The Dispatch Podcast - About That NBC News Drama ... | Roundtable

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

The hiring and firing of Ronna McDaniel at NBC News brought up mixed feelings for the staffers at The Dispatch. Sarah, Jonah, Steve, and David (French!) open up about their own complicated relationships with mainstream media, the problems with hiring partisans into newsrooms, and whether McDaniel is a good avatar for any of these questions. The Agenda: —Roles of ideological purity in media —The crew’s experiences at their respective news outlets —Steve’s behind-the-scenes insight into McDaniel’s Meet the Press interview —The changing definition of RINO —The lack of truthfulness in news outlets —Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ballot-access dilemma Show Notes: —Meidas Touch article on Ronna McDaniel hiring —Vox hit piece on Sarah Isgur following CNN exit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar and the gang is back together. We've got Steve Hay's Jonah Goldberg and the prodigal son, David French. I'm back. Let's dive right in. Steve, I feel like in, in Mean Girl. You've come to this episode with a lot of feelings, even though you don't even go to this school. I don't go to this school. This is the flagship school.

Oh, gosh. Flagship discourse is dead, dude. The correct terminology now is they're all spin-offs of the remnant. Well, okay, there was sudden silence because we kind of had to acknowledge, okay, fair. Rana Romney McDaniel was pushed out of the RNC by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. And after leaving the RNC, she got a contributor ship job with NBC News.

This was met with surprise, consternation, and a lot of big feelings from employees at NBC News. And this, of course, led to a whole lot of discourse. It resulted in Rona Romney McDaniel not working at NBC News after, what, less than a week? There's a few things that people are saying about this. One, she shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Two, she shouldn't have been fired because this is the kind of ideological purity that each side is demanding and it's a problem for their viewers. It's a problem for our, you know, national conversations. Three, she should have been fired because of what she said about January 6th and people who were involved in that shouldn't be platformed.

Four, my name has come up quite a bit because the question is, is this similar or not similar to what happened to Sarah at CNN? What happened to the New York Times folks after they published the Tom Cotton op-ed and other places that have basically gotten rid of conservatives? We should also know, just because he's a colleague, Kevin Williamson, at the Atlantic. Yep. So, Steve, with the big feelings, I'm going to start with you because you are also a contributor at NBC News. Is there anything on the reporting side that I'm missing on this? Any relevant details? Yeah, I was on Meet the Press last Sunday when this issue arose.

Ron and Romney McDaniel gave an interview that Kristen Welker, the moderator of Meet the Press, introduced the show, introduced the segment and said, this is going to be a news interview. This interview was booked before Rana McDaniel became an NBC contributor, so I'm interviewing her as a newsmaker, not as a colleague. The interview went quite long, I think longer than NBC had planned, longer than we on the panel had expected. And then when we came back from break after that interview, I was on a panel with Chuck Todd, Kimberly Atkins' store, who's sort of the progressive. And Kristen Welker moderated the discussion. she turned to Chuck Todd first, and Chuck,

and what has now been sort of a famous creed decor, really let NBC executives have it for hiring Rona McDaniel. I agree with what Chuck said. I don't think she should have been hired at NBC. I do think after NBC had made that initial mistake, they shouldn't have continued to employer. But that doesn't mean that I think, you know, some of the folks at MSNBC and some of the folks on the left

are on the side of the Angels here, because I do have concerns about exactly the kind of purge at sort of the heart of this that you mentioned with, you know, James Bennett at the New York Times, you know, other instances where not even necessarily conservatives, but often conservatives are pushed out just because the sort of woke mob doesn't want them in their position. But starting in the first place. But isn't part of the question whether, right, like NBC says they,

They, you know, fired her, whatever the right word is, because she had a contract. So to say they fired her, but basically they're going to just pay her all the money that they said, but not require any work from her because of her role around January 6th and election denialism and all that. But I think what the pushback is pointing to the James Bennett's, the me's, the Kevin Williamson's is there's always some excuse, but it's not about that. It's about the, you know, far left wing not wanting those voices because any conservative voice is an 11 on the amp. And so here, fine, it's January 6th with Kevin, it was abortion with James Bennett.

It was publishing a Tom Cotton op-ed. And with me, it was existing. We'll get to that later. It was existing. That's my biggest right against you, Sarah. I think there's some truth. to all of that. The reason I don't think Romney McDaniel should have been hired by NBC has everything to do with January 6th and her work in supporting Donald Trump's stolen election claims,

trying to help him remain in office after he'd lost an election and then minimizing January 6th. If you look at what she did from the earliest days, she was boosting the totally unfounded stolen election conspiracies. She pushed election officials in Michigan not to certify the election results and promise to get them lawyers for their trouble. The RNC raised money on Trump's stolen election stuff. They provided a home for that crazy conspiracy-laden press conference with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others, throwing out one false conspiracy after another. And then if you remember after January 6th, the RNC put out a statement condemning Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsiger for their role on the January 6th committee that included the very unfortunate phrase legitimate political discourse to

describe what had happened on January 6th and around January 6th. That was a Rana Romney-McDaniel phrase. She said it first in her own words in an interview with the Washington Post. So I think she's guilty of all of these things. She certainly had done Donald Trump's bidding as he tried to steal an election. And I think she played a contributing role, not just a bystander role, in preventing the first peaceful transfer of power that we've seen in the history of the country. That's a big deal. I think NBC was, I think it was foolish for NBC to hire her, given all of that. I want to steal me on the other side of this, which is some large percentage of the country of voters when asked the question, do you believe that Joe Biden was

legitimately elected, we'll say no. Now, I think you can break that out into different things versus like the election was stolen or the election was rigged by which they mean, you know, the rules for voting were changed legally but sketchily or if you want to say it. But regardless, that's a sizable portion of the country. And if you want to have conversations about politics, having someone who represents that perspective is important. And if you want to point out that there's no evidence for that or she lied or anything else, feel free to do that, but you should be doing that on air, not just not platforming those people, not including that part of the conversation, because it's not changing people's minds to simply pretend it doesn't exist. Well, there are all

sorts of distinctions to be made there. One of them is just platforming. One of them is paying a lot of money to platform hiring as a contributor, giving them that spot on a regular basis. Look, I think there's a cause effect problem embedded in your question, right? 50% of a American voters think that Joe Biden, or 50% of Republicans think that Joe Biden wasn't fairly elected is not a reason to hire Rana Romney McDaniel because she represents people who believes things that are false. She deserves some of the blame for the fact that 50% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump lost or won the 2020 election because of everything that she and the RNC did on Trump's behalf in the days and weeks after the election was decided.

And continuing, after 60 of 61 court cases, went against Donald Trump and the arguments that he and fellow Republicans were making. So in this case, what you would be doing is not hiring somebody just to provide another side. You would be hiring somebody to provide a side that has been shown to have been false, that is demonstrably false. And it doesn't matter whether 50% of Republicans believe that it's. it's true if it's false. If 50% of Republicans thought that Jonah was a woman, we wouldn't hire

somebody to come on and make the argument that Jonah is a woman because that's an important viewpoint to have represented. That's what Jim Z calls a drive-by. It doesn't matter if the claim is false. You don't have to- I think you've got enough airing already. I will stake my journalistic reputation. David, since you work for the New York Times, basically Jonah works for CNN, David works for the New York Times, Steve Hayes works for NBC, and we're just going to go outlet by

outlet and talk about whether this is similar or different. And Sarah, you work for ABC. So far, so good, I guess. And we have some Fox representation. Fox should come up in this discussion later. David, I want to come to you next. Is this similar to the James

Bennett getting fired over the Tom Cotton op-ed about deploying the National Guard to quell civil unrest in 2020? Or is it really different because of what Rana Romney said specifically? It's a mostly not similar, but partly yes, similar. I mean, look, you know, the name that has not come up here is Mark Short. So Mark Short was hired by NBC a week or two before the Ronoram McDaniel News. And for those who don't know, Mark Short worked with Vice President Pence through almost

of the Trump term and was a quite loyal foot soldier for Mike Pence and for the Trump administration and then said no to the January 6th coup attempt. And so, and he's hired and he's there and he's conservative. And so this sort of idea that says, well, see, that's what's going to happen to Trump administration officials in the mainstream media. Nobody's got a chance is just wrong. The litmus test in this case seemed to be a legitimate litmus test, which is, hey, did you go along with this violent attempt to overthrow the and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power? That's a pretty legitimate screening question for a new hire.

And the idea that they didn't do this also, I mean, the idea that they went ahead and did this anyway is just remarkably bad judgment, is remarkably bad judgment. And it feeds into this sort of sense of grievance and persecution you have. have in Maga World where, see, they just don't want Trump officials. They just don't want Trump officials. When the real answer is, if you look at the comparison between Mark Short and Ron Aramie McDaniel, is there's a difference between Trump administration officials who did not go on along with an insurrection and Trump administration officials who did and NBC employees

were and are still adult enough to draw the distinction. But the problem is here, from my standpoint, here's where the partly yes, partly the James Bennett part comes in. All of the, this was not like everyone hired Ronna Romney McDaniel and then tweets surfaced or, you know, information surfaced. No, they hired Ron and Romney McDaniel. One of the most recognizably Trumpian figures of the last four years, she literally dropped part of her name to join this cult. Like, this has been known for a very long time. And so this sort of idea that NBC fires her, almost like, oh, wait, we hired Ronna McDaniel? We did what?

In response to pressure, in response to internal pressure, is where you get the partly yes. And that's what, of course, going from some of the experiences we talk about here, Kevin, Sarah, James Bennett, Barry Weiss, others, you have a sit, there is a bad precedent you set when an employee revolt. reverses a hiring decision and the employee revolt is not based on any real misconduct as we have recognized misconduct workplace, you know, what would be considered sort of for-cause termination or workplace misconduct in the past. I mean, James Bennett in the Tom Cotton situation, the Tom Cotton op-ed removed from the hot house environment of 2020, yeah, I had beef with it because I think that invoking the Insurrection Act, the problem wasn't troops in the streets. It was troops under Donald Trump's command in the streets, whereas members, the state governors were mobilizing

the National Guard, which was under their command, not Donald Trump's command. But my concern is with yet another one of these employee revolt type situations, which has really, frankly, been a scourge of mainstream media for several years now. So that's the partly yes, but she never should have been hired. Not in a million years. Not every partisan is a liar. I mean, let's just put it like that. I take David's point about Mark Short,

and I think that's pretty good evidence. Except, Jonah, what if it's just that some things bounce off the atmosphere and others don't, and here's where I'm going to use me as an example? I didn't have anything to do with January 6th. I was involved in the Mueller investigation. That's what you say. And yet, there was enormous point.

pushback. I was hired as a political editor for CNN. I wasn't going to be on air. There was enormous pushback. Very, very similar, like incredibly similar to what we saw from NBC. There was on-air stuff. There was lots of off-air stuff. And after two weeks, CNN caved to that pressure. So I guess, Jonah, I don't know. I'm not convinced that just because there wasn't that sort of reaction to Mark Short. Maybe it's just the no-one noticed Mark Short. Maybe the press release hit on an otherwise busy day and people were doing other stuff. That being said, you know, the pushback to me, of course, because there wasn't a January 6th thing, I've never lied to the press. There were no tweets to be unearthed, except that it turns out I was a Republican before. The pushback was, well,

we should never be hiring people who worked in partisan politics. Of course, that blew up pretty quickly because Jim Shuto was a political appointee for the Obama administration, who's now a pure, not a commentator, not an opinion person, like a pure reporter for CNN. George Stephanopoulos is, of course, an example that came up. Many reporters worked either on the Hill or on campaigns before they moved into reporting in their younger years, I will fully acknowledge, interns, etc. Pete Williams was the spokesperson at the Pentagon during the Bush administration during the Iraq war, was the NBC chief legal correspondent. So that kind of didn't stick. But I will say there were, uh, then it was a Sarah's never written anything, which is just, that was annoying and false.

I've been published in law reviews, neuroscience journals, but it just was accepted. Like, Eric Wimple wrote it in the Washington Post. Like, it was just fact, despite like not Googling my name. I mean, I'd written for the weekly standard. Remember, Steve? A few times. But, the Trump administration was still going on and I had worked for the Trump administration a little bit similarly to stuff NBC has done hiring Biden administration officials like Jen Saki while the Biden administration is still going on

so I want you to be able to talk about whether you think it's similar or different whether it's the January 6th stuff or that's just an excuse because they knew about it beforehand so huh but also maybe it's not appropriate to hire people who worked in the administration that's still going on. And that makes it different than a George Stephanopoulos, for instance, where Clinton had served two terms, he wasn't running again. George wasn't put on

as a reporter anchor until well after Clinton had left the White House. Now, maybe you can say the Hillary Clinton stuff was a little bit different, although in his book, they certainly don't seem like friends. So I want you to weigh in on sort of the wisdom of all of this to begin with. Okay. So many things have been said that I agree with. There are a few things I have a dissent from, you know, you say you've never lied to the press, but I am technically a member of the press, Sarah. I just want to be clear about that. So if you want to, like, revise and extend your remark.

Look, I think it was a mistake to hire for all the reasons we all think. Like, let's just, let's be a little blunt about it. She is not, you know, when Donald Trump says about Latin American countries, they're not sending their best. Something similar can be said about Ronna McDaniel. No one has ever said in sincerity. gosh, I wonder what Ronna McDaniel's take is on this. She's a partisan hack and not a particularly good one.

The first thing that needs to be said is, so on the merits, there are better people that they could have hired. And maybe they had ideas about access or whatever. And I think that's all legitimate. I'm still torn about that fact because, again, and I take Steve's point, you don't have to pay them. But you do have to pay them because, like, there aren't a lot of networks that have someone

who actually is voting for Donald Trump this fall who are telling their, viewers how those people think why they have different views i mean the the us this group ain't that and so like yeah we i mean there is something to be said for like having those voices out there but please continue jonah i think the thing that gets left out in a lot of this conversation is how they clearly screwed up the process of hiring which cnn did too with me by the way and that's a big similarity i'm so glad you brought that up look when steve and i left fox right i left with like 13 months left on my contract at Fox.

I didn't know if I was ever going to get another television contract. Turns out that we were both sort of in demand, which was great. We hadn't planned on it. We talked to NBC. We talked to CNN. We had decided to split up. It's not like we needed more time together. But I'll tell you, I know for a fact that the brass at NBC called around to different

shows and said, hey, would you use Jonah Goldberg? would you like it if we got Jonah Goldberg here? The idea that they didn't do that for Ronna McDaniel, which is if I'm going to believe Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd, and I have no reason to believe that Chuck Todd would lie about any of this, and I don't think Scarborough or Maddow would, but I trust Chuck more than I trust, you know, whatever. Let's just say they take them all at their word.

That's just malpractice. Yeah. Right? And let's just say for the sake of a hypothetical that they're all lying, right? Right? Because I could see if you didn't attach the names of the personalities, given the level of audience capture television networks have, the ability of television hosts to cave to viewer backlashes cannot be underestimated. That is one of the reasons why Fox had to spend $800 million because they had to respect the audience, right?

So it is, again, I'm not accusing any of these specific people of it, but it would not seem out of the realm of possibility if you described it to me in abstract. that a bunch of people said, yeah, be fine, bring her on board. And then there's this huge viewer revolt, and they go cover their own asses and they say, hey, I wasn't cleared on this. Again, I don't think any of them are lying about it, but I think it's possible.

If that's the case, then heads should roll among the hosts. If the brass didn't talk to anybody and get buy-in or feedback, then their heads should roll. but if they did have some sort of heads up and then do this preening thing on TV saying I mean I'm sorry Nicole Wallace is a very nice person but spare me the phrase

our sacred airwaves the network that has Al Sharpton on all the time as like Mount Rushmore of pundits telling me that their airwaves are sacred is just a bit too much and so the public tantrums if they're all sincere that's one thing I still don't like the tantrums.

I still don't think NBC should have fired her. I think, you know, you own it, you deal with it, you take the embarrassment, you explain what you're doing every single time, let Rona McDaniel, Ronald McDaniel be a martyr. Shouldn't have hired her, shouldn't have hired her the way they hired her. Shouldn't have fired her is my view on that. I think the similarities here, the reason why this gets complicated is I agree entirely with Steve in the parallel universe where I want to live. Donald Trump is unfit to run, would have been considered unfit to run

for office in 2016, but he really would have been unfit after January 6th. And it would just simply have been, this was like the night of the long knives. This is completely unacceptable. These people should be shunt from public life, as the Amish say. Anybody who was involved in any of that stuff should be, what is the name, Profumo in England, go work feeding lepers and soup kitchens or something, right? Because you should not be allowed in politics. But we don't live in that world. I think that's a shame. And so I think McDaniel should be radioactive. I think Trump should be radioactive, but they're not for reasons of lots of collective action problems and institutional failures. And then you add in the other problem, which is like, so I have a disagreement

like Charlie Cook on the editor's podcast, and I love Charlie, he's a dear friend of mine, but he's going on about how none of these networks, it's not just that they don't want people who like Trump. They don't want any articulate defenders of conservatism at all, regardless of Trump, regardless of the January 6th thing. I just think that's flatly untrue. That's so false. I think I'm a pretty good defender of a conservatism. I think David's a pretty good defender of a conservatim, like Sarah and Steve.

Sarah, a pretty good defender of conservatism. And you can go down a lot. I mean, Rich Lowry, Ramesh Poonuru, these guys who are on that podcast, they're on cable news all the time. Jim Garrity. They're on Meet the Press. My point is, is I think a lot of these networks do have tolerance for articulate defenders of conservatism. The problem is that on both the Democratic side and the Republican side and

throughout right-wing and left-wing media, issues don't friggin matter anymore. Yes, thank you. I'm so glad you said that. No one's talking about, oh, like defend, you know, Ukraine from a conservative perspective or tax rates or any of that kind of crap. Trump is a, Trump is the issue. I've said it a million times on here. When we were all growing up, or at least when me, Steve and David were growing up. I'm still growing up. The word rhino meant someone who was squishy on abortion or taxes or foreign policy or something like that.

It was about issues. Now, by Trump's own admission a hundred times, rhino solely means, only refers to people insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump. And so you get this weird kind of thing where you have to find people who are supposedly intelligent conservatives who are also willing to talk about Donald Trump as if he's comrade Stalin. And that's a really tiny universe of people because it almost demands that you have no integrity or that you lie. And that's how Ronna McDaniel starts to look attractive. So the added problem is I agree with Charlie and a lot of our friends and with you, Sarah,

that a lot of these people are full of themselves. They are not objecting to, they're using the January 6th thing as the reason to justify their rage when they would have, they have very little credibility with this stuff because we've seen it so many times. CBS went into a, you know, apoplectic about Mulvaney. Mulvaney had nothing to do with January 6th. He quit. He quit as a result of January 6th. The guy, I mean, he was at that time, I think, special envoy to Ireland or something.

But he left the White House in protest. And CBS journalists still objected because he had worked for Trump. And so there's this huge Motten Bailey thing where, you know, they are retreating to this January 6th argument, defend democracy argument, when in reality they think a lot of them really do think having conservatives in their midst, you know, it's funny, I've got to do this fight with people on Twitter last night where they were listing all the people like Trump had said, or Elon Musk had said, MSNBC doesn't allow any Republicans on. And people started listening, you know, Joe Scarborough, Nicole Wallace. Charlie Sykes Michael Steele and I was like you know most of these people

don't call themselves Republicans the response of a lot of people's well they were Republicans when they were hired maybe maybe not I don't know got to go back and check the record but Nicole Wallace again I don't mean to pick on her

but she's the perfect example of this yes she's a Republican who has completely and totally shed any pretense of being an actual conservative the only time she ever brings up being a Republican is about what she saw on the inside to help demonize existing Republicans.

And I sometimes will agree with her about some of that stuff. But that is what an MSNBC, that is the nay plus ultra of MSNBC Republicans. And so I just have contempt for almost everybody in this entire conversation. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is, the consequences of not having life insurance, can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters.

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Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ethos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. Steve, I want to know what you think about the idea of hiring people who worked in administrations into these jobs in the first place. Whether it's Fox, whether it's MSNBC, whether it's me going to CNN, whether it's Jim Shuto, George Defenopoulos, any of these folks, what Jake Tapper worked for someone or other on the Hill, I don't remember. Tim Russert worked for Moynihan. Yes, I think probably I was thinking more of Tim Russert.

You're a real journalist. How do we balance between the credibility of journalism versus. the diversity of experience in a newsroom. I think in some ways that's the most important part of all of this. The question sort of at the heart of this, what are these partisans hired to do? Are they being hired to continue to be partisans? Or are they being hired to bring insight and analysis

and maybe reporting in a way that informs and enlightens viewers? And I think too often the answer is the former. They're being hired to play a role to continue to be partisans. nobody thought about it actually too hard because it sounded good on a press release and the name is famous. I think that's true. But I mean, if you look at, I mean, if you look, and this is probably more true of cable than it is of the networks. And I should point out my association with NBC is with the network. It is not with MSNBC or CNBC or the others. I do the network and I do the network streaming shows. So it's a little different than I think what is going on with MSNBC.

But if you look at the role they have these partisans play, It is often a role. So they set this up. I mean, it's almost like professional wrestling. They set this up in such a way that they encourage partisan battles. So you'll have a Democrat and a Republican who are not there often to provide sort of in-depth thoughts about what's actually happening. They are there to be partisans as part of the combat. I mean, Crossfire sort of was the epitome of this, but it is prevalent through.

out, I think, cable news in particular. And in that case, I think you have people who are hired and sometimes paid on air saying things that they don't believe because the networks want them to do this kind of performative battle. And I think that's one of the reasons we're in this predicament. It's poisonous. It's wrong. And it happens all the time. To Jonah's earlier point about what's sort of the true source of outrage here. You know, I think it's hard to know. I do. think some people probably draw the same line that I do and that it sounds like you all do, which is January 6th is just too much. You can't hire somebody who's been a participant in the January 6th and stolen election

conspiracy stuff, especially if you're running a news network. And who also admits that they had been lying at the time? Yeah, yeah. You're running a news network. You know, these are sort of well-formed conspiracies that she, I mean, she said, in her meet the press interview that she believed Donald Trump didn't want any of the things on January 6th

to happen. There's a mountain of evidence that Donald Trump did want those things to happen, that he cheered them on as they took place. He's defending them now. He's calling the participants unbelievable patriots. She was saying things in that meet the press interview

that were furthering, I would say the Trumpian conspiracy on all this stuff. But on the question of whether they were outraged for just about the presence of another Republican or about January 6th. So we did a call the day before the meet the press panel. This is sort of a typical panel call. And I'm not sharing any big secrets by disclosing this. You go on, you do a call, you basically find out exactly what the topics are and kind of maybe what the sound, the network will have. If one of the interviews was pre-taped, you might get a transcript in

advance so you can provide this analysis. And sometimes you're invited to kind of share what you think about the topics in a in a general broadway you don't have sort of a pre-rehearsed panel discussion but a discussion about the discussion to come so find out on on saturday we knew that ron and romney macdano was going to be on we sort of found out that she was going to be interviewed the next day and then i said about doing preparation for the panel so i read as much as i could i looked further at the sort of the controversy and the arguments people were making and i went to uh might as touch i don't know if you all know that It's M-E-I-D-A-S touch.

It's a very popular, mostly video-driven website on the left that employs people who clip videos of things that people say. They get tons of virality. Very popular. And it's a good place to go, I think, to see sort of how people are reacting on the left. So they ran a story that next day was something like Y-W-T-F NBC, MSNBC,

Hires Ron and Romney McDaniels, a commentator. The person who runs it, Ron Philip House, Often, I think, provides interesting and helpful videos, stuff that would otherwise go unnoticed, has a list of all of these clips of Romney McDaniel that he says are from disqualifying. Virtually none of them had anything whatsoever to do with January 6th. They had everything to do in almost every case. What they had McDaniel doing was providing partisan spin. Now, I thought it was often very bad partisan. spin, unpersuasive partisan spin, but it was pretty run-of-the-mill partisan spin, and certainly not

the kind of thing I think that would disqualify you from this kind of a network job. And I think that's kind of at the heart of what we're talking about. Are there people, whether it's viewers or MSNB hosts, MSNBC hosts, or producers, staff, what have you, who just look at Ron Romney McDaniel and say, we don't, we live in this pleasant little world where everybody basically believes the same thing and we can all get together and not our heads along with one another, and I don't want this person coming in and sort of disrupting that. I think that does exist. I think MSNBC is part of the problem there. This is obviously true at Fox, too. I mean, it's been highly amusing for me to watch a lot of the Fox talking heads

try to beat up NBC and MSNBC for their lack of ideological and partisan diversity. I mean, you work at Fox, have a little self-awareness. The liberals at Fox have long occupied the position of the Washington Generals in the Washington General's Harlem Globetrotter battles where Alan Combs has trotted out to get beat up every night by Sean Hannity. That is the case. I mean, there were some good liberals I work with at Fox over the years, but by and large, that is what Fox is doing.

And it's a little bit much to hear from some of the partisan hacks at Fox that really NBC and MSNBC should be more committed to ideological and partisan diversity. Back to your first point, and I'll shut up. I think the most important question, this goes back to you, Sarah. Okay, maybe I won't shut up. I'll just keep going. What are partisans hired to do? Are people with partisan backgrounds hired to do?

When you came to the dispatch, this was after the CNN kerfuffle, you had been sort of labeled a partisan. CNN, after taking you out of the political. editor role was willing to use you on air, but wanted to use you in a very particular way. And that was to have you sit in the Republican chair, making Republican arguments, often using Republican talking points, so that they could have this sort of performative political battle. When you came to the dispatch, we wanted to do precisely the opposite. We said, wow, this is interesting. She's worked in a presidential campaign.

She's had experience in the media. she's been a lawyer, she's worked at the Justice Department, been in the Trump administration. We would like you to use all of that experience and then just tell us what you think. Then just provide reporting and analysis in a way that's intellectually honest. And, you know, by my lights, that's what you've done here for four years. I think that's why this has really worked, despite the fact that you had worked as a partisan and that we in our opening post on October 9th, 2019, said we are not partisan. are not interested in partisan boosterism.

And yet we hired you, but we asked you to do something different. I think that's the distinction between what we're doing and what a lot of these networks are doing. I'll just note that while CNN put me in the position to be a Republican arguing against a Democrat on air the very few times that they used me in that year and a half or so, I didn't do it. I went on air, but just actually said what I thought.

David, how do we do this moving forward? because, again, I guess I do feel a little like there's always some excuse. It's always some reason why this time we can't have that conservative on this platform. And I think that we lose intellectual diversity. It, you know, does chill speech, not in like a First Amendment context. It just chills people even being willing to talk to going to the other side. Because I talk to CNN in advance, in depth. Do you understand everything I've ever said?

Do you understand everywhere I have worked? Are you going to actually be willing to withstand whatever the pushback is? And I was assured the answer was yes. I don't know what happened on the McDaniel side. But if she's smart, she had a similar conversation with NBC. So then when they do cave to the pressure, it's sort of like fool me once. There's nothing you can do except then your reputation gets trashed. You know, there were news articles in every major outlet.

the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, all of it about what a dumb, horrible... Like, literally, it's funny. If you go back and read any of the news articles, none of them mention that I'm a lawyer, not one. Right. None of them mention any writing I've ever done. In fact, they say that I've never written anything,

which is a weird thing to say about someone who's, you know, in their late 30s, who's like had the jobs I've had. Like, how would you even do that without having written anything? So your reputation gets trash. So why would you then even? and try to get a job with one of those places, if you're someone who hasn't done this yet, right? Or someone calling me and asking for advice.

And so then we get more into our ideological bubbles. And to the point, they had every reason to know everything she had done, every ability to find out. I'm not sure I agree that she shouldn't have been hired in the first place, though I don't know that I... I certainly wouldn't have wanted her hired at the dispatch. So in guessing that sense, I agree.

But, like, if you're going to have people who are like pro Hamas on air, I guess I'm not totally sure why you can't have people who are going to explain how half the country votes. But regardless, the effect of this, I think is really pernicious in the overall environment of siloing people into echo chambers. So many things. One, what happened to you and Kevin and some others

are the only reason anyone has an ounce of sympathy for Rana Romming McDaniel. Let's just be clear. Because if you were at CNN right now, if Kevin was riding away at the Atlantic, et cetera, her hiring and firing would be, how was NBC so stupid? And thank goodness they changed their mind

before they did enough damage. You're right. I'll acknowledge that. That's the only reason I have any sense at all that NBC should have kept her. Well, yes, because we don't necessarily then believe them. Like the reason is that those examples do exist, so then we don't believe NBC that they did it

because of January 6th. think they did it to cave to left-wing pressure that shouldn't be left-wing pressure in their network because they claim to not be a left-wing network. Right. So that goes all the way back to my initial comment of the part where I am in sympathy with some of these folks who are saying it's outrageous to fire her. The only reason I'm in sympathy is because it's very unclear to me in my mind, was she actually fired because of the January 6th stuff and being a known liar or was she fired because of everything else. And that's why I brought up the Mark Short

counter example. So, yeah, I think that every news outlet when it's trying to hire somebody, it shouldn't do a measure of partisanship, prior partisanship, so much as a measure of prior truthfulness. And a news outlet in general, a news outlet should be of all the employers

most allergic to hiring known liars, even when you're talking about somebody who's supposed to be a partisan warrior, a partisan combatant. Don't hire known liars. And here's the thing that I would say, and just to defend some of my colleagues in the mainstream media, I have had so many conversations with people

who say, I want, we want a MAGA writer. We want somebody who is going to write for us that will defend populism, that will defend all of this stuff, but who also is going to be honest, isn't going to expose us to gross defamation judgments, is going to be a decent human being to work with, which is actually a point that matters in workplaces. And when you start to say,

just that one requirement of don't be a known liar, don't be somebody who's going falling along with outrageously absurd conspiracy theories, is sweeping out an increasing percentage of MAGA because what's happening in the dynamic in the background that people don't realize is as MAGA gets weirder and weirder, and this is something that Nick has documented quite well, as MAGA is getting weirder and weirder,

the gross things you have to buy into to remain a person in good standing are just mounting up. And then you're saying to these news outlets, why don't you hire these increasingly weird conspiracy theorists? well the question answers itself and then the other thing I'll say just to circle back with Jonah this is a pet peeve of mine

I had dinner the other day with somebody y'all would recognize him good guy and he said David I really like your work at the times but I think you need to challenge your progressive readers more and so I said two things to one do you read the email from my progressive readers

and do you believe that they feel unchallenged that was question number one and because the answer is progressive readers write me all the time saying that they disagree strongly with my perspective because they're operating in an ideological spectrum where they see me as somebody who takes substantive positions on the issues

that are substantially to their right and they see that and they read it and they don't always like it and then the other thing is and I said to him so what do you mean would you want me to use my platform for example to argue that biological males should not compete in women's sports, to use my platform to say that Dobbs was rightly decided,

to use my platform to say that 303 creative was rightly decided, to use my platform to defend the legitimacy of this conservative Supreme Court, would you want me to do all of those things? And he said, yes, this is what you need to be doing. And I said, this is what I've been doing. Like, all of these things are pieces I've written and things that I've written sometimes repeatedly. But even amongst some conservatives of goodwill, in the final analysis, it's, But have you defended Donald Trump? But have you defended Donald Trump? That gets down to the, that's the final test.

That's it. It's not a position. It's not an idea. You know, people in the evangelical right loathe me, even though I have put Orthodox evangelical theology into the New York Times at volume. Like I'm writing about sort of Christian belief so much that some writers, some of those progressive readers that I supposedly never challenge

are like, would you lay off it? Right. And so it's just a really weird environment where this sort of half the country thing really as we're talking about a quarter of the country, which is really, really, really invested in MAGA is demanding that conservatism

reorient itself entirely around the defense of their man and their conspiracies. And I'm just not going to do it. I'm just not. And this idea that that means I'm, quote, currying favor with the left, or Jonah is, or Steve is, or Sarah is, well, there has to be something that is conservatism, a set of ideas that is conservatism. And if you're saying that I am not upholding those ideas, I'm much more interested in that critique than I am the critique that says, well, you're not a conservative unless you defend the guy who violates every single value, both ideologically and morally, that you hold dear. I just don't buy that critique. The one thing we are definitely guilty of is the Ronna McDaniel thing.

People are like, this is such an Inside the Beltway thing that only pundits care about and only people, you know, only well-compensated, you know, talking heads care about. And we spent 50 minutes caring about it. That's right. So I'll defend it. But isn't that our, in that the listenership? Yeah, no, I'm not saying we were wrong.

wrong to. No, I think our listenership likes, I think our listenership likes something broader, but I actually think it's really important. I mean, I think one of the reasons our whole political system is so screwed up is because the information environment is polluted. And if she's polluting the information environment and hyping conspiracy theories, that's part of the problem. I think it's definitely worth spending time on. 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

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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. All right. We're going to do a little not worth your time extended edition. And Jonah, I'm coming to you. Is it worth my time to spend additional thought thinking about RFK Jr's candidacy? He's announced a vice presidential pick. I have no idea who this person is. And more to the point, every time I ask, wait, how is he going to be on the ballot? I met with sort of a, like a dog who was just asked a very complicated question like head turn like he's not it looks like going to be the libertarian nominee they would have ballot access um my understanding is he's going to be on the ballot in like seven states so why is this worth my time yeah but what are the seven states some of the seven states might matter yeah so look like the way i look at this is i mean i think he actually came out and said it that he's a spoiler candidacy In 2020, only 2% of voters voted third party.

And right now, RFK is polling around, what, 18, 19%, I think it will come down considerably. But even if it comes down by 60%, even if he's not on the ballot and has to be written in, it seems to me that he's going to get more than 2% in a lot of places. And in a lot of places, Biden doesn't have 2% to spare. You know, if in 2016, the election was but for, what, 68,000 votes in three states or five states, and in 2020, it was 48,000 in three states, this is going to come down really to the wire. And Kennedy could tilt it to Trump. I know a lot of people who think that Kennedy takes more votes from Trump than from Biden. I don't see it.

I'm not saying they're wrong. I just haven't been persuaded yet. And David Frum was making this point yesterday. I was on CNN with him. I did not know this. I haven't checked it out for myself. But apparently the guys who are setting up his super PAC, which is where most of Kennedy's money comes from for this,

they're mostly Republican MAGA aligned. So even if Kennedy takes from across a weird coalition of people, the money they're going to spend is going to be disproportionately against Biden. and just one last point on this. We've talked a lot on here and elsewhere about how gross and cynical Democrats are for grooming, I could come up with a better word,

curating the opposing primary, right? Like, you know, taking out ads to signal boost the most magnet candidates because they think they're easier to be in the general election. Trump's true social stuff against Kennedy reads to me exactly like that. Kennedy's a radical Democrat. Kennedy is to the left of Biden.

Kennedy is the real deal, that kind of thing. And that works to solidify Trump's base. But I also think it signal boosts to the disaffected young lefties that Biden's having trouble holding on to that Kennedy's their real guy. And I'm sure you're going to start doing that to Cornell West as well under the same theory. And so I still believe if it's a two-way race, Biden wins or is at least favored. But I don't think it's going to be a two-way race. And Kennedy is going to have real impact, even though no chance in hell you ever becomes president, thank God.

So, Steve, the reason I hesitated on the ballot access, like actually what state's question is because we don't really know. The RFK campaign has said that they have enough signatures to appear on the ballot in Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Utah. but Nevada has said, no, because they didn't have a vice presidential candidate on the petitions with the ballot. So who even knows? And then a super PAC has claimed to get enough signatures in Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and Michigan. But again, that hasn't been confirmed by any of those states. And as someone who has worked in ballot access, to your point, Steve, I actually have experience in doing this. And I will tell you, the quality of signatures can very,

greatly depending on how you got them. So sometimes you need 1.5 times the number of signatures required on a petition. That would be really high quality signature gathering. If you're sort of farming this out to a company that tells you they'll gather signatures, which is what most campaigns are doing, by the way, sometimes you're going to need three times the number of signatures, sometimes four times the number of signatures because the way that you compensate people is going to create weird incentives. If you compensate them by signature, suddenly a lot of those signatures aren't going to be real, so you need a lot more. Which is all to say, just because they claim to be on the ballot in Arizona or Michigan or states that look like they could really be decision

makers shrug until those states actually verify the number of signatures, coin flip at best that that's going to be accurate. Do you agree with Jonah on who he takes more? votes from or that he's going to be relevant at all. Yeah, I certainly think he's going to be relevant. You've asked the most important question. What on what ballots will he actually appear in November? That will matter more than anything. If he's polling at 20% nationally,

but it turns out that he's actually just 40% in California. Right. That's not going to matter. Right. All who support are in Vermont and California and North Dakota or something. And like everyone in Georgia and Arizona think it's a binary choice. Yeah. So I don't, you're right.

I mean, in that hypothetical, that analysis is right, but I think it would still matter. If you look at the margins that we've seen, I mean, look at the margins in 2020, look at the number of votes that separated the two candidates in some of these important states. If RFK Jr. is a right-in candidate in some of these states where he doesn't appear on the ballot, he could very well get enough votes to make a difference in who wins or loses the state. So I think he's relevant regardless of what happens. I think it's sad. I think it's a statement about our politics. But I think he's relevant regardless of what happens. But the thing that will matter by far the most is whether he's able to get on ballots.

And the problem I think that he faced, he was asked about this, as I recall, not long ago and didn't really have an answer. It was like, oh, ballot access? You know, it was like his operation hadn't really been focused on that, which I think gives you some. sense of the kind of quote unquote campaign he's really running. But, you know, if they're able to scramble and the clock is ticking, I mean, some of these, some of these ballot access deadlines are upon us or will be upon us very shortly. And he's running out of time to get on. So, you know, I think it's a big challenge for him to, to qualify in many of these cases. But if he qualifies and if he qualifies in those states, I think you could have a major impact. His polling, I think,

has gone down. It's down even further a little bit. I think it was the Fox News poll that I saw yesterday. He's basically lost like a point every time they've pulled. So he was at, you know, 15, then he was at 14, then 13, then 12. I expect that he might continue to, to drop. But, you know, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in a swing state, you know, one of the seven competitive states, if he's at 6 percent, is potentially decisive. David I think you speak libertarian pretty well oddly because you're sort of yeah yeah is there any chance that the libertarians see this as a vehicle for them to be more relevant in the 2024 election well we have to draw a distinction between libertarians and the

LP the libertarian party which is now a grotesque entity that has been sort of taking taken over by a subcategory of libertarians, what is it, the Mises caucus, that is, they're just a gang of trolls. It's a very weird situation because in the one hand, you could say, okay, the libertarians are utterly, totally disorganized, but they are organized enough to every four years have ballots, have 50 state ballots, get on the ballots of all 50 states. And with massive, massive discontent between the Republican and Democratic nominee, there's a theory in which a libertarian nominee, if they were sane, if they were sensible, if they were moderate libertarian, could really make some progress. Now, instead, the libertarian party is in the hands of just wildly malicious people. And so it's just hard to know what their calculus would be.

I mean, they're not libertarians. They're just wildly malicious people and trolls. But the one thing about the Robert Kennedy's situation that I don't know that people are tracking this enough. I am getting all kinds of questions, emails, text messages from Robert F. Kennedy, curious evangelicals. And that might sound like the weirdest thing you've ever heard. It does.

His anti-vax. So I don't think people realize how much the anti-vax message spread like wildfire in especially younger evangelical circles during COVID. And so there are certain evangelical influencers if you follow that are conservatives that are saying, no, no, no, not Robert F. Kennedy. Don't do Robert F. Kennedy.

All the people who are justifiably in their view, suspicious of the COVID vaccine, don't go Robert F. Kennedy. And I don't think we realize the extent to which really the anti-vax movement in the U.S. has sort of moved from Granola left to health and wellness influence her right. And there's no bigger avatar of that than Candace Owens is, you know,

she is now, you know, she was excused from the Daily Wire, but she has five million Twitter followers. And she's about, and countless followers on all the other social programs, social media apps. And she's about as anti-vax as they come. And I think especially young female, young women evangelicals, are, have been drawn to that anti-vax world and that anti-vax lifestyle to an extent that I don't think people quite realize, or at least they're curious about it. And so to me, it's an open question

as to sort of who is drawn more to Robert F. Kennedy. And I'll just say this, I don't think folks truly realize, especially for somebody who is blessedly, not deeply online and on Twitter and all of that stuff, I don't think people realize the extent to which there is a hyper-radicalized faction of the right right now, hyper-radicalized. It was far from consensus, for example, in the right-wing world that the Daily Wire did the right thing and firing Candace Owens. There's a huge division right now in the online right over this phrase, Christ is King, which is now being used as an anti-Semitic weapon against, Ben Shapiro, for example, in defense of Candice Owens.

There is a radicalism that is erupting. And those people are drawn to a Robert F. Kennedy type. And so to me, it's far from clear that he pulls more from Biden than Trump. I think people who say, oh, the Kennedy last name, Democrat, you know, I, and that's basically the knowledge, they'll pull from Biden. But the people are diving in deeply into this conspiratorial anti-vax world, they're pulling from Trump. I would just add one quick thing. The major Democratic strategist guy I talked to about this when I asked him, Kennedy, more from Biden, more from Trump, he said, he said he thought

more from Biden because it doesn't get any coverage, but the anti-vax sentiment among young African-Americans is also very, very strong. And, or African Americans in general, but particularly like young African-American males, which who were, you know, Biden is suffering with a little bit. And the Kennedy name matters in that community. But I hear you. I mean, again, I don't really know who he draws more from. It's just so hard to predict, given the ballot access, given he doesn't need to draw very many. And given the fact that this race is going to be in five states, give or take, it's going to be so, it looks right now, it's going to be so close that whether you call it Robert F. Kennedy or if you call it the rain, very much.

very small factors could have very large effects. Last thing, lightning round, Chris Christie said publicly, he is not going to accept the no labels nomination or however you want to think about what they're doing. They say they're not a third party, et cetera, to run under their ticket, so to speak. My not worth your time take on this is that no labels stays relevant in the conversation as long as they don't have

a policy platform or a candidate and that as soon as they do unless that candidate is Matthew McConaughey Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil or someone else with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks would be amazing. Near Universal Name ID in the United States

time already has run out. It's too little too late and if it's someone who's elected or a former elected person it will simply fade into the background of sort of another establishment person who has a record that people will you know, not like for any number of reasons.

Steve, lightning round, what could a worth your time no labels future look like? Yeah, I just don't agree with you. I mean, look, they've had a tough time getting a candidate. I think most of the people that they've talked seriously to are concerned about electing Donald Trump, one after another after another,

and there are reasons for them to be concerned. I think if no labels, you are actually running out of viable candidates, if they were able to pick somebody who could, you know, occupy the ballot lines that they already have, unlike what we were talking about with Kennedy, they've made progress on ballot qualification in important states. If you could put somebody on that, given what I expect to see from the Trump and Biden campaigns over the next six, eight months, I think it could matter in much the same way that a Kennedy write-in effort could matter, right? These could be very competitive states. Small margins could be determinative here. They could matter in that sense.

But I think we're sort of reaching the sunset of the idea that no labels is going to run a candidate who, you know, starts a major third party movement and wins a bunch of states. I think you're right. If you don't have somebody with name ID or big name ID to do that, it's hard to build sort of the movement that they wanted to at the outset. David. you know i'm very sympathetic to third party movement i think actually we probably need four parties in this country i would like to see a far left party a center left party a center right party and a far right party i don't think that's in the cards um but you know we are in a situation where the current two party system it's been sustainable for a very long time because the

alternatives really no viable alternatives sprang up the parties had been really pretty pretty decent at reflecting sort of the will of their respective constituencies. But now the two-party system is a increasingly poor fit for the culture in which it lives. Because one of the things about the culture in which we live, we are used to custom service on every level that is tailored to our specific needs or specific desire. So you're talking about I'm the generation group with three, channels and two parties, right? We have generations who are growing up with 200 channels and

streaming and custom algorithms and all of this and then two parties. And so you're seeing the increasing prevalence of sort of niche cultures and niche political cultures that all get poured into this stew. And as you've seen with October 7th in Israel and with the Democratic party, there's nowhere, there's no clear path for Biden within the Democratic coalition that's the safe path, just politically, just politically. If he's, if he abandons Israel, he's got a big part of his constituency very angry. If he continues to support Israel, he's got this whole other part of his constituency really angry. And coalition politics are, you know, normal and par for the course. But the combination of hyper-polarization, niche political communities,

immense frustration at sitting candidates means that we should the market is ready for something else the market is ready but the system is not because the system is still set up for the two parties Sarah as you and I know because you know you were going to get me on all 50 ballots yeah that's right all 50 states in 2016 I mean we were that close with the 20 bucks you handed me yeah we were that close all right Jonah last word do you I'm more sympathetic to the idea of multi-parties. I don't know how you get it, given the way of the law works. And I think a lot of ways people who say are really stuck with these two parties

missed the fact that, yeah, we're stuck with these two brand names for the foreseeable future, but these parties are changing really fast right before our eyes. Within the last decade, the Republican Party, which is the party of married suburban couples with college educations who wanted to send their kids to college, Republican Party is not that party anymore. And the Republican Party is a white working class party with some bells and whistles that a lot of people running the party are eager to banish as quickly as possible.

And the Democratic Party is the party of the rich. It's the party of the upper middle class of the suburbs. the ideologues running both parties or the ideologists running both parties don't really understand how to work with their own constituencies and so the nature of what these parties believe

and stand for and fight for is changing really rapidly before our eyes I'm not saying necessarily for the better but it's kind of like you replace the contents of the two parties but you leave the facade up and everyone is like will things never change

and it's like dude there's a lot of change going on right now and again not necessarily for the better um i would like i would like to see a third party come along just to destroy one of the parties because that's usually how one of the parties gets destroyed you know it's what happened to wigs it's it's essentially what happens to the republicans um in 1912 and i shouldn't say that it didn't really happen in 2016 in 2016 you kind of bring back to wigs sarah bring back to wigs wig nudans so i'm for more creative destruction and a third party will do that but i'm generally with you sarah i think people like the abstract idea of a third party

and a third party candidate, and then when you actually manifest this vision in the temporal spatial order, they're like Chris, Chris, Chris, John Kasich, I don't want that guy, no, and, you know, and

David, or John Yang or whatever, you know, it's like they like them in theory, but not in practice, because in practice they're real people, and you know, there's a reason why John Huntsman will never be president of the United States. There's so many reasons why John Huntsman will never be president of the United States. And on that note, thanks for joining us. Guys, it's always fun to have the OG crew.

It is. It is. What's going on, Steve? He felt like Steve just had a Mitch McConnell moment. You know what? Let's just, Adam, we're going to start over. Okay. I don't trust Adom at all, not to use all of this, by the way.

I know. Totally. At least gate it so we can get some new members. I mean, it's so early for me, Steve, and I'm sharp. It is 8.30 for you. David was gaming until four in the morning. All of you. Children. I mean, I'm already three drinks in.