The Dispatch Podcast - Biden’s Losing the Vibe War | Roundtable

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Jonah the usurper invites Kevin, Mike, and Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle on today’s episode of The Dispatch Podcast for some unfettered, wide-ranging punditry stretching from Biden’s wobbling support of Israel to the political implications of Florida’s abortion law. The Agenda: —World Central Kitchen deaths in Gaza —Biden’s balancing act between addressing concerns from the pro-Palestinian crowd and supporting Israel —The Florida Supreme Court upholds the state’s six-week abortion ban, but the pro-life victory could be short-lived —California's housing crisis and the state's regulatory barriers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. The new BMO ViPorter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. Greetings. Oh, no, that's not right. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I am Jonah Goldberg. Steve Hayes and Sarah Isger are on, I want to say they're on assignment, but I really have no idea where they are or what they're doing. So it has fallen to me to be the host of this week's Dispatch Podcast Politics Panel. Given that, I took it upon myself to assemble the greatest team history has ever seen since Jefferson podcasted alone. And so we have,

our own inescible Mike Warren. We have our own inescible Kevin Williamson. And then I got a ringer and we brought in the Washington Post, Megan McArdle. We're going to talk about things and word stuff. Let's sort of start with foreign policy, with maybe an eye or sort of how it's playing out here at home, the politics of it all. In Israel, some aid workers from the World Central Kitchen, a generally good organization. They were killed in a strike by Israeli forces. Israel is launching an investigation. Israel is apologizes. Israel says it'll get to the bottom of it. Jose Andres, the guy who runs the organization, says this was deliberate at some level.

And the White House is expressing profound and abiding outrage. At the same time, it has been expressing outrage over BB Netanyahu while at the same time providing weapons to Israel to continue the war. Kevin, what does this look like to you? At a level of just cynical, political calculation, it's difficult to believe that they would have targeted these aid workers intentionally. First of all, just categorically targeting aid workers doesn't seem like the sort of thing that Israel would do, but certainly targeting aid workers that belong to a very mediogenic organization that would bring

down precisely this kind of storm of bad PR and political pressure on them. I just find it difficult to credit the story that this would have been done intentionally. I was obviously an intentional strike. I mean, this wasn't we sent a bomb someplace in it landed someplace else. They were shooting at these vehicles. It seems that they just misidentified them. I don't want to be cavalier about this, but people get killed in war zones, including innocent and people who are trying to do good things, and they are trying to do good things there,

particularly when you're talking about very, very dense urban environment. It can be difficult to sort things out. You know, you're not talking about some cars that were on an open highway with nothing around them for 60 miles in every direction. So it's a very kind of close and tight way of fighting. It's a terrible thing. I suspect that the Israelis will probably do a competent job of figuring out where the mistakes were made because they're pretty good at this kind of stuff. But yeah, it's going to be politically very, very difficult for them.

It's already very difficult for them, of course. You know, the world has a very short attention span. The political indulgence of Israeli governments in general to pursue their interest in these ways is pretty brief around the world. You know, this horrible attack happens. Civilians killed in terrible ways, torture, rape, all the rest of the stuff. And the world is, oh, this is terrible. And there'll be some sort of response. And can we get this over in, you know, two weeks at the most?

And that, of course, is a silly and unsurious way of looking at things. but that is how things get treated. So, Megan, it seems to me kind of obvious that the Biden administration wants to help Israel, which I applaud, but with sending aid or continuing to send aid, while at the same time denouncing BB Netanyahu as if there's a baby to split there between support for Israel, which he'll get credit for from pro-Israel people, and the role. throwing BB under the bus and expressing more and more outrage and saying, don't go into Rafa, which he thinks will buy him support, or seems that the theory is, we'll buy him

support from the anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian, whatever label we're supposed to use here, crowd, as if people aren't paying attention to the other, you know, like the supporters of A are watching him do B, and the supporters of B are watching him do A, and the Biden administration seems to think, no, no, no, we can keep these separate and stay popular with both crowds or we're in credit from him. Can that work? Do you think that can work? No, no. But I mean, look, he's in a really hard spot. This is just an issue that splits his coalition. And when you have an issue like that, what do you do? You look for a way to tell part of your base, look, I'm with you, but signal to the other part, but, you know, I understand what your concerns are.

And so the way that they're doing that is on the one hand, we're supporting Israel. On the other hand, We don't support Bibi Net and Yahoo, right? And the issue, that's not a crazy position in some ways. You can certainly, I think, argue about with this convoy strike, I think, is Israel taking enough care and it's targeting? I'm not going to have that argument because I am not a military expert. But that's a legitimate question that you can debate. The problem is that that's what the half of his base,

that he's trying to appease by criticizing Netanyahu. What they actually want is for him to force Israel to accept a unilateral ceasefire. First of all, he doesn't have any way to force Israel to accept a unilateral ceasefire. Second of all, the problem is that's not where Bibi Netanyahu might be divided from the rest of Israel. Israeli public opinion is really unified on like we need to completely destroy Hamas. We need to take them out, and that includes going into Ruffa and basically probably killing a lot of people as they attempt to get the last of Hamas where they are holdup. You can argue about whether they should have more humanitarian corridors, should they first evacuate all the women and children from at some risk that there will be some terrorist, you know, material or whatever that come out. But the argument within Israel is simply not whether we should stop now and allow Hamas to survive this battle.

They want Hamas destroyed. And so saying, I support Israel, but not Bibi Netanyahu is like saying, I support losing weight, but not cutting how much I eat. But he's also, as I say, he's at a really tough spot. What's the guy going to do, right? Does he just give up Dearborn? I mean, I think he has, right? Like, functionally, he's not going to, he is not going to get the Arab vote in Dearborn. They may not vote for Trump because that would be kind of crazy, given Trump's opinion on all of this stuff, but they may well stay home.

Well, Trump did just say that election day will be Christian visibility day. So, like, that makes sense. So he's not going to be there? That's right. He's just going to vanish. No, he's going to take his upside down. Bible and stay home and read two Corinthians. I suspect, and if you don't mind me jump in for a second, that there might just be a little

bit of question begging here, because I have some doubts that this is a real political dilemma for Joe Biden. I think that the number of people in the electorate who are going to vote for president based on Israel policy is got to be something in the neighborhood of 1%. Most of those people already have their minds made up. And if you're looking at people who are actually going to vote based on Israel policy, I don't know that that's actually going to be a net loser for Biden to be relatively pro-Israel when you look at, you know, very pro-Israel Jewish voters in the suburbs and places like Philadelphia

that he's going to need to carry some of those swing states. Yeah, it's going to hurt with some Arab-American voters in Michigan and some other places like that. But I don't, first of all, know that they're going to vote for Trump. and secondly, that this is actually going to be the thing that decides who they vote for or whether they vote. I'm just not sure that we've got very, very strong evidence of that. Okay, so let me put it to Mike Warren, who's not coming in here yet. Pick up on what I interrupted you from saying, but also I tend to agree with Kevin that on the strict voting stumpy on Israel stuff, it's a net winner for the Biden administration. Israel is more popular than the Palestinian Authority by two, three to one, even though both have lost popularity.

But I also, I don't think that Biden is particularly concerned, is primarily concerned about Dearborn Michigan. I think he's more concerned about young voters generally who see this as a symbolic thing. At the same time, do you have a theory about, I mean, beyond visited by spirits and whatnot theory about John. Fetterman's, because the reason I bring him up is he has gone 110% pro-Israel in Pennsylvania, a state that Joe Biden needs more than he needs Michigan, at least as much, and he seems to be more popular than Joe Biden in Pennsylvania. I've been looking for good polls on this. It's a little murky. Is the threading the needle thing, is the six and one half dozen under the other approach by Biden? Is it actually on net good politics for him?

So let me answer the Federman question first, which is like Federman has, Federman shows the way for Democrats on this, but it's not. He's the Boba Fed of American politics. Exactly. But it is not coincidental that he does not have to run for re-election for four more years. And Biden has to run for re-election this year. I agree with Kevin that the constituency who cares about this from the pro-Palestinian segment of the electorate. It's very small. But I think what Biden is dealing

with is a constituency that is not necessarily important electorally, but is very important for getting through being a democratic politician or the Democratic president. It's you hinted that at Jonah. It's young people. I think it's young people who work in the administration in the Biden campaign or in the various political outfits, college-educated young people who basically disagree with Biden on funding Israel. They are with the sort of pro-Palestinemia of ceasefire. And I think that's the Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen issue sort of highlights that this is more of a sort of PR or, or, or, almost a media problem for Biden more than a raw electoral vote problem. It's just, it makes

things uncomfortable for him. And you have Jose Andres out there. I think sort of understandably, he's understandably furious and outraged about what happened, but being really irresponsible and sort of making these sweeping claims that Israel deliberately targeted this van. I think that's just unfair. And there's no way he could know that. But Jose Andres is a celebrity He's very popular in Washington, D.C. where he is based. Everybody who is under the age of 35 loves to go to happy hours at Jose Andre's restaurants. I mean, he's sort of, it's sort of an avatar for a constituency. Again, that doesn't matter electorally, but can cause a lot of internal angst within the Democratic Party apparatus. I think that's what Biden is struggling with.

It was sort of heartening to hear John Kirby, the spokesman for the White House, essentially confirm that there was no evidence that this was deliberate. But I think that is the problem that Biden is dealing with. And I don't see where there's a solution other than to sort of give lip service and stay the course, which is what Biden seems to be doing. There is a solution for him, though, I think. What's that? And what Biden needs to do is fire about 50 people.

in their 20s on these people who are out there you know with the anonymous public letters and that kind of stuff you know he wants to fire them you know it would feel good and um and he also knows that he got to be the nominee the last time around because he's not a crazy person who's completely enthrall to the lunatic political views of people who were undergraduates three years ago and um I hate the cliche of you know sister soldier moments and all that kind of stuff but um if you really want to make a point and remind people of why he was the guy the last time around, there's fire a bunch of these kids. Just send him home. Can I, can I say something about that real quick? I was, because I was just talking with somebody about this. I think Biden is sort of

constitutionally incapable of a sister-soldier moment in the way that Bill Clinton was sort of, he was built in a lab to, to sort of triangulate and do those moments. Biden is in a way is too proud to do that. And I just don't think he's able to do that. even if he really wants to. Sorry, go ahead. No, I also think that this is, there are a bunch of like unintended side effects of having an older president

that I certainly had not appreciated until it happened. And one of them is that he isn't able to exert the discipline over his staff that he would have been able to if he were younger. And I think that that's true

in a couple of ways. is one is just that he doesn't have the energy, right? He doesn't have that. But another problem is that he's not the future of the party, and they know that, right? In a normal administration, say the Obama administration, right? You know that Obama is going to be around for another 30 years, and he is going to be a leader of your party. And hitching your wagon.

Yeah. And hitching your wagon to that star is valuable for your career. anyone in the Biden, first of all, you do have this thing, right, that the kind of saying in Washington, right, is that Republican voters are crazy and Democratic staffers and donors are crazy. And by crazy, we can just say they are way outside kind of the middle of the electorate, right? They are pushing for things that make it harder to get, to win a general election. And so what you have now is that for these, staffers, they're looking at what's my future? Well, my future is not with Biden because he is not going to be around in 10 years running the party, creating opportunities for me. My future is with some other politician who's probably going to be to his left. That's their calculation. That's the calculation also they want to make, because as I say, his staffers are way to his left and their way to the left of the electorate. And so they are looking for reasons to believe that

it's good for them, but it actually is true, that their future is with someone else. And so much more than in a normal administration, their own career interests lie with cultivating politicians who are not their boss, cultivating groups that are not their boss. And I think that that is changing his ability to exert staff discipline. And that's some of what we're seeing on this issue and others. So, Megan, let me stay with you on that for a second. I get asked, I do a lot of CNN now, and I guess all the time, why do Americans or why did Democrats give, or what do Americans give Biden such low approval ratings on this issue, that

issue, this issue, that, you know, like down the whole list, right? And I've come to my standard answer, which no one seems to like is, I don't think the issues really matter. It's that this is, that Biden is just a stand in, those issues are a stand in for Biden. If you don't think Biden's doing a good job as president, then you just make this mental calculation. Therefore, he's not doing a good job on the economy. Therefore, he's not doing a good job. on this. I'm not saying he's doing a good job on the economy. I think it's, we can talk about that later, but that's not my point. I think he's objectively not doing a good job on the border. But I think my point is, is you could ask, is he doing a good job on protecting the snail darter? And nobody

knows jack all about what's going on with a snail darter. And he would still have, Kevin accepted. he would still get like 38% 42% approval just because they've they've flipped the causality around and I think that's sort of Biden's primary problem and it feeds into this stuff like with Israel and Ukraine and and also just the economy generally is it feels very much like George H.W. Bush in 1992 which I think some of us are old enough to remember those those days where I was one of those voters who was on the right, to be sure, but I just said I can't vote for this guy in 1992 because he's just, I'm just exhausted with him. And isn't, I guess the question is, do these issues really matter the way in which people like us want them to and want to

talk about them? Or is this really just like vibes and Biden is losing the vibe war? I think a lot of it is, I mean, it's so hard to disentangle, right? Jimmy Carter's problem was the Iran hostage crisis, but that was, it was a problem in part because it fed into a perception that he was kind of weak and fuzzy and wasn't going to take a strong manly posture towards Americans' enemies abroad. And the fact that that happened on his watch, along with everything else, right, it just kind of cascaded.

And I think with Biden, part of it is his age. right is that that gives you a perception of being less strong and authoritative and capable we can argue about whether that's age discrimination or legit but it's just there it is a truth that you have to deal with and then when Afghanistan happens when you know the account when inflation happens it just feel it feeds into a perception that he's not in charge and that in turn makes people see things as worse than they are because they think no one's in charge right I think there are objective reasons whether you blame Biden or not. Some of it is his fault. Some of it's not. There are objective reasons that people are unhappy with the economy even though it is, even though we have full employment and growth looks pretty good. But that those problems would not be as big if there were not a general set of fears about his competence and his philosophy. And I think that to go back to his staffers, these like little left wing moves that he, makes to try to appease that base. It doesn't actually help. It just feeds into the perception

that he's not really in charge and he's kind of a prisoner of all of these interest groups. Yeah, I agree. It makes it feel like he can be rolled. It doesn't seem like he's taking a bold stand. It feels like, you know, what can I, what piece of my body can I saw off today and feed you? And so I'm completely with Kevin, just on principle, on the firing people. I mean, the idea that you would go outside, a White House staffer would go outside the White House to protest the White House, like I don't care what the issue is. You should just be fired, like their badges should be deactivated. You should resign and write a tell-all book like a normal person. Exactly. Right. You know, and you're, and the, you know, it feels like the bravery on the cheap of it all just drives me crazy. It's like the college kids who go on 12-hour hunger strikes, which I like to call skipping lunch for Palestine. You know, like have some courage of your actual convictions. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change

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without having these clear bookmarks and chapter titles and all the rest. I just want to get that out there. And so since we have wandered... It was masterful. Thank you. Thank you. Since we've wandered sort of like Joe Biden into the kitchen because he can't find his way to the bedroom into presidential politics,

let's switch there to Florida Supreme Court upheld Ronda Santis' six-week abortion ban limit. I don't know what the preferable term is depending on the various consequences. but it also said you can put the question of abortion on the on the ballot for this November I'm open to correction from anybody I've not met anybody yet except official flags for the Biden administration who think this actually could win Florida for Biden but Rick Scott is apparently kicking his dog a lot right now um so Mike like will given what we all just said about Biden seeming vacillating and weak and sort of not up to snuff for a lot of people. Is it possible that the abortion issue

will have coattails for Biden rather than the other way around? Is it possible? Sure. I mean, there is a possibility. Is it probable? I'm a little skeptical. And I'm skeptical because Florida Democrats are skeptical. There was a great Politico story in which, It was a little more about the Biden problem that Democrats are concerned about. They don't want Biden pushing this abortion referendum issue in Florida. They don't want the Biden brand around it because the pro-abortion rights crowd in Florida needs Republicans to vote for this referendum. It's actually a pretty high bar to get it passed, something like 60%.

And so Biden comes out. got this memo. This makes Florida winnable. They've already got some digital ads out about this. And all the Florida Democrats are going, stop, please, do not, do not engage on this. I think, again, because they need Republicans who are maybe not as hardline on abortion as the official party is to vote for this. But also, I think it's, I think they view it as counterproductive. They would not be saying this kind of stuff out loud to a place like Politico if they thought Florida was winnable. If they thought they had enough votes and enough Jews to not just pass this thing, this referendum, but to actually get

enough Democrats and Democratic voters out in Florida to elect Joe Biden. The state has just gone so Republican over the last couple of cycles. I find it implausible. It seems like a pipe dream. It reminds me of Georgia and Arizona in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was deploying resources in the final weeks. Whoops. She should have been deploying those to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan. And we'd be talking about the end of the second Clinton administration.

So count me skeptical. So Kevin, I just brought it out then, like forget, one pushback I give in Florida, which I did get from a famous Democratic consultant. type guy, which is, it's still good news for Biden, right? And if you're, if Biden has a billion dollars, one billion dollars to spend on this election, and, and Donald Trump has, you know, a warehouse full of Bible, he's trying to move in 2850, throwing 50, $50, $50, $75 million at Florida to scare Trump people into spending money in Florida, which is a very expensive state. is useful.

Again, I do think Rick Scott is going to have issues. But more broadly, Kevin, just we saw in 2022 midterms, you know, there was supposed to be red tsunami. There was not a red tsunami. And I think it was Nate Silver made the case that wherever

abortion rights seem to be actually in threat or democracy to be actually in threat, Democrats did really, really well and over-performed Biden. The Biden White House knows this, right? So is it, like, I guess my point is our Florida side, are the issue climate going to be more important than Biden's act, than Biden the candidate in any way? Yeah, well, I think the, the theme that runs through both of those is being bad at politics.

Rick Scott is not a very good politician and he's going to really struggle probably. And pro-lifers are not very good at politics, weirdly enough, even though they're They just won a big thing in the Supreme Court. So the last time I interviewed Rick Scott, he was governor of Florida still, and he'd been a really good governor. I mean, by any measure, you know, Florida did well under Rick Scott's governorship, and he barely won re-election. And I asked him, you know, why are you so unpopular? I mean, why didn't you get reelected by, you know, eight or ten or 15 points or something like that? And I think he understands that he's just, he's not a naturally charming, easygoing,

competence-inspiring kind of person. He's this, you know, prickly, unlikable figure. Now, he had trouble getting reelected after he'd been a good governor. He's not a great senator. He has not been, you know, someone who has some kind of great, you know, confidence-inspiring record in the Senate. I don't think he'll lose. It just seems unlikely.

I mean, Florida has been trending very, very Republican. But if they have to scramble some resources to shore of his. campaign that'll, you know, drain some money, scare some people, divert some attention. So it could be an issue to that extent. We've talked about this a lot on this podcast and other places, but for 50 years, pro-lifers said, we're going to send this issue back to the States. We're going to win at the Supreme Court. We're going to get rid of Roby Wade and send abortion back to the States. And that's what happened. And they all went, oh dear, abortion has been sent back to the States. What do we do now?

And so they've lost what? Seven referenda in a row now, something like that. And if I were betting my own money, I would bet that the Florida one probably does all right. I mean, it'll depend on how it's worded and all that, but it very well may roll back some of these restrictions. Coming to some sort of modus vivendi on abortion is going to require a lot of old-fashioned politics of changing people's minds, coming to compromises, engaging in persuasion. electoral, you know, politics fighting this out on an election by election, rule by rule, law by law basis, it'll be another 50 years probably, maybe more, before this actually really gets to a place. We've got some sort of stable consensus about what policy is going to be on that. And pro-lifers went into this, having invested so much in overturning Roe v. Wade, and having that as a kind of singular focus of the movement that they, and I should say we, have been, I think incompetence, probably a fair word when it comes to the politics of what pro-lifers have been up to in the Dobbs era. And maybe Florida is a chance for them to figure out a way to

get better at this and to engage in that persuasion they haven't been very good at and engage in that sort of regular, old-fashioned kind of hearts and minds politics. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't bet my own money on it. And so, Megan, I know this is your favorite topic. But You know, the person who's out there trying to be the moderate on abortion right now is Donald Trump. Yeah. And what's frustrating to me is, first of all, I'm frustrated about a lot of things. As you may know, that's sort of my space. It's your brand.

Frustrated guy. Yeah, I'm on brand with that. But I was against Roe. Glad Roe was overturned. Likewise. Very, very happy to see States duke it out and figure this out on their own. likewise don't think there's a much of a case for a federal ban constitutionally the idea of a federal ban i find offensive almost as offensive as row right but what trump is doing is taking

the the moderate policy position it's a constitutional mess but he doesn't care about that and the biden white house the biden campaign is running ads all over the place that are being wildly signal boosted by mainstream media that says secretly a passionate pro-lifer. He brags about canceling Roe v. Wade for them, and Biden's going to make Roe v. Wade the law of land again, yada, yada, yada. And part of the frustration is that there are a lot of people who think Roe v. Wade is synonymous with both abortion compromise

and unfettered abortion rights, which can't quite, those two things can't quite go together. and I just don't know, I'm curious what you think. Can Trump convince people who don't already like him that he's the one who's going to put the abortion issue to rest? Or do you think that the Biden vision of just repeating over and over again, he promised to repeal Roe v. Wade, I want to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again,

is the better argument politically. that's a really good question i i tend to think not partly just because this issue is so polarized right if you are really committed on one side you're a democrat and if you're really committed on the other side you're a republican and there's no crossover like pro-life democrats is pro-choice republicans almost not a thing anymore um more pro-choice republicans i would i would guess than pro-life democrats but not a lot um and so i think part of it is just that there's not a lot of space that the policy stuff is sort of irrelevant, right? It's about your brand.

But I would also say, I mean, it is hilarious watching people like Madaglacius attempts to kind of argue that he's going to be operationally super pro-life. He's not. He's not going to try to get a, he's not, I mean, with no offense to pro-lifers who want to do this, he is not stupid enough to try to push a national abortion ban through Congress because it would be political suicide. And this is not a comment on the morality of it. It is the practicality.

You can't get it passed, and it will destroy you at the polls if you try. But you're not referring to his proposal of a 15-week cutoff. Yeah, no. I mean, like, he's not going to, I think 15 weeks is actually probably most of the public's okay with that. That was my point. It's that policy-wise, I think he's in the sweet spot, but Biden's calling that an abortion ban. But that said, let me caveat that, which is that I think one of the reasons pro-lifers were so flabbergasted. by the post row political. I mean, also I think there was just a lot of idiocy. They passed. They got a lot of

really bad trigger laws passed that were just, even if you think that you want to ban abortion in cases of rape and cess life of the mother, they were so badly drafted that a lot of hospital general councils were just like you can't, if a woman's having a miscarriage, you have to wait until she's like bleeding out before you can do anything, right? And that was bad. They were badly drafted. They weren't paying attention to the details. And I think that that's in large, part because they were misled by the way people polled on abortion under the shelter of row. When the Supreme Court had kind of taken the issue off the table, it was safe to say, like, yeah, no, in theory, we should only have abortion in these narrow circumstances.

But I think what people, including me, by the way, underestimated was that people really liked the option value. Even people who were nominally pro-life, they liked knowing that if it happened, they wouldn't they wouldn't have to, they wouldn't have to think about it, they could do it, right? Even if they thought I shouldn't do that. Well, they liked knowing that they could. And I think there's a lot of that out there, that now that it's actually on the table and live, people are just more pro-choice than pro-lifers thought.

And so the caveat to a 15-week ban is that I'm not even sure that, like, I think that actually, if that existed, people would be fine with it. But moving in that direction is, you've seen. this in states that are really red and nominally pretty pro-life and the legislature is willing to do stuff but when you put it on the ballot it turns out the voters aren't and i think part of that is that like people who want abortion to be legal may be more likely to turn out for a bunch of reasons including the fact that they tend to be educated uh more educated but uh who just tend to be higher propensity voters but i also actually think that there just is people want the option value

even if they're not comfortable with it and i think that that actually speaks to where most of the public is. It's like, they think you shouldn't have abortions for selfish reasons, but they also want the flexibility to make the decision about what counts as a selfish reason for themselves, if that makes sense. And that is, it just creates a really tough political landscape for Republicans and pro-lifers. Yeah, it kind of, I mean, I don't mean this in any dismissive kind of way. It kind of doesn't matter if it makes sense logically. I think, it makes total sense descriptively, right? You know, I think that's where people are and or a lot of people are.

You know, the pro-life movement, it kind of makes sense that they don't know how to drive the car because they've been, you know, they've been the dogs chasing it for 50 years and... And dogs can't drive cars. And dogs can't drive cars. But also, I mean, I haven't really thought about this before. I just think it's kind of interesting. We forget that we know all of us have talked a lot about the big source, and polarization and all of these things,

a zillion different ways, I had never really occurred to me that if you were a committed sincere pro-lifer of anything close to our age, right, plus or minus 15 years, really, you've developed almost no muscle memory, no tangible skills about the retail politics

of dealing with the abortion issue with audiences and voters that don't already agree with you, right? You've worked within this very large industry of activists where the issues you've brought to voters have tended to be these 70, 30 things like partial birth abortion or very late-term abortion and that kind of stuff.

And you can, I mean, Kevin and I know this, that on the right, there are a lot of audiences that you can speak to and be popular with where everybody agrees with you already. and that environment used to be used to be well not us anymore but those audiences still exist

just someone else is talking to them but the that environment is not you are not going to become the soudicar of great political activist fighters growing up in that environment you're going to be pretty flabby

about this stuff and you know and so it may take a different generation to getting back to sort of Kevin's point, a different generation of politicians and political activists who actually know how to do electoral politics in a post-row environment. And I don't think we should expect that to happen anytime soon, given the other things going on in an American policy. So I think there's that's that's absolutely right. And I would, but I would add two things. One is that like the obvious place to start is with the 70-30 issues, find more of those.

past them, right? And the other thing, though, is that I think there is this vacuum right now. But just to be clear, because I think people get confused about this to some of the people in the Marjorie Taylor Green world out there, when we say the 70, 30 issues, you should take the 70 position. Sorry, I should have been in today's Republican Party. It should have been much more clear. Yes, take the 70, not the 30. But I also think that, look, you have created, there is a vacuum, and that is a space in which you do sometimes see, you know, like in the West, a new hero. rises, right? Because it is time. And I think that there is huge space in this for a political entrepreneur to come up, do fundraising with people who are pro-life, but are also

understand that they got to win, you know, who are sufficiently disappointed in the way that the DLC arose in response to the fact that the Democrats kept losing elections and even people who really loved democratic policies did not like losing presidential elections. And so eventually this creates a space where someone can come up and say to donors like look we're pro-life we want a we want a total ban but you know what i would be almost as good at this point is what if we could get to 15 weeks and that person is going to like raise money figure out how to message it um and they're going to do better but it does i mean that said the dynamics of today's republican party somewhat cut against this if i can speak to that for just one second and and just

something Megan referred to earlier, one of the weirdly ignored, sort of studiously ignored strange facts of contemporary politics that's very, very important is that Donald Trump is a moderate on lots and lots and lots of issues. He got the nomination in 2016 because he was attacking the kind of Paul Ryan consensus from the left on entitlement's taxes. He's got Joe Biden's views on trade and sort of economic nationalism and these sorts of things. He's an extremist when it comes to rhetoric. He's maybe arguably a bit of an extremist when it comes to immigration, although if you look at the polls, particularly in illegal immigration,

he's not that far outside of where the consensus is. He's a real extremist when it comes to pursuit of power and his own interests. And then he will do all sorts of crazy and irresponsible things. But if you look at abortion certainly is one of those issues, but lots of other issues, he is to the left of where the Republican's consensus was for years and years and in many ways. still is. So it really matters how you talk about this stuff because one of the unique, weird, magical qualities that Donald Trump has is that every now and then he just sort of blindly stumbles into the right position on an issue. And he has a real talent for making the right

position toxic and undoable. And abortion is an easy, an easy issue to get there rhetorically, as certainly I can attest among many other people. You know, it's an issue that can bring out the wrong way of talking about things and the wrong way of thinking about things. And this is sort of very strong emotional responses. So even getting you the right policy, whether it's, you know, it's take the 70 side of the issue, not the 30 side of the issue, where from 15 weeks backward, it really matters how you go about doing that, how you go about talking about it. And there's certainly room for improvement. I had planned on talking about presidential politics and using the abortion thing is an excuse. And instead, we used the presidential politics thing as an excuse to talk about

abortion. But I do want to brought it out just for a second, back to the presidential level, and this is out of left field. But consensus here, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are old, right? I don't think I have to make that case. Let's just say that American democracy is still intact in 2028 and that the Republican doors and that neither of them are going to be the candidates. again just like if you want to fight me on these propositions fine does american politics start reverting back to the mean of normalcy a little bit or does it stay weird like have have we have we broken orbit and we are spiraling out like darth vader's tie fighter at the end of star wars with no uh nothing to constrain us or is the or are is is the trump era an outlier and the

incentives for parties to be more normal going to kick back in? I will take the position that there is no returning to some normal. I think we're in a, we're in a shift, right? I mean, like Trump is a catalyst, or maybe he is a symptom of the two parties, shifting coalitions, people moving in and out. And I don't know what it looks like in 2028, but I have been of the view that the Republican Party's trade of educated, moderately educated, middle class suburban voters for working class, white working class, and now perhaps other minority group working class voters, was in general and in the long run a losing proposition. that Republicans need to be the party of the suburbs in order to win elections. And that was a necessary condition, but not even a sufficient condition for Republicans

to win elections. So now I don't know, I don't know what it looks like. Do suburbanites, you know, migrate back to the party, perhaps? But it's a different, it's a different party where they're not in the driver's seat anymore. And maybe the Democratic Party looks more comfortable to them. I just, it just seems like the extremes of, of both parties' coalitions will be in the driver's seat for the foreseeable future until they are, until they are not. Like to go back to what Megan was saying about the, you know, some sort of DLC version of the pro-life movement. I think it's going to take a lot more losses.

I don't think there is a sense on the right, for instance, that there have been any losses or any legitimate losses over the past six years. And so it seems to me that the upending of the parties is only going to continue. And we could see, I'm still skeptical of a third or fourth party emerging, but, But it does seem like we're in the middle of that shift and not either getting out of an aberration or on the other side of the shift. It feels like we're still in the middle. And Donald Trump is so warps our sense of normalcy that just him losing or winning in 2024 will not end the warping. A lot of sci-fi references today, too, like more than usual. This is all trolling of Steve and pandering to Megan.

Yes. Anyone else want to chime in on that? Yeah. Look, I think there are a couple things that I remember when I was, when Trump was elected. I don't. There was a minor event in my life. Yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh.

I know. No, I remember a friend on Facebook who is a very nice economist who lives in California was like, finally, maybe we can get all of the sane, sensible people into one party. And I was like, are you crazy? Like, first of all, what he means by sane and sensible, right, is educated and, you know, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And I was like, we are not an electoral majority. Right? So, like, that party loses elections. And second of all, who's doing policy in the other party? Right. And I think that that actually is, for me, one of the big worries about right now is the educational polarization is so toxic. And it is left Republicans. Look, I have a lot of issues with the way that the expert class has gone super left. I think Madaglacius had a really funny.

um, like phrasing of this where he said, uh, you know, somehow the fact that all of the experts are in one party has made policy in both parties worse. And I think that that is really, really deeply true. Um, and so that is what worries me, both in the fact that like, look, I have issues with the experts, but also they know stuff. Um, and also there are things that are hard to do by, the sheer how now we're going to go comic books but like you know what Julian Sanchez once

dubbed the Green Lantern theory of politics or maybe that was actually Matt Iglesias as well sorry it's Iglesias day that's three references to it yeah three references and when the green light no sorry doubled the number in the last year

Julian Sanchez was the Carebear Stair theory of politics which are they're related the Green Lantern theory is that if you were just had a sufficiently steely will anything is possible and the care bear stare is the theory that if you're just nice and care enough, anything is possible, and both of those things are false. And so I think that that, you know, that issue of having all the experts on one party who are then themselves prone to groupthink and these weird status

seeking dynamics where they're worried more about, like, have I made myself acceptable to the leftmost person in my academic group, then is this thing politically feasible and or correct? But then the other side, you know, you tell them that vaccines work and they're like, you can't tell me vaccines work because that's just some pointy-headed idiot. That's a huge problem. The other problem I worry a lot about is the longer Trump is around, the more he is just going to optimize the Republican Party as a cult of personality. And forget whether you think he is in fact a marvelous personality for whom we should all be rooting, et cetera. I do not personally, but, you know, tastes very. But the main problem is that that's not a party that's optimized to win. It is a party that is optimized to make Donald Trump feel happy. And not all of the things, as he has repeatedly demonstrated, that make Donald Trump feel happy are winning electoral strategies. And that the longer this goes on, the more you are losing people who have any kind of sense of, first of all, even just what it takes to get elected once you've gotten past a Republican primary. And then second of all, what it takes to do policy.

And Republicans have always been bad at thinking about, like, how do I actually implement this thing? How do I get this through a bureaucracy? You see this with like all of the trade stuff, all of the we're going to go after social media. All of this implies a large and competent bureaucracy that is not left-leaning. They have put zero effort into building that. But Trump is making that so much worse.

And so can you rebuild from what the Republican Party is becoming? Can you rebuild a competent party that is capable of doing anything other than just grandstanding for social media? I don't know the answer. And without that, you're going to get a worse Democratic Party because the Republicans aren't checking them because they're then kind of more free to follow their worst impulses. And also, frankly, because with stuff like executive orders, they often give Democrats bad ideas. that the Democrats then capitalize on because they're more competent. Kevin, you have no views on any of these related issues.

I was just wondering over the fact that on a four-person panel, half of which is Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson, we are not the most dour and pessimistic. Mike Warren came in and just limboed under the low bar for excitement that we set on a daily basis. And then Megan, with a really surprisingly, cynical and despairing and lamentatious view of the world. I think my work here really is done.

I'm going to ring off. We were just setting you up. We wanted you to build on the dismal platform that we have set you up for the spike, Kevin. Now just take it over the net straight down. Buy gold. People look at me to think volleyball metaphor. That's what we do. Gold's too optimistic.

Ken goods and ammunition, by the way. So I've been writing this book for, I've been working on for a couple of years about idolatry and politics. And one of the things that I've decided about the Republican Party was that it was a personality cult before Trump came along. It was a personality looking for a personality to wrap itself around. It was already oriented in that direction toward this, you know, kind of performative, ritualistic, ceremonial kind of politics.

Democratic Party is two, but less so, because the Democratic Party has a more substantive set of self-interested policy goals driven by labor unions and things like that than the Republican Party has. And so, you know, John, you've often said that Trump is the luckiest person in politics and he's a very lucky person in all sorts of ways. I really do think he walked into the Republican party at a kind of golden moment for someone like him. It was a party in search of a demagogue. It wasn't a party that a demagogue came in and took over and really bent to his will. And to the extent that Trump bent the Republican Party to his will, it did not take a lot of bending. You know, it was, it was more of a thumb wrestling kind of thing than a leg-breaking

sort of thing. So I don't really think the Republican Party can be fixed. I think that its problems are just at this point systemic and irreversible and that it's going to continue its decline into what it's becoming, and that's just going to be that. So my guess is that a third party or some sort of party-like organization is probably going to take over the stuff the Republican Party used to do that was normal, ordinary political stuff in terms of, you know, recruiting candidates, managing campaigns, trying to come up with issue platforms and things like that. I think it was really, it was a wonderful symbolic moment when the Republican Party just stopped producing a platform, just that we don't care anymore. That was. It was almost literally like whatever Trump says. Yeah, that was a really telling moment. And if Trump wasn't there, I think they probably still would have done the same thing. because that's not really what they're about.

So either some other organizations are going to step in and do the kind of party work that the Republican Party used to do, or it just simply won't get done. And I think that a lot of people who are kind of center-right people, particularly center-right people, who don't care a lot about the abortion issue, have already made their peace with their voting for Democrats, at least in the short term, and maybe in the long term, there's going to be parts of the Democratic coalition. that may be good for the Democratic Party and that it'll change that party a little bit and make it a sort of more normal party

that has people in it who are not all really ideologically homogenous and super left wing and that'll leave the Republican Party as being just this kind of circus that it's become. On the other hand, people who are kind of committed social conservatives

who want a political agenda for social conservatism don't really have a place to go. The Democratic Party is never going to be changed to such an extent that they're going to feel that they can operate inside that party. And the Republican Party just has stopped really being a party. So, yeah, those folks don't really have a political vehicle. So in the West, a new hero will rise.

Just saying. I just want to add one more thing, which is, because I thought about this a lot after 2020, which is what happened with Trump's you know, we didn't lose mantra is that what he did was what he did for, what he's done for most of his political career, which is tap into a very natural impulse among people when it comes to politics. And instead of doing the sort of, instead of doing the responsible thing, which is to say, which is what Mitt Romney did, which is what Hillary Clinton did,

which is what John Kerry did, which is to say, I know you're upset, but this is important. support, you know, we know this. Trump does not care about those kind of responsibilities. And he tapped into something which I think is natural, which is people get angry at this. How could this, how could we have lost? There's no way we could have lost. And that's a very healthy part of the process of a political party losing. And it's one of these many processes that happen in a political system that I, that hasn't happened on the Republican side for all those reasons. And I think there's a danger. It's not the exact same thing, but those sort of conversations are also not happening on the Democratic side. Obviously, Joe Biden is the incumbent, but he's such a strange

incumbent. He is so much of an anti-Trump figure and the vessel in which sort of anti-Trump people are sort of invested in. As Megan has said earlier, he's not the future of the Democratic Party. And it seems like the conversation about the future of the Democratic Party has also been delayed in the ways that the future of the Republican Party has been delayed because it's all about Trump. And I think that, you know, if Joe Biden were 15 years younger, 10 years younger even, he'd still be old. He would still be old. But it would, and he would be still older than Barack Obama. But it does, it does seem like for all the other age issues that are plaguing Biden, it's this, it's the sort of natural kind of push and pull within a party's

coalition. Who are we? What do we do? How do we take the lumps and figure out how to make that work? How do we build on the victories that? All of that has been forestalled because it's all about Trump. And that's a problem that the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party, This is a yin-yang situation. Like, it's, it is an either-or in a two-party system for the time being. And, and I think that's a reason why we're stuck here for the next four, eight, maybe longer. Until we're Biden's age is basically what you're saying. Well, it is possible for a country to have really, really bad politics for a long time.

You know, smart countries, you know, India had really, really bad government for 50 years. I mean, still got pretty bad government in a lot of. was. Germany had really, really bad politics for decades and decades. Japan's had pretty bad. Tell me more. About Germany. Sorry. No one who speaks German could be a bad man. I was thinking more recently, actually. But just because Trump goes away doesn't mean that our politics gets better. We can have bad, defective, unconstructive politics for a really long time. Countries can do that. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellus lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com and ask your family eye care professional for SLR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Okay, so a topic that we want to talk about, I want to talk about that Megan suggested that we were running a little long, but I want to get to all the rest.

Maybe we'll try to do it quickly is this story about in Vanity Fair, which I think is emblematic of a much larger thing. A guy wants to, well, Megan, since you suggested it, why don't you do the summary and give us your take on it? Yeah, there's a guy who's got a bunch of a rich Silicon Valley, guy who's got a bunch of billionaires who want to build a city north of a new city north of San Francisco. And, you know, to me, look, I'm a crazy ideologue libertarian. I'm like, yay, California needs housing. What would be awesome is if there were more places for people to live? No, that was

not what Vanity Fair thought. What Vanity Fair thought was bad billionaires. We should take all that money and use it to fight homelessness in San Francisco. I think there's a lot of things wrong with that theory, starting with the fact that, like, the problem in San Francisco is larger than the existing stock of homeless people. If you built all of those people shelter, that would attract more people, understandably, who are struggling to get shelter to come, right? So, you know, the cited cost of curing homelessness is not correct. But beyond that, right, look, there's two kinds of homeless people. There are people who cannot earn a market wage that would ever shelter them anywhere because they are so profoundly they're disabled

they have profound mental illness they are struggling with severe um drug addiction those people can't house themselves and that is one set of housing problems the other set is people who could afford to house house themselves if there was an abundant housing market that was providing enough homes um and california is bad at that and even when they change things right they have they have They've done some stuff around, you know, upzoning near public transit and so forth. They're really bad at just letting housing be built. They should be throwing subsidies at this guy. They should be like throwing parades for anyone who is attempting to build a new city on what is currently agricultural land.

And by the way, like all of the complaints about water and sewer, agriculture consumes a lot more water than people do. You know, like notoriously, California's almond crop consumes some insane. sane amount of, um, uh, the water that they take from the Colorado River. It's like literally like a gallon per almond or something. I mean, it's some crazy, crazy thing. Totally crazy. We should not be growing almonds in a place that does not have enough water. Of course, that's like, another libertarian rant about how we should price water. But I think this is just emblematic of, of the kind of problems in the left wing coalition over housing, which is like, I want more housing, but I don't want rich people to build it and get rich off it. Right. I don't want them to build housing they would

like to live in. I only want the special kind of housing. And therefore, and the special kind of housing they want to build is hugely expensive. At the same time, there was just an article saying that like building these affordable housing units that California is trying to build, this place identified a bunch of projects where the numbers are in the high six figures and even the low seven figures per unit for affordable housing. You know, this is like, guys, just just stand back and let the market happen, let the billionaires, like, buy some farmland and, and build some housing. Housing is good. People are good. People need housing. I don't have a more highly developed here. Sorry, I'm like, I'm like actually stunned and incoherence by this. Why would you ever object

to someone wanting to build more housing on land that it currently has farms on it? Unless you're, like, kind of the front porch republic, cities are bad. We should never have any. Everyone should just live in a yurt somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains. Other than that, you should be thrilled about housing if you are a nice urban liberal. And I don't understand why I see this script rollout over and over and over again. We need more housing. Okay, let me build some. No, no, don't build any housing.

You terrible, terrible person. What sort of person would want to build housing? That being said, before some people build a whole new utopian city out of scratch, can you guys maybe build a 200-unit apartment building in San Francisco and see if you can pull that off? But that's harder. That's the whole point, because the governance in San Francisco is so whacked out. The things that are keeping them from being able to build an apartment building or a condo building in the Bay Area are also the things you're going to make it really difficult from then build this city. And so the idea of, well, let's get some billionaires involved and get some big crazy Silicon Valley ideas is not going to solve the underlying problem. I'm a friend right now who's building a modest apartment complex in a much, much friendlier market where the local government's very happy to have them building housing there because, like you. They understand, hey, we have people. They would like to live somewhere. Let's build some housing. And it's still a really, really complicated and difficult thing to do. And it's complicated

and difficult thing to do profitably or in an economically sustainable way. Yeah, God bless these guys for trying to build something. And I like big ideas and grandiose plans. And I have a weakness for that kind of grandiosity. It makes me happy. But the real problem is that you just simply can't build normal ordinary houses. You don't have to build a whole new city from scratch and give it the name Forever California, which makes me want to join a militia or some it sounds like it could be a prison

actually. No, it sounds like an album, right? Come on. This is the Beach Boys compilation, and I would buy the hell out of that album. Let's take this small problem and turn it into this much larger, much more complicated problem and try to do that thing instead rather than deal with the actual relatively small but still

hairy and difficult problem. Yeah, it seems like the problem that the lefties in San Francisco have primarily with this is the word billionaires, right? I mean, it's like a trigger word. But honestly, this is what happens when you have a regulatory environment. I have talked with someone in California who represents the most evil people in our society, those real estate developers. description of what of the length of time it takes to get approval for whether you're a small time developer or one of these you know big time residential home developers to get something done in California with the environmental impact just just the cost of the environmental impact

review how long that takes how expensive that is it's it's it's so much more profitable for these you know big real real estate development companies to just build more in Arizona or Nevada. And in fact, that's where a lot of people in California, when they retire, are moving to those states. So what you're left with is only billionaires can build new houses in California. So that's really the problem. And, you know, I don't know if California forever is the solution.

but it's sort of the only solution that would work at this point because the state sort of can't move beyond these sort of outdated environmental and labor regulations, all of it gets to be so onerous that it constricts the supply and here we are. And so what you end up having is, you know, school teachers in San Francisco. who have a two-hour commute because they can't afford to live, you know, anywhere, but they have to live past Emeryville, practically, to commute it. When the big earthquake happens in California slides into the ocean, Peter Thiel can finally put his hard-won seesteading skills. When you mention the earthquake, I think about the, what was the Northridge earthquake, you know, 25 years ago.

That was the first time I remember, and it's happened a bunch of times since that, that highway fire and bridge fire in Pennsylvania. I don't know if they've done it in Baltimore yet. But whenever there are these like massive infrastructure crises, everyone celebrates when some politician says, we are going to suspend all of these regulations to deal with this crisis, to get this thing taken care of as quickly as possible.

And I'm in favor of that. I'm just don't get why if those rules and regulations inhibit the proper functioning of government to do the things that the voters and taxpayers want in normal times, why they should exist. And if you take the rhetoric of homeless advocates, who I think, you know, I think there's a lot, there are a lot, there are many rooms in the mansion of homeless activism and some of them are more redeeming than others, so to speak. And probably not the best metaphor. I guess. And some of it is just simply, you know, it's the professionalization of activism and

reform and all of that. But if you take them all at their word that it's a crisis, it's an immediate crisis, it's a pressing crisis, all these kinds of things. If you had said, well, look, we lost all these people are homeless because of an earthquake and we're going to suspend regulations so we can rebuild housing. Everyone say, well, of course. Okay, these people didn't lose homes because of an earthquake. But it's still a crisis for them if they don't have homes. And yet when you say, well, let's suspend ludicrous regulations and zoning rules and all that.

People say, oh, no, no, you can't do that. And it's just this inherent contradiction within sort of sclerotic progressivism that, you know, Mancer Olson said that the only way you sort of get out of this problem is with a devastating war. And

I would rather we found some, you know, curtain number two for how to do this, but I just don't know what it is. Well, the interesting thing about that is, you know, If you can suspend the regulations after the earthquake, that's nice. But in this case, the regulations are the problem. So you essentially get to suspend the earthquake. This is the thing that's causing the issue. Not only can you suspend it while you fix the issue,

you also take away the main cause of your problem. I mean, I think you are seeing a constituency within the left, which would be healthy for the right to develop a similar phenomenon. You mentioned Madaglaseus one more time. No, no, Ezra Klein, right? With everything big old liberalism where he's pointing out exactly this, right? Because the problem is not that people don't understand what the effects of this are. The problem is that every group is like more concerned with defending its position within the coalition than it is with getting stuff done.

And so every group, anytime anything happens, wants all of their stuff added to that group and the net result is that nothing ever happens. And there is a reform, right? There are people like Azra who are now speaking, and I think making, they're convincing some people. The real question to me is whether they can overcome the phenomenal interlocking, you know, backscratching of these groups and actually fix their party to the point where they could conceivably fix a place like California. And I really, I would like to say that they can. I'm sadly not as confident as I would like to be.

Yeah, not to sound like a broken record, but the solution error is fix the parties. And then what the parties are supposed to do is manage coalitions and tell some members of the coalition, eat it. You have to go along with this even though you don't get rewarded. And instead, because the parties are so weak, everybody gets their bite at the apple. and there's no, there's, there's no traffic copying going on.

Although I think if there's one sort of hope for the, the democratic problems are more at the state and local level in a lot of ways, right, like, which is why I think there actually is an argument for the city, right? It's not just that billionaires have a lot of money. It's that you can move, like, there are, there's stuff that's California specific, but then there's even more crazy stuff that's San Francisco specific, where if you try to build something on like a parking lot in the mission. Someone will pop up and be like, this is a historic parking lot where Jimmy Hendrick shot heroin in like 1965 and you can't do anything with it.

That does cover a lot of parking lots. And that at least will be, you can get by moving. And I think that, you know, part of the answer, right, is that people move to other states that allow building like Arizona, like Utah, like Florida, like Texas, places that are more building friendly. The concern is obviously, do they bring their opposition? Do they come get the cheap real estate? And as soon as they've gotten it, start passing rules that make it harder for other people to get it. But, you know, at least there is some competition in a way that there is currently not on the Republican side because they don't, none of them want to do policy. All they want to do is get on Fox News saying something and then, you know, tweeting it to their followers and hoping

Donald Trump or sorry, trothing it and hoping that Donald Trump will re-truth them or, you know. All right. So I'm going to use moderator's privilege here and skip the not worth your time thing and just make that sort of Sarah's baby. Sarah is the one who gets to do it. And I don't want to encroach too much on her. I do want to say on the truth social thing, I've been trying to make it work and no one wants to come with me. But I just love that they call the truth social and people constantly say he has another post on truth social and the wordplay opportunities for thumb-sucking punditry about the post-truth era when Trump is posting truth, post-truths on post-truth social in the post-truth era. It's almost like a tongue twister of irony. But there we have it.

Megan, thank you so much for joining. We hope you'll come back. I was happy to be on the Dispathy. Kevin, Mike, I'll see you around the virtual water cooler. I can't remember if I'm supposed to say something else.