The Dispatch Podcast - Bluffing With Bravado | Roundtable

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Sarah Isgur is joined by Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes to discuss President Donald Trump’s latest saber-rattling tactics against our allies and enemies—and whether his bluffs will pay off. The Agenda: —Did free trade policies fail? —Global saber rattling (IEEPA?) —Scott Lincicome: Why Donald Trump is wrong about tariffs —Trump fishes with dynamite —Gaz-a-Lago —Will Trump ever follow through? —USAID: Carrot-and-stick or waste? —Let’s not commit war crimes —David Hogg as Democratic National Committee vice chair Show Notes: —Thank God for the stock market. —Our fact check on the Politico-USAID story —Lara Trump to join Fox News The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web.

Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com. Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar and I've got Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes here.

Not a slow news week as they tend not to be in 2025 so far. We're going to talk about tariffs, about Trump's provocations, their effectiveness and what to think of them on the world stage and a little bit about USAID, those celebrating, those bemoaning. And finally, the DNC elections. Are they worth our time? So I just start policy-wise. Forget the politics for a second.

Jonah, tariffs have been a part of American political history since day one. They're mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. This was a big part of the populist movement in the Jackson. era. I mean, Andrew Jackson, not that there was another one. Are tariffs conservative? Are they good? Are they bad? They're generally bad, but they have a place. They have a rule, right?

Like, taxes are just generally bad. But in some specific circumstances that they're necessary. You're absolutely right. Tariffs are a big part 18th and 19th century. They're part of the Constitution. The U.S. government used to pay for a lot of stuff with revenue from tariffs.

The U.S. government also used to be about a 20 to a fiftieth of the size that it is today, and you can pay for a lot of your government if your government is very small with tariffs. It doesn't mean it's a smart way to pay for it, but okay. And so they are just simply, they are a tax that is almost entirely, not entirely, but almost entirely, in almost all cases, paid for by the consumer. sometimes the importer eats the cost if they can afford it and that kind of thing and on very

rare cases like with Chinese dumping of materials sometimes the Chinese the foreign entity can eat the cost right because they're trying to gobble up market share but all in all it is a way to shift the burden of a cost to something to the American consumer and just to build that out in the most obvious sense like literally the foreign company pays the money to the U.S. Treasury but because consumer prices go up to match that, it is in effect a tax on domestic consumers. But the U.S. Treasury does get money from the foreign place. That's right. It does. Sure.

And so anyway, Donald Trump, his position on tariffs is that tariffs are in and of themselves good, right? Most beautiful word in the language, better than love, all of this kind of stuff. He thinks they make economic sense. He says that he can pay for, they can pay off the national debt. They can do all of these things. They're floor wax and a dessert topping. To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States

and build a factory in the United States so it doesn't have to pay the tariff. But he also says that they are a way to punish our enemies. And also just, I mean, like, there's an inconsistency that comes from thinking they're just basically like a schmars. that can do everything and anything that you want them to do. And they can. And anyway, you just ask about tariffs generally, so I'll stop there. But I think the way he's been handling has not been great, Bob. Steve, did free trade policies fail?

Is this the rejection culturally, politically, historically, of NAFTA, of moving manufacturing to its most efficient places, et cetera? No, but I think in part what you're seeing is a reaction to sort of the natural disruptions that come with free trade. Part of the big debate on trade among conservatives, even free traders over the years, has been to what extent should government play a role when there are these natural disruptions that result from, you know, I mean, we haven't had anything really close to unfettered free trade in the United States, but freer trade than Donald Trump is proposing now. And I think in the case of the manufacturing sector,

you've had some more free market types. I would include myself in that group. Suggest that this is sort of the natural course of the economy. And the market goes through these disruptions. They're understood, that well-understood economic phenomenon. And to the extent that civil society and the private sector can help accommodate people who are displaced or challenges that these market disruptions create, They should.

Great. You have others who have made the argument that this is the proper and necessary role of government. Government should definitely step in at the state and federal level to help sort of manage through these expected disruptions. Marco Rubio has been making a sort of version of that argument. I would say a less demagogical version of that argument for a decade. He included parts of it in his 2016 presidential run. I think he's since become just much more sort of. Trumpian demagogic in his cases. So I don't think these things are unexpected. And I don't think

they're the result of the failures of free trade. Okay. I want to hold that conversation in our head and talk about Trump's provocations on the world stage. So the Trump administration declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEPA, for those who live in the Beltway. The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, was the cause for the emergency. In response, he announced that he would implement a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% additional tariff on imports from China. Additionally, energy resources would be hit from Canada, would be hit with a 10% tariff, the administration argued that access to the American market is a privilege,

highlighting that while trade accounts for 67% of Canada's GDP, 73% of Mexico's GDP, and 37% of China's GDP, it only accounts for 24% of US GDP. The U.S. trade deficit is at its largest now at just over $1 trillion. Okay, so in response then, Mexico and Canada announced that they will do things to further secure their border, for instance. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on social media that Canada would spend $1.3 billion on a plan to reinforce its border with new helicopters, technology, and personnel,

as well as additional resources to stop the flow of fentanyl. And everyone was like, wow! Look what Trump was able to accomplish with just some tariff, saber-rattling. Trump, in exchange, announced that he would delay the, you know, start of these additional tariffs for one month, and then people noticed that, in fact, Trudeau had announced

that exact $1.3 billion at the end of last year. Mexico, very similar, 10,000 National Guard troops at the border. I think they had already had about $15,000 at the border. You know, I met a bit of a loss for what the question is because it's hard to argue then that it's effective, but there is something effective about it, if that makes sense. sense. Yeah, just to jump in quickly, and then, Jonah, you can, I know you have thoughts on this. Look, I think on the one hand, everybody to a certain extent is making disingenuous arguments about this because the claim that you're getting from the Trump tariff supporters is, you know, after he said, remember, he said as of Friday of last week, there were no

concessions the Canadians and Mexicans could make. Nothing could change this. This was going through. We're doing these, we're doing these tariffs because we need to do. these tariffs. And then there were some concessions and then he backed off. By the way, Scott Lindskam, obviously, who writes our capitalism newsletter, there's a terrific one out today about, I think it was the great almost trade war of 2025 that breaks this down in tremendous detail. It is an absolute must read. We'll put it in the show notes. It's very good. But Scott predicted sort of the cycle of this in a tweet he sent back in November. where he said, you know, maximum Trump bravado to start,

minor concessions to follow, more Trump bravado. I don't have it in front of me. I don't have it exactly. But it's basically like one after another after another. So when this happened, when these announcements came over the course of the past few days, you know, Trump sort of beat his chest, the tariffs paused for 30 days. And, you know, this was marked as a big Trump win. Well, that wasn't, I think, very serious or honest for the reasons that you suggest, Sarah.

Most of these things were teed up beforehand and were likely to come. And the specifics of the Trudeau announcement in particular were that were mostly publicly known. Having said that, and to give sort of the Trump side, it's due, most of those announcements that came in December came as a result of the expected tariffs that Trump had previously been talking about. So it's not like, you know, Justin True, you just announced this stuff in December out of the blue because he suddenly decided he wanted to get serious about the tariffs. There's real power in presidential rhetoric. And I think when you look at things like the numbers of border crossings here, which are, you know, at an astonishing low nearly three weeks into the Trump administration, presidential rhetoric matters, right? I think it mattered when Joe Biden sort of repeatedly, rhetorically shrugged his show. shoulders, if that's possible, about the border for years and years and years, and people read

it as a welcome sign because it was mostly a welcome sign. And Trump has been signaling that he would be closing things off. So anyway, that's just my preface. I think Trump, the threats of these tariffs are in part what caused some of the behavior that we've seen that the Trump people are now disingenuously celebrated. Jonah, we are building to our final crescendo here. So we're doing this a little different. So give me your thoughts on this. before we we get to our next moment on this. Yeah. Okay.

So it's all nonsense. Soup to nuts. It's absurd. Unlike the thing with Columbia, right? Which was a real win by Trump, very minor, right? The fight was basically about we wanted to expatriate people on military planes. And they said, no, it has to be commercial planes. And Columbia caved.

So now we can send military planes. Well, yeah, although it was symbolic. Columbia tried to like push us around and it was like, no. And they were like, okay, fine, never mind. Yeah, okay. Good. America's great now. Thank you.

But great again. The problem with this stuff is that, first of all, on Friday night, Donald Trump is asked in the Oval Office, is there anything Canada and Mexico or China can do to avoid these tariffs? And he says no. Because these tariffs are an economic measure. They are justified in their own right. This is not a negotiating tactic. Okay, so already, we're not negotiating right now.

If you don't say do X or I'll do, if you don't, if you have no quo for your quid pro, then you're not negotiating, right? You're just doing something unilateral. I mean, I wrote my LA Times column about this the day it happened. The stock markets started to tank. And I wrote a column saying, thank God for the stock market. because that's the only thing that Donald, other than sometimes polls, it's the only thing

that Donald Trump will listen to when it tells it something, tells him something he doesn't want to hear, right? And he likes to think that the stock market is a barometer of the success of his presidency, and when the stock market goes down, it freaks him out, and so he caved. He just unilaterally caved on his own measure. The Mexicans and the Canadians gave him some face-saving press releases, not really any new policies. It was just simply, okay, here. here's the stuff we already promised we're going to do. Now we're going to do it. You can take credit for it. Oh, and I guess we'll throw in a fentanyl czar. Woo! Right? So, and then the MAGA people, the Trump people, all take credit as if this is a huge success for this policy and proof that he was

just doing it as a negotiating tactic. Well, if he had already gotten the stuff that he got as a result of this before he did any of it and threatened it, then it's not a negotiating win. And Moreover, the costs of this are ginormous, right? You are, if you are a corporation that has to make decisions about your supply chains going forward, what are you going to do next, right? You don't know, you know, what happens at the end of these next 30 days. It creates a climate of uncertainty. There is no rational reason to be, to have gone after Canada at all in any of this. The fact that he was willing to have a different tariff rate for oil,

concedes the point that tariffs are not good for American consumers, right? It's like, terrorists are good for American consumers, according to Trump, but we don't want to raise the cost of oil from Canada, so we'll make it a lower tariff rate. He's conceding the point of the critics of terrorists have been making all along. And then when he has, so like my basic problem with this is not falsifiable. You can't say, oh, but for this, he wouldn't have gotten that, right? And it's basically like fishing with dynamite. and then whatever floats up to the top

after your stick of dynamite blows up, you're like, that's the thing I meant to catch, right? He didn't know what he was going to get out of this. It was just to create chaos, and it's part of his larger pattern of creating crises that he then solves and takes credit for because he likes that constant sense of drama, and it helps him, and it throws Democrats off,

and it throws the media off, and it gives his critics something to freak out about, and then they get to make fun of them when the worst-case scenarios don't transpire. People are taking his bait. But this was ludicrous on its face. Okay, that's actually a perfect then transition to what I mostly want to talk about.

On Tuesday evening, Trump announced that he intended to seize control of Gaza and turn the region into the Riviera of the Middle East. Mara Gaza. I thought it was Gaza Lago. Oh, Gazalago works too. Yeah, that's better. The more euphonious.

The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it. I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East. This is Trump, quote, will own Gaza and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development. He said he did not make the decision lightly.

His plan would require resettlement of 2 million people and possibly require military intervention, but Jonah, to your point, when there is intransigence in a problem, like the Middle East, for instance, and everyone has just sort of dug into their positions and we're now in a trench war of millimeters, blowing up the conversation and causing that chaos that you talk about, the fishing with dynamite, could be really effective. However, I would ask whether the terror thing that had just happened, something that didn't really need to be fished with dynamite, and then he backs down, kind of ruins the whole Gaza thing, right? Because if it's like this rhetorical, maybe it's a bluff. Maybe he's a psychopath. Maybe he's going to do it. Maybe he's

not because you want to get the Egyptians and the Saudis and everyone else to come to the table with sort of a fresh mind about this whole thing because things could get really crazy if the U.S. suddenly has a Gaza protectorate, then they have to at least really take seriously that you might do it. But you didn't do Columbia. You didn't do the tariffs on Mexico and Canada. The bluffs don't work. Or you keep having to ratchet up the cost of the bluffs, if you will, which I guess I feel like I've also seen between 2016 where build the wall was the like crazy thing he was saying and 2024 where things were like much bigger, like any sequel has to be to recapture attention. So does anyone think that he's remotely serious about Gaza?

Or should I take that seriously? Like, should I be like, oh, maybe he really means to commit American troops to take over Gaza? I just find it like so laughable, but I would have been in favor of that bluff, whatever you want to call these things, provocation, if it had been the first thing he'd done. And because I do think that that whole situation screams for some starting from scratch, common sense, this isn't working type conversation. So I actually agree with you on a big chunk of that.

I am willing, I just did CNN this morning and I have to fend Trump on the Gaza thing. I mean, let me let's let me stipulate up front. The actual idea of the United States taking over the Gaza Strip is a mazeball stupid and unworkable and complicated, and depending on how you did it, possibly a war crime, you know, ethnic cleansing, you know, is a war crime, moving populations against their will is a war crime. Now, if you could bribe them or come up with some sort of framework where you could get them to voluntarily do it, that's great. The problem is if they were the kind of people that were open to being voluntarily moved,

we wouldn't, Gaza Strip wouldn't be a problem in the first place. And if they were the kind of people that liked to be, were open to be like sort of moved to to build a better life, then a lot of these neighboring countries would have taken them in a long time ago. I mean, there's just a lot of chicken and the egg thing here, right? When Biden built that pier, I thought kind of stupidly, to provide aid, Hamas fired on it, right? The idea that we're just going to move the caterpillars and the, you know, the earth-moving equipment in there and fix all of this and turn it into a spa is, is absurd. That said, I agree with you entirely on this rhetorical point, which is that we have had this pattern now for a half century,

Palestinian radicals terrorists murdering a bunch of Jews, whether it's Munich or, you know, on October 7th or everything in between or in the first or second antifada, all that. Israel responds. Everyone condemns Israel. And then all those money comes in and they rebuild the damage that Israel does and the clock starts over again, right? Days since unjustified terrorist attack, you know, sign goes back to zero. All the NGOs, all the international institutions, all of the cookie pushers at the State Department, they all have this as their muscle memory of just recreating this pattern over and over and over again because everything else is supposedly unthinkable. And then Trump comes in and proposes something that is legitimately

unthinkable, but at the same time, it sends this signal and says, listen to you guys, you thought you're just going to do this all over again. There are consequences to October 7th. They're different. And we're not going to fall back into that same pattern of argument and all kind of stuff. And like the stuff America could support can be more than just like giving a little extra help to settlements and radical, you know, settlers in Israel. It could be like hardcore all in on the side of Israel. And that at the very least is probably shakes Saudi Arabia and some of these other countries who are

probably dug in on other things they wanted for the, you know, to continue the Solomon Accords or whatever they're called. They're now like, well, that seems more reasonable to give in on now if we can forestall this thing. It reminds me, I remember reading once that Henry Kissinger would go into negotiations during the Vietnam War and would freak everyone out by opening up by saying that he accepted all of the other side's positions and demands and was just going to go all in on it. And they were like, oh, crap, what does he see that we don't see? Hold on a second.

Maybe we don't really want X or Y. Maybe that was this thing, right? And shattering people's expectations, I think, has real value. Whether this administration has the follow-through on it to take advantage of it, I don't know. And just the last point, this is a wild gift to Bibi Netanyahu. I don't think Bibi wants America to take over a Gaza Strip either, right? But this is a fantasy of a lot of the hardcore right-wing guys in his cabinet who've been thinking about leaving. And if this is even remotely on the table, they're going to stick in this cabinet for a while.

So this was a real gift to Bibi. And again, if you could do this peacefully, where you actually made better lies to the Palestinians and they got out of the Gaza Strip, I'd be open to the idea. I just, I think it's, it's nonsense. And it does make J.D. Vance and a lot of these people look ridiculous who are talking about how all Liz Cheney and those people want is more foreign wars in the Middle East. And here's this guy saying, okay, actually we're going to extend, you know, the Monroe doctrine to the frigging Gaza Strip.

But there you go. Steve? First, I think Joan is entirely right about sort of the silliness. I mean, you know, if you follow the rhetoric of, many Trump enthusiasts on this, it just reveals them, you know, in a way that few other issues have to be totally full of it on some of their endless war, ending American imperialism stuff. I don't think they actually thought that George W. Bush administration were imperialist in the first place. But I mean, this is Donald Trump's sort of nakedly and unapologetically

making an imperialist argument. I mean, you know, there's talk. literally talk about building condos, real estate development for Trump and his family. There's a report from Pock that this originated with sort of the musings of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, who wanted to, you know, develop it for real estate purposes. I mean, there's sort of a level of absurdity and the very people who were against imperialism until Trump said just this thing. And I'm now enthusiastically forward in talking about the possibilities, I think, deals them to be, you know, mainly unsurious, at least on these questions.

I mean, we talked about this a little bit last week, you know, whether there's Trump can sort of being a madman or being so unpredictable can be an advantage. I agree. I think it can be an advantage. It's unclear whether this is an example of that or whether this is just Trump with his ad hoc decision making, sort of going bigger and going bigger. And, you know, everybody will impose on this set of events, the interpretation that they want. There's a, there's a, I think a chronology here that suggests that this might have been more ad hoc decision making than anything else. You look at the press conference with Netanyahu, Trump comes out and says, not only that we're going to remove two million Palestinians, but says permanently. And then

the White House sort of goes and says, well, he meant permanently for a little while, which Of course, it's not permanently. So you saw Trump come out big and bold, chest thumping on this first day, high-fiving. These Israelis were high-fiving themselves on the way out of the room, all these stories about how exciting this was, the appeal to Netanyahu's domestic political opponents, puts him in a better political position, things that Jonah was mentioning. So that's how this starts. And then you have a second day of pulling back, where you have National Security Advisor,

Mike Walts, giving interviews. including one to CBS where he says, hey, nobody has a realistic solution about this. Trump puts some very bold, fresh new ideas out on the table. It's going to bring the entire region to come up with their own solution if they don't like Mr. Trump's solution. So he's recharacterizing this as just, you know, Trump kind of musing aloud about a Gaza takeover at a press conference

with Netanyahu. And then, you know, by day three, Trump puts out this new statement this morning. And it is sort of the ultimate vote for Pedro and all your dreams will come true statement. On the Middle East, Trump says Gaza would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. People, Palestinians will be resettled far safer and more beautiful communities, new and modern homes. They'd have the chance to be happy, safe, and free. The U.S. were. working with great development teams from all over the world would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on earth. No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed. Stability for the region would rain. Come on. Like, nobody believes this. But we go back to the question, and I think it's at the center, it's at the center of the first three weeks of Trump second term. Do you take him seriously?

you take him literally. And I don't think anybody, there's no pat answer to that. He doesn't yet have a tell. And that, that I think is what's making this a challenge. What does it tell us about the Trump presidency if this is the first three weeks? Because like I said, I mean, this stuff can work in either small doses or used to dramatic effect at certain strategic positions, but it feels like it has been the hallmark of the first three weeks. it is, you know, Colombia, Panama.

We haven't even talked about Panama and the sort of saber rattling over, taking back the Panama Canal, something that, you know, yeah, we probably shouldn't have given away the Panama Canal. I'll agree to that. And then Panama announces that they're not sort of resigning for the belt and suspenders. China deal. Canada, Mexico. Now this Gaza thing.

Can it keep working? Well, people just sort of buy into this idea that like, yeah, Trump doesn't ever do the thing. but one time he will do the things. And you kind of, I don't know, you have like, trying to think of something Trump has followed through on that was kind of like bonkers town. I mean, so I would say, I mean, this is the problem

with the seriously literally question. Look, some of the things that Trump did on the domestic front in the aftermath of the 2020 election, you heard from even hardcore devout Trumpers. He would never do that. He's not going to use U.S. troops. He's not going to try to get a revote. He's not going to push for this.

and he did those things, you know, to such a great extent that his attorney general left, his secretary of defense was cashiered, because they wouldn't do the extra constitutional things that Trump was trying to tell him to do. So there's a very real cost to making the assumption that these things are literally too crazy, that just because Trump says them as something that, you know, moves or throws, casts out the Overton window, like, that he won't do them. And I don't think it's safe to operate on the assumption that he won't do this stuff. But I think the problem in some ways is that the stakeholders in these geopolitical decisions, the crisis like Gaza, the smacking down allies like Canada and Mexico or biggest trading partners, they pay very careful attention.

You can be sure that the governments in Canada and Mexico are paying very careful attention. to every single detail of what Trump says, what Trump does, and so are diplomats throughout the world, precisely to your point, Sarah. So, you know, the MAGA amen chorus here can cheer win, win, win, and tell themselves that that's what's happening. This is just Trump dominating. But these other countries have, you know, have a stake and we'll pay careful attention. I have to say the one thing that hasn't been discussed much, particularly with respect to Canada and Mexico, let's say that we consider these wins, right? That, you know, the concession, the preemptive concessions that Trudeau made on these tariffs early, that was a

win for Trump. And even if he just repeated him later, it's still a win for Trump. And it's more or less my view. How you get there really matters. I mean, there's a reason that you take care to treat your allies well, because there will come times. And we've done this. And we've done this with, certainly with Canada, with our NATO allies, where we rely on them too. And it's better to not have been an asshole in all of your dealings with them so that when you go to them and say, hey, we need this or we'd like your help on this, or we think that there's a, you know, a new trade partnership here, that they'll be willing to at least entertain your offer. And if you've treated them poorly, I think the likelihood of that goes down every time something like this happens.

Okay, let's move on to USAID, which is a different topic, but is it a different topic? On Friday night, thousands of federal employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, will be placed on administrative leave. This follows Trump's decision to freeze all U.S. forward assistance for a 90-day review. USAID provides humanitarian aid to over 100 countries and employees 10,000 worldwide, two-thirds of whom work overseas. USAID has a budget of approximately $40 billion a year, which amounts to about 0.6%, so just under 1% of federal spending. Earlier this week, Marco Rubio became the acting head of USAID when they moved it under the auspices of the State Department,

said he intends to merge the agency with the State Department. Foreign aid. Let's go back to our policy conversation. Jonah, is foreign aid a carrot that promotes U.S. interests abroad? or is it a waste of my effing tax dollars? Why not both? Look, I mean, look, some foreign aid is bad and stupid. And like, it's very easy to say all foreign aid is bad when you're all you're going to do is

point at like promoting DEI in Serbia or whatever. I mean, whatever these things that people are pointing out. But foreign aid also is like extremely useful. You know, soft power is not as big a deal as people, some people want to make it into, but it's not nothing either. inoculating kids for dengue fever or, you know, PEPFAR or building schools in Mali or protecting Rohingya on the Thai border. You know, there are things that we're doing with foreign aid that are not only, I'm always cautious to use this term, the Christian thing to do, and I mean that

an entirely positive way, but also stand us in good stead. And, you know, and there's an argument that some of like like I mean you know the law stuff on this far better than I do but like it seems to be one of the reasons they're going after AID is that it was formed basically through an executive order and they think there's a legal better legal case there to dismantle it than if it was a purely statutory thing and yada yada yada another reason is that the foreign aid is unpopular and a lot of ignorant and misinformed people think it's like 25% of the budget It's not, as you say, but there are things that foreign aid that we do with foreign aid that are defensible morally and strategically.

And there are stupid things that we do with foreign aid. And so the conversation reminds me a little bit of the question you asked two weeks ago about birthright citizenship. It was like, as a matter of policy, would it be a bad thing to get rid of birthright citizenship? And my basic answer is probably not. I mean, I can live with it either way. You know, I don't think it's a hugely important issue on the, on the plain merits of it. But I don't think the President of the United States can constitutionally get rid of birthright citizenship.

And I think that sort of atmospherically, it sends a signal that is not necessarily positive about what's happening in America. Similarly, I could not give the most petite rat's ass about whether or not AID is run straight out of the State Department or if it's a separate age. But that doesn't mean that Elon Musk has the power to go in or should have the power to go in and dismantle the thing. If his arguments, if the arguments against IAD were so good, he wouldn't need to lie about it. He wouldn't need to retweet conspiracy theories about it. He wouldn't need to say that there's nothing good that it does. It's not even a case where there's some worms in the apples. It's just a bowl of worms.

Can't, you know, it's evil, right? That's nonsense. And that and so like the process. here bothers me a lot and the the steadfast refusal to be serious about any of this stuff bothers me a lot but there's plenty of room to reform aID which could have been done if they just you know if they put somebody in there who actually knew how to run an agency well you could have done all of this without the fanfare and the drama but they like the fanfare and the drama is the feature not a bug as far as well okay yes and no steve some of this

I thought Jonah was going somewhere slightly differently at the end. If at any point, a previous administration had run USAID well, you wouldn't have built this resentment and reaction to it. And that could be true for immigration. That could be true for literally anything we're talking about. What creates the pendulum swing is the incompetence and the gaslighting of being told. Foreign aid is such a small part of the budget. Like, we don't need to do anything with that.

We don't need to ever even look at it. Don't worry about it. Don't look over here because they can't actually justify what they're doing. And by the way, I said it was 0.6% of the overall federal budget, which is true, though smart dispatch listeners will realize that we talk a lot about that how the largest part of the budget is non-discretionary spending. So if you just look at discretionary spending, which I think is more relevant here as a percentage, it's still under 4%.

But, I mean, that's four times larger as a percentage. And it's $60 billion freaking dollars, Steve. I guess I don't really care whether it's a small percentage. That's a lot of money that we should determine whether it is actually effective in any of its goals. And if no one's willing to do that working within the system because they can't do it working within the system, there's just too much bureaucratic pull to the status quo. Then you get back to this fishing with dynamite thing. If it's the only effective way to get anything done to change anything, then you're going to have a whole lot of people voting for dynamite. Yeah. I mean, I guess I disagree with you a bit on your premise. I think foreign aid is a target sort of all the time. And even if it were run incredibly efficiently with obvious tangible benefits, you'd still have people who say we shouldn't be doing foreign aid because they don't want the United States involved sort of overseas. That's the core sort of America first argument foreign aid is bad everywhere and always. But I guess my view is, is,

a lot closer to yours and Jonas. I think the first thing that is worth saying is there is a ton of entitlement and arrogance in the sort of foreign aid bureaucracy and on the part of some of these NGOs who haven't really had to answer for what they get, what they spend, and how they spend it for years. And you can see that.

And from time to, time we find rabid anti-Semites, for instance. Right. Yeah. I mean, some of the, some of the details when you look at this are appalling. And, you know, these are things that never should have been funded in the first place and should be zeroed out as quickly as they can possibly be zeroed out. And I do think that, you know, one thing you have to say about Doge and its particular focus on USAID is it's highlighted these things in a way that sort of hasn't, I mean, very little of this is new, but the attention to it is new. And the attention to it is new in part because of the way that they've trained fire on these things. And, you know, in that, I'd say limited sense,

this is an overdue conversation and a much needed conversation and a good one to have. Having said all that, some of what we're seeing is totally absurd. There was an intention entire flap on Wednesday was a better part of a news cycle. It's still going on. I saw people trying to correct the record this morning about these claims that USAID was funding Politico to the tune of $8 million a year was the original claim. And the allegation, Politico had missed to pay, head misspaying its employees for some technical reason and these sort of right-wing infotainment types. And they're just engagement people.

All they want to do is create engagement. They don't care whether what they say is true or not. Hyped this to suggest that it was the, to hint that it was the ending of USAID funding for Politico that was causing Politico to miss its payments, et cetera, et cetera. There's a grain of truth to this. USAID paid, I think it was $22,000 each for a total of $44,000 for, I think it was $37 of these high dollar subscriptions to Politico Pro Insider publications on energy and the environment. Virtually anybody who does business in Washington, D.C., at these agencies in these congressional offices that are criticizing, these agencies for subscribing to these things.

They also do this. So political made some money because of USAID, but it was nothing like this sort of graft. And this is maybe one of the better examples I can imagine in recent memory, where there's this entire hype story about USAID funding Politico that's just not real. But it gets a response where Carolyn Levin. at the podium of the White House press briefing says these subscriptions are now ended. Nobody in the government will have these high dollars subscriptions anymore.

Somebody pointed out New York Times subscriptions and made a suggestion this is on social media of, I think it was $29 million in U.S. government money going to the New York Times. Elon Musk says this is, you know, retweets. It says this is all corruption at its worst. So much of this bears no. resemblance to the truth. And yet it's why people are going to be making decisions and it's how sort of our national debate is being shaped based on so much bullshit when as we've all conceded,

there's a real debate to be had. There's a real discussion and there are real changes that are needed. Most of what we're seeing in this discussion doesn't really touch on that. I want to do a little bit of a lightning round here at the end on this. Steve, is USAID a really effective cover for the CIA to operate in a bunch of foreign countries or is it a bunch of liberal soft commies peddling, you know, millions to teach foreign governments how to write gender inclusive language? Both.

I think it's both. And that's what makes it an effective cover for the CIA. Right. I mean, look, the CIA uses any and all of these agencies. The CIA, you know, puts people in agriculture positions in U.S. embassies around the world. So they can use any of this. Yeah, the ag one is, is famous. The CIA uses all these, all these organizations.

But look, I think an effective USAID doing what it's intended to do is not only a defensible example of soft power. it's a necessary and potentially very important aspect of U.S. soft power, particularly in combating things like the Belt and Road Initiative. But, you know, when it's abused, it deserves the criticism that it gets. See, I prefer because Sarah earlier referred to it as the Belt and Suspenders Initiative. That's going to be in my head for a while. Anyway. We've had a couple of those.

Sarah did the Belton Suspenders Initiative. I think you called it the Solomon Accords. Abraham, Solomon. I'm sure I probably had eight of those, but unless you call me on it, they didn't happen. Live television. We'll do it live. I tease that I realized I got it wrong because I said,

or whatever they call it, because. All right, Jonah, here's your lightning-ish question. What am I supposed to make of the fact that Elon Musk is somehow at the center of a lot of this? Because if you remember back again in the beginning, so long ago, three weeks ago, Doge was originally going to be this like fraud waste and abuse. They were going to go in and find all these efficiencies and cut government spending. And then everyone was like, yeah, but then you're going to have to comply with FACA.

And like, you're not going to be able to do that. You're just not going to be able to do everything publicly like that. And then they were like, no, no, no. We're actually going to go do digital stuff and like make the websites work better. And now Elon Musk is moving agencies into the state department and furlowing the federal workers potentially. On the one hand, you're having like, who is this guy, unelected, richest guy in the world doing any of this? And on the other hand, I don't know, again, like if after 50 years, 100 years of stagnation, people are going to vote for dynamite. Elon Musk.

looks a lot like a stick of dynamite right now. So what am I supposed to make of Musk and all of this? You know, honestly, I'm kind of torn like you are on this. He's an agent of the president. The president was elected. I mean, I think the whole idea of mandates is hot garbage and doesn't exist. But the president does have power over, you know, you don't know how. I thought the Goldsmith episode on Unitary Executive of A.O. is great.

You don't have to be a complete subscriber. The hardest for the most extreme version of Unitary Executive to say that the president has a remarkable authority over the executive branch and so as long as Trump is approving this stuff and as long as you think some of it is necessary

and I do think some of it is necessary there's definitely a side of me that says let's see where this goes the other side of me forget you know that I may disagree with how he does stuff and the characterization of some of the stuff he does and all that kind of stuff

the reason I have a wait and see approach is that, you know, he, a Twitter executive, after, you know, after Musk took over Twitter, he fired 80% of the staff. And apparently one of, this guy, the Twitter executive said that Musk's attitude was in effect, if you don't end up having to put some stuff back in afterwards, then you weren't cutting deep enough, right? Steve Bannon says Musk's attitude is like in film, we'll fix it. and post, right? Break things and then fix the stuff that you shouldn't are broken kind of thing.

That kind of thing works everywhere where it works until it doesn't work, right? And there are places where government touches on people's lives. There are places where, like, I'm all in favor of maintenance on airplanes, but not while they're flying, right? And so, like, he's going to at some point cut beyond where he should have cut or done something, you know, he's going to go too far, get over his skis on something that matters to people, right? Right now, USAID is the perfect thing to go after because everyone, you know, except for what, you know, there are literally dozens of us who are willing to defend foreign aid. But, you know, VA benefit payments, anything I'm going to do with entitlements, keeping planes in the, you know, and you.

air? I mean, there are things where government actually does matter in the moment. I could see him screwing up somewhere and that coloring the entire process that came before it, where people say it'll it'll re-contextualize what he's already done. And that's when the nobody elected Elon argument will have salience for people. But as long as he's doing this stuff that's sort of more interesting or soap opery or entertaining, I just don't think there's going to be a huge backlash against him and the stuff that he's doing. But that doesn't mean there won't eventually be one. All right. A little not worth our time? Question mark. The DNC held elections for their new leadership last weekend. Ken Martin, the longtime leader of the Minnesota Democratic Party, was elected

the chair of the DNC. Martin stated his first priority as chair included a reevaluation of the state of the party, its finances, party contracts, and a post-election review process. Sounds a lot like the 2012 R&C autopsy. To me, we'll see what people dub this one. He stated, quote, we know that we lost ground with Latino voters. We know we lost ground with women and younger voters and, of course, working class voters. We don't know the how and why yet. In addition to electing Ken Martin, they also elected activist David Hogg as one the three-party vice chairs, sort of signaling that they are not moving off of their progressive stuff. And there was a bit of a, I don't know what the folks were making fun of

the DNC sort of learning nothing and their quotas and sort of extreme inclusivity measures. When DNC chair Jamie Harrison had to come out and say, our rules specify that when we have a non-binary candidate or officer, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female. With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two male and two female. In order to be gender balanced, we must elect one male, one female, and one person of any gender. Therefore, the remaining six officers must still be gender balanced. There was a lot of making fun of that. I will note, however, that in fact, the R&C has the same policy, that the chair is one gender and the co-chair must be another gender. Jonah, do we care about the DNC elections?

Is the Democratic National Committee, a leader, a follower, an indicator of where the Democrats are going? What does this mean, if anything? It doesn't mean a lot, but it doesn't mean nothing. Look, I think naming David Hogg, I was on our friend Mike Pesco's podcast yesterday, and I think I got a little too excited and called him a pajama boy twink. But I cannot stand David Hogg. I think he represents everything smug, ridiculous about a certain breed of sort of MSNBC liberal. And to say that he is going to be the, even symbolically, a face of the Democratic Party, I think is a sign that the Democratic Party

has not come to grips with some of its problems. I will say, I didn't know about the quota thing, the gender quota thing for the RNC, but the DNCs, assuming that they've only gotten worse, but I mean, 20 years ago, I remember a Democratic insider explaining to me, you know, the rules about how if you point to Puerto Rican to one position, you have to point a Cuban-American

to an equal position, all of that kind of stuff, right? I will read just to, it's rule number five in the RNC bylaw, so that people can go read this themselves that they want, a chairman and a co-chairman of the opposite sex who shall be elected by the members of the national Republican National Committee, yada, yada, yada. So people know I'm not making that up, but it is only that versus...

Trump's woke R&C, geez. But I would say, you know, mostly this is a symbolic problem, right? This just shows that internally the Democratic Party doesn't know how to have the conversation it needs to have, right? That's my problem with it. And the best evidence of that, was having a sort of debate thing with the contenders for the RNC chair that was hosted by essentially three MSNBC hosts, right?

We would sort of recognize that this is a problem for the RNC if they had a similar thing where it was just Fox News hosts interviewing people, right? So they have Jonathan Capehart, very liberal guy, people, you know, I know a lot of people who like him and respect him, and that's all fine, but he's a very, very liberal guy. He asks, show a hands, who thinks that Kamala Harris lost because of racism and misogyny or racism and sexism? And they all three raised their hands and he says, okay, you've passed my test. If Jonathan Capehart is even symbolically the hurdle, you know, his test, his approval, his approvals,

The thing you need to be the head of the Democratic Party, that is proof that the Democratic Party needs a much more thorough internal conversation about its problems. But right now, I don't think it knows how to talk about that stuff because fish don't know they're wet and they don't realize how deep in a ideological bubble that they're in. Steve, does it matter what the DNC elections are? I think it does. It should be noted just as a side note. that Laura Trump, the former head of the RNC, was just given an evening show on Fox News. I think it was a Saturday evening show on Fox News. Yeah, I think it does for the reasons that Jonas suggests. I mean, you know, the biggest, the most important thing for a political party to do after it loses an election like this is, you know, something like the autopsy report that Republicans did after 2012.

but not just doing it, getting it right, understanding the reasons for the loss. I read an interview that Jamie Harrison, the former head or the outgoing head, now former head of the DNC gave to the Associated Press on his way out. And, you know, he was asked, why did you lose? And he gave this sort of grab bag of, you know, weird side issue examples that I think just missed the entire thing. He was also asked, by the way, he thought, he was asked about Joe Biden and the switch from Biden to Kamala Harris, and he said he thought Joe Biden should have remained the candidate. I mean, just like, how do, how, you're not a serious party if you think

that. You're not a serious person if you make that argument. Joe Biden made that argument, and I chalked it up to his declining mental faculties. Jamie Harrison doesn't have that excuse. The other thing, I think, getting a little bit into the nitty gritty is who they didn't choose. The contest basically came down to Ken Martin, the head of the Democratic Party, Minnesota, and Ben Wickler, the head of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. And, you know, Ben Wickler is somebody who is known primarily, certainly my conversations have primarily been with his opponents, Wisconsin Republicans, who, think he is the best operative they've come up against in years. I talked to one leading Wisconsin Republican before the 2024 election who said he thought Tammy Baldwin was likely going to win, in part because of the organizing that Ben Wickler had done, but also said that, you know, he knows

strategists and consultants working in Wisconsin Republican politics who in effect give two extra points to their Democratic opponents statewide because of the Ben Wickler, effect, because he's such a good organizer. So, you know, I think they didn't choose him. He had, I think, a more moderate message. He talked about reaching out to rural voters. He, it seems to me, was sort of a better candidate in terms of his experience and what he's been able to do, but also in the way that he talked about really taking

serious, you know, a hard look, a serious look at where Democrats have gone wrong. And with that, we conclude another dispatch podcast. See you next week in the fourth year of the Trump president. I don't know.