The Dispatch Podcast - Can Democrats Flip a Kansas Senate Seat?

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, and Mike Warren to discuss the possibility of Democrats flipping a seat in Kansas and the Trump administration’s “public service announcements.” The Agenda: —The Senate race in Kansas —Roger Marshall and patient arrests —Why are Republicans still confident? —Trump’s “public service announcements” —NWYT: The New York Times' top 100 television shows of the 21st century Show notes: —Jonah for National Review: Breaking Bad Breaks Through —Go to The Dispatch to see the panelists' top 10 TV show picks  The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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travels. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we discussed the possibility of Democrats picking up a Senate seat in Kansas and how Donald Trump's unpopularity is affecting down-ballot Republicans. Then the Trump administration uses taxpayer funding to buy campaign ads that they call, quote, public service announcements. Spoiler, they're not public service announcements. And then finally, not worth your time. The greatest TV shows of the 21st century. Our reflections on the New York Times recently released list and in the show notes a top 10 from our panelists. I'm joined today by the dispatch's editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, national correspondent Kevin Williamson, and politics editor Mike Warren. Let's dive right in. Morning gentlemen, when we

released this podcast, it will be five weeks to the day from the 26 midterm elections. And if you've been paying careful attention over the past several weeks, you've noticed that we are now, and others are now talking about races that were really not on the radar. They were not listed as competitive races two months ago, certainly not six months ago. Among those races are potentially Nebraska Senate, where a Republican leadership aligned group has apparently committed to sending 10 million additional dollars to the Nebraska race to help Pete Ricketts in a, what may be a competitive race, still hard for me to see it as a competitive race. We've seen a lot of discussions. about Alaska, which was not thought to be a competitive race six months ago or as competitive

race. And now it is one of the most competitive races. We're talking about Ohio, Iowa, Iowa. And interestingly, over the past few weeks, one race has commanded lots of attention, and that is the U.S. Senate race in Kansas, where incumbent Republican Roger Marshall is fighting to keep his seat against Adam. Hamilton, a prominent religious figure in this state. There's not a ton of polling on this race, but what couple polls we have show the race pretty close. I would say the bigger tell than the public polling is what we're seeing from Roger Marshall, who is certainly acting like this is a very close and competitive race.

I want to get into this for a couple of reasons. I want to talk about the dynamics race. There's been some reporting. There's an ad out from the Democratic. Challenger that has gotten a lot of viral attention. But Mike, let me start with you. You probably follow this stuff more closely than any of the rest of us. Is this a real thing?

Could Roger Marshall lose that Senate seat in what's thought to be deep red, Kansas? There's certainly some state right. They've had governors that have been Democrats. But could Roger Marshall actually lose that race? The short answer, Steve, is yes, because, I mean, in the realm of possibilities, anything as possible. But more seriously, I do think you hit on something very important, which is, yes, the polls show there's a limited polling. You know, I think the last two polls have shown Adam Hamilton with like a one point lead, two point lead, a few polls before that showed Marshall and lead.

But what's more important or what we can watch to gauge in as barometer for whether this is a winnable race for Adam Hamilton, a loseable. raised for Roger Marshall is the actions of the candidates. And you're absolutely right that Roger Marshall is on the offense. I guess he first, he's on the defense because Adam Hamilton's been running this really kind of devastating ad about the way that Roger Marshall's, who is a doctor, sick the cops on a woman who had a $50 overdue medical bill. And this commercial's been running. There's a story about it. And they've sort of formed it into a commercial. And She was eight months pregnant and put in handcuffs. Correct.

Which is like frowned upon. Yeah, exactly. The visuals of it are terrible. The story of it's terrible. And I think what's telling about how concerned Marshall is that is that not just that he responded to this ad, but the campaign's response is essentially, it wasn't $50. It was like $1,500, something like that. It was more than what the Democratic ad says, which is not the best defense.

And I think it just shows sort of how flat-footed the, the, the, the, the, the, Marshall campaign is and how concerned that they are, that they could lose this. Now, I think the thing we have to calibrate our analysis of this is just because there is a lot more attention, a lot more money being spent because the candidates are, seem to be fighting this. Marshall's not sort of keeping Hamilton at arm's length and ignoring him. Just because it's a fight now that it may even be a close race doesn't mean that Hamilton is on his way to winning. And I think as we, a lot of these races in a lot of the states that you mentioned, Steve, Alaska, and others, just because it's competitive doesn't mean that those races are all going to follow the same

trend of some of the more competitive races in the Senate and in the House. But the important thing to remember, too, is that money is fungible and money has to be spent somewhere. And if you're spending it in these states that are in sort of neutral times ought to be, You know, the red states, Republicans ought to be winning these outright. That means they're not spending them in states where they need to defend more competitive races. So what you're seeing here is an expansion of the map for Democrats, where Democrats are moving

into Republican territory. And that just makes it all the more harder, all the more difficult, I should say, for Republicans to defend those seats that they need to defend to keep their majority. This is not the place where Republicans want to be right now. Yeah, right. Kevin, I mean, the National Republican Senatorial Committee of the story in Axios last week, National Republican Senatorial Committee is sort of sounding the alarms. They need to raise $10 million to defend seats in Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska. These are seats that Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024.

That's not that long ago. But I want to ask you about this New York Times story about Roger Marshall, a physician and his medical billing. The time story, and feel free to elaborate or correct anything I don't get exactly right, was effectively that Roger Marshall ran this practice and there were people who didn't pay their bills and he sued them. He went after them. He wanted them to pay their bills. And what followed was a series of things like the one that Mike mentioned that Jonah said in this particular instance, apparently the police showed up at the door of this woman. The claim is that she owed $50. She was handcuffed. She was pregnant.

Awful, awful stuff. On the other hand, I will admit that when I read that story in the New York Times, I thought these people didn't pay their bills. People should pay their bills. What's the recourse of a physician who doesn't, I mean. Well, we should be clear, first of all, that these people didn't get arrested for failing to pay their bills. Yes. They get arrested because they didn't show up for court hearings.

Right. And refusing to show up for a court hearing is, in many contexts, an excellent way to get yourself arrested. Now, it's bad look for all sorts of reasons in this poor woman is eight months pregnant, being dragged away in handcuffs and things like that. But this isn't something that just happens with medical debt. It happens with parking tickets. Happens with unpaid taxes.

It can happen with unpaid student loans. It certainly happens to a lot of people with things like child support, which is a very common, you know, reason for people to get arrested. They get a court order to pay back child support. They don't have finances to do it. And they get arrested for that sort of thing. So we don't have debtors prisons. in the United States.

You don't go to jail for not paying bills. But ignoring... Did I hear a tinge of remorse about that? Just a... You know, I could tell you all sorts of stories about how ignoring summonses to appear in court don't make your life better and don't make the problems go away.

I've got a few of those stories myself. And... Don't try it at home, kids. A couple of things about this. One is that medical practices, particularly sort of smaller, ones like, you know, independent practitioners who are, you know, general, general doctors and pediatricians and things like that, dentists, often are not very good businessman. And these practices

do go out of business all the time. People who are very good doctors, but not very good at running a business. That happens, that happens from time to time. There is the issue that these, you know, hospitals and big medical practices and things like that don't actually do their own debt collections. What they do is they sell their debts off to collections agencies and they take a big haircut on it. So if you've got a $100,000 package of debt and you sell it to a collections agency, you might get $45,000, $50,000, something like that, but you're going to lose a bunch of money on that. And the collections agencies, their job is to collect that money for themselves.

That's all they do. That's their whole business. So, yes, they're going to sue people. They're going to take every legal action they can to do that. And it's not a very pretty business, but it exists for a reason. And the reason it exists is that companies need to get cash when they're owed money. they don't have good ways to do with themselves. Collecting debts is a very expensive and labor-intensive proposition,

which is why these companies are willing to take such large haircuts on their outstanding balances. And it's an ugly business. I don't like it. Again, I've been on the wrong side of that one, too, various times in my life and didn't enjoy it very much. The last part of this, which isn't as much a factor in this story, but it's a factor in lots of other people's stories, is that medical billing sucks. medical billing is complex, it's unpredictable. You know, I've had these things. We can all tell these stories and we're going to maybe talk about this on a different podcast,

but where, you know, I took my kid to the emergency room and I got a bill on the way out, that I got 16 other bills over the course of the next six months, none of which we could quite figure out what they were for, whether they were replications, duplications, things like that. Everyone has these stories. When you go to the hospital, you don't end up getting like a single well-itimized bill that's easy to understand that you can pay. or, you know, contest if you're going to contest it.

I've had, you know, we've all got these kinds of, you know, crazy stories. And some people will, in frustration, just ignore those things. Now, again, this is the wrong way to go about it because it's not going to go away. These problems are not going to go away if you ignore them. What I've learned in 54 years is that problems don't go away if you ignore them. It took me a long time in life to figure that out. Like two weeks ago, I finally sort of got it. Jonah's got something he wants to chime in about there.

I can tell. Or just saying maybe you're just not ignoring hard enough. Yeah, I'm not going to be hard enough. Jonah, you know me well enough to know that I've ignored very hard of the course of my life. I spent a good eight and a half years ignoring all sorts of problems that probably needed to be addressed, and it helps if you are not sober for those eight and a half years. But it's an ugly kind of story. I don't think the time story was very good, and I don't think that the way the story has been

used against Marshall is very honest, because it's not a, as though this is something unique to him or his practice or some decision he made. It's not like, you know, Dr. Marshall's hospital has got a goon squad that it sends out to, you know, arrest pregnant mothers and drag them off. If you're going to have a system in which people can be arrested over procedural issues having to do with debts and debt collection and civil issues, then you're going to end up with these things. Some of those people are going to be sympathetic because a lot of the reasons people don't

pay their bills is because they're poor or they're in bad situations. Or, you know, a lot of these cases, they just had a kid or they're in the middle of a pregnancy and their capacity for dealing with administrative externalities is pretty low. I can tell you that when you've got newborn triplets at home, you will let some things slide occasionally. And some of those things are hospital bills that end up being overdue. I still get this all the time where I get medical bills from routine things that my kids have been involved in that I have no idea what they're for. They just kind of show up randomly six months later. I don't remember this visit, that visit, whatever it was. And I've got a lot of resources and, you know, decent income and a wife who can

handle a lot of this stuff. And for us, it's still a problem from time to time. So for people who have, you know, fewer resources, less administrative capability and less money, it's going to be going to be a real issue. I don't think that that's, again, this particular man in Kansas's fault, but it is a real issue for a lot of people that probably needs to be addressed. Well, I think that's one of the reasons that this is so politically potent, right? Why this is so effective as whether it's medical debt and medical debt, of course, comprises a huge percentage of the overall indebtedness of the American people, personal debt of the American people. Like you said, Kevin, you can identify. Wait, what is this bill? I don't remember.

this. Did I pay for this? Why didn't the insurance cover this? I called the insurance company. I mean, almost everybody can identify with that. And even as the details of these allegations against Roger Marshall have been smoothed over to the point, I think, of real distortion. I mean, the shorthand is Roger Marshall sent the cop to arrest the pregnant lady over 50 bucks. That's the shorthand. There's no way that that's even close to the truth. But this is how our political debates happen these days. So I have some context that helps explain a lot of this. Marshall's a bad politician.

Well, there's that. And so when you make these kinds of charges, you're like, okay, come back at me. You know, like explain yourself. And he does a bad job of it. And I want to be fair, I don't know him. I don't have a strong opinion about Marshall one way or the other. Prior to this election cycle, if you'd ask me who the senator from Kansas was, I would have struggled.

I will admit that. But like I've I've seen enough of them like have you guys seen him at the state fair where he got booed for saying that I just live an hour's drive from here when in fact he actually lives in Florida for all when he's not in DC for the all intents and purposes. He has a barely a thousand square foot shack that he uses as like a hunting and fishing cabin and he puts that as his official residence. Meanwhile his wife is a is employed as a real estate agent in Florida and they have million dollars. plus house in Florida. And he's gotten his fishing licenses every year in Florida. And when he goes into the Kansas State Fair and says, hey, I just live an hour down the road here, the audience broke out and booze and laughs and jeers. You're thinking he should do is saltwater fishing in Kansas. And so he's got a problem of just sort of being, already being out of touch. And so the context of

this ad just reinforces that. And I agree with you. It sounds like it's a, it's a, it's a, a cheap shot. It's not quite as cheap as the anti-Romney ad that said he was giving people cancer or something back in 2012. But the other thing is this Hamilton guy, who's his opponent, is an independent, right? Not a Democrat, but he's essentially would caucus with the Democrats. I think that's. He's a federalist. He was good last time. He was in office. The musical is terrific. He's got George Washington's endorsement. Fantastic rapper. No, but he's actually a really good politician, it turns out. But just to just to clarify, he is the Democratic nominee. He is the, he is the party's nominee for he was a Republican before he ran for office and he is most known

for being a major pastor in Kansas and not a political figure. So just just to clarify that, he had been an independent. And he's good. I've watched these clips of him where he's good and he kind of signals that he's like this middle of the road guy and he's pointing out the Republicans are sort of out of touch and lost their way. And I think that's the vibe that is killing the Republicans right now is that he's leaning into being like a normie. These guys don't know what they're doing. These guys are self-serving. I'm a pastor. I'm a nice guy. He's the guy that Talarico should be. If they had nominated him instead of, if they had someone like a pastor like him, I think Tala RICO would be up 10 points in Texas right now. All Kevin's points are well taken. I just think

that like if we're talking about the larger zeitgeist, the, the inability of Marshall to sort of defend himself and defend tariffs, which he also got booed for, in a state that is, Kevin has been emphasizing for a long time, states like Kansas are being hit pretty friggin hard by tariffs, by diesel prices, by fertilizer prices. And meanwhile, you get this guy saying, what's wrong with all of Washington and he's a nice guy? It feels like the momentum is against Marshall in Kansas, not knowing what the polling is. And can I say one other thing, another tell, if you will, from Marshall is he has been criticizing ICE enforcement. And you've actually seen Mark Wayne Mullen, the DHS secretary from neighboring Oklahoma, say we're not going to be doing enforcement.

So again, these are these are all signals that Marshall knows. Marshall has is paying a lot of money for good polling in his state, private polling, that's telling him, he's in trouble. That's how we know this is a race that, again, not necessarily Marshall's going to win or Marshall's going to lose, but that he's in trouble and he needs to be doing these things to avoid a loss. Anyway, and the overall picture just is just so, so ugly for Republicans right now. I was looking this morning on the Cook Political Report of their seven toss-up races. Like three of these are Republican incumbents. And then they're like Texas and Iowa. And now we're talking about Kansas. Donald Trump won Kansas in 2024 by 16. I mean, this is not a

marginal state. It is not a state. You know, the first time I thought that there might be something going on in Kansas was when I read a story, I was just reading, I subscribe. I don't really do a lot on Twitter these days, but I subscribe to a lot of local papers on Twitter. And I sort of use it as a feed so I get all these stories. And I saw a story from a Kansas paper early summer, as I recall, about Roger Marshall raising concerns, raising alarms with data centers. And I thought, this is an interesting thing for him to be talking about at this particular point. Why would he be talking about this thing? And here we are several months later.

So, Mike, back to you. There's some suggestion that this is, I generally used the word zeitgeist. He described this as the vibes. I thought he was going to call Marshall a mid candidate, you know, start to use the lingo of the youths. He's chopped. He's chopped. He's chopped.

He's so unk. Every time I say unk, my kids are like, Dad, that was really like three years ago. You can't do, do not do six, seven either. There are some suggestions that this is overdone, that people are getting carried away. Everybody's now talking about this blue wave election. There's a tsunami. Yes, of course, Trump had approval in one. poll last week in the 20s, but still, it can't be this bad. The map is the map. Of course,

Republicans are trying to raise more money to make sure that potentially vulnerable Republicans in these states keep their seats, but Republicans have a massive cash advantage over Democrats, sort of everywhere you look, certainly nationally. There was a briefing apparently this weekend at Sea Island in Georgia by a Republican pollster who said, you know, not only are Republicans likely to keep the Senate entirely possible. They'll be adding seats to the Senate. Is it possible that people are just getting carried away that this is yet another example? We'll look back in the second week of November on conversations like this and say the polling was wrong. Mainstream media got swept up in sort of anti-Trump.

fervor over reading his approval rating and Republicans have done fine, have exceeded expectations. Once again, yes, it is possible. And it's also possible that things could change in the reality in which voters are making these decisions. Yes, it's five weeks. That's not a lot of time. Most opinions are set in stone at this point, but not every opinion and not every swing opinion. And voting in places starts very soon. Yes, there really isn't that much time at all. But things could change in the realm of, in the multiverse of possibilities. There is a one path in which all of a sudden every Republican voter comes home,

everybody who voted for Donald Trump comes out and votes for Republicans. But that being said, there is certainly a trend. And the trend may not be going as far as. as certain polls suggest, right? Like the trend is against Republicans. Republicans are not popular right now. Donald Trump is not popular right now. And for that reason, again, as I said, the map has expanded at Democrats' favor.

They're fighting in more places. That does not mean that in all of those places, Democrats are going to beat Republicans. They may come up short. And I think one thing we do have to consider is whether these polls are undercounting these public polls that show Democrats, you know, winning or ahead or very competitive in Texas and Iowa and Ohio and Alaska and Kansas and all these other states that, you know, I saw something about Chuck Schumer wants to spend money in the Mississippi Senate race. Okay, now we're getting a little ridiculous. But that doesn't mean that that trend is wrong. But I do think there is a possibility

that there is some undercounting of Republican voters, shy Republicans who are. are not talking to pollsters, not answering. I mean, there are difficulties in reaching certain types of voters. And perhaps those kind of rural, most loyal to Republicans and Donald Trump voters are just harder to poll, harder to access, harder to get them to answer questions, harder to get them to finish questionnaires. There have been some pollsters out there who have been suggesting that this is a possibility. So I think we have to leave ourselves open to the possibility that there.

There are more Republican voters than the polls are showing us. That's just a real possibility. On the other hand, I have been talking with folks in a lot of these races in states where there are competitive statewide races and competitive house races and competitive local legislative races. And their interest is not in what's public, but of course, what's private? What are they seeing in the polls that they are spending, again, a lot of money on to understand where are voters. And I talked to somebody in a swing state and I'll protect who they are

and which state they're in last week to say that this person's view was that every, this is a Republican, every Republican who has some rosy view of the midterm election. And so this is including Eric Iverson, who's the pollster who spoke at the NRC retreat in Sea Island, who said, hey, We could grow the number of senators sentences we have. This person I spoke with said that every Republican who has that kind of rosy scenario is assuming in their polls a turnout and electorate that matches the 2024 presidential electorate. And it's the only way that you can get a good outcome for a Republican in this environment, at least in this person's Ken and in the state and the races that they're operating in.

And this person's response to me to that was, there is no way this is a 2024 electorate. That's just obvious. Donald Trump does not have the support that he had in 2024. He has lost votes, swing voters, independents. They have moved away. We talk about that all the time on this podcast. We talk about it all the time and the things we write, even among Republicans, but particularly among swing voters. And so to assume that there is an undercounting, you have to assume that the

electorate is as or just slightly less supportive of Trump than they were in 2024. And nobody who's being honest, nobody who's being paid to be honest to their candidates or to speak to journalists about this stuff. So we should be cautious, but we should also just recognize the reality that the trend is what we're seeing in public is what people are telling me they see in private as well. It's bad for Republicans and don't delude yourselves and thinking otherwise.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch Podcast. This family is on the brink of Civil War. Mobland, the hit original series is now streaming on Paramount Plus. We are the heraldigans. Don't know than it? And Google us.

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And we're back. You are listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. If you go back to the primaries and you look at the primary polling in places like Michigan and Wisconsin and others, there was a pretty clear pattern of over. counting the progressives, progressive voters, the candidates who were Democratic socialists or identified as lefty Democrats pretty consistently overpolled compared to what their outcomes were. Let's take Mike's point.

He's correct. We have now seen for more than a year a dramatic falloff in independent support for Donald Trump, for instance, for Republicans generally. the generic ballot initiative where where voters are asked, would you vote for a generic Republican or a generic Democrat in this congressional race? Democrats have consistently been outperforming Republicans now for a year plus. So let's just stipulate that Mike is correct in the broadest sense. If there's some small error, if there's some challenge in polling these shy Trump voters we've been talking about now for about a decade, the people who don't participate in polls who hang up on the pollster or jump off the call.

I mean, one of the real questions among pollsters sort of at the really detailed level is the people who get on a call, answer some of the questions, and then they just drop off. They don't want to keep answering the question. Could that be a factor as we look at these races? I've so often read the words white falloff this week that I think there's some sort of a weird racial thing going on. Here's a weird data point, just because, you know, electorates are complicated. How people choose candidates and how excited they are to talk about that is complicated. So Hino Hosa, who is the Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, is ahead of Greg Abbott in two polls. Overall, in the polling average, she's running like 1.8 points behind him, which is very, very close.

She's in the house. Her father was the chairman of the Texas Republican. party at one point. She's pretty left-wing. She worked for the public employees union. And what's interesting to me, though, if you go down and look at her numbers, is that she is, in spite of having a Spanish surname, she is underperforming Tala Rico among Hispanic voters. Now, there's something going on there that I can't quite put my finger on that is some kind of political complication or it's just polling noise. And it could be one, it could be both, it could be neither. We don't. We don't really know. I think that there is good reason to sort of hedge your bets that Republicans are

going to overperform the polls because they often do. And they've particularly done that when Trump has been on the ballot for all the reasons that have been talked to endlessly by people who know a lot more about this stuff than I do, that Republicans do tend to be a little bit undercounted. And so when you're talking about a lot of races like that Texas governor's race that looks like it's a less than two-point race, well, maybe it's not. Maybe it ends up being, you know, five or six points on election day, and this all looks like just polling noise and other sorts of stuff. But there are a lot of data points in this election. It's not one race we're talking about. It's not a presidential race. There's a lot of places where things look bad for Republicans,

for this Republican, for that Republican, for different kinds of Republicans. Republicans seem to understand this as well, which is why some of them are trying to, you know, kind of walk sideways away from Trump a little bit. And this isn't happening mainly in kind of, you know, closely divided 50-50-ish purple states. It's happening in states that have a very, very strong Republican identity. Kansas is a weird case. I know this is like the one like cephalological fact that I have in my mind. I'm not Chris Dyerwalt on this stuff. I don't drill down on this stuff that closely. But Kansas is kind of a weird case because Kansas is a much more Republican state than it is a conservative state. The voters there do not typically pull like very, very right

wing on stuff, but they are very consistently Republican voters. And that kind of partisan inertia, I think, tends to be difficult to overcome because we're not talking about an electorate that's going to be swayed by ideological enthusiasm, probably much one way or the other, but they're in the habit of doing certain things, and those habits don't normally change very rapidly. Now, again, 659 diesel, 669 diesel may make that a different story. You know, Kansas isn't exclusively a farming state or anything like that, but these stories, and the economic effects of these things have a kind of way of echoing and rippling throughout, a state that doesn't have a huge population like that especially and doesn't have a hugely

diverse economy. So, you know, Texas is bigger and more complicated. It's economically more complicated. I think it's probably politically more complicated in some ways. Ohio, you could say the same thing about, but it's, it don't look great. But yeah, if I were, if I betting my own money on it, I would bet on Republicans to do a point or two or two and a half. half or three better than we might expect overall from the polls. But I would expect that variation not to be evenly distributed among Republican candidates. Some Republican candidates are going to do a lot better than they look like on the poll. Some are going to do right where they were supposed to, and some probably will underperform. So whether that average ends up averaging out in such a way

is to save a bunch of those seats, we don't really know until the day after the election, but it's possible that it does and possible that it doesn't. There's some bet hedging punditory right there for you. It could happen. It could not happen. Again, you're just being honest because one of the dumbest things you can do if you're doing what we do for a living over the past decade is make straight line projections with no humility whatsoever. Like, of course you can get this stuff wrong. And it is the case that everything is pointing in one direction and pointing pretty dramatically

in one direction. But one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you all was because, like, let's say things are wrong the day after the election. We wake up and all the things that we've been talking about. But here, all of the indicators that we thought were telling a certain story, end up not telling the story. We should have those conversations here and test our own assumptions. Steve, I agree with all that. And I don't disagree with anything that anyway I said.

But there are like, like, and I agree entirely that the polling is less reliable and will continue to be less reliable until some grand new technological innovation. I think it was definitely true in Michigan that the kids who go to college, the sort of, that Abdul Syedd had, which was college campus, progressives, people with graduate degrees, that kind of thing. They're just more likely to answer surveys. They're much more likely to, like, be engaged and show their enthusiasm when polled. And the people that, what was her name, Haley, his opponent were white working class and African American and were less engaged, but she almost won. And so I think you can get these mirage. Like we were told that he was going to win by 20 points and he won by, I don't know, less than two.

That all said, there's another way to look at it. It was like revealed preferences kind of thing, right? The fact that Salazar, this congresswoman in Florida, ran this ad, sharply criticizing Donald Trump. A Republican. A Republican from a very popular Hispanic woman, very pro-Trump in Florida, who, you know, I think she's the one-in-one-seated. Michael, correct me if I'm wrong. Lela while back.

And she runs this ad saying, Mr. President, your immigration policies have gotten out of hand, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Trump is now going after her hard, criticizing her. But, like, she has polling numbers. Like, we don't have good polling numbers. She has good polling numbers. The fact that Byron Donald's running for governor in Florida scrubbed all the mentions of Donald Trump off of his website.

He's not doing that because he's buying into the mood on Morning Joe. He's not getting caught up in the fervor of the New York. times he's doing that because he and his people see something yes and so like the body language of the gop right now is one that seems to confirm the idea that they're in trouble the weird thing is how much i've now talked to several people who've either attended or talked to people who attended major gop fundraising things behind the scenes briefings for donors And the way leading Republicans talk behind the scenes is that they're very cocky. It sounds more like this pollster from Sea Island.

I suspect part of it is that they, if you say, yeah, we're going to lose very hard to raise more money. There's more competition for this honor than a lot of, I think, Democrats are willing to admit. But I think the Trump administration and Trump error Republicans are in our lifetimes the most pay for play donor driven politicians in our lifetimes. And I'd say that knowing that you can make a very strong case that Bill Clinton and previous era's had some real competitors in there, right? Their pitch is we do things for you because we're in power, that we are a fee-for-service party. I mean, this was this was Trump's $5,000.

Keep Republicans, we put cash in your pocket. And so you have to say you're going to win because you have no. no other argument for true believers. And that's why I hear from some true believers who actually want to hear stuff about like foreign policy or tax policy or reducing the debt. And instead you get this pitch about how, oh, the Democrats are going to be socialists, but isn't it awesome that Donald Trump is promising $5,000 for every able-bodied human being over the age of 18?

We could do some statistical work on this. But my theory is that Republicans are probably most optimistic at the meetings where Rick Perry is there with his big trunk of psychedelic drugs. Can I make one more point about these polls and who is being counted and who is it being counted? Because we're thinking of it in terms of what are those Republican voters who aren't being counted, you know, the shy voters. First of all, some of those voters are not strong Republican voters. And they most of them. Yeah.

You know, and so they were they were the most likely to fall off in the first place. And you can look at things like the Iran War, the failed promise to get inflation under control by Trump. And you can just see them sort of wiping their hands and say, I'm not even engaging anymore. The other thing is, this is a particular set of voters that I'm very interested in, but I think you can extrapolate it out to others of the same type, which is take Hispanic voters in South Texas. I was just in Austin last week and I went, went to a panel, which they were talking about what's happening in South Texas with Hispanic voters. These are culturally conservative voters who have been voting. If they had been voting at all, they've been voting Democratic for decades. And they flipped to Trump in 2024.

And that group of voters is, and I should say there are three congressional districts in the most southern part of South Texas that are Republican. Sorry, Donald Trump won those districts, even as they've been redistricted. Donald Trump won those districts in 2024. for two Democrats and a Republican hold those seats right now in the House. And they are all three very competitive for Democrats. They've even been redrawn to be more friendly to Republicans. And yet they remain competitive for Democrats. And I do wonder, these are voters as well that are difficult to poll.

And they were voters for Trump in 2024. They are very much flipping the other way very hard. And the people who are paid money to know how these particular voters are. going know that there is a world in which they are undercounting as well democratic support in these polls we just i really do think it is the polling as a as a practice certainly public polling it's just it's getting more more difficult and we should have a wider range of possible outcomes that not simply say it must be more republican than what the polls show because of these factors i think the range of possible outcomes is wider before we take an hour

break, I want to encourage you to please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. If every person listening to this podcast became a member of the dispatch, it would do great things for the dispatch as a company for this podcast and for the textual work that we put out. In addition to that, you will unlock access to bonus podcast episodes, all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join. And if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month for free. Speaking of ads, if they aren't your things, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes,

two free gift memberships to give away exclusive town halls with the founders like the one that we are doing Tuesday evening, September 29th, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. One of the things we've seen consistently from President Trump

and the White House and the White House political operation over the past month is an attempt to rally to motivate these. soft Republican voters, the people who would not have been Republicans maybe 15 years ago, but have shown up consistently for Donald Trump. And one of the way that they've done this is President Trump himself in his speech at the non-convention convention in Dallas and in virtually every public appearance since then has said, pretend that I'm on the ballot. Vote like I'm on the ballot.

We need Republicans. Well, the White House has taken that message a step further now and is, you know, is releasing campaign ads. There's no other way to look at these, but campaign ads that are financed by US taxpayer dollars. The White House claims that these are public service announcements. They are most definitely not public service announcements, and it's such bullshit.

We shouldn't even humor their explanations about this. We've got one to play here. This was an ad that was actually reprimed. purposed from a 2024 presidential campaign ad for Donald Trump. Noah, can we play that? This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communist, Marxist and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will liberate America from

these villains once and for all. So for those of you watching on YouTube, you could see President Trump walking down a hallway with some portraits on a wall. And at the end, there is a line in text on the ad that says paid for by the U.S. government. In fact, there's been reporting now that the U.S. government has spent more than $1 million paying for these kinds of ads in terms of actual dollars and $40 trillion of debt. that's not the most money. But in terms of propriety, that's questionable to say the least.

The White House, as I said, insists that these are public service announcements and put out a statement making the argument. The attacks on President Trump's public service announcements are highly dishonest. The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads. President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. And then they list other public service announcements that George W. Bush and the Obama administration have taken. taken out, those public service announcements do not resemble these at all. They're not close. It's a huge category error. Kevin, the question to you is, why is the Trump administration doing this? Why are they released these ads? I think in part, we've, we answered the own question,

that question directly because President Trump wants to be in the center of everything. But why are they using taxpayer funds to do this? Because they're grifters. You know, I was thinking about the the story about Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, and this Russian oligarch paying for a chunk of it. Now, these people supposedly are billionaires, right? Now, let's leave my occasional Trump wealther, wealth trutherism to the side. I think that he grossly exaggerated his income and wealth for many many years, but let's lay that aside for a second. Presumably, the members of this extended family have enough money to write a check for a couple hundred thousand dollars to rent out an island for a party, right?

I mean, that's a lot of money to us, but, you know, I mean, you have people with a mere hundred million dollars can do that sort of thing without, you know, thinking twice about it. But they do it because they can't because they like this feeling of, you know, getting a little something and being able to use someone else's resources or pad their pockets a little bit. And I think with this stuff, they just do it because they can. But the same reason that Trump will often lie about stuff, there's no reason to lie about it's just like it's just what he does.

It's like he's just trying to keep in practice. When there's opportunities for grift, even if they're not particularly lucrative or important or anything like that, they will do it. When there's an offense against norms and precedent and Republican virtue and all that sort of stuff,

they will make that offense because it's what they like to do. There's a line in a novel that makes the argument that the difference between good and evil is that there are saints who do good just because it's good, but there aren't people who do evil just because it's evil. They do evil because they're greedy or because it's in the pursuit of pleasure or, you know, some sort of financial interest or power or something like that. But I don't think that's

right. I think there are people who do the wrong thing just because it's the wrong thing and because they enjoy doing the wrong thing. And I think those people currently run the government in the United States of America. Yeah. Jonah, let me ask. So I'm perfectly willing to accept Kevin's explanation. I think that explains a lot of why Donald Trump does what he does. He does it because he can. He doesn't care if it's wrong. He doesn't buy the lines. To clarify, he cares if it's wrong. He prefers it that way. I wonder if there's more strategic reason, whether this is true of Donald Trump's thinking

or if this is his political team, if they had just put these ads out and not included the tagline paid for by the U.S. government, not had this controversy that we are now talking about. In all likelihood, we would not be talking about these ads that Donald Trump was put out. them to ads that are me, me, me, Donald Trump. But because the taxpayers are footing the bill, we're talking about them. And everybody's talking about them. The New York Times is reported. Washington Post is reporting on them. You have the cable networks that are playing these ads again and hosting people, mostly Democrats, occasionally Republicans, expressing outrage that Donald Trump

would use taxpayer dollars to do this thing. Isn't this outrageous? I think it is outrageous. But couldn't it be the case that they're doing that precisely. to get the kind of attention that we're giving them right now. Yes. So like I don't disagree with Kevin. The problem with Kevin's framing of it is that it's non-fossifiable. Scorpions sting frogs because that's what scorpions do. Trumps do bad things because that's what Trumps do.

I'm open to all of that. I just think it's a necessary but not sufficient answer to this. I think and the thing I think is really interesting. So I listened for more than is probably healthy to like 25 minutes. of them complaining about this on Morning Joe. And I want to be really clear. I agree with all the complaints. It is urbanism.

It is gross. You know, I often say, what if this was Obama's one of the lowest forms of punditry? But it's one of the lowest forms of punditry, not because it's wrong, but because it's easy, right? I mean, it's just like so unbelievably obvious that literally every single person

who is shrugging, yawning, winking, or celebrating these ads would have lost their minds if Obama had done something like this, right? I mean, like you would have seen various Fox News hosts upending Jerry cans of gasoline over themselves and setting themselves on fire in protest over that. But when Trump does it, so and what I think is sort of fascinating is that for 20 minutes they talked about this. And again, I agree with all of it.

I agree with you guys. It's offensive. It's gross. It's literally un-American in what he's doing, right? It's also, I believe, illegal, like flatly illegal so long as you don't actually think it's a public service announcement. And you have to be willingly stupid to think it's a public service announcement. What I thought was really interesting in the morning Joe conversation and we're doing it again here is no one has pointed out that in other contexts, people are talking about, well, what is Trump going to do? do with the hundreds of millions of dollars he's got in his super PACs.

Like, if he wanted to pay for an ad promoting himself, he could have. Like, he's got, you know, as Haley Barber would say, enough money to scald a wet mule. The whole point that he's using taxpayer dollars is the point. This wasn't a money saving thing. This was a screw you everybody thing. And I think part of it is for the reasons that you allude to that he's trying to get free media out of this, right? I also think there is some strategy to it. I think this will cause anybody who believes in like good government and norms and all that kind of stuff to set their

hairs on fire and say this is outrageous. They'll get some free replay of this. But also the gibronies who only like Trump because he's a giant middle finger, I think they have a theory that this is the kind of controversy that will get them out. I also think that Trump, thinks defying norms now, doing the wrong thing, proves how strong he is. Like, I think it's like it's a very lizard brain thing for him to say, I mean, literally if there was a giant red button that would end all life on planet Earth on his desk, and if people told him every single day, don't push the big red button, we wouldn't be here right now because we'd all be dead.

And I think that that sort of oppositional defiance disorder is a big thing with him. you know, and then you get this rationalization structure of, oh, I get to save money. But I brought up this like with people before. This is not the first government paid for ad. It's a little different because it just says paid for it by the U.S. government. About six months a year ago, I think it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were running ads just about how awesome Trump is. They were a little more defensible as a public service thing because it was talking about making housing more affordable. totally dishonest stuff, but like at least it had a public policy just to it.

And I kind of wonder whether or not, this is another example. There are a bunch of them of them not getting the reaction they wanted from those ads. So they're like, okay, let's just make it all the more obvious. We're saying screw you about what the rules are. But I don't know. It's still, it's offensive. It's gross. And he's got all the money in the world to pay for ads for himself if he wants to.

You had that item that we were talking about before. about the GOP is trying to raise $9 million more dollars, the defense say, you know, what should be safe seats. Trump could kite that check in a minute from one of his super PACs. He's not spending money because he doesn't actually care about the GOP, which is also why he appeared with Zoramam Dani, screwing Republicans in New York State who are saying that they need to be a check on the kind of socialism of Zoroam Dani.

Trump is a rhino in the strict sense of the word. He's never cared about the Republican Party. and this is just another example. These ads don't help the Republican Party. He could write money. He could write checks that help the Republican Party. He does not care. Mike, last thought on this topic to you?

Well, the first thought I have, I agree, maybe a synthesis of Kevin and Jonah's view on why Trump is doing this. And it just, it put in mind to me, there are so many instances of this in the Sopranos, but there's one in particular where Tony Soprano, who's the boss of the Soprano crime family, He lives in this big house. He's got lots of money, you know, available to him. There's a scene where he goes to the brother-in-law of sort of his counterpart in the New York family. His brother-in-law of that counterpart is an eye doctor. And he tries on, Tony tries on sunglasses and says to the brother-in-law, oh, I left my wallet on my car.

I'll be right back. And then he just walks out and steals these sunglasses. which he could easily afford from this, this rival's brother law, just to do it. And I just think that put me in mind on this. But the other thing I'll say about the intended effect and the actual effect of these ads is there is, we're getting a constant stream of the only thing I can call it as content from the Trump administration. We had this recent state dinner in which these Trump administration officials are posting

pictures and videos of themselves online, showing kind of a glamorous time that they're having at a state dinner. I don't be grudge. Like, state dinners should be sort of these elevated, even if it's for a, you know, a monster like she from China. You know, they are these kind of moments of glamour, I suppose. But I do think there is, you combine it with the sense that things in Washington for the Trump administration seem to be going really well.

They're wearing nice clothes and eating nice food and having a glamorous time. Donald Trump is out there putting these ads out for himself in front of football games and Saturday Night Live and all these things. And all of the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, all those sort of these obsessions that Trump has. And I do think it draws away from the intended effect of these ads, which it does seem like Trump is not focused on the things that voters actually seem to be concerned about, which is the cost of gas and diesel and the cost of all these other things. And it contributes, I think, to this vibe that we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast, that things are just not going in the right direction. And the party in power, the Republican Party is just not attuned to it, not responsive to it. Whatever the intended effect of this ad was, I just think it's likely to backfire.

Well, your mention of the Sopranos provides us with a ready made transition to our not worth your time conversation today. Thank you, Mike. You're a pro. I wanted to talk with you all about this list that the New York Times has published the best TV shows of the 21st century. The Times has a hundred of these. Apparently the rules are that it has to have started in the 21st century. It can't have just continued into the 21st century. I have looked at this list.

It won't surprise you that there are many shows on the list that I have not seen or where I've seen one episode or two. In fact, if I look at the top 25, I can say that I have chosen to sit down and actually watch seven of the top 25. So not many. Jonah, I'll start with you. When you look at this list, do you agree with the way that the Times has ranked these shows? Is there a show that should be on the list that's not on the list? And how do you feel about the great British baking show or whatever it is, which is, which is on this list, much to my surprise.

So I think part of the issue, part of the problem is like 100 shows, right, 100 slots, 100 seats gives you an opportunity to cover a lot of different constituencies, right? And so obviously I like a lot of the shows on this list. I wrote a cover story for National Review 10 years ago about how Breaking Bad was the greatest show ever made for television. And so them putting Breaking Bad at number one makes me happy. Them putting Better Call Saul at 27 makes me unhappy. But it's like it's on the list.

And let me just say for listeners, if you think the wire, which they put in at number two belongs at number one, I think that is a perfectly defensible position. And I can, you know, the wire is a very good show, which is why they rank it at number two. Unlike Breaking Bad, the Wire had a very bad last season, and Breaking Bad did not. But regardless, I think one of the criticisms I've seen, which I think is fair, is that this is very over-indexed for college-educated viewers. Yeah, you were pissed that Bluie was not on. Well, no. I mean, there's like, I mean, like, you wouldn't know from this list that, you know, CBS is just absolutely dominated much of the 21st century in terms of viewership. And yet some of CBS's biggest shows aren't aren't on here.

because CBS has aimed more at sort of flyover audiences. And I think that, you know, like Yellowstone's not on here, which I think is an interesting cultural statement, given, you know, its popularity. But like fleabag at number five, I think is ridiculous. But should it be similar on the list? Sure. So let me just, let me just jump in and share the top 10.

Breaking Bad is number one, then the wire, then Madman. Succession, fleabag, Game of Thrones. Veep comes in at number seven, then 30 Rock at eight, curb your enthusiasm at nine. And number 10 is Atlanta, which is not only a show that I've never watched. That's a show I've never heard of. It's Donald Glover. And it's an African-American heavy show.

It's supposed to be very good. I've never really watched it. I do like Glover a lot. But that's sort of what I mean about you can cover a lot of constituencies on this. And I just think that the constituencies they cover are the amount of social commentary and critical commentary that the HBO show Girls got was so wildly disconnected from the number of viewers that it had, right? It was, I think the New York Times maybe once every two weeks had a piece about girls and about

what it said about America and all this kind of stuff. And almost nobody watched it. But it had this huge cultural footprint. And that's what our way I think kind of sticks. Based in New York City, young. Based on a certain kind of, about a certain demographic and their angst and all of that kind of stuff. And I think this list is a little reflective of that, but it's not a bad list. I mean, one of the reason why media outlets, why newspapers love and magazines love making lists is because

people will then argue about the list. It is old-fashioned American journalism to do this kind of thing. So I don't get super mad about it. We need to think about what kind of list the dispatch will do when we do a list like this. Well, we'll come up with something like that. Girls, by the way, You're right that nobody watched it, but it was a very good show. I was very well-written show. Well, that's because it was written for you. I mean, you were the target demographic. You know, it's funny.

So I actually, I was asked at National Review to watch a couple of seasons of girls and write a piece about it. And I thought, yeah, this show was really like for middle-aged white male national review writers. It was like really who Lena Dunham had in mind when she wrote this show. But the writing on the show is first, right? And it was at least for the first couple, two or three seasons, whatever I watched. And it's a very, very well done piece of work. The endless wire versus Breaking Bad argument is the way I always frame it is that breaking bad is Shakespeare. You know, it's one character and the tragedy essentially of his life, whereas the wire is Dickens.

And the wire is so much Dickens that there are Dickens jokes in the wire with the with the pain in the ass newspaper publishing saying the kinsian element and uh i think they um i think they understood that about themselves and that that just really comes down to a matter of i think of what you like i think justified should have been higher on the list it was 83 i think i think justified was a terrific show which i also wrote about for for national review back in the day much like the wire though it's it didn't end great but it was a great show what do you mean i liked the last season of justified i thought it was pretty good argument another time all right well jones is... Do you agree with the top two, Kevin? Would you have another top show? What's your best show?

Stating aside, I put on my sort of more critical hat here that what's good and important is necessarily the same thing as what you like. Yeah, I think those are probably two of the shows. Although I liked both of those very much, and I've watched every episode of both of those a lot. I have leaned more into, I think, the wire than I have Breaking Bad. As much as I enjoyed Breaking Bad, I don't think it rewards. it's rewatching quite as much as the wire does. And because the wire is such a richer story with so many different kinds of characters and such a larger swath of life. But yeah, I think that most of the list is pretty defensive. Yeah, I would say I was taken or surprised by the fact that there weren't more British shows on this.

And originally I thought maybe they just didn't do British shows, but they have the office the UK version of the office, they have peeky blinders. There are at least a couple, maybe a handful. Yeah, slow horses, the thick of it. Luther's not on there, but maybe that started in the 90s, but Luther's a great show. No, Luther is a 2000 show. I noticed that was missing and I was sort of surprised.

Mike, are you generally good with the top 10 here? Not, I'm not, the top 10 is not perfect for me. I think it's interesting to note that of the top 10, that top 10, there's only one that was on network TV. And I don't think that's a flaw of the list. I think that is just reflective of how people watch high quality TV. And I will say that I think there's a tension in that Jonah, you know, mentioned about like CBS has lots of shows that a lot of people watch that are not on this list. But are they high quality shows? I'm not, I'm not convinced that they are just because a lot of people are watching it doesn't make it high

quality and a lot of the quality of filmmaking has now migrated into television. And so I think what you're what you're seeing here is a list that reflects that, you know, that that higher quality of television that sunny bunch, you know, referred to as the golden age of television in a cover store for the weekly standard about 10, 9, 8 years ago. And so I think it's maybe appropriate to not have the Big Bang theory, which is an extremely popular show on CBS for however many seasons. Although it's not, that's not true that there are no, say, network sitcoms on here. The Modern Family, it was a very popular show on ABC. And it's on this list.

30 Rock, right, is number eight on here. You've also got the office. You've got Parks and Recreation. But those were not even, those were about big hits. The office was, Parks and Recreation, not so much. to the good place, not so much. Those were on network TV. Well, so Mike, the question I have for you is, do you think at 61, RuPaul's drag race is too high or too low? I knew you were gonna try to pin me down on this. Where's David French when we need him?

Right. I do think the list for all the, you know, okay, it doesn't go with the network stuff with the sort of for the hoi-poly of TV watchers, but it does try to keep it broad in a way that I think makes it difficult to say, well, this was the best show. I mean, somebody at the top of this conversation mentioned Bluey. But Bluey is a great TV show.

And I'm not saying that just because, yes. But just because my kids watch it all the time and I'm sort of deluded by it, it's a great TV show. It doesn't have a place on this list, but there's drama. There's sort of like high quality drama. There are sitcoms. There are sketch comedy shows on this list. There are anthology shows and documentary. series. And so it does feel like you're comparing apples and oranges and bananas and celery and

tennis shoes. Like, you know, there's a way that the list is too broad. And then that's made more obvious by the fact that things are missing that should be on this list. So I prefer Breaking Bad. I do think Breaking Bad is the best of those two. I think the wire has really gone down in my estimation over the last decade or so. Maybe it's just that fifth season just really sits poorly with me. There's a lot of recency bias on this list as well. There was a couple of shows that I was looking at that I thought are not good, but people are obsessed with them at the moment. I think Succession at number four is crazy.

Succession was a fun show, but it's, it is, that's crazy. The White Lotus is at number 21. The White Lotus is trash. It's really well made. It's really well acted, but it's trash TV. And the fact that it's the 21st best show of the 21st century is ludicrous. And Better Call Saul at 27 is a crime against humanity, honestly. Totally agree.

Phenomenal show. But I do like that they include an Andor on this list. So I have very complex feelings about this. I think Better Call Saul is in many ways a better show, but it's more of a better show because of how difficult it was to pull off. Godfather 2 versus Godfather 1. I think technically Godfather 2 is the better movie, but you have to give, you know, it doesn't exist, but for one,

And the idea of doing a prequel where you actually have whole new independent characters and storylines that work for the most part with the originating show, prequels are hard. Sequels are hard. Prequels are really friggin hard. So, I mean, I think technically there's a real case to be made that better call Saul is the better show. But at the same time, it's derivative in some ways of the original source material. And so I have a hard time putting it above Breaking Bad, but it's another one of these things I can defend, you know. One final complaint, 58 for Chappelle's show.

Now, I know Chappelle has fallen in the sort of elite viewpoint over the last few years, but Chappelle's show is a top 15 show of the 21st century. It is a travesty that it is that low. It was such a funny and groundbreaking and, like, completely changed like the approach to you know like key appeal is higher than chapel show uh i think you should leave is higher than chapel show but like chapel show laid the play the ground work is ridiculous i would just take dexter off which i thought was not that great a show and it was also a pretty evil show but that's just me well um i have homework for each of you this isn't real like homework you

don't have spent a lot of time on this but would you each put together to your top 10 so that we can put it in the show notes mike you you can include Bluey. It'll be 10 minutes. You don't need to overthink it. If you want to then write about it, great. But just dash off a list of 10. Yeah, like I got time for that.

Good. All right. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for listening. See you. Finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice. Doing this really does help new listeners find us.

So I hope you'll take a minute to do it right now. And as always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable. At thedispatch.com, we read everything, including emails from people who think night agent should have been on the top 100. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.