The Dispatch Podcast - Bad Vibes at the Border

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Sarah left The Dispatch Podcast and now there's no speaker of the House. What went wrong? Steve and Jonah join the flagship host's return to discuss the speakership battle, Joe Biden's Trump-era border wall, and corruption writ large. Also: -Small dollar donor problems -Democratic blame game -Anti-transparency in government -There's a secret speaker?? -Trump and Menendez corruption inquiries -The return of Not Worth Your Time Show notes: -Jonah's G-File on government transparency -Rep. Matt Gaetz on ABC This Week Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I can always throw in some Iran. And I ran, I ran so far away. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. I'm back. And I've got Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. And we're, yeah, we're going to talk about McCarthy. We're going to talk about the house.

We're going to talk about what that means, what it doesn't mean. Does it matter? I don't know. We'll talk about corruption. queries, whether it's Senator Menendez or Donald Trump. And finally, some news coming out of the Department of Homeland Security as the Biden administration reverses course and says that they will need emergency funding to build the wall. All that and more coming up on your dispatch podcast.

all right let's dive in so guys i was gone for a month and i got to tell you i actually did try to you know not sit there and doom scroll the news um so i was gone for a month i missed everything let's assume there wasn't a shutdown uh the gop primaries haven't changed really at all in terms of polling if you're just looking at the big picture of one guy's ahead 40 points. And then I come back and lo and behold, there isn't a Speaker McCarthy anymore. And I'm not totally sure why, to be honest. Steve, can you explain why? Yeah, Steve.

Yeah, I mean, do you want the short version or long version? I don't want it to have the terms motion to vacate. Yeah, we'll try to speak in plain English. Look, I think the real explanation that there is no more Speaker McCarthy is because Kevin McCarthy was so hell-bent on becoming Speaker McCarthy that he created, he sowed the seeds of his own doom here. If you go back to January 6th and the period in the immediate aftermath of January 6th, actually, if you go back to two days after, the 2020 presidential election, Kevin McCarthy jumped on board the false claims that Donald Trump was making that the election was stolen. And he was, he amplified those claims throughout,

even as it became clearer and clearer that there was no evidence to support those claims. January 6th happens. And Donald Trump is, you know, cast out of polite political company, at least for a short time, until Kevin McCarthy makes a trip to Mar-Lago without telling most of his colleagues that he was going to meet Donald Trump, take a picture, thumbs up photo, and effectively start the resurrection of Donald Trump's political career. Why did Kevin McCarthy do that? He did that because he wanted to be Speaker of the House, and he was determined that if Donald Trump, he determined that if Donald Trump was not enthusiastically supportive of, of his bid to be speaker, he would not be Speaker of the House.

And this is something that Kevin McCarthy has wanted, as he woke up every day in his entire adult life. So he played this role in sort of reviving Donald Trump's political life and then made a series of concessions most famously in connection with the actual vote to become Speaker of the House to the people who are sort of legislating, nihilists, performative politicians who don't want the house to succeed and created all sorts of mechanisms, including that one that you mentioned right at the top, Sarah, that would make

it easier to depose somebody like Kevin McCarthy. So he gave power to the people who are metaphorically setting ablaze our politics today, and he paid the price. So, Jonah, I was on ABC's this week, last weekend. Matt Gates was being interviewed on it. So this was just a few days ago, Sunday, right? And nobody, it was like Matt Gates by himself. Nobody thought he had the votes.

Nobody thought he could do it. They were like, why are you doing this if it's not going to work? How did Matt Gates pull this off if he's so reviled within the Republican caucus? And, I mean, isn't this kind of a huge win for Matt Gates? Massive win from Matt Gates. No getting around that. So first of all, I have many cerebral egg-headed explanations for a lot of the reasons why we can't have nice things.

But I think it's really important to sort of focus on a really pragmatic reason why this happened, why Matt Gates succeeded, why everything is so screwed up, is because the GOP has a really narrow majority. If you had a historically normal majority, you would still have jackasses, bander snatches, wahoos, yihars, and the rest who would want to cause trouble, but they would know that they couldn't cause trouble because they didn't have the votes to do something like this. I mean, you add in the fact that, you know, we're not allowed to say what MTV stands for. But I like this game where we have a podcast and I just pick one word that you can't use.

and see how everyone can work around it. This is fun. It's kind of like reverse madlips. Yeah, yeah. And the secret word today, children, is motion to vacate. You know, there's a French author who wrote an entire novel without the letter E, which is hard. Anyway, but no, but like incredibly narrow margin for a majority. And a rule that says a single person is empowered to potentially,

to raise the question of whether or not they should fire the speaker. You know, Tip O'Neill probably had some total nihilistic jerks in his caucus, but when you have a majority of, I don't know, 70 seats, they play nice, right? And so a lot of these dynamics are made possible because the narrowness of our, because of this red-blue thing, which manifests itself in the house as much as, any place else in American life, empowers the people at the very margins. You had what, this guy, Rosendale from Montana,

who admitted to praying that the Republicans won a small minority because that would empower him. Tom Massey, who I think is a bit of a nutter, but a sort of clever one, he said at the beginning of the year that he thought this was great because now there's a Massey caucus. Because such a narrow margin

made him more, gave him more clout, right? I mean, if you're the difference between winning a vote and losing a vote, you're important in ways that you weren't otherwise, right? It's like we see this dynamic with Mansion in the Senate for a lot because it's a smaller body and it's a narrower chamber and all the rest. And so then, so beyond that, I think the most telling thing, I've been on this kick for a while now, but to borrow a phrase from Ron DeSantis, the GOP has a culture of losing.

And I think it does. And I think it's for some of the reasons that DeSantis does, describes. Some of it has to do just with embracing Trump who refuses to admit that he lost, which creates all sorts of downstream effects. But it also has to do with the fact that there are a lot of people who are incentivized to be basically cable news and podcast hosts rather than actual legislators. And for them, the benefits of losing are really high and the costs of winning are really prohibitive because if you win, first of all,

you have to be accountable for the legislation that you accomplish, for the deal, right? You have, there's accountability and responsibility to govern. If you lose, you get to say, we were defeated by the deep state, right? We're pure, we want the good things,

but these evil and sinister forces, do you know what time it is? these forces, these corrupt forces of the deep state of the Biden regime, whatever, they kept us down, but we fought the good fight. There's purity in losing, but if you win, that by definition means you collaborated with the enemy. You sold out in some way. And so the House Freedom Caucus, which wanted to claw back the deal that McCarthy got,

which was a win, right, on the debt ceiling fight. They're like, no, no, no, we have to claw that back because we were rolling. We sold out. And that's the animating spirit of this. And so when Gates was on, we're talking about Jonathan Carl on Sunday on your show, where I'm very glad, by the way, they now identify you as a dispatch senior editor instead of a former Trump, whatever. That used to drive me crazy every Sunday morning. You? You drove you crazy?

Yeah. How interesting. He said, hey, look, Jonathan Carl said to him, well, you lost. and he said, a defeat is not surrender. And he made this sound as if, like, this was something to brag about, right? That, like, the people who refused to come up with any kind of bargain or deal were the heroes. They were, like, the Jews at Masada, right? Who refused to collaborate with the Romans and then committed suicide, but that kept them pure and righteous.

This is who, this is that, that culture animates so much of sort of the House Freedom Caucus, MAGA right, because if you can actually make deals, that proves that the catastrophization that you've been spewing for five years is wrong, right? If you can make incremental progress, if you can get 70% of a loaf, well, then maybe we aren't on the verge of an existential crisis in the end of America and, you know, whatever. It's like the, what's the say, Chernovich and these losers. There's this new meme going around on the ultra maga's stupid, right, about how you do realize if Biden wins again and you're an influencer on Twitter or social media on the right, you will be executed, right? They want to raise the stakes to something like that. If it turns out

actually, no, you know, we worked out a deal and we bent the cost curve a little bit and made real progress. That makes them look like idiots. And so this culture of losing thing, this almost German romantic idea that there's only purity and defeat or a lost cause like the Southerners used to say, animates a small group of house members, and when you only have a five-seat majority, that's enough to ruin everything. So I think my take is similar to, but also adjacent of Jonas, because I'm going to draw on the small dollar donor problem, which is once you got rid of big donors, or at least cabined their influence, which everyone thought would be a good thing, right?

they were not representative of the American people, their interests were not the same as average Joe, all of which is 100% true, by the way, and that therefore these big donors had outsized influence on policy that didn't represent the actual day-to-day needs of most Americans, all absolutely accurate. But the question should always be, but is the replacement better or worse?

And here, the replacement is small dollar donors. And I think everyone thought, like, well, small dollar donors are going to be, be more representative of people because a lot of people have 20 bucks. Not a lot of people have 20,000 bucks. While it is true that a lot of people have 20 bucks, most people won't give their 20 bucks to a candidate. And so you end up with actually an almost equally small percentage of people giving money. But more than that, they are just as wildly unrepresentative of the actual political needs, interests, et cetera of the country. Okay. So how do you activate those people

through outrage, anger, social media. They don't, things really don't need to be true. Unlike the big donors, it's not like these small dollars are actually meeting these people or asking them questions or are getting to like press them on anything. It's all just this online relationship. And so here's where I super agree with you, Jonah. It is absolutely in the interest of that caucus to lose. But I think I'm adjacent as to why it's in their interest to lose. Because in order to have legislation,

you have to compromise. Nobody gets everything they want in legislation. The compromise is not interesting to or appealing to that percentage, that small group of Americans who are willing to give their $20 on social media. It doesn't make a very good meme on social media. Right. And so you have the

basically shut down of Congress, because this is true on all of the sides. It's true on the left as well. AOC is one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Democratic Party. Her legislative accomplishments, aside from renaming post offices, is Zilch. She's one of the least productive legislative members, which you can totally see why. She can't compromise on anything. And even within her value system, there's contradiction. So she's almost frozen by her own values because even if she got everything she wanted, you know, to make housing more affordable. But what about the lizard that lives on that land? You know, like, you can't do anything because somehow it won't be pure enough. You never can be pure enough. Nothing can have a downside. That's right. And as you have written so

eloquently, Jonah, literally everything has tradeoffs. Right. So they don't want to, it's so much better to lose. If you win, you have to compromise and you can't do that. If you lose, you just get to complain about the other sides, either in action or compromises. And as you say, Jenna, also, you needed so few people to make this happen on the Republican side. You didn't, in fact, as much as I'm complaining about all this, what's sort of remarkable, Steve, is how few Republicans voted to oust McCarthy. In fact, the vast, vast, vast majority of the caucus voted to keep McCarthy. It was, and I'm going to, was it eight? Eight in the end? eight Republicans wanted to get rid of Kevin McCarthy.

Compare with the 90 who voted against the budget shutdown thing, right? So that's a huge drop. Okay, so Steve, the question is, is it fair? I've seen a lot of people on the right say, look, saying that this is, you know, Republican Civil War and Matt Gates did this and these eight Republicans, you know, in fact, they could have had this 8% reduction in spending. and border security and all these other things they say they want. And instead, they worked with Kevin or with Democrats to oust a Republican speaker

for the first time ever and the shortest tenured speaker since 1876. So all of that's wrong, they say. And in fact, we should blame the Democrats because they say they want a functioning government. They say that they want bipartisanship. And then they also didn't want a government shut down, all this other stuff. And then the first chance they get, they vote to get rid of Kevin McCarthy so that, what, they can have Speaker Jim Jordan? How is that what the Democrats said? And is this something like them putting all this money into primaries, supporting the Trumpy, the MAGA candidate against those Republicans who voted for impeachment or those bipartisan Republicans who actually had worked with Democrats?

How is this any different? How are they the good guys here? Well, look, I think the people who make that point have a point. But it's not a very important point. All of the other bigger things matter a lot more. It is true that Democrats, by doing what they did, have sort of created additional disincentives for a subsequent Republican speaker to try to push his caucus in a more responsible direction,

his conference in a more responsible direction or hers. But that's not really what's happening here. That's an attempt by Republicans to shift blame onto Democrats. Look at a couple quick points in response to the stuff that you guys said. One, I think we should be careful in interpreting the vote tally, the fact that there were only eight who really pushed Kevin McCarthy out to mean that Kevin McCarthy had the enthusiastic support of everybody else. He did not.

There are so many Republicans. who are frustrated with Kevin McCarthy precisely because he empowered these fringe nihilist Republicans. In this context, if you make them choose between, say, Matt Gates and Chaos, or Kevin McCarthy,

a good fundraiser and the status quo, they're going to side with Kevin McCarthy. But he was not, he certainly had his fans. I mean, there was the back and forth, 30 minutes to each side, the pro-McCarthy side where you had leadership allies giving, you know, singing

McCarthy's praises and the anti-McCarthy forces where Gates and the others criticized him. But Kevin McCarthy, the antipathy and the frustration with Kevin McCarthy went much, much deeper than those numbers would suggest. On Jonah's point, I mean, obviously the fact that there's a slim majority is kind of the decisive factor here, right? None of this happens if there's a much bigger. Or at least it doesn't happen in the same way if there's a much bigger. It's a huge structural part of the story. No question. And I mean, I do think there are enough beyond the eight that if you needed to have 15, if you needed to have 20, the bigger it got, the more you probably would have gotten

because of the incentives to be a loser to prove your point. But I guess I don't think, I buy I buy your argument in general. I don't know that I buy the Tip O'Neill point. I'm not sure. Tip O'Neill, if he had a 70-person majority, that insulated him from this stuff. But I also think just the incentives and the nihilism didn't exist in the same way, right? I mean, I don't think there were 70 people. I don't think there were five people in the Democratic conference at that time whose purpose was to not govern, whose purpose was to do all the things that you and Sarah talked about, to be on TV, to fundraise, do wealth. There might have been radicals, but in many cases, they were sort of like ideological radicals among Democrats at the time. Yeah, no, that's right.

I agree. I agree. Rather than just sort of institution demolishers, which I think is an important distinction. 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. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect

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this september lease a 2026 xc90 plug-in hybrid from 599 byweekly at 3.99% during the volvo fall experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. All right, Jonah, two questions. One, is it fair to blame Democrats for this? Two, I want you to reiterate your transparency point

that you made in the G-file because I think it is actually, you've made this point that transparency is overvalued in American society right now, that we just assume it's a good word. But I think now you have the best. example yet. Yeah. So, and for listeners who really want to geek out on this stuff, Sarah, David, French,

that guy who does this other thing. And I did this thing for the National Constitution Center where we talked about possible constitutional reforms where we got into some of the stuff. Yeah, so on the blaming the Democrats thing, as I put in the G-file, the Wednesday, which if you were a paid member of the dispatch community, you could read right now, I said, look, let's put it this way, if I push Steve into a bear pit and the bears eat him alive, sure, I worked with the bears. I collaborated with bears to kill Steve, but everyone should expect bears to eat Steve.

He's full of cheese curds, right? I mean, and tater tots, that's what they love, right? So, like, historically, it is incredibly rare to expect members of one party to vote for a speaker of another party. And the forcing mechanism, the people who put, you know, the people who pushed McCarthy into the bear pit, they deserve the overwhelming majority of the blame for this. That said, I haven't seen good reporting on it. Everyone's talking about how McCarthy was apparently under the impression that he was given a promise that if something like this happened, that Pelosi or the Democrats, they wouldn't necessarily vote for him, but they would not show up so that the threshold number would change so that McCarthy could survive losing eight Republicans and they didn't do that. That would explain a few things, by the way.

One, McCarthy calling the vote so quickly and feeling really bold publicly, but two, that after the vote, And again, this is similar to my ban on the motion to vacate, but that the interim speaker, which that's a whole constitutional question I have, well, how that's a thing, but that he took away the quote unquote hideaways for Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. These are little fancy offices,

like their third office, basically. But they're really nice. They're very close to the floor of the house. And that this was a really petty thing to do. And clearly it was about some brooky, promise. So that would make sense. And I'm very frustrated by a lot of the reporting on this because they just make it sound as if McClintock, who's not that kind of guy, just did this, you know, purely out

of spite, unprovoked by anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's the story, is that they felt betrayed by a promise that was made. Now, on the other hand, Shimon McCarthy, Pelosi's not the speaker anymore. She's not, I mean, not the leader of the Democrats anymore. He might have wanted to, like, get on the phone to Jeffries and say, if this promise was ever made, are you going to honor this promise? And if you're not going to honor the promise,

maybe I should take a little longer whipping my votes to see if I can survive this thing. So I think there's incompetence galore in there. But under normal circumstances, parties don't vote for a speaker from the other party. And if there isn't some sort of backroom promise that we're missing out on, then I think blaming Democrats for this stuff is kind of silly.

On the transparency point, all right, so just to be very brief about it, I've been arguing for a long time that Congress has become a parliament of pundits, right? That these guys, it's a semi-permeable barrier between being outspoken congressman or senator and being a Fox News pundit on the Democratic side, very similar with MSNBC. And one of the reasons for that is that Congress doesn't do its job anymore. It's outsourced a lot of its responsibilities, the administrative state and the courts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But another part of it is that almost everything is under the camera lights. Everything is visible in what Congress does. And what Congress does at its core is politics. And politics is about negotiation, about horse trading, about compromises, about coalition building.

and you cannot do that in public. You cannot negotiate for anything in public. And there are examples of this going back in time of the memoriam that you have to close the doors because what you have to do if you're negotiating is you have to offer something, a COLA adjustment for Social Security, a haircut for federal workers,

a tax hike, you know, for corporations, whatever. You have to offer it to see. what you get in response. Hey, if I did this, would you give me that? If you do it in public, the people you're throwing under the bus will kill you.

And so, when everything's done out in public, everything is as transparent as possible. All that Congress becomes is another TV studio. And as you've all of then, you know, says under the cleatelikes of transparency, Congress becomes indistinguishable from any other public space. And so that's why you see people like, what's his face, Benjamin Chavitt,

the guy from Utah who just was like, you know, I'd just rather spend all my time at Fox rather than just part of my time at Fox, right? Even Trey Gowdy, who I like a lot and is a good guy, but he like. Jason Chaffetz, yeah. You know, he's like, Jason Chaffetz, right? You're like, let's, you know, like, it's just easier because if I'm going to, if I'm expected to just be a pundit in Congress and not get paid, to be a pundit, I'd rather be a pundit. And there's that sort of, that sort of push. And so I think

I think you can make a very strong case that for the institution of the Congress and for the institution of the Democratic Party, particularly the House Democratic Party, it would have been in their interest to keep Kevin McCarthy in there. Because they had to vote publicly because it's not a secret ballot. There's no way you can vote for Kevin McCarthy to be speaker and not get primary, right? Because the Democrats have a very similar primary problem to the Republicans. And, but if it had been a secret ballot, you can see 20, 30 members of problem solver caucus types say, hey, you know, we'd better have, it would be better for us if the speaker was beholden to us than beholden to the MAGA guys.

And chaos is bad for us, and we're trying to get stuff done. And maybe we can get some concessions, but they can't do it publicly. But doing it private, if they could do it in the secret, I think they might have done it. So I'm torn on that point because I think you make a very good argument. I'm pretty wildly pro-transparency in all aspects of government. And I think a lack of-transpriced me. Yeah. Well, I mean, look around, right, the world, this, the current set of circumstances

should have radicalized all of us, probably. But I think the strength of your point is that it's not entirely theoretical, right? I mean, we've heard from people like Ben Sass and others who work on the committees in Congress that are the most secretive intelligence in both the House and the Senate. And people behave. These committees work well. People get along. They compromise.

They listen to each other. They talk issues through. And they usually can come up with some solution that, you know, may not end up being effective, but is at least something that is produced from exactly that kind of back and forth that the framers imagine. I think that's sort of the best. the best example of the argument that you're making. And as I say, it's not theoretical. It's happening. And you hear this from Democrats and Republicans who serve on these committees. Okay. Let's put a pin in this because I think we'll be talking about it next week as well as Republicans pick their new speaker, people who have thrown their hats

in the ring. Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, a variety of others. And we may end up with Elise Stefana who says she's not running in the first place. Who knows where this will all go. By the way, I mentioned I always take Elise Tohannock at her word, too. I mentioned the secret speaker. So I found this fascinating. And for those who have not been following this minute by minute, after 9-11, for continuity of government reasons, the speaker started designating a secret speaker that would become speaker upon their death incapacitation or removal.

And that's how when Kevin McCarthy was vacated. from the speakership, Patrick McHenry then becomes acting speaker. And then the question becomes, according to this made-up thing, he is imbued with all the powers of the speaker. But does that include, for instance, being the third in line to the presidency,

which seems pretty relevant. Like we might want to know that right now? Wasn't it known that he was speaker pro tem? I don't think so. No, it's a secret speaker. The things you learn from listening. to the dispatch podcast. Only Kevin McCarthy and the House clerk knew who the secret speaker was for the purpose

that you couldn't then, you know, have sort of a decapitation plan for the U.S. government or at least for the House of Representatives. But I don't know that you can simply designate someone to be third in line to the presidency. But so Matt Glassman, who's like one of the Congress nerds that every, you know, that most reporters rely on. He makes a pretty strong vociferous case that for purposes of the Succession Act, because the succession to the presidency after the vice president is an act of Congress, right? It's like they came up with a list of it. It used to be in the olden days, St. Wabanackle was the acronym for it because it was like Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and then

on down. And he makes the case that the third in line, to the presidency now is what's her name from Washington State voted most likely to shush you at the library she's now the third in language she's the president pro tem of the Senate

okay but I don't know that it makes it right or wrong but there are also a lot of people saying you know that he is the full full blown speaker which you know he's got a nice bow tie it's reassuring all right so we're going to move on to what is going on

with just corruption writ large. A couple news stories worth mentioning. Obviously, Senator Menendez from New Jersey, is under indictment for lots of interesting corruption. News story from the New York Times came out talking about a fatal car accident that his now wife had in which she is not tested for alcohol or drugs.

she leaves the scene, or is allowed to leave the scene, before, you know, very quickly, before this person's even declared dead, which was not going to take long, given the state that this person's body was left. There is body cam recordings where another police officer shows up from a different area and says, yeah, he's shown up to this accident scene at the request of a friend, basically. And then they've got text messages that show basically there's going to be a $60,000 Mercedes in their lives very quickly after this accident. And she's going to thank one of the men who Menendez and she are charged with sort of conspiring with here. And then suddenly a couple days after that, Menendez is calling the New Jersey Attorney General's office asking for them to be lenient on that guy.

friend for a criminal investigation, which is all to say, not great, Bob. That's just one piece of this Menendez tapestry of corruption that we've been hearing about for years and years. I find it fascinating that the guy basically gets off on a technicality the last time DOJ indicted him. And his response was not, foof, man, turns out they're watching me and I should be more careful, but let me be more brazen in my criming. My criming was clearly too good and secretive last time. Now I'm going to do the gold bars in the house and have text messages between my wife and these dudes

where she's like, thanks for all the help and the Mercedes. I'll make sure Bob takes care of that thing for you in exchange for the money, an official act. I mean, she might as well have written out the elements of the crime. Okay, on the other side of this, Donald Trump is currently in court, literally, in a civil fraud trial. And Ruth Marcus, not a right-wing whack job, considered quite a left-wing pundit, writes an op-in in the Washington Post where she says,

I hate Donald Trump as much as anyone, but let's be real, if he weren't Donald Trump, this would not be happening that the quote-unquote corporate death penalty that this judge has ordered it seems completely outside of the normal course for these New York fraud cases and disproportionate to what he's accused of doing. She talks to other lawyers.

So Steve, I guess my question to you is just to start. You know, the right gets made fun of for talking about the weaponization of politics. And I think some of that is this idea that, like, it's only being weaponized against very specific people that are within their very small, you know, cohort. But is there something to this idea that when you sort of raise your hand to serve, that you're going to, most people who end up being elected to office will be disliked by 50%, you know, the 50% that didn't vote for you. them. And that somehow then we are weaponizing a justice system to go after those people more than everyone else? Yes. I think that's true. Weaponization of politics isn't a new thing. This has been going on for a long, long time. And for those of us who believe in smaller and more

limited government, it's one of the reasons why. Give government less power. There's less opportunity for the government to weaponize it against its enemies. So nobody should be particularly surprised. And I've actually thought the Ruth Marcus column was pretty persuasive. I think you could. And, Sarah, you have made parts of the same case as it applies to Hunter Biden, right? I mean, he's been scrutinized in some ways in a manner that he wouldn't if he weren't Hunter Biden. I think you can also make the inverse argument. He's gotten favors that he wouldn't have gotten if he weren't Hunter Biden. Even just with this one case, by the way. So if you're not Hunter Biden, they're not going to go and get like well first of all you wouldn't have written a book that talks about

your substance abuse but whatever like it's very unusual to get charged with um the purchase of a gun with the substance abuse but once you are charged with it you also don't get pre-trial deferment either so like even in this one case you see both sides working there he wouldn't have gotten charged if he weren't hunter Biden but if you are getting charged unless you're hunter Biden you don't get the deal which in the end he didn't get so so so I would say answer to your question directly, yes, I think there is such a thing as weaponization government. I think it's a problem.

And I think it's a problem in this specific case as it relates to Donald Trump. What I think discredits the people who are making that argument at the top of their lungs is that they use it to dismiss all of these claims against Donald Trump. They've used it to dismiss the arguments against Donald Trump in what. which we know he's guilty of the things that he's alleged to have done. I mean, they're using the same argument in the classified documents case and, you know, in effect, saying he didn't even have these documents. The documents weren't important. And as we've pointed out here before, there are photographs of the documents at Mara Lago. There is video of the document

stash that Donald Trump had in his bathroom and elsewhere on premises. You have Donald Trump on audio saying, in effect, I did these things, whereas you would say, Sarah, I'm criming here. And they still say, this is weaponization of government. So yes, I think it's a real thing, but I also think it's being overused by the defenders of Donald Trump to defend times when he actually has committed crimes. So, Jonah, I think Donald Trump, per usual, has done something very smart here. Donald Trump has an uncanny ability to scan the horizon and find the weak spot. And you can against his opponents,

against his opponents within his party, against opponents on the other side of the party, and he's done it with these legal cases as well. You'll notice they never talk about that Florida case because it is by far the strongest case, the documents case. Instead, they immediately pounced on the Georgia case, which had a lot more politics involved

in it was so widespread reaching that you could find weaker points. Well, now forget that. This New York civil fraud case, I think, is far better for Donald Trump. In some sense, the

evidence is more clear. You know, for instance, you said your apartment was 10,000. 30,000. Sorry, 30,000 feet. And it was only 10,000 feet. I don't hard to see how you mess that measurement up quite that badly. But Donald Trump has a judge who's clearly overreaching, who makes that weird goofy face for the camera, takes off his glasses and

like smiles and stuff. And Donald Trump's line about this, I think for people who don't, you know, think pretty deeply about it, frankly, and don't read Kevin Williamson. Look, I got a loan from the bank. I repaid the bank loan and the banks aren't the ones complaining here. They didn't sue me. They're not claiming to be victims. This is New York State just picking something out of thin air that they don't like. Now, Kevin Williamson's point in all that is like, yeah, yeah, but you got more favorable terms on the loan.

That's the whole reason that you lied about the square footage is so that you're, you know, you get this sweet, sweet loan. But he's right. He repaid it. The banks didn't lose money in that traditional sense. so you know and then you have menendez sort of pulling his own trump right didn't do it this is all whatever and you've got some republicans saying can't trust DOJ so i'll i'll wait and see but right now menendez shouldn't be removed from the senate yeah so a lot going on there um i'm going to try and

tie the two together um i've written about this before there's a tendency in some some non-western parts of the world to interpret cause and effect and risk differently than weird white or western rich i can't remember what weird is supposed to stand for you know that way of thinking uh but for what we used to golf first world people if you're going on a cliff on a on a road mountainside road really really fast and you tear around the corner and right as you're going around the corner There's a school bus full of first graders coming the other way. You swerve, they swerve, you almost both go over the side of the road, plunging to your death, but you don't.

There are certain people who do that and say, that was really close, I should be more careful next time. There are other people who say, huh, that worked. That's how you drive. and they don't internalize any kind of like, I was lucky, I pressed my chances, I need to adjust myself, you know. And that's both Donald Trump and Bob Menendez.

They've gotten really close to getting burned a million times, and they've survived it, and so now they think playing with fire is normal. My favorite thing about Bob Menendez, just in his defense is when he gave that statement about why he had scads and scads of money sewn into the lining of his clothes and gold bars and all that kind of, he didn't mention the gold bars, but why he had like half a million dollars sewn into his jackets and whatnot.

He said in part because of his experience, his family's experience in Cuba where the government could confiscate your wealth. And look, that's exactly what happened. The government came and took all his money. So he just didn't hide it well enough. Yeah. Should have put it in the freezer. And so at the same time, I just, I understand, you know, Sarah and Steve, you guys are these, you know, dot every eye process people and all that kind of stuff.

And I agree. Trump law gets crazy. I think the New York criminal indictments are garbage. Shouldn't have been brought. I'm sympathetic to the arguments you guys make about the fraud thing. in New York, which I agree is good for him politically. I don't think it's good for him psychologically. Dismantling the Trump Empire in New York,

and really the Trump business overall, really gets him in the Kishkes, as we would say in New York. And at the same time, this is a guy. I think Jim Garrity had this stat the other day. USA Today looked into it. he has been party to and the bringer of something like up to 4,000 lawsuits in his life. He has abused the courts. He's threatened people.

He tells contractors and vendors take 10 cents under the dollar or we'll keep you in court forever. He breaks laws as we all stipulate here. He just doesn't talk about it very much. He plays fast and loose playing the odds his entire life. And when the odds finally turn against him, I am. utterly, metaphysically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually incapable of mustering a scintilla of sympathy for him. The damage it does to the system, the damage it does to our politics? Yeah, I think that's a serious things to be concerned about. And I chalked them up

in part to the damage he has done to the American political system, because one of the things you can count on Trump doing is he doesn't just bring out the worst in his allies. He brings out the worst in his enemies and his destabilizing effect, you know, the people, a lot of people shouting about his violation of norms are norms violators too because they think his violations justify their violations. So yeah, if you want to have some great commission about depolitizing the law and all that kind of stuff, go for it. I would vote for Sarah to be on it. But I cannot make the leap to say, oh, poor Donald Trump is being railroaded because he would be perfectly happy to railroad other people. He's abused the legal system, his entire adult life.

He's pressed his luck, and he went looking for trouble time and time again. And now that he's found it, he's whining like a big baby. And I just, I can't muster any sympathy for him. Could I make one quick point about why he's doing the whining that he's doing and how he's doing the whining that he's doing? He does not have to be in court. And he's choosing to be there for three straight days. And in each of these days, he interrupts at some point with a wild rant about the process, about the judge, about, you know, exactly what Jonah's describing. And he's doing this because he thinks it's to his advantage. He's using this for political purposes. He's raising money off of it, hand over fist. He's ginning up his base. He's, I think, making the argument or

We're advancing the argument, growing the argument, that this is all just political. He wants the pictures of him in court. This is not an accident. And I think it's important to recognize that, you know, even if he truly believes that he's being railroaded here and treated unfairly. And I don't. He is using this in the most cynical way possible. to gain political advantage. And it'll probably work.

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

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without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. square space.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. I want to make sure we spend some time on this last story. I'll read here from the Wall Street Journal. When he was campaigning for president, Joe Biden pledged that, quote, not another foot of border wall would be built on his watch. But this week, his administration announced plans to do just that.

The Department of Homeland Security outlined its intent to build up to 20 new miles of Trump administration-era border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, one of the busiest crossing spots for migrants attempting to enter the U.S. According to the Secretary of Homeland Security, there is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas. In order to do so, they will waive federal, state, and local laws

that protect water, air, and endangered species to speed up deconstruction. In addition to intense criticism from Republicans who have made the border a key issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, Democratic mayors and governors have also pleaded with the federal government to take action to slow the flow of migrants coming to their cities and requesting temporary shelter. The about-faced by the administration, which halted all border wall construction on the first day of Biden's presidency, shows its increasing desperation to tamp down illegal border

crossings, which have surpassed $2 billion for each of the last two years. Steve, this, on the one hand, 20 miles, we could sort of shrug that off. This is a very clear Biden campaign promise that made perfect sense for his base, for the Democratic Party, I actually am surprised by this. Even with how bad the immigration crisis has gotten at the southern border and even with the complaints of mayors like Eric Adams in New York, and we've heard it from Chicago, we've heard it from Massachusetts. I know one of those is a state and two of them are a city, but that's how it's been working.

Are you surprised? No, I don't think the Biden administration has a coherent approach to this problem. don't think they had it before they came to office. If you go back and you look at the rhetoric that then candidate Biden used and President Biden used, there were very few specifics and a lot of feel-good language aimed at both easing the concerns of people who thought he was going to lift the Trump policies immediately leading to a flood of new immigrants at the border, new migrants at the border and also giving, using the kind of reassuring language to folks on the left who he thought he needed to support him. There's a Washington Post piece dated December 22nd, 2020.

So he's been elected six months at this point. It's before January 6th. The headline is Biden says he'll reverse Trump immigration policies but wants guardrails first. And this is the lead, pay close attention to the number in the lead. President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday he will keep his pledge to roll back the Trump administration's restrictive asylum policies, but at a slower pace than he initially promised to avoid winding up with, and here I'm quoting, President elect Joe Biden, two million people on our border. It is very clear that the Biden's approach to these issues has been a complete and total failure. And as much grief as he gets on the issue for whatever way. I mean, this is as much, to me, this is, I mean, in many ways,

sort of less, the most biting critiques are not the ideological critique so much as just the basic competence critiques. But Jonah, and I know we've talked about this before a little, but this feels like a total and complete vindication, not only of the policies of Republican governors, but the quote-unquote political stunts of Republican governors. You wouldn't be seeing this from New York and Chicago and Massachusetts and these other, quote-unquote, sanctuary cities or sanctuary states that were so high and mighty about their principles

until their principles actually came home to roost with them. It's really fun to say you're a sanctuary state, Massachusetts, when you're nowhere near Texas. What a joke. And now that they have, what, a thousand people or something, they've declared it a state of emergency. They don't have housing. They're worried about their schools and their hospitals. Are you kidding me? I'm, my anger about that is somehow higher than nearly anything else that, you know,

It's one thing to declare yourself a sanctuary state, frankly, when you're not on the southern border. And it's another thing to reverse course so quickly and easily, like you had no clue what was going on in these other states and didn't even care to find out, but to call them racist when they were dealing with two million border crossings a year. And you have a few thousand people. Yeah. I mean, so the, I mean, again, you're right. We talked about this before. not of us like using human beings as props, but it was successful. And the Republican governors who did it responsibly at the very least sending these people up there just had the better

argument. It just simply had the better argument. Like it's a national problem. National problem should be born by the nation and not just by these, you know, places near the border. The sanctuary city stuff to me always was akin to, and you're too young to remember some of this, Sarah, but in the 80s, there were a bunch of cities that announced that they were nuclear-free zones, right? That they would not tolerate nuclear weapons in, you know, in Tacoma Park, which is like a famous nuclear-free zone. And there was some rationale that I had to do with, like, trucks going through to whatever.

It doesn't matter. It was dumb virtue signaling, right? It had no cost and only benefit. It was smug. And I always used to say, you know, let's see what they think when the, you know, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, when the, come spilling over the border, right? You know, then all of a sudden they'll think differently. And it's similar with this. I mean, I'm not trying to make light of this. It really is a humanitarian crisis that's going on. But it was really just cheap posturing. And I. And by the way, just to like define some of what they meant by sanctuary cities, they had passed these local ordinances or state laws saying that, you know, migrants in their states or cities, would have access to free housing, various money and resources, but also they would prevent cooperation

with federal law enforcement to detain anyone being released from state jails or prisons for then deportation. They would not report people who had committed crimes. I mean, this wasn't just like the most sympathetic people in the world. No, you're right. It's good to point out that this, wasn't purely symbolic. You're right. I was just talking about it came from the same place with these people. But like they were, that part of it was like even if you commit a crime in our

jurisdiction, we will make sure that you can't be deported. Right. Because no person's illegal, Sarah. But I disagree with Steve only at the margin where he says he's not surprised by this. I am surprised by this. I am surprised that the Biden administration, which I think has been basically terrified of anything that approached the outskirts of the outer suburbs of a sister soldier moment is actually waving federal regulations to build a frigging wall.

It is symbolically a really big shot across the bow of a lot of the base of the Democratic Party. I mean, the AOC crowd can't just sort of be like, oh, this is fine. And I think that the reason they're doing it, is not to have a sister-soldier moment. I think they're doing it.

The only reason they would actually do it is because someone convinced somebody in the White House that it's absolutely necessary to do something to stem the tide here and to be seen doing something setting. So I don't know if it's like necessary as a facts on the ground of the border thing. I mean, I think it is necessary

as a facts on the ground of the border thing, but I don't know if that's the motivating reason or if it's necessary because, hey, we're going into a presidential election and we've done nothing substantive to stem this stuff at the border that we can point to that is convincing. I think they have some stuff at the margins that you could make a nice egg-hitty argument about. But like, at the reality, they need something symbolic to do here, which tells you that they're learning that this is a huge political problem for them,

including in their home bases of big blue cities. And I just always thought that there was something inherently about it's like you're never going to see the Biden administration say, you know, racial preferences in higher education are bad. It's just something you can't say as a Democrat and right now. And the idea that you could say, okay, we're going to build a wall at the border and we're going to waive all of these things that we would have called fascist if Donald Trump waive is a little shocking to me. just, it tells me that the public policy problem, the political problem are much bigger than they're realizing how big a problem they have. Well, just to clarify, I am surprised at what they've done. I'm not surprised that it's such a mess.

Okay, yeah, that's fair. I think it was easy to predict that this was going to be a disaster because of the way that Joe Biden talked about it in the campaign. And there was no serious resolve, in my view, to actually try to address. the problems, which probably was evident when he made Kamala Harris, the czar of these migration issues. And she's been incredibly and I think predictably ineffective there. I also, you know, I was about to say, we try not to do media criticism on this podcast, but we don't try that hard, clearly. So here's some media criticism. The amount of ink spilled

on Trump's immigration policies like barrels, gallons, you know, water towers would not hold it all. And I think a lot of that was, I think we're seeing vibes. Donald Trump sounded mean when he talked about immigration.

And even though the Biden administration has kept, you know, so many of the policies and are now back to building the wall, you know, we're not hearing nearly as much about the actual policies and the OMG, this is racist, this is mean, spirited. And in the meantime, by the way, let's not

forget, and also I don't know where the ink is on this, but we've seen a few stories that because of the policies and the changes that people believe the Biden administration would make, allowing more people in the country, which is why the numbers

are as high as they are, we've seen huge increases in child labor um you know in meat uh agricultural places meatpacking etc um sex trafficking like these aren't good guys bringing people over the border their old job was drug smuggling and other human smugglers and if you have a kid with you it's a lot easier to get over and not be detained and where's the ink on that where's the um wow these policies are cruel in a totally different way just because you sound nice when you're saying them doesn't make

them good and i by example my analogy i guess is sort of biden's dog so this dog bit someone for the 11th time and the reaction to that is like oh well that's a shame like that's not good like you can seem like a nice guy in a good you know dog owner that you really love your dog and everyone's like well but he loves this dog. No, that is incredibly cruel to the dog. That dog is obviously anxious. It's not feeling safe. That's why it's biting people. You're not a good dog owner. You're a cruel dog owner that you've put this dog in a position that it feels so unsafe, that it's bitten 11 people. Why do people still think that Biden is like a nice guy? That's not a nice guy thing to do. The thing he's done with Hunter Biden isn't a nice guy thing to do. He seems nice. He sounds nice, whether it's

immigration policies or the dog. But actually, the end result is a really, really not nice thing. Donald Trump sounds really mean all the time. And his policies, I don't think you have to defend them. But like, maybe we should get out of how you sound when you say the thing and more about the actual effects of the thing. So I agree with you entirely in your critique of Biden. The only thing I'd say about Trump, and some of this is poisoned, is my thinking is poisoning because of stuff we've learned that Stephen Miller had said, you know, and that kind of stuff and whatever. But I don't think Trump just sounded mean. I think he thought meanness was a point, was a means to an end, right?

Well, actually, let's even stipulate that, whether it's true or not, that the meanness was the point. Right. It still seems the major media outlet seem incapable of looking at a policy and its effects outside of the rhetoric and the meanness, right? The intent trumps the incompetence at every turn when they talk about Biden. I have a question for both of you, though, that gets it to a little cheerier place of rank punditry. Let us say, which I don't want to intrude on your high stakes thing here, but let us say that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are the Republican and Democratic nominees for president.

I dispute the premise. I'm so full of two stakes right now in this future. Does it help Joe Biden win the election to be able, would it help Joe Biden to be able to win the election? If he could say, hey man, hey dog-faced pony, soldier, I actually built more wall than you did. Does that hurt him with his base? Does it win him with the middle?

Does it just cause the universe to implode on itself? I'll take my answers off the air. Yeah, I think that's a fun question. You're right. It's a good question. If you believe, since the premise of the question is that it's a Biden-Trump race, as outlandish as that suggestion might be. Well, I mean, no, I don't want to overcomplicate it because I think the way that you're asking the question,

the reason you're asking the question can help elicit. answers that are, you know, potentially interesting or at least interesting to think about. But of course, it's not likely to just be a Biden-Trump race if it's a Biden-Trump race, right? Like, it could be RFK Jr. Yeah, I'm not trying to get in all the angles. I'm just trying to say, if Biden could be able to say he built a bigger wall than Trump, does it help Biden more than it hurts him, right? That's the question I got.

So the only reason I bring up those other places is if you had a left wing of the Democratic Party that was so frustrated with Biden for having done so, those other places give those people somewhere to go and not be, you know, for Trump. You know, if on the other hand, you restricted this to a strictly Biden-Trump race and you look at the ways in which Biden is struggling right now on issue after issue after issue. If you look at the issue set today, the polling is true. truly remarkable. There was another Marquette University poll, and I don't have the numbers up in front of me. But, you know, Trump's favorability on the economy is like two to one over Biden,

on immigration, two to one over Biden, on inflation, you know, huge over Biden. You can sort of go down issue by issue by issue. I think it was Medicare and Social Security. Biden was 39, Trump was 37. That was the only place that they were close, if I'm not mistaken. There may have been one other where Biden was ahead. But the issue set right now is grim for Joe Biden. And I think the question would be if he did something like this, if he leaned into this, could he be taken seriously as somebody who says, look, I might have been a little bit late, but I'm now taking this problem on? That's a hard argument to make, I think, given three years of incompetence from the Biden administration and given frankly what we're seeing and the critiques that he's

getting from democratic lawmakers, you know, in order to be seen as taking the problem seriously for his second term, it will be a tacit acknowledgement that he has failed in his first term. Have y'all been doing not worth your times while I've been gone? We haven't found they were worth our time. Did you think that the podcast was not worth your time while you're gone? You haven't been listening? Wow. Not worth your time?

Babies. All right. Well, I don't really have one today. Do y'all have anything? So my proposal was going to be the dog, the Biden dog thing. Because this is, as you all can imagine, this is not something that I would think that we should spend a lot of time on. And it's not something I would typically get worked up. But I'm where you are, Sarah.

And I'm so frustrated by this. And the lack of coverage. Yeah. I mean, I guess my, again, not surprisingly probably. But my concern has less to do with the dog and the dog's anxiety than the people the dog is biting. I don't either. Oh, yeah, I don't care that much about them. There's now a picture that the Daily Mail has published, I think, today that a tourist took of the dog biting like the chief groundskeeper at the white.

It's a picture of the dog with his teeth bared on this poor guy's arm. Like, can you imagine walking around the White House complex just being worried that a big old dog is going to bite you at any moment? A German shepherd. I find that absolutely outrageous. I mean, think about all of the lip service we've had for safe work spaces. Think about the shit that OSHA does. Excuse me, killer. Think about the stuff that OSHA has been doing for decades that, you know, literally in some cases have the effect of killing small businesses for workplace safety reasons.

And yet, if you work at the White House under Joe Biden, you're worried that if you walk down the hall, you might get bit by a dog that could send you to the hospital? I'm sorry, it's not funny. It's totally outrageous. Like, I find this totally, totally outrageous. And I guess, I mean, we could be criticized because we haven't made it a big deal and we haven't written a bunch about it. But I am not surprised that this hasn't gotten more mainstream press coverage. but it ought to. This is a problem.

I mean, don't forget when Romney would go on a family vacation and put his dog crate on the top of the car, that was like, how many news cycles? So yeah, Joan and I are concerned about the dog that this is really unfair to the dog. I guess, Steve, to combine the two, it's not an either-or. It's really unfair to the dog.

It's really unfair to the people who work there. But the answer, I think, isn't blame the dog. The answer is, blame the by the body. Biden's. Yes. We agree on. 100%. Like, this isn't the dog's fault.

You are a bad dog owner. You've put this dog in a situation that he clearly cannot thrive in. I know they tried to train the dog. In general, my experience with dog trainers, the dog doesn't need nearly as much training as the people. And the people have to be consistent. And they have to be good dog owners. This is not a good dog.

Dogs need big high-energy dogs need. Exercise. Like, I'm not a huge fan of Caesar Milan, the dog whisperer guy, because he uses some techniques I don't like. But his basic lesson for normal dog owners is exercise cures 90% of psychological problems with dogs. It's because dogs build up anxiety. They can't let it out. They build up, you know, they have excess energies.

They look to keep themselves busy with things. You've got an extremely protective dog in a German Shepherd. in an environment with a thousand strangers a day, you know. You didn't have to get a German shepherd. We make dogs for lazy families, frankly. We make all sorts of dogs for lazy families. German shepherds aren't one of them. Border collies aren't one of them.

These working dogs... They need a basset hound. Look, a golden retriever, whatever, like a yellow lab. Or an intern in a dog suit. I mean, come on. The little Bijon fris, whatever they are. Yeah, but like Joe Biden's, the guy with the raybans in the muscle car, and he doesn't think. And that's the problem.

Yeah. So he wanted a German Shepherd, but he's not willing to put in the work to have a German shepherd. And again, I know, Steve, you're right. Like, maybe this isn't worth our time in some sense. But to me, it's this metaphor. He seems like a nice guy. So we're going to always assume he's a nice guy. I've heard reporters say this. And if people want the job bad enough to be in politics to work in the White House, they should be willing to run a gauntlet of some ferocious dogs every now on that. move jean-a-pologist dog apologists all right with that it's a treat to be back and we'll talk to you next week I'm going to be able to be.