The Dispatch Podcast - Bring Back Political Factions | Roundtable

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Mike is joined by Steve, Jonah, and Chris to set expectations for the primary in South Carolina. Become a Dispatch member to join Steve, Jonah, and others in a special live panel marking the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine. The Agenda: —Haley and Trump in South Carolina —We need more factionalism —Haley keeps on trucking —The Republican Party doesn’t want Reaganites —Kari Lake vs. McCain family —Did the “Biden crime family” narrative just implode? —Is CPAC worth our time? Show Notes: —Jonah's G-File on ranking presidents —Subscribe to The Collision for more reporting on Trump's indictments Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. We've got Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and Chris Steyerwalt, and together we're going to get into the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, the future of the GOP, that bombshell indictment of a major FBI source, Alexander Smirnoff, and maybe a little not worth your time. But before we start, I want to tell you about two very special dispatch events coming up on Saturday. a dispatch live panel marking the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Jonah, Steve, Declan, and Mary are going to be joined by two reporters in the field in Ukraine. Tim Mack and Bennett Murray are going to be coming live from Ukraine. That's at 4 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. But if you want to see that, you've got to become a member. Join the dispatch. Become a member.

There's a link in the description. of this podcast. And then the special treats just keep on coming on Sunday. The dispatch crew, Steve, Jonah, Sarah, and yours truly will be at the principal's first event, a summit, if you will, in D.C. And we'll be live streaming a conversation, a dispatch live conversation to the full dispatch community. Be on the lookout for an email about that. And with that, let's get right into it. All right. Well, let's talk about the South Carolina primary. Chris, Trump is going to win the South Carolina primary.

Is there anything else to say about the first in the South primary election? Or can we just wrap this segment up and be done? Well, I guess I would say politics generally is not about how well you do, but how well you do compared to expectations. So Trump and Biden sort of have a similar situation in the next two contests. Trump in South Carolina, Biden in Michigan, where he's running against uncommitted. And uncommitted is gaining ground fast in Michigan on Biden. So for Trump, polls have been pretty consistently saying that he is going to get more than 60% of the vote, right? That he's going to get pushing 70% of the vote.

And if he does that, then in her home state, whatever Nikki Haley says about soldiering on is the returns will be diminished because Trump will finally get the win bonus, right? If you're the frontrunner and you're winning, what happens is your vote share goes up. and then it becomes, then you get Santorum. Your delegate share, you mean. No, your share of each contest, the popular vote in each contest, tends to go up. You hit a tipping point and it's like you won by this much in Iowa, you won by this much in New Hampshire, and then you win by this much and this much. And the share goes up as the resistance. The big mo is George H.W. Bush would put it.

The big mo and also the anti-mo, which is that people who might go out to vote for some. somebody who has a chance of winning, say, I'm not giving up my time to go be part of a lost cause. And that's what Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum or Ted Cruz and John Kasich faced. That's what Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee faced in 2008. It just, that's what happens. So for Trump, if he can knock that 70 percent, if he can get, if he, if he's close to 70 percent, it doesn't matter much what Nikki Haley says. On the other hand, he has set an extraordinarily high bar for himself. So if it's, if, if his first number in his, if the first number in his total is a five, that's bad, right? That, that, that would be bad. And you, that's the weird math of politics,

which is, um, you could win 59% of the vote in South Carolina. And still people will say, I don't know. That wasn't that good compared to whatever. And I'll shut up by saying this. South Carolina apportions its delegates based on congressional district. And there's one district. It's Nancy Mace's troubled congresswoman Nancy Mace's first congressional district, which is more college educated, more affluent than the state as a whole by a pretty wide margin. It's Charleston and the low country. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

These are the swells, the coastal elites. And this is the one place. if Haley can basically replicate there, what kind of a share she did on the New Hampshire Seacoast and other Tony precincts of New Hampshire, if she could do that, and she could win one congressional district that would strongly bolster her argument. I got delegates. I didn't get shut out onto Michigan. I hear what you're saying, Chris, about the big mo, about the way that these things normally go.

At the same time, things have not gone normally in this nominally. contest a season that we're in so far, right? I mean, Nikki Haley should not still be in the race, given her third place performance in Iowa, her second place performance in New Hampshire that was frankly underwhelming even on her terms. And yet, the money keeps coming in. And she seems to be representative of something more than just the second place finisher for not a majority of Republicans, certainly,

maybe a sizable chunk of Republicans who say we don't want Trump and we are using our vote for Nikki Haley as a way to protest what everybody says is the inevitable. Does that change the calculus? Jonah, Chris, Steve, anybody would have jump in on this. Does this change the calculus for her? and we just have to throw out what we know about primary politics because this situation is different. I mean, I'll jump in.

I mean, ultimately, what matters is if you win or lose, and she hasn't won. And if you go by the polling we're looking at right now, she doesn't stand much chance of winning. So in that sense, no, it doesn't change anything at all. The likelihood that Nikki Haley would become the Republican nominee, I think even in the sort of the wildest, most unlikely scenarios, depends on something happening to Donald Trump, whether that's conviction, whether that's an act of God, what have you, then you can at least have a discussion. about whether Nikki Haley would be the Republican nominee. I don't necessarily think she would, even in those circumstances, because the party is so overwhelmingly built around Donald Trump. We're about to have, in all likelihood, Laura Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law,

become co-chair woman of the Republican Party. The Trump world has spent the better part of the last six, eight years, rebuttal. building state parties in his image. There was this resolution that David Drucker reported on that sought to end the Republican nominating process after the first two states, which would have passed, I think, but for the embarrassment of it, having been exposed, it's just a Trumpy party. And so the likelihood of Nikki Haley staying in and thus somehow enhancing her chances of becoming the Republican nominee that way don't seem very high.

Having said all that, I mean, I do think it's notable and far more in the general election context than in the primary context that she continues to get, you know, 20, 30, 40 percent in polls and in these early contests. I mean, when you have somebody who's an alternative to Donald Trump and, you know, you You have big chunks of the party saying, I don't want Trump. Like, give me a choice and I don't want Trump. As we've discussed before, if a very small percentage of that group shifts their vote to a no-labels candidate, assuming there is one, or even a Joe Biden vote in the general election, or doesn't vote on the presidential line in a general election,

that is really going to make it tough for Donald Trump to win. particularly in a head-to-head contest. Yeah, I kind of feel like I'd need to get one of those apps that plays soundboard things because the problem with this is that it's the same punditry for the last six weeks, which is that Trump's going to win. Nicky's going to do a show.

Trump's a weak incumbent, but he's an incumbent. So incumbents are very powerful in a primary, but if you look him as an incumbent, he's a very weak one. You're absolutely right. A lot of this stuff is unprecedented. Lots of things, lots of old rules of politics have gone by the wayside in the last 10 years. And so it should encourage humility with people about making predictions about the future based on the old rules when the old rules no longer apply.

I agree with that entirely. As someone who is not particularly invested in the Republican Party, but is invested in the idea of having a two-party system where one of the parties is kind of conservative, I'm very much in favor of Nikki Haley staying in the race, even though I don't think, barring the deus ex-McKina scenarios, she wins the primaries. But I'm in favor of it because we need this country, this country would be much better off

if both parties had a lot more factional. Word. Word. Where there were strong factions on various issues, not just the squad, but also like DLC Democrats, that kind of thing, right, for the Democratic Party. And factions for the South or factions for the Northeast. I mean, I want factions orthogonal to other factions crisscrossing each other at every layer,

right, horizontally, vertically. Because when you have factions, you can't do this popular front nonsense where if you're a good person you vote Republican or if you're a good person you vote Democrat, it's got to be, Well, you know, in my state, we do a lot of soybeans, and we have a lot of Mennonites and yada, yada, yada. And so that's going to influence how I vote. You leave Indiana alone, Jonah Goldberg. You leave Indiana. I was sub-tweeting in Indiana.

And what if the Republican Party is ever going to be healthy and saying again, it is going to need at minimum a faction that is Reaganite, let's just call it, in some way. way. Sane, suburban married couple voters who want low taxes and limited government, but also good schools and all that kind of stuff. Like sane right of center governance faction. That's not the only faction I'd like to see, but Nikki running and continually running, continuing to rack up 20, 30, 40 percent helps that faction become self-aware and coherent and, and, and, and, and, define itself in a certain way. And the more the Trump, the MAGA faction, which is like 30% percent, keeps saying if you're not 100% on board with Trump, you're not a Republican, the more that hardens the other faction to say, well, if they don't want me on their team, I won't be on

their team. And American politics needs a lot more of that kind of thinking where people, like right now, the only people who operate like a serious faction on the Republican side are the jack wads who keep throwing out House speakers, right? They use their leverage to do that. Majorities, pluralities, other factions should press their interests. And so the long-term reasons I'm in favor of what Nigelie is doing is because it's good for the long term of the party. Just one last point. The response to me would be from a lot of people, well, if Joe Biden's re-elected, that'll be the end of America. Or if Joe Biden isn't elected, it'll be the end of America. If you don't believe that, if you actually think America will survive beyond the 2024

election, you can actually think long term about what's good for the party and what's good for the country. It does seem, though, that there's attention. I don't want to dwell on this too much, but it's something that I think of it. I think we talk about it internally at the dispatch, a tension between what you just described, Jonah, and a kind of desire to tell it like it is or how it seems to be. We don't want to say that Trump's nomination is 100 percent. it's, you know, certify, you know, metaphysical certitude that he will be the nominee, but we want to be realistic and honest to readers. And I think there's some tension in how we approach covering and talking about this.

That's certainly a frustration I have is how much do I give, say, Nikki Haley, you know, credit here for staying in? or is it important for me as a reporter to point out that it's sort of delusional? She doesn't actually have a chance, a real chance of being the nominee. I don't know. Steve, do you have any thoughts on? Yeah, I mean, you know, we've done a lot of reporting on this. You know, you and Drucker and John McCormick have done some good reporting on sort of what Nikki Haley's thinking,

what her team tells us about why she's staying in sort of the long-term dynamics. I actually happen to think it's really important. I mean, just to pick up on Jonas, something Jonas said real briefly. What's interesting is you started your comment, Jonah, by saying something to the effect of, I think it's really important that America, in a two-party system, that one of the two parties be a small government party, or I don't know exactly. Right of sense, a conservative party. Yeah.

So I'm not sure that that's really the case anymore, honestly. Like, I don't think the Republican Party, a Trumpy Republican Party is not a small government party, period. I agree. That's why I want the fact, Nicky, fact. Yeah. So, like, it's not there, if the debate inside the Republican Party doesn't continue, there will be no small government party in the United States. I do think that, that as you look forward, let's just say that, you know, our speculation here is accurate.

Nikki Haley is not going to win the Republican nomination. She stays in for a little while. it does become really interesting in a general election context, I think. I don't know what her plans are, and there are obviously would be obstacles to her doing something as a third-party candidate, but, you know, we know that there's this no-label's effort. It's, I think they're on the ballot in 16-ish states. They are optimistic about being on the ballot in all 50 or something close to all 50 states. And while, you know, it's usually the case in recent elections that if you talk about a third-party effort or you talk about, you know, an independent candidacy, it immediately brings sort of dismissive scoffs.

You can't do that this time. I think this effort is likely to matter, particularly given how close the last two elections would be. And if it's the case that no labels prefers a Republican at the top of their ticket, which, by all accounts, they do, you know, would could you have somebody in that context who says, you know, not a probably not a hard ideological Ronald Reagan conservative party, but who makes sort of a platform of common sense conservatism, hey, you know, it's it's really been fun to spend all this money. but we probably ought to think about how much we're spending in debt and deficits. Hey, the Republican Party seems to be not really interested in global leadership. Maybe we ought to try to shape the world that we're living in.

I mean, it's not hard to imagine that surfacing in just a different context. If it's the case that, as Jonah says, the Trumpy part of the Republican Party continues to say, like, not only do we not need you, we don't want you. if you are an old Reagan-style conservative. So,

Stairwold, I want to get into that. And I do think maybe, Steve, you're jumping a little bit ahead what we're talking about sort of, is there going to be a new party? You can't rain me in. You can't rain me in. Oh, yeah, I'm bringing you in.

You can't stop them. You can only hope to contain. Or as I usually say, forget it. He's on a roll. Germans, bro. Bump, bro. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important.

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gubernatorial candidate in 2022, lost. But losing as a Republican these days means you win, apparently, because she's now the leading Senate candidate. And Carrie Lake famously during the primary for governor at an event said, basically if you're a John McCain Republican, get the hell out. She's now claiming that she was joking. She's trying to make amends with the McCain family. You can go on Twitter or on X and see how that's going. Just Google Megan McCain's X account. But we have some polling on this. So Carrie Lake is running for the seat occupied by Kirsten Cinema, the former Democrat who's now an independent. She, cinema has left the Democratic Party because she's been getting pushback on the left. And

Ruben Gallego, a very progressive congressman running as a Democrat. We could be seeing a three-way race if Cinema decides in the end to run. And there's a new poll that shows Ruben Gallego winning. This is a progressive, pretty far-left Democrat, winning a three-candidate matchup. This is Emerson, right? Ruben-Gygo, 36 percent, carry like 30 percent, Kirsten-Sinima, 21 percent. And even in a two-person race, Ruben-Gygo, 46 percent. to carry like 39%.

I know it's early, but I think this does go, this does maybe presage what could happen with a continued Trumpian push for the Republican Party, which is you see a sizable chunk of regular Republican voters

leaving the party, not voting for Trumpian-style candidates. Is that what we're seeing, Chris, in Arizona? Well, first I want to go back to something Jonah said, which is I still want the remnant to install a drive-time radio soundboard. And I think morning radio, yes.

You just got remnant-time. Mang-ming-ming-ming-ming-ming-ming-ming. Yeah, so that's just on my, put that in the comment box. But Milton Friedman once said, don't try to, don't worry as much about electing good people as you do about forcing bad people to do good things. And I'm a big believer in the urgent need for reform, both in how Congress itself works and most urgently how our primary election system works and how the parties choose their nominees. And I do believe contra Dr. Friedman that that's important. But there is a lot of wisdom in

what he's saying. When Foster Freeze, billionaire conservative Republican donor gave Rick Santorum like two million bucks or whatever for a candidacy that would never win, right? Rick Santorum was not going to be when Foster Freeze gave him the money, gave the super PAC the money in the 2012 cycle. It wasn't like here comes Santorum. He's going to, he's going to win. But what he was doing was saying, I'm going to increase the opportunity cost for Mitt Romney and Republicans to at least pay lip service to traditional family values and traditional patriotic kind of American, you know, however you want to describe it. What effect did that money have? What was the effect of that money? In some way, you could say that the Santorum faction won the 2016 nominating process, right?

that Donald Trump, an heir, certainly to older figures on the American right, Pat Buchanan, and before that, well, Huey Long, yeah, but also George Wallace and others, right, who were, he's a lot more George Wallace than Huey Long. But people on the cultural right who were pushing a populistic, nationalistic message. But Santorum's emphasis was on blue collar, working class, small town, Pennsylvania, kind of stuff. And those forces, that faction, did very well in 2016. They chose an extraordinarily unusual vessel for those sentiments, but they did have greater success the next time. I think this is something I've talked about many times.

the hard part for Haley's supporters. So there are some Haley supporters who say blow Trump up. This is a good place to put money to hurt Donald Trump and weaken him as a general election candidate. Okay, that's cool. If I was a rich dude, I don't know what, I probably wouldn't do that. But, you know, it's certainly,

there are worse ways in politics to spend a million bucks, frequently. Ask Dean Phillips. but there are others who are accustomed to being the mainstream, right? So there are these other people who are like, well, why aren't the people doing the correct and smart thing? Why aren't they dumping this loser, Donald Trump, who is the only one who could lose to Joe Biden, right?

Joe Biden is such a terrible, terrible candidate, such the weak, the worst incumbent that we have ever seen in the modern era. He is weaker than Jimmy Carter in 1980. He is a mess. And Donald Trump is the only candidate who potentially could lose to him. So the electability people who say, well, why don't you pick this woman, this accomplished in the prime of her life, in the prime of her career, woman who has been the governor of a medium-sized state, she has foreign policy experience, why wouldn't you just pick this woman?

They are not accustomed to doing the necessary work, which is it's an insurgency. and it's going to hurt. And that's the Friedman point. The Friedman point is if you want to get bad people to do good things, there has to be a price. And what you see in Kerry Lake, through a deeply greased lens, what you see in Carrie Lake is a woman who was once an Obama person, who became a radical MAGA super weirdo, and now is like, like, well, the National Republican Senatorial Committee makes a bunch of good points. And the decision by John Barrasso and others in the Republican Senatorial Committee to say, we don't think that you're, we think you're more ambitious than you are ideological.

And Carrie Lake has said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm down for whatever. I just want to win. I just want to win. And that's the kind, I think the factional energy that Joan is talking about. out. That's how it manifests itself, right? Is that you, these, these ungainly coalitions and Nikki Haley is a big part of that because if you want, here's the thing, if you want someone other than Donald Trump, you're probably not going to get it. I would say at this point, there's a greater chance that Joe Biden won't be the Democratic nominee than there is that Donald Trump won't be

the Republican nominee. Yes. So if you want somebody other than Donald Trump, good luck. But if you want Donald Trump as a nominee to be different than you have to punish him now. And that takes you into a whole complicated part about mitigating Donald. Are you a team Stefanic that says, let's mitigate and improve Donald Trump again. Let's try another Renault effort on Donald Trump. Or are you the people that say, I'm out, you're done. This guy can go to hell. I'll never vote for I don't want anything to do with what he's doing. And I'm sitting this one out and writing in very goldwater. Hey, just factual point of order, sir.

Is there any evidence that you're aware of that I am not hereto-for privy to that suggests Elise Stefanik is motivated by a desire to make Trump better? I mean, I was totally with you until you used her as the stand-in for that faction. I mean, like, well, who's, really? Well, I'm thinking that you are quite. quite right that ambition outruns. How about Steve Daines? How about those endorsers of Donald Trump who are like, look, just get it over with. Like just let it, if it's if it to be done, best that it be done quickly. And let's get it over with and then try to mitigate and get influence inside

his universe. And to the point about Steve Daines, the Republicans are much more likely to win Senate seat in Montana with a good candidate than they were if Steve Daines at the NRC had fought Trump. So Matt Rosendale, who is the only one I'm certain would lose to John Tester, said, I'm out after Donald Trump chose against him because of the favor trading that Senate Republicans have done. So it's like the Rick Scott model. Trade deal with Trump.

Remember when Rick Scott took a big award down to Mara Lago and gave him like to see? It was like a kid's tennis trophy that they had they had they had they had refigured as you know the Defender of Freedom Award so it was like a Dundee from the office exactly exactly so I think a very good point Jonah very good point all right anything else Steve I mean we see before we move on you know we see for instance Mike Pence the former vice president launching this you know getting a bunch of more money for his initiative, sort of defend and bolster Reagan-esque conservatism in the party. Any signs that that faction has any life in it?

I mean, the fact that I'm bringing up Mike Pence suggests maybe that it doesn't if he's the sort of leading effort, but maybe I'm wrong. What evidence do you see? And then we'll move on here. Yeah, look, I think it's an unfortunately small group. Would that it were a larger and more powerful faction of the Republican Party? Yeah, you know, I don't think they're not likely to exert much influence throughout the rest of the Republican primary. I mean, this is a Trumpy party. Donald Trump runs it.

Most of the people who are, it was interesting just in that in that quick exchange about who's doing this to improve Trump. versus who's doing this for ambition. I was thinking alongside of you guys, and I didn't come up with many people who are doing this, doing what they're doing to improve Trump. You know, Marco Rubio, no, that's ambition. You know, Tim Scott. Tim Scott, that's ambition.

I mean, I think there were some in the, you know, who joined the first Trump administration because they were worried about, you know, improving or containing Trump. I would put Mike Pompeo in that category. Nikki Haley herself. At first, Mike Pence might have been Nikki Haley. I mean, I think you can point to a lot of the people who were sort of the big names and good gets for Donald Trump in his cabinet as top advisors who went in with the idea that they would improve Donald Trump or contain him or or shape his policy direction.

I just don't see very many people who are doing that now in part because it seems so futile. And that is part of the reason why the second, the prospect of a second Trump term is frankly so scary to me. On the broader question, look, it's Mike Pence made an announcement that he's spending $20 million to build up what we would call a Reaganite policy movement. Think tank. Yeah, think tank. Ed Fuller, one of the one of the. the founders of the Heritage Foundation, long-time president, my first boss in Washington, D.C. I wrote Ed Fulner's letters back in the day, who was, I think, by all accounts, a, you know,

an old-school Ronald Reagan conservative. And I think he's still on the board of the Heritage Foundation. But the Heritage Foundation is nothing at all like it was when I went to work there in 1993. And Ed Fuller joined Mike Pence's new project. You're seeing. things like the freedom conservatives, which I think, Jonah, you signed their letter, their statement of principles. Pretty good old school statement of principles for people who believe in small government, traditional conservatives. You might call them the remnant. There's this principal's first gathering this weekend that's being put on by a guy named Heath Mayo. They've had a few of these before. And old school, traditional small government,

conservatives. We're going to do a dispatch live from there on Sunday morning with some of our group. So I do think there are people who still believe in that. I think it's probably a reasonably large chunk of the audience people who are listening to this. Dispatch membership, dispatch readership. The question is what impact can they have in a Republican primary? I think we've sort of gotten an answer to that. The real question, I think, and it remains an open one, is what will happen. What impact will they have on a general election? I think there could be quite substantial. Well, let's move on and talk about something that actually happened last week, but I don't think we really had digested this event until this week, or certainly I had, which is this indictment

coming out of the special counsel, and we have to be specific here, because there are many special councils at the Department of Justice now. This is David Weiss's office. If every council is special, is any council special special? It's a good point, Jonah. It's a good point. A very special counsel. This, you know, this participation trophy generation of lawyers at the Department of Justice, it's getting out of hand. But this is David Weiss, the special counsel appointed to investigate all things, as the Republicans might call it, all things Biden crime family, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, the brother of Joe Biden, all of their activities have fallen under the purview of David Weiss and have fueled a lot of the talk about impeaching Joe Biden from House Republicans

and there is an ongoing impeachment inquiry that is borne out of a lot of this investigation. And yet there's this indictment that comes down from Weiss's take. of a guy named Alexander Smyranov, great name, in which they charge him with lying to the FBI. This is a longtime source for the FBI on all things nefarious in Eastern Europe, apparently, of lying to the FBI and completely fabricating a story, a story about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and influence peddling in Ukraine and particularly with this Ukrainian energy company.

And it turns out that the story has been the basis for, I would say, 90% of what the Republicans on Capitol Hill have been saying is the smoking gun evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt. And the FBI has essentially said he made it all up. This source has made it all up. We're indicting him for lying to the FBI. That's what's happened. The response from the Republicans on Capitol Hill to this news has essentially been nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. We're going to continue to investigate.

It's pretty remarkable. Isn't it, Steve, that this is, this story has essentially fallen apart. It's not to say, of course, that Hunter Biden doesn't have unsavory. the international business connections that he traded on his father's name. All of that remains true. But this is using the words from House Republicans themselves,

this was the crux, this story, this source for the FBI was the crux of their argument. And now that's kind of disappeared. Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm glad you ended there. I think it's really important to say what we know publicly

and what has been publicly confirmed in some cases by members of the Biden family in testimony or in interviews about Hunter Biden's business activities is gross. It should give people the shivers. He clearly traded on his name. He did it a number of times. Some of the things that Joe Biden said, that he didn't know about it, that he was unaware, that he had no involvement. Almost all of those denials appear to be untrue. So this is its own problem right there. I think the question was how Republicans would add to that sort of basic set of knowledge and if they could find anything that was more damning. This was what they came up with.

They have other things. They'll point to other things. They've quickly moved back to emphasizing different things, but there was a time in the aftermath of these allegations, which alleged that there was an audio recording of these exchange, of this bribery talk. basically. For a while, they made this the center of their case, Mike, as you pointed out. And it was one of the most popular things that folks on our former network Fox News talked about, sort of ad nauseum with people like Jesse Waters vouching for the credibility of Alexander Smyrnav. And as you say, Mike, it all appears to have imploded. And the extra detail, that we're still in the process of learning more about is that Mr. Smyranoff appears to have

obtained some of this information from known Russian intelligence operatives or assets, which adds yet another wrinkle to this case. Well, I mean, certainly Biden world is celebrating this. They think that the fact that this appears to have collapsed on the Republicans and, you know, blown a hole at the center of the case that they were attempting to make renders the entire case sort of worthless. And I would imagine that on the impeachment stuff, it might. It really probably does. As you said, though, at the outset, there are still real questions about what Hunter Biden was up to. And I suspect that there are still things that we would learn that

will cause people to think, this is the swamp, right? I mean, this is swampy behavior. It's It's not that uncommon, but the fact that it's not that uncommon in Washington, D.C. is one of the reasons that normal people outside of Washington, D.C. don't like Washington, D.C., and were open to the arguments that Donald Trump was making about Washington, D.C. being the swamp, before he came in and made the swamp even swampier. Yes. Although, you know, I've always been skeptical that Biden crime family is the, is the, you know, killshot that Republicans, have been hoping for. I mean,

maybe it's just been supplanted, Chris, by Biden is too old to be president anymore. But it always seemed that that his, that Biden's, you know, policies on immigration, for instance, or just his very, you know, advanced age and questions about his, his mental capacity are much more damning

in a general election. than this kind of unclear, swampy behavior that Joe Biden's, you know, effed up son as engaged in. Was there any sort of political salience to this? Or is this just the kind of stuff that swirls around among, you know, in right-wing media that Republican primary voters get really agitated about, but has never really broken through in the way that, say,

Bill Clinton's corruption did kind of have some salience in his presidency. Well, I stand four square with Brother Goldberg against monocosality. It's a bunch of thing. Why is Joe Biden in the absolute pits? What's the deal? And, yep, we would say, if I'm making it, making a list, I would say that his decrepitude is the amplifier for all the other problems, right? It just makes everything else worse. How do you feel about Joe Biden's handling of

inflation? Worse because I look at this guy and he can't make it across the stage. Worse because I, when he talks, it's like a car crash. So it's an amplifier. So I would think that as an amplifier. The reason I have seldom seen a more grievous mish handling of a political problem than Joe Biden, his campaign, and the Democrats of Hunter Biden's corruption. It is stunning. The photo of Hunter Biden standing on the Truman balcony for the 4th of July fireworks, the same weekend that, coincidentally, a bag of cocaine was found at the White House. And you're like, is there not an oyster farm somewhere where this man can go work? Is there, is there no place?

Is there a dude ranch for sober living somewhere in the Utah desert where he could spend his time? Hey, there are a lot worse photos, by the way, that you could have brought up about Hunter Biden. So thank you for bringing. Marjorie, the congresswoman from Georgia will be heard from. But the, there's two kinds of scandals, basically. There are scandals like Trump's civil, the civil lawsuit against Donald Trump in New York is bad for Trump. It reinforces an existing negative, which is that Trump is a corrupt business person.

So that's bad, right? However, Republicans want to spin that and say, well, it's, just proves it's a two-tier justice system, blah, blah, blah, blah. It ultimately reinforces like, yeah, that guy seems like a shady businessman and a court found him to be a shady businessman. Okay. Then there are scandals.

And that's, by the way, the her report falls into that same category. What's the problem with the her report is that the ten words in it, a well-meaning, sympathetic, elderly man with a poor memory, America goes, yep, I know that guy. That's Joe The guy we see on TV is the guy that the investigators see behind closed doors.

That's the guy. Then there are scandals that cut against core strengths. When Donald Trump brought Bill Clinton's accusers to the presidential debate at Washington University, what was he saying? Yeah, I'm a pig. You know who else is a pig? Bill Clinton's a pig. And Bill Clinton's wife assassinated the character of his accusers and abetted his grossness. Did that cost Hillary Clinton the election?

I mean, a bunch of things cost Hillary Clinton the election. But certainly, and what Republicans are looking to do with Hunter Biden and Jim Biden's corruption, is to say, look, they all do it. You can listen to Dave Chappelle's riff on Donald Trump and what Donald Trump represents is basically saying, yeah, I cheat. I lie. I steal. I'm a crook. So is everybody. So they all are. And I know that they are because I use it. That's how he answered the question about not paying taxes to Hillary Clinton. Yeah, of course. What do you think I am? Some kind of an idiot. Of course I lie, cheat and steal. So do you, so does everybody.

For Joe Biden to lose that little clause about a well-meaning, sympathetic part, any of it, any diminution of the core brand, is bad. And the inability to, and I know it's very hard, but to basically exile his son. And look, when Eric Swalwell is taking Hunter Biden to the steps of the Capitol to have firely denounce whatever, it's like, what kind of a, after scamming millions of dollars on your father's name, as your dad stands for reelection, that you don't have the decency. to take a plea and go away, right? Take a plea, go away, take your beating, and maybe your dad on his way out of office

will pardon you, I don't know, but you owe your dad at least enough to go away. And I think it is, regardless of what dupes, James Comer and Jim Jordan have been, it's a liability, right? It's just, it can, I agree with the assessment that nothing has changed in the sense that Republicans are not going to give up accusing Joe Biden of corruption, and Democrats are not

going to give up saying that Donald Trump is a pawn of Russia. Yeah, Jonah, thoughts on what this means. Yeah, no, very quickly, I mean, I think, I think Brother Steyerwald is right. The significance of all of the Biden crime family stuff politically can be boiled down to the fact that now Trump has something to say when he's accused of being corrupt, right? And sort of like in the first impeachment thing, he just wanted them to say. say there was a corruption issue and he would do the rest or one during the for the second impeachment stuff he wanted bill bar to say they were investigating corruption and he'll do the

rest right and so like the ability to he's he's he's he's he's honed his entire life as the guy who will tell you anything he possibly can to put you in this condo today and so he understands sizzle far better than he understands stay and um and so i think that's sort of the, you know, you can boil it down to that. I will say I am a little surprised by the Smyranoff story insofar as, I don't know, there's, there's some fishy going on, there's more than one fishy thing going on. First of all, I agree entirely with Steve. Biden's corrupt. I mean, by the old standards of Washington, Biden's corrupt. Not necessarily not corruption necessarily leading to be unfit for office or impeachable or

anything like that. That gets into timelines and all the rest. But he led his family, A family trade on his name for a very long time, and he did some really sort of ugly things, and it's gross, but part of the problem is, it's like, you know, in the middle of the night, your campfire is very bright, but when the sun comes up, it still puts out the same amount of lumens,

but it just gets completely washed out by the ambient line. Trump is so corrupt that it kind of makes it hard to talk about Biden's corruption in the same way, but it's there, and it's hot. And so, but the thing about the Smirnoff thing that I think does confuse me is, you know, The FBI did stand by this guy for a while, and he was a source in good standing for a while,

and now they're kind of throwing him under the bus. And I need to know more about that, and maybe I have not read your epic write-up at all this, but maybe you solve all these questions for me, Mike. I wish I did. Also, I have to say I am surprised that the Goober Patrol of the sort of Marjor Taylor Green crowd has not said, oh, Biden made the FBI make this up. They're saying he's lying. This is all part of a cover-up

to make the thing go away. Yes. Jesse Waters has floated that. Isn't it interesting that, you know, all of these people are being disappeared or arrested or... I'm glad to hear they're living down to my expectations. You just have to pile a conspiracy on top of a conspiracy to explain the conspiracy and why it's no longer operative.

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And as I was going through this Smyranoff indictment, I was having flashbacks to 2019 in which I was getting phone calls and text messages from Rudy Giuliani about about what are you going to do this Saturday night? Exactly. Yeah, I was going to say that finishing that sentence could be a while. What are you wearing, Mike? We could be friends. We could be more than friends. Hey, it was it was three o'clock in the afternoon. So, yes, he was a little, he was a few sheets to the wind.

But he, he, talking about the corruption of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Burisma, like, all of what is going on in this indictment and what, in which, in which the FBI says, this story we were told was made up. You know, I was hearing about this stuff in bits and pieces since 2019. and I remember at the time telling Rudy, I'm happy to report on things if you can give me evidence and information and his response being, oh, you wouldn't cover it anyway, so I'm just going to rant to you.

And there is so much, I think you're absolutely right, Jonah, that Trump is all about the sizzle. But there is so much sizzle, I'm mixing all the metaphors here. There's so much sizzle and there's so much smoke. And the whole point of it all is not to establish any facts, but to throw everything up at the wall, see what sticks. And when it falls apart, just keep throwing.

We're saying, look at all the other crap that sticks there. And it's very, it is very difficult for me as a journalist to sift through it all and make sure I know what's fact, what's fiction, it must be impossible for anybody who isn't paid to pay attention to this stuff to sift through it all and understand, and that's what seems so nefarious about the Republican effort to elevate people and sources that tell them what they've already concluded.

That's my little rant about this. It's very frustrated. Anybody have any thoughts? I mean, I'm just picturing, I'm now, we've now completed a dinner of steak and s'mores from Jonas Campfire reference. So I'm now really hungry. Look, this is exactly what Giuliani and the Trump team were trying to do in the context of Burisma and the first impeachment.

This is what they were looking for. They wanted something like this that would allow them to say, hey, Joe Biden is over in Ukraine, trying to get this prosecutor fired because, you know, they didn't want to expose the corruption of his son. And they, by all accounts, didn't come up with it. Then they had this gift some three years on via Alexander Smirnoff, who, you know, may have gotten it from Russian intelligence. But the whole point, Mike, I mean, your key point is that this is, this allows them to confuse the issue. I mean, And this is the Steve Bannon, you know, famous quote, flood the zone with shit. People don't know what to believe. I think, I mean, I probably hear that more talking to regular people who feel some civic obligation to follow the news and to care about their country. And, you know, many of whom are skeptical of the kinds of reporting that they've gotten from the mainstream media over the years for reasons that I am totally sympathetic to. And they look at a story like to say, we don't know. How are we supposed to figure it out? And then we go and like actually talk to the players involved. And sometimes we come away and we say, we don't know.

How are we supposed to know? And this is what, this is a deliberate effort. It's not, it didn't start with, with Trump. I remember covering Andrew Cuomo's first campaign for governor. He had been HUD secretary under Bill Clinton. And this was, I was, I think I spent time with him the summer of 2001, traveling around the state of New York, showing up at all his events, asking him questions. And he was one of the, the, the,

most obvious and serial abusers of government travel to benefit himself and his state and his political ambitions. So it was, I don't, I'll get the numbers wrong, but I, you know, it was like he took 60 trips as HUD's secretary to New York and four to California. And that was the second state that he visited the most often because he wanted to be in New York on official business to be bestowing gifts like federal grants to different, uh, different areas of New York to further his political campaign. This does not sound like the Andrew Cuomo. Yeah. No, it's perfect Andrew Cuomo. I will not sit here, sir. And here are you impuging the integrity of Cuomo. But the payoff came. The payoff of the story of what makes it relevant here is Cuomo started a

There was, the guy he was likely to be running against, and this is me not forgetting, I mean, me not remembering, had taken a couple helicopter trips as governor. Not a big deal, by all accounts, you know, kind of the way you would do business if you're governor in New York. And Cuomo hit him first on that and made it this huge deal. He said, you know, he's abusing the public trust by traveling so much on the government time.

when the same and very accurate description of Cuomo's activity was finally made, he had neutralized the issue because he had been making this claim all the time. And they sort of shrugged their shoulders and said, we knew these attacks were coming, but I'm not the problem. It's this guy. So Trump didn't originate this, but he is very good at it. And that, I think, is what he's doing. Final quick point, we've seen this in the classified documents case,

where this wasn't really Trump's doing, but if you look at the defense that Joe Biden offered of himself for keeping and holding these classified documents that comes out in the her report, and again, I'm paraphrasing, but there's a point at which he says something like, I kept them because I could, or I kept them because they were mine or I, you know, whatever.

It is very close. It's at least an echo of the defense that Trump used, which, you know, struck, I think, most people at the time as egregious. as not compelling. And Trump is going to be able to point to that, certainly in the Court of Public Opinion, if not the actual legal court,

then say, hey, this guy's saying the same thing. How can you go after me when you didn't go after him this way? All right. How about some not worth your time? Maybe this is something that it's so not worth your time. You're even going to be frustrated that I'm asking about it. But the conservative political action conference,

is it worth our time to pay attention to this conference. It's been going on for 50 years. It has essentially been Trump Political Action Conference, as Kellyanne Conway called it in 2017, since that time. Is there any utility?

Has there ever been any utility? Is it worth our time to talk about the CPAC conference going on right now? I am interested in seeing whether, how do we pronounce his name, Miele, the Libert. The Argentine. Yeah, the libertarian-ish Argentine.

I don't know whether he knows where he's going, but I am interested in seeing what, because, of course, he might have accepted an invitation to speak there in the way that I might, if the Argentinian Society for Journalistic Excellence and Balance had invited me to go, and then I got there, and I was like, whoa, you guys are wild. Particularly if you saw the list of past speakers, right?

Like, Reagan and all these good people have spoken to CPAC in the past, you could see. Yeah. I'm curious to see what he's all about. He is one of the most fascinating figures on the world stage to me right now. I am interested in that. I think what the media utility of CPAC is as a great place for haters to hate each other, right, to go for the Huffington Post or whatever to go and be like, look at these horrible people.

don't you hate them? And it's like, yes, they're the worst. And it's good for the people who are rage merchants on the other side as a venue, as an opportunity to hate the people who hate them. I don't think it's, I don't think it's useful. I think just to tie it to what you were saying before, normal people rely on institutions as signals to say, okay, I don't need to know everything about every claim made about Hunter Biden, but I can look to institutions that I trust to say, okay, where are we on that? And back when CPAC was a thing, the American Conservative Union scores on people's conservatism, members of Congress, their ideological stance were relevant and interesting. But now I, you know, whatever. Do what you like. Steve Hayes.

Yeah, I think we have to pay attention to it, unfortunately, because these are people, you know, there was a panel yesterday with Steve Bannon and his Warren podcast. These are the people that Donald Trump has empowered. They're sort of the core of the MAGA movement. And certainly if Donald Trump becomes president again, they will be helping to run the White House and helping to run the country. I don't think there's any choice but to cover it and to pay attention to it because it will in all likelihood play a significant role in shaping the 2024 presidential

campaign and maybe the administration that follows. Yeah, so I wrote about that god-awful presidential ranking thing this week, and one of the points I made was that those rankings are actually pretty useful, but they're not useful for understanding presidents. They're useful for understanding political scientists. Like, this is what political scientists think today. It's a poll, right? That's what those rankings are, are polls. And, you know, we normally understand that when we talk about, trust me, I'm getting to CPAC in a second. We normally understand that when we talk about polls of groups, they don't necessarily think, like, when we hear a poll that says, you know, 60% of Republicans think Donald Trump is, shares values like mine and is a believing Christian.

known of us think oh my gosh that must mean that Donald Trump is a believing Christian we think oh my gosh look what 60 percent of Republicans say you know not necessarily think but say okay so anyway so um that's the only way to think CPAC matters and this is this gets my point is I wish the media would cover CPAC as look at these gibronies who showed up someplace who really love Donald Trump and are saying these things and who may staff as administration. But the problem is that they buy, you know, CPAC's marketing. CPAC says they are the official organ of conservatism.

They speak for conservatism. And they encourage MSNBC's CNN, New York Times, to say that what happens at CPAC defines what conservatives believe. And that, like, their straw polls are indicative of what conservatives believe. but it turns out that even like I was just reading this morning there are a lot of hardcore CPAC people who just haven't shown up this year

it's attendance is low this is like the dregs of the dregs who are going personally I think the people who have agreed to be speakers in Malay I think Chris's point is a good one is a sort of a special case but the people who you know the pundits the influencer types

the non-politicians who have agreed to participate in this thing they're telling on themselves about who they want to be associated with. Some of the people who are going there, it's pretty disappointing who are, you know, for some of them. For others, it's exactly who you'd expect. And I say this as the 2011 conservative journalist of the year named by CPAC.

Lottie da. And so CPAC is sociologically interesting and politically, for the reason Steve laid out, interesting. but it's not like, to me, it's like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The press covers where the Southern Poverty Law Center as if it is authoritative, scientific, you know, you know, they say that these people are right-wingers, therefore they're right-wingers.

They say they're bigots, therefore they're bigots. The deference to their authority is complete. That's how they cover CPAC, when in reality it is a representative, it's a pretty corrupt, pretty diminished representative organization for one faction of the right. And it should be treated that way. It reminds me it's of a piece with, you know, whenever I see a story, usually it's, you know, a psychological study says this. You always have to remember. No, a psychological study says this about college students at that university who, were paid, you know, beer money in order to participate.

It's not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily tell us something about humanity as a whole. I recall all those years when Ron Paul would win every presidential straw poll at CPAC because he, because his people were the most intense and most willing to travel and most willing to come out and vote and go to CPAC and participate in a straw poll. just a straw poll um you know i i have a sort of uh and i'll i'll close this out by saying i'm not sure if it's worth our time i have a a weird relationship with CPAC which is my first i attended as a college student as a journalist um with the hope that there would be it would essentially be uh uh you know kind of a buffet of people that i could interview you know politicians

and and influential people uh that i could go back and report on for my for my college conservative libertarian newspaper and it was it was kind of a disappointment and it's just been disappointing me ever since as a as a professional journalist it's getting harder and harder to use it as a way to find interesting people and ask them interesting questions it is maybe it was always thus but but I do feel like the scales have fallen for my eyes on CPAC. I don't think it's as useful as a reporting tool as I once hoped.

But we are going to leave it there. Thank you so much to Chris Steyerwold, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg. I have been Mike Warren. I will continue to be Mike Warren. Thanks for listening to The Dispatch Podcast, and we will talk to you later. I want it to be known that I deserve some sort of gold watch special award for not doing any of the double entendre wordplay I wanted to do about match lap I mean not a thing I kind of set you I feel like the whole thing was setting you up for it and I'm a little disappointed I know I know but

But, like, I mean, we grasp on the issues. I mean, there's so much stuff I wanted to do.