The Dispatch Podcast - Can Elon Musk Deliver for Conservatives? | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Sarah Isgur, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes discuss the latest potential government shutdown and whether we are about to enter an Elon Musk co-presidency. The Agenda: —Co-president Musk's fight against a debt deal —Trump's presidential honeymoon —Who gets blamed for a shutdown? —Should conservatives be excited about DOGE? —TikTok's divestment —Is this a moral panic? —Bret Stephens: "Done With Never Trump" —NWYT: Modern Christmas music and Grinch remakes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar with Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. And this is our last podcast of the year. We're recording this on Thursday, December 19th. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year's to you both in advance. And Happy Hanukkah, which is on Christmas Day this year. Oh, that's true. It's all one happy thing. All coming together, baby. Yeah, we're doing prime rib and a brisket in my household. You're not referring to cooking your child. He's had a good four years. I think it's time. Right. Steve, any children you're cooking?

You have so many more to choose from. No children with beer or pets. This turned into a real Jeremy Bentham situation. Yeah, very odd. Real Springfield, Ohio action here. Beef, beef tenderloin, Cajun, beef tenderloin is what is on the menu for Hayes family Christmas. Jonah? Are you Christmasing or Hanuking?

Week Christmas, but this year, my lovely bride has a grandiose plan for eating out. I'd rather not disclose the location on this podcast, but I will tell you about it later. Because it's Taco Bell. What's money good? I wish. What's money good for? You've got to get out of the house as quickly as it comes in. Yeah, well, since it's under your mattress, it gets lumpy. All right. Look, there's some news news happening this morning. I don't think we want to get too into the weeds because this will be a fast-moving story. But nevertheless, I also think it highlights a lot about the future for the relationship between Congress and the president. Steve, we are dealing with once again

the budget, continuing resolution, shutdown, debt ceiling, all of those things pouring into one, and worth remembering that Democrats control the Senate and Republicans control the House. So the new Congress will not be sworn in until the very beginning of January, in which case Republicans will control, of course, the House and the Senate. But right now, it is divided government. They had reached an agreement, and then it all fell apart this week. Will you just sort of give us the blow-by-blow? Yeah, it depends who you mean by they had reached the agreement.

which is, turns out to be very important. Look, I mean, Speaker Johnson had been negotiating with Senate Democrats to try to get this continuing resolution that would have funded the government through March. The idea was that you'd sort of do the basics. Democrats wanted to add some sweeteners to the deal to get Democrats on board. It was going to be ugly as these things always end up being. if you do this through sort of non-typical atypical budget process, which hasn't happened literally for decades. Donald Trump was read in on this process. He knew what was happening. He had been expressing frustration to some Republicans in Congress about the need to raise the debt ceiling during a Trump presidency.

He wanted that to be taken care of before he was president. He has since tweeted to that effect or truth to that effect. I think what happened in this case is as the big reveal of the continuing resolution, which I think is a 1600 word, maybe 1900 word, I'm page document came closer. It was supposed to have happened over the weekend. and it didn't happen until Tuesday evening. It became apparent that there was going to be a bunch of crap in it, as there is every time the Republican critics seized on it

and pointed out, I think, correctly, that there's a lot of crap in it, elevated that to Elon Musk, who is functioning as something of a co-president in these days that he's spending time down at Mar-a-Lago and talking to President Trump, Musk amplified a lot of the critiques of what was in the bill and invented some new critiques that actually aren't really in the bill.

Basically had a couple of things that he focused on that really he either mischaracterized or didn't get right or just weren't true. And it's driven sort of hysteria among Republicans to oppose the bill, oppose the continuing resolution, and to speak out against Speaker Johnson. okay so i want to separate this into two different categories one is conservative philosophy like what should conservatives think about this type of thing and separately the politics of it should a incoming president who's about to have both houses want this off his plate before he comes in or should he want them to wait so that they can do a better job once they have unified control

So let's start with the politics. Jonah, what's the right answer here? Because I've seen Republicans on both sides of that argument saying, yeah, yeah, make Democrats own this. Yeah, it's crappy. But the last thing you want to do as president is walk in with this mess to deal with right off the bat because it's never going to be pretty. It's never going to be perfect.

So, yeah, it'll be bad and make them do it. Or is this actually exactly what Trump ran on? Stop with the compromising nonsense. Yeah. If they can't do it the right way, have them wait, and we'll do it the right way, and we'll show you how to run a freaking government, just politically for a second. Yeah, I mean, I suspect that if Trump could avoid having the debt ceiling thing on his watch, he wouldn't care about the spending in it.

That's my guess. I think he's got a very TV-centric understanding of this and that debt ceiling fights catnip for House Freedom Caucus types, for pounding the table. all that kind of stuff, and you saw what happened to Kevin McCarthy during some of those fights and all that kind of stuff. And so I think that's the drama he wants to avoid and take responsibility for. Yeah, because just to be clear, if you don't get the continuing resolution, you have a government shutdown. If you don't get the debt ceiling done, you perhaps have an economic shutdown, something that has far more wide-reaching effects than just federal employees not showing up to work

and getting paid anyway later. Right. I mean, if you don't do the debt ceiling thing, you kind of get at all, right you get eventually the government shuts down you know um it's next level shut down and um so i think that's the kind of thing he wants to avoid but i don't you know there's no there's no record in all of trump's time in politics they actually cares about too much spending but i think as a political matter i honestly don't know i think he may be right you know if you can pull it off but it's sure, you know, it's one of these things that sure makes, Matt Contonetti's been arguing that Trump's having something unprecedented, a honeymoon,

and I think that's right, right? He's popular for the first time, as we're going to discuss later. There are some critics who are moving in his direction. Everything's going his way. I think that sending the signal that you're going to have this kind of uncertainty about the political process,

about things that matter this much, is probably not great for him politically, even if it's sort of like inflation fed this view, you know, of things were out of control, even though people wouldn't articulate it necessarily is having to do with inflation. Having one of these fights that was clearly caused by Trump World at the last second right before Christmas, you know, on the same day that there's apparently a wildcat strike at Amazon and all that kind of stuff, having everybody go home and have Christmas dinner talking about, oh gosh, this is going to be four years of this is probably not the best messaging. But if he can actually get uncomfortable things

off his plate down the road, maybe it would work out in the long run. I just, I find it impossible to predict and I find it impossible to believe that they've got this planning planned out so well, particularly since they still have to get whatever they are going to get past the Democratic-controlled Senate. Steve, at the point that we're recording this, I also feel like we're hearing from a lot of people who aren't Donald Trump. So a lot from Elon Musk, for instance. And there's these questions of like, oh, is Elon Musk saying this at the behest of Donald Trump? Or is he saying this at the behest of Elon Musk? And what exactly is... Is he lobbying Donald Trump? Right. What exactly is Elon Musk's not role going to be, but influence going to be? And what exactly does that mean for Speaker for now Johnson? How does the relationship work between a Speaker Johnson and Trump and And Elon Musk floating around.

Do we, is there any historical analogy you could give to, like, what Elon Musk is at this point? I don't think so. And I think we'll be asking this question for a long time. I, you know, Jonah is right to shy away from predictions. Nobody really knows how this is going to go. Nobody really knows how the Musk-Trump relationship is going to go. I suspect that we'll end in a fiery blowup at some point with them pointing fingers and being angry at one another.

I don't know what precipitates that falling out, but probably better for it to happen sooner rather than later as far as I'm concerned. Look, I think the really important thing to emphasize here is what I said in response to the question you asked me right at the outset. Trump was read in broadly on this. None of this is a surprise to Donald Trump. He knew he has been in regular communication with Speaker Johnson. as Jonah has pointed out earlier, Speaker Johnson has sort of prostrated himself before

Trump, willing to do basically anything and everything Donald Trump wants him to do. So the idea that Speaker Johnson is now freelancing on behalf of the establishment is pure fantasy. That is not what's happening here. Trump has been read in. He has known about it. The difference is Elon Musk went public with his opposition. and has riled up sort of a lot of super maga types to oppose this thing. I think the politics of this for Republicans are far worse than Jonah suggests.

And again, straight-line predictions are really hazardous in political moments like this. But it's hard for me to see how this turns out well for Republicans, in part because you now have them cheering this on, right? I mean, you have House Republicans who are tweeting, shut it down. Nancy Mays saying a shutdown isn't a big deal. Elon Musk coming out in opposition to certain elements of this CR to suggest that Republicans block it. It seems to me makes it pretty clear that Republicans will be to blame. You know, a lot of times when we have these dances, the question is, who's going to be blamed for the shutdown?

down. I don't know that that's much of a question right now. I think it's Republicans. And I think you have Republicans who are not only comfortable with that, sort of gleeful about that. And I think there are real risks to doing that. Let me just... Well, can I just note also, perhaps they've learned something from the immigration fight from the summer. There was a negotiated immigration bill that everyone had agreed to that Trump had been read in on. And then that fell apart. Everyone All the pundits said Trump would get blamed for not fixing immigration. They would hold him responsible because Biden had tried and Trump had stopped it. And obviously, there was no political cost that mattered.

You may say he would have won by even more, but not won at the end of the day. And so if it turns out that voters don't want compromise, they want stuff fixed. Then perhaps Republicans learn from the immigration fight and aren't wrong. Yeah, I mean, I think that they may well have learned. I think there are some obvious parallels. You made them. You pointed them out. And there are some major differences.

The immigration fight, when it happened, you had the Biden administration doing things that many of us, many people had been encouraging the Biden administration to do for a long time to tighten the free flow of immigrants through the southern border. They had started that. The process had already begun. and the rest of the debate was largely prospective. What was the U.S. government going to be doing to solve a problem in the future? The difference between that and the CR fight is that if there's a shutdown, you see this stuff immediately.

I mean, there will be immediate implications. There will be, you know, lots of reporting about what's happened. Look, I would love it if it were the case that the broad American populace was eager for serious reduction in the size and scope of government. I don't think that's what's happening. I don't think that's what they're asking for here. I don't think that's what a shutdown would deliver. And it should be pointed out.

I mean, I get, you know, you do these, these, we have this discussion a lot, right, about these shutdowns, about what's happening about funding of government, about debt ceilings. It's just got to be pointed out that most of the people who are pushing this and, posing as small government types are really full of shit. They're not for small government. If they were for small government, you know what they would be for? They would be for regular order. They'd be for transparent, thoughtful budget process.

And the first thing they would argue is for entitlement reform, because that's what's going to reduce the size and scope of government. That's what's driving the debt. And that's the thing that would have an impact. Instead, what they prefer to do is pretend that these. you know, one-off pork projects are what's driving the debt or that foreign aid less than 1% is what's driving the country broke. It's not true. I think many of them don't even know that it's not true. But the idea that, you know, standing firm on, at this moment, on this thing

at the end of a crappy process is going to reduce the size and scope of government is just silliness. So, Steve, that's a perfect segment. way to the conservative part of this conversation I want to have, which is, for instance, Jonah, I think conservatives 20 years ago were right to point out that all of the earmarks and pork barrel spending were not conservative. So they got rid of earmarks. And as a result, you know, it was, it's my, you know, Wolves and Yellowstone thing. Like there's these unintended consequences that you're just not quite aware of because at a high level, earmarks are not conservative. But it turns out earmarks were the oil, the grease that made the skids work

and allowed the kind of compromise so that everyone was able to come to the table and get real things done, have Congress actually function, which is way more conservative than having the president issue a bunch of executive orders that then get reversed every four years. So let's talk about this process and pork barrel spending and to Steve's point about, well, entitlement reform is actually the thing you'd need to do. What should a conservative, not the politics of it, not who wins elections. What should a conservative think about this? And then I want to talk about sort of what this tells us about the incoming Trump administration. But let's just talk about what should a conservative think about this?

What should sort of think about this or what? So there's the big picture, what a conservative should think about this. And then there's what should the conservative position be right now? the be right now problem is that there is no real conservative position to take it's sort of like letting a bunch of teenagers load up the truck with poorly packed dynamite grain liquor right and maybe some bear cubs high on cocaine going and having a tailgate party somewhere and then so like how do you how do you have a conservative What's the conservative position on this party? It's like you shouldn't have gotten yourself into this position no matter what, right? Like there's no conservative way out of this other than to quietly put down the bear cubs. Apologize to the mommy bear, but that's not going to happen, right? So you can't, and that gets us to this.

It's a terribly strange metaphor, I understand. It's not early listeners. It is if you had the day I had yesterday. So that said, I think the conservative position is sort of as Steve, alluded to is like this is no way to run a railroad right this is not how you do it and you can't do it the wrong way for so long and then be like okay now what's the right thing to do you've got us into like c s lewis has this point where he says if you took a wrong turn at a fork in a road and you walked a mile down the wrong road it is not progress to keep walking in the wrong direction

progress to walk back to the fork in the road and go the right direction and that takes time And so that's a hard argument to make at this moment. You can't undo the process to the point we're going to go back to regular order when we got to issue a debt ceiling raise or we got to fund the government and that kind of thing. So, but I'm totally with you on the broader point. I've been under for a long time that like if we brought back earmarks and, you know, and to some extent we have, the Democrats have, but to a lesser degree. But I'm at this point at the dispatch summit to Paul Ryan.

And I was like, look, give everybody a frigging community pool and a rec center. and bribe them into voting for serious revisions to entitlements, and we would save, it would cost pennies on the dollar, right? It would billions would buy trillions in savings politically. And that's sort of what the currency of Congress is favors, political favors, log rolling, earmarks, that kind of stuff. And when you take away the currency for that kind of place, you make it very difficult for everybody to have transactions.

And when you can't have Congress doing transactions, Congress doesn't work. And when Congress doesn't work, politics doesn't work properly. And so fixing Congress so that it can soak up more of the politics in our life, because Congress is where politics is supposed to happen, would fix all sorts of things. We won't have them all. We won't air until next week because while this may be your last podcast before Christmas, it's not mine. Sick burn. I had Richard Ryan-John, who just launched this new great outfit, this journal called Civitas, and out of the University of Texas.

You know, we were talking about Wilmore Kendall's notions of congressional majorities and presidential majorities, and they're two very, very different things. Presidential majorities are media concoctions, they're about special interests, they're about stakeholders, and formed around a very high level of abstraction. Congressional majorities historically are much more. rooted to their actual communities. It is a, it is an expression of a consensus among people close to the ground, close to the concerns of their own people. And they're really what are supposed to be driving the political direction of a country for the most part. You know, I like to point out every now and then, you know, that the president should more properly be pronounced president, right? It is presiding over the stuff that Congress is doing. It is not supposed to be the thing,

cracking the whip and running everything and setting the agenda for everything. But when Congress doesn't do that, it naturally falls to the president to do it. And that's one of the reasons why we can't have nice things. By the way, just to be clear, when you say you have a podcast next week, do you mean you are recording a podcast next week or you already recorded it and you're serving your listener stale bread? I have not ruled out recording. First of all, I may record right after this podcast.

And if not, I may record tomorrow morning. And then I've not ruled out recording the solo Revenant next week after Christmas. That's just how I roll. Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. Good to know.

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coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Steve, you know, I don't want to sit here and guess on what the next Trump administration is actually going to look like or accomplish

or anything else. But I hear from a lot of people who are going to go into the administration have been interviewing for jobs and all of that. And there is certainly a lot of feeling like they have a long leash to do stuff that previous presidents would have found politically untenable. Now, some of those things we may not think are conservative. Like, let's think about the, you know, the conservative views on antitrust law or big tech, for instance. But some of those things we've talked about very briefly, actually, but, you know, in the Project 2025, like the boogeyman version of it, where people will be like, can you believe this Schedule F stuff,

where they're talking about making it easier to remove civil servants who have policy jobs, you know, policy-making jobs, that won't carry out the policies of an administration, that's actually very conservative you know having a president who is a lame duck politically may not be very helpful for a lot of reasons but if you're a conservative and you've wanted to do real fundamental changes to the government you know the like the extreme example an extreme i mean it's long running and not happening get rid of the department of education Isn't a lame duck kind of the guy you want to do it with

and who may actually be the one to be like, yeah, sure, I don't really care about this? Is this an opportunity for conservatives that we haven't talked about enough? I mean, that would certainly be the positive gloss. You know, I would add to that the idea that Trump himself has pitched himself as a disruptor,

as a rule breaker, as somebody who can ignore norms and bust through guardrails and sort of get away with it. So I think if you are a conservative reformer, and what you imagine needs to be done to the federal government is reform along those lines, you can make that case. I wouldn't be, I'd be pretty sympathetic to that case. I mean, I think the argument about the administrative state long predates Donald Trump, right? I mean, you had conservatives who were making the case for decades that... But they didn't do it. They didn't do it because in some ways, I mean, I think the, the

for the Trump mega crowd would say they were far too timid. They were not willing to, you know, upset the apple cart, what have you. They didn't have a president

who DGAF. I think there is some truth to that. I think in some respects, if the goal was to reduce the size and scope of government, it was the case that conservative establishments of years past were too comfortable with K Street

were unwilling to take the, the political risks that they imagined to be involved in doing those kinds of things. I remember interviewing Vice President Cheney in 2004 before the re-election at the Vice President's residence. And as somebody who has been a long-time enthusiast of exactly those kinds of disruptions, you know, moving toward an actual reduction in the size and scope of government. I asked him if in, he was, he was leading a review of the size and scope of government, and he had done something similar during the Ford administration when he was chief of staff. And I asked him in 2004 of the various cabinet agencies, which ones had they discussed closing?

Because conservatives had long been talking about closing Department of Energy, Department of Education, department of commerce. And he, you know, this is Dick Cheney, right? this is not somebody who is a rhino or a big government conservative looked at me like I had three heads like what are you what are you talk no of course we're not talking about shutting down cabinet agencies and I will admit to being disappointed I think what he meant by that was we're focused you know this was 2004 we're focused on fighting and winning the war on terror we're not focused on these kinds of things and to the extent that we're expending political capital we're

doing it in in furtherance of that objective. But to the extent, for instance, that, like, the Bush administration, for instance, is filled with the type of people who would fill a Republican administration, just like the Biden administration is filled with the type of people who would fill a Biden administration, this is where the Elon Mustang becomes kind of interesting. Lots of the names we're hearing floated are not the type of people who would work in any presidential administration. They're Silicon Valley guys. They don't know the rules in D.C. some of that could be hard for them to then make changes

because they don't know the rules, they don't know where the levers are, they don't know what they're not allowed to do, they don't know the FACA requirements for holding public meetings. On the other hand, they also have real track records for actually running stuff and they're not trying to get the next job and get the lobbying position and everything else.

So is having a bunch of Silicon Valley guys come into Washington, D.C., potentially conservative, and having Elon Musk have real influence that everyone's, you know, mocking and, you know, saying co-president in a pejorative way, isn't, again, if you're a conservative, is there an opportunity here?

There's definitely an opportunity. I just think that we should be realistic about what the opportunity looks like, right? I mean, I think for all the reasons you're suggesting, I mean, there is a value to having somebody from the outside come in and put fresh eyes on this. And as you say, somebody who's not going to be offended to say, why in the world would we do it this way?

Right? I mean, and the response in the past might be from somebody who wants to go on and, you know, lead a trade association or not asking that hard question because they don't want to offend somebody or they, or they, you know, are unwilling to think outside the box. There's definitely some upside to having people come in with fresh eyes and look at this and ask those sort of obvious questions. Why are we doing this this way? I think being realistic about it, you know, If you listen to the rhetoric that has come out of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy, I would say it's sort of a combination of that kind of refreshing new thinking on problems of this magnitude combined with total naivete and obvious ignorance about what the problems really are. You know, I mean, there was this discussion that Elon Musk triggered by some tweets that he sent, I think it was last. week, maybe it was the week before, about foreign aid. And he had at one point asked the question sort of like, how many people knew that this is how we spend our money? And it's like, well, everybody knows that. This is public information. It's been public literally for decades. You're not discovering anything new. And there is this kind of naivete that attends a lot of that rhetoric, which, again, I suppose you can make the argument that that's refreshing or it has to

come with the kind of fresh eyes that you're putting on the situation. But the other big, and my bigger problem with Elon Musk generally is, he says so many things that just aren't true. He doesn't know, he doesn't take the time to check. He peddles so much BS that you don't want to get into a place where you're not only, not making decisions about what the actual causes of the real problems are, but you're making decisions based on false assumptions or bad information. And my greatest concern about Doge is that that's what they will do.

So Jonah, it's like this Greek tragedy. Like the greatest strength is also the greatest weakness. The greatest strength of bringing in people who aren't part of this world will also be the greatest weakness. They'll have fresh eyes, but they also won't know how to get it done. They are going to be willing to break things, but it also may mean that they're not very careful. They're not very, you know, they're not going to get into the weeds of stuff.

They're just ideas, guys. And I think it is a good opportunity. I think conservatives should be working to nudge that opportunity in a good direction because probably, like most things, moderation is key. You kind of want to pair that move fast and break things guys with the experts in government who've actually been doing it, who can be in the weeds for their very high level, not in the weeds, which frankly is how I think a lot of the really successful Silicon Valley companies have thrived, you know, for every Mark Zuckerberg, there's a Cheryl Sandberg.

Sheryl Sandberg is a pretty careful, thoughtful, in the weeds type person. That's what I'll be looking for when more of these personnel things get rolled out, is are they figuring out that that's a good model for them? Yeah, I mean, a couple different thoughts. One, there's also a third type of Silicon Valley person, which is, what was her name, the woman from Theranos? I'm very serious about this. There's a woman from Theranos or there's a woman, there's, what's his face?

Elizabeth. Holmes? No. Elizabeth Holmes, yes. Or Sam Blankman-Fried, right? I mean, there are grifter, fake it till you make it types. And honestly, I sincerely believe that Vivek Ramoswamy is one of them. I'm not saying he's a criminal like some of the others,

but I'm not saying he's as nearly as serious a person as he portends or his biggest fans think he is. I think he's much more of a huckster. Those types really mess up the work of the see things with fresh eyes, types and the people, the cautious, careful people types. And because they get to pander to the crowd in a way

that distorts the politics in all sorts of bad ways and creates a real look squirrel kind of problem. I kind of that said, I think the other thing I keep thinking about is you know, it's the difference between Chesterden's fence, right? There are certain things the government does for really, really

good reasons. And you should know what those reasons are before you tear down the fence. And, and And there are other things that the government does simply because it's been doing them for a very long time and those things need to go. I think you're right that you need sort of both types to figure out when to bouldos and when to sort of save the retaining wall. And it kind of reminds me there's this serious debate in Israel for years. I think the pager operation kind of probably put it to rest for at least a little while. The original Israeli intelligence feudal, the original Mossad.

It was full of guys who were like concert pianists and cellists from, you know, Germany who are now doing like badass, weird intelligence stuff in, you know, for this new country. And one of the things that made the early Massad so creative or the early OSSI, or whatever, you know, the precursor of the CIA was that no one knew the right way to do it. So they just said, hey, we need to get this done. Let's come up with a cool way. Let's go figure out a way to do it. And they just did it.

There was an argument that, you know, part of the problem with Israeli intelligence has it become too bureaucratized and lost that creative, fresh eyes kind of thing. And so I have a lot of respect for the fresh eyes argument. And then there was the pageer explosion. And that's my point. And now they're back in the care. Everyone's like, okay, you figured it out, right? Necessity is the mother of invention.

But, you know, I mean, you can take this point probably way too far than it needs to by pointing out that it was like some young woman pretty fresh in the business who came up with this idea and everyone said you're high until they're like, oh, this actually looks like it could work. So I'm all in favor of slashing and burning where slashing and burning is appropriate. I am sort of with Steve on the point that Donald Trump is not the kind of manager to sort between the three different kinds of Silicon Valley type. as well as the many different kinds of Republican hacks, serious legislators,

bureaucratic infighting and all that kind of stuff. Sounds like we're describing Dodge City. Yeah, well, I expect a lot more like, okay, corral stuff than I expect, like, serious military campaign stuff, again, to use bad analogies. I think it's going to be a lot of chaos. And some of the chaos will have positive, you know, repercussions, and some of it won't.

But I don't think it's going to be, you know, A guy who points Matt Gay, tries to name Matt Gates Attorney General because Matt Gates gets a free five minutes with him at a beach resort and says, hey, I'll go after all your enemies and say, oh, that sounds great. You're it. That is not the kind of approach that lends itself to the careful kind of big ticket reform that we're hoping for. I think that's true. But I also, I don't think you can get someone who's willing to do the big ticket. reform and take on the political cost. If they're rational, because a rational person, we've tried lots of, we've had lots of rational presidents and they won't do it.

But let me, can I ask you one more question on this there because I think it's interesting. I like this. I think this is a worthwhile discussion to have. I've had this a lot as somebody who's a small government guy. I mean, this is sort of, one of the reasons I wanted to come to Washington. My first job was at the Heritage Foundation. I believe in limited government. I mean, this sort of what drives me to do a lot of the things that I do and make the arguments I make. And I would like to think that what you're saying is true and could possibly come to pass the fact that we will be bringing fresh eyes, people asking new questions, people approaching these things in a different way. I like that. Let's say that Doge has some real success and that Elon Musk and Vivek Gremaswamy come up with a list of ways to, again, it seems pretty clear that.

not going to touch entitlements, so they're not going to deal with the biggest problem. But let's say that they, you know, pull out the citizens of government, citizens against government waste peg book from 1997, which had a lot of these ideas that they are now discovering, right? This is all new to them, but literally they were published back then. Let's say they pull that off the shelf. They take some good ideas. The Cato Institute put out a big list of, of, of, you know, potential savings. They work from the Cato list, and they come up with these things. They propose them.

And Donald Trump, who is, you know, the president who will be responsible for making these decisions, begins to get pushback from many of the people in the MAGA base, the sort of new working class Republican Party, who voted for him in part because. of his embrace of bigger government. Government can do these things for you. Those policies that Musk and Ramoswamy are advocating start to affect the people who voted for Donald Trump on a different promise. What does Donald Trump do then? Is Donald Trump going to stand up and say, you know, I've been so concerned with our national debt for so long, you all are just going to have to suck it because this is, or is he going to do what he did with no taxes on tips, where he hears a story

from somebody who's in the service industry in Nevada, is frustrated that this person is having her tax is tipped, or her tips taxed and announces an entirely new policy later that day as the story, as the story goes. And the same policy that then Kamala Harris rolled out just a few days later, horseshoe politics. Yeah, no. My point is not that this is a conservative juggernaut heading down the train tracks destined for success because they figured out the secret sauce. I think my point is a little different,

which is I think the only way this even has a 10% chance of getting done is if you have someone as kind of irrational as Donald Trump as president. And look, my percentage is pick whatever percentages you want. It's a 60% chance that it crashes and fails and nothing changes and a 40% chance that some really good conservative stuff happens. But regardless, you're not going to ever do it, I think we've learned, with rational people running the show because rationally, it's never in their interest,

politically, their careers afterwards, whatever else. I mean, this is my pet project. I'd be so curious about a government run by people who never needed another job. And I don't just mean, like, wealthy people. What I really mean is old people, I guess. Because if you're young and wealthy, fine, it's not the money. It's still, though, something.

You don't just want to, like, ride off into the sunset. I want to see a government run by people who are done when they leave the job and what that would look like. And I guess to some extent, that's kind of the experiment we're running with Donald Trump. There's nothing coming after this. Now the problem is it is the experiment we just ran with Joe Biden and it was worse than

my imagination allowed me to imagine. So again, not saying this is some silver bullet that's destined for success. It's more like, uh-oh, what if this is the only recipe where there's the possibility of success? And I'll be curious. Okay, we've talked about the relationship

between Congress and the president at length, as it turns out. I do want to talk just a little bit about the relationship between the courts Congress and the president as well and sort of the true separation of powers, checks and balances in the world of TikTok. So bipartisan legislation,

past Congress was signed by President Biden that would force TikTok to vest from its parent company, bite dance, starting January 19th. That means TikTok will not be in existence, as you know it, on your phone, basically. Donald Trump originally, of course, tried to do various things to ban TikTok when he was president. He has now flipped on this and says that he wants to find a way to make this work.

I sort of love this, not because it's TikTok. I mean, my own bias here is that I think TikTok is terrible. I mean, it's a really good product, but, like, meth is a good product, too, I guess. you now have the Supreme Court saying that they will have expedited oral arguments on this case January 10th so that they can get a decision out before the law takes effect January 19th.

The president, President-elect Trump, saying he wants to do something about it, look, there's not a whole lot of options here. This was passed by Congress, so he can't just undo it. There is a 90-day period where if TikTok is in the process of being bought, that he can basically give them 90 days

to complete the sale. TikTok is not in the process of being bought. In fact, China passed a law that said that TikTok or a company like TikTok was not allowed to ever sell its algorithm. So the only thing that could even be for sale legally is the sort of name TikTok and the user base, like, you know, the app itself. But what's in the app is basically not for sale. And this is interesting, right?

Because, again, as a conservative, we have wanted Congress to do more. Well, here it is. Congress did something that did it in a bipartisan fashion. This is what the Supreme Court has. has been sort of pushing back on the administrative state and the powers of the president, trying to see if Congress will do stuff. And here they did stuff. But it implicates, or doesn't implicate, depending on who you ask, the First Amendment. Our friends over at Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, are on the other side of this from me. They're going to take away

my First Amendment card, and I'm really upset about it. Congress, however, said that this was a national security issue, and that with China both collecting Americans' data and able to manipulate what Americans were seeing, China does not have a First Amendment right to broadcast to Americans, the other side arguing, including the former Solicitor General for Donald Trump, Noel Francisco, arguing that Americans have a right, a First Amendment right, to information, and that this will be the first time in American history that the U.S. government has shown. down a medium of news. So lots here on separation of powers

and also whether, I mean, is Congress slash the people who want TikTok to be divested, sort of moral panic the way we thought about violent video games? Or is it the people who think TikTok's just fine who don't understand the new world we live in, the new type of warfare we live in, where you're allowing China to have

kind of access to Americans unfettered where you combine the data and the ability to show people things, they can target, I mean, I've said this a lot, they can find the 10,000 people who are most interested in videos about political violence and feed them nothing but videos about individuals who, if killed, would cause the most chaos to American democracy. Lastly, it's been pointed out by those, they're not really defending TikTok, but more defending what America means on the world's stage. And Steve, I'll send this to you first. Can I ask you a terminological question real quick before you ask this question?

When you say the first time of American history, the government will be closing down a medium. I don't consider TikTok a new medium. I consider it a platform within the social media medium, right? I mean, it's like, and the government has shut down newspapers and magazine. Like what? Oh, Woodrow Wilson, like shut up. a whole bunch of magazines by taking away their ability to use the mails, right?

Yeah, and we generally think that was a bad idea. Yes, agreed. Yeah, fair enough. And that's why the analogy doesn't work perfectly because it is a good idea to shut down TikTok. But anyway, please go on as Steve's question. The argument from these types of folks, and there's also this problem where TikTok has spent enormous amounts of money lobbying in the United States. And I'm always unclear on who is paid by TikTok and not paid by TikTok.

So when I'm representing some of these ideas, I don't know if these people are paid by TikTok or not, and I don't really have a good way to know that. But the idea goes something like this, China would love nothing more than for America to ban TikTok because, yeah, maybe they lose access to manipulating Americans, but they also prove the hypocrisy of America and it's, you know, big touting the First Amendment

and all of this, you know, freedom will win type stuff that if our enemies make us look more like our enemy, they win in a way. So if they keep TikTok, they win. If we ban TikTok, they win. Yeah, so I'll start with the last point first, which I think is nonsense. If you pay any attention to what comes out of the Chinese government,

the Chinese government doesn't need the United States to actually do something that theoretically contradicts its values in order to make the claim that the United States is doing things that contradict its values. They say that stuff all the time. It is sort of the staple of anti-American Chinese propaganda. And if you pay even casual passing attention to what comes out of the Chinese government with respect to America, they make these kinds of arrogance all the time. They don't need to do this.

They're not going to be celebrating if the United States somehow in their mind looks hypocritical. I guess the question I have, and, you know, I am certainly no legal scholar, and I don't have to invite, it's nice to be in a position where I don't have to invite you, Sarah, to correct me if I'm wrong. You're going to do it whether I invite you or not. It seems to me, though, that this is much more about foreign ownership than it is about free speech. But that's what one side says. The other side says, that's not true. I mean, I'm on the side that this is about foreign ownership, not free speech. But their argument is basically you know that they can't divest from bite dance. So you've

dressed it up in that outfit. But yeah, this is still about banning TikTok. And if you were actually worried about data collection, you would pass laws about that would affect Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and everything else. But you're not doing that. Because this is actually about viewpoint and you don't like the viewpoint on TikTok. But they can. Why can't they divest? Not with the algorithm. And therefore, TikTok's just not worth very much without the algorithm. They can't do it because the Chinese government says they can't do it, which kind of gives up the story that Chinese government actually does have control over TikTok.

That's the argument. That is the argument. I mean, all of the distance that bite-dance folks have tried to create between their operations and the Chinese Communist Party collapses because of that one very central reality. And I think it sort of gives lie to the idea that this is fundamentally about free speech. It's probably too harsh. It suggests that this is much less about free speech than it is about foreign ownership. Jonah, what about the moral panic point? Is this like violent video games?

TikTok isn't the problem. It's not causing the kids to be anti-Semitic. What do you think? I'm always open to the idea that there's a little too much of a moral panic. That's fine, right? And I think there's, and there often is. it's kind of proof, I mean, but what's the moral panic part here? Is it anti-Chinese moral panic? I don't think anti-Chinese moral panic is moral panic. I think it's justified concern about a country

that sees itself as needing to overtake us as the world's hegemon and is undermining our institutions just hacked a whole bunch of, you know, of our politicians, pumps out all sorts of garbage about us, is strong-arming our allies and all sorts of things, right? I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're earning our animosity. So it's not anti-Chinese moral panic. The argument that it's moral panic about TikTok is undermined by the very fact that you brought up that we're not going after Twitter or true social or Facebook and saying, you can't do these things either, right? I mean, that's a different thing. If it was truly just a moral panic about social media, TikTok would just be one of the many castles that the rioting peasants would be burning down.

We're focusing it pretty narrowly on TikTok because TikTok is a foreign-owned entity that is that, you know, we would never, we have not allowed with no controversy whatsoever. And look, God love the fire folks, but like it has not been a controversial point for my entire life and then some that foreign countries can't own TV stations. Rupert Murdoch became an American citizen just so he could own a TV station here, right? No one was like, we're impinging on Rupert Murdoch's free speed rights. Why do we have to force him to become an American? Because that's the frigging law, and that's just the fact of it. And the fact that we're taking that principle and applying it to this really sinister

and pernicious social media platform, it just does not bother me in the slightest. It's not like, it would bum me out if I had a huge investment of my number of followers on TikTok And then they were all, like, taken away from me. And I understand why people are pissed off about that. But that kind of thing happens in life. I just don't see, I don't see any high-minded principled argument here. And I completely agree with Steve that the idea that, like, China would love us to get rid of TikTok because it would prove we're hypocrites is just one of those great examples of trying to weaponize people's actual principles against them. without actually holding them yourself because none of those people, including some friends of

mine, right, who I, or passionate defenders of TikTok, are very few of those people who are passionate defenders of TikTok say boo about China's mass regime of censorship and, you know, and cultural genocide and all of these other things. They're like, oh, you get a lot of thousand flowers bloom. Well, you know, if Chinese culture just says it's okay to round up Uyghurs and culturally and and ethnically cleansed Tibet because that's just what Chinese people do and you have to have some tolerance for it. Well then, you know, in America

one of the things we just, we're quirky people. One of the things we do is we say countries that that ethnically cleanse Tibet and run concentration camps and have a Jim Crow system for

one race, a Han Chinese or first class citizens and no one else is in their country. We tend to block their ownership of social media platforms in our country. We're weird. Live with it, right? I just don't, I don't, none of those arguments work on me. Okay.

The last part of this TikTok conversation is about that relationship between the president Congress and the Supreme Court and just big picture. I mean, I've been saying this, like if you don't like Donald Trump or if you don't like Joe Biden, either way, you should want far less power in the presidency. will anyone ever realize that I'm right about this? Too late. They only realize too late. You're right about it.

I'm really hoping that the court holds the line here. Congress said it's a national security threat. The Supreme Court's role here is to ensure that that is not a sham, basically. I don't think there's any evidence that it was a sham. And beyond that, it's up. to Congress. And like, let's build up Congress and celebrate when they actually do a meaningful law instead of invalidating it. Yeah, I just don't think this is a close call. It's worth noting just as an aside that the D.C. Circuit that upheld the statute was very diverse, right?

I mean, they made different arguments for different reasons, but they came together on that point. and it was an Obama appointee, a Trump appointee, and I think a Bush appointee. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute.

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Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active. All right, last thing. maybe a not worth your time, if you will. Brett Stevens in the New York Times published a piece. Brett Stevens, never Trumper, all of that stuff.

And this is the paragraph that I thought would really drive Jonah nuts. So here's a thought for Trump's perennial critics, including those of us on the right. Let's enter the new administration by wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump's cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear,

that whatever happens, this two shall pass. Jonah, agree, disagree. I'm utterly mystified while you think that paragraph would set me off. I'm not being sarcastic. Like, those have basically been my positions for last eight years. I have not said that democracy is, we're seconds away from losing our democracy. I've had, you know, people, you know, what's this, I had Robert Kagan on who wrote this book about, you know, and wrote this famous thing about Trump being Hitler, but I don't think he's Hitler. My standard joke now for a decade has been Trump's not Hitler. Hitler could have repealed Obamacare. And I, in fact, wrote a very similar column to that after Trump was elected in 2016, where I wrote a column called Never Trump, never more, where I said, look, my idea of Never Trump was, was going to vote for him, was never going to endorse him. and was never going to lie about it.

Other than that, I don't know what never Trump actually means. It means very different things for different people. I don't know what it's supposed to mean for me other than that, and that's all I ever defined it as. But I went on to write in that piece. One thing I'm not going to do is lie. And so you only have one president at a time. I'm not going to carry water for them,

but I'm also not going to be unnecessarily critical of them until we give them a shot. where I think Brett gets it wrong is he should have wrote my column when I wrote it rather than waited until now eight years later to write it because we now know what he's like as president and I think that Brett makes a sort of elides the fact that he's a known quantity now not an unknown quantity and which it does not mean that you shouldn't hope for the best I hope for the best there are a lot of things I will I hope Trump gets done there are a lot of things

that Trump did in this first term that I thought were good I also think he's utterly unfit and unqualified for office, regardless of the fact that the American people voted for him. And that's my big problem with Brett's piece. Look, I think Brett is one of the best columnists in America. I really respect him. I think he's great. Murder is wrong. But. Yeah, a little bit of that here, right? And I should also say, you know, when I wrote that Never Trump, Nevermore piece, Rick Pearlstein wrote an entire New York Times magazine piece premised on me selling out to Trump based on that piece. And it was, was so egregious because he clearly didn't read the whole thing that I got the New York

Times to come as close to issuing a correction as they could in their white-knuckled panic over Trump agreed to do because Rick Burlstein's a hack just for the record. So anyway, back to this. I think- Wait, Jonah, I have a question. Are you the type of person who can remember everything you've written? Like, do you happen to know that piece because like that's something that's really steered into your memory or because you remember most of the stuff that you write and the titles of stuff that you wrote eight years ago. Well, I remember pieces that get me in a wrapped ton of trouble.

Got it. Okay, because if you showed me something I wrote last year and took off my byline and said, guess who wrote this? I don't think I'd have any clue. And beyond that, you'd probably disagree with it. That's true. Me and John Podort's talk about this all the time

when we're goulding around. Like, he found, he was trying to remember what net neutrality is about. He found this piece and he's reading. This is really helpful. This really explains a lot. And then he realized he wrote it. I've done that

I was like wow this is good oh I wrote that that's awesome I've done that but I've done that but it's usually with stuff that's not good like whoa I'm who wrote this crap oh wait so the thing I don't like about Brett's piece and it's more tonal and directional is I don't really

care if the American people disagree with me about something I'm not as defiant and ready to, quick to draw my middle finger as, say, Kevin Williamson is about this point. But I don't, so wishing for the best, that's all fine. That's all great. Turning out that Americans viewed January 6 as less of a big deal, he did or than I did, it's perfectly legitimate to point that out. It's also not a reason to change your position on January six. If you think January 6th was fundamentally disqualifying to be president of the United States, you have to take into account the fact that it was fundamentally

disqualifying to be president in the United States and not change your position or seem like you are simply because you've been left on the sidelines because of where politics has moved. And then there's this last paragraph, this last thing. He says, it's Trump's sulfurous contempt for that elite, his refusal to be shaped by their norms or shamed by their scorn and his willingness to call out their hypocrisy that makes him a hero to his followers. Case and point, how come so many who denounced Trump as a sexual predator were 20 years earlier, Bill Clinton's steadfast offenders? Why were the same people who demanded investigations into every corner of the Trump's family business dealings so incurious about the Biden family's dealings? Like the curiously high prices

for Hunter's paintings. All perfectly legitimate points. We've talked about a lot of that stuff. But this cuts both ways. why were Bill Clinton's most ardent critics, now Donald Trump's biggest supporters? Why are the people who demanded investigations into every corner of the Biden family business unconcerned with the Trump family business? And this is my problem of this binary thing.

It's like we point out the hypocrisy of other people without acknowledging that to call them hypocrites kind of makes yourself a hypocrite too. By all means, spalunk as deep as you want into the Biden family business stuff. if you're Comer or one of these guys, but to then dismiss any concerns about the Trump family business while the Saudis are building another Trump Tower right now

when this guy is president, that's BS. That is just as corrupt and hypocritical as anything you want to accuse the other people of. The tone of that really bothered me in Brett's piece. Steve? Yeah, well, I think you'll see why Jonah and I agree so much on this stuff. I mean, let me start by say, same thing that Jonah did about Brett.

I do think he's as close to a must-read columnist as I think anybody is. And he's interesting. He's interesting. He's not predictable. He's smart. He's sharp. He's a terrific writer. All of those things.

And I don't think, I have to say, I don't think, I mean, I don't know what, I didn't like this column. I don't know what compelled him to write something like this. But I do think there are a lot of people, including columnists that some of the major papers, who, who engage in occasional sort of writing his fan service. Like they want to be popular in this new moment. I don't think that's probably,

I mean, I don't know Brett well enough to get inside his head. I don't know writing this in the New York Times is a particularly popular move. Yeah, I don't think that's probably what pushed him to write this. But I do think, you know, in some ways he says things that I think are obvious. And other things, he says things, as Jonah points out, that he should have said eight years ago. And in some cases, to be fair to Brett, did say eight years ago. But I think it requires ignoring a lot of what we've seen. I mean, it was the case eight years ago.

Like Jonah's never Trump, never more. We published an editorial on the Weekly Standard expressing sentiments that were very similar to what Brett writes and said, we hope to be as wrong about Trump's fitness for office as we'd been about his electoral prospects and argued that anyone who cares about the country should want him to succeed if it means, you know, advancing American interests, implementing policies to improve the lives of Americans, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that the more relevant point for this moment is that Trump is who he is, he was elected last year, at least in part on the basis of promises that he made on both policy

and governance that, in my view, if carried out, would violate the rule of law, undermine our system of checks and balances, and threaten the rules-based international order. Like, that's just the reality here. He's nominated an unhinged conspiracy theorist to run the U.S. healthcare bureaucracy, someone to run the U.S. intelligence community who routinely accepted an amplified propaganda of dictators and adversaries over the findings of that intelligence community and an individual for FBI director to fairly and equally apply the law, who literally wrote a book called government gangsters that included an enemies list and who spent huge chunks of the

the past four years promising retribution and revenge on his political opponents. That is who Donald Trump is. It's how he ran for president. These are the earliest and I think most significant decisions that he's made will be living with them for four years. Beyond that, he's downplayed Putin's genocidal assault. He's called for Senate Republicans to abandon their advice and consent rule to embrace recess appointments. Twice in the last couple of days, he's basically called for a leading critic to be jailed. So yeah, I'm for it. You know what? Let's let's avoid the doom saying, let's avoid the exaggeration. Let's avoid hyperbole. But, you know, one of the things that we think we did here during the Biden administration was sort of warts and all, honest, straightforward assessment

of Joe Biden's presidency, including focusing a lot on his age and mental acuity at a time when it wasn't very popular to do that, particularly among people who made arguments against Donald Trump like the ones I'm making now. So we did that with Donald Trump in the last year of his first term. We did that with Joe Biden in the four years of his presidency. We'll do the same thing with Trump again. And I think that's a, it's a solid approach to covering Donald Trump. And with that, dear listeners, we are once again so grateful for you. We hope you have an incredible holiday season filled with hot chocolate with the tiny little marshmallows in them, lots of Christmas carols, even the annoying ones. I learned a new one, by the way, guys,

and I'm told that this is incredible that I have managed. I mean, I think my repertoire of Christmas songs, by the way, is I'll put it up against anyone's. I've got the classics. I've got the Frank Sinatra era stuff, the hymnal ones, the kids ones, right? I'm stretching all across the known universe of Christmas songs, I had never in my life heard must be Santa. And my kid is performing it at the Christmas pageant and learning it together. Who sings it? I don't know that I know it. Well, I'm not going to sing it for you right now. But Bob Dylan. Yes, yes, you are. Oh, yes, you are. You can't just throw it out there and not give people a taste. Look, it was, I'm going to read from

Wikipedia. It was released in 1960. The cover reached the number 40 on the UK singles charts. I don't know. I think the Bob Dylan one is probably the most famous. But Rafi also sings it if you're familiar with the... Oh. You're familiar with Rafi. Wow. Okay. That guy owes me money. I'm not made up my mind of what category I put the song in in terms of like let's put the songs into great, good, and annoying, I never want to hear it. It's not great, but it might be good. I'm not annoyed

yet, but I haven't heard it very much. The great Christmas songs are, oh, holy night and silent night. And I just don't think there's anything else that comes close to those. Does anyone want to fight me? Those are my two favorites. Really? I also like

Oh, come all you faithful. But those are, I think those are the two best. The goose bumps with, oh, holy night. Exactly. When it gets to the fall on your knees. It's so good. Almost regardless of who sings it.

Yeah. That's right. And although I feel like sometimes. Unless it's me, which is not goosebumps. You want it to like to just the floor to drop out. Yeah. Like you want to fall on your knees. Anyway, Jonah.

I just, I have to speak up for the heat miser song for the year without, from the year without Santa Claus. That's good. The new you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch on the latest version, which is sort of the hip-hop version, is strong. It's a bop. It's a bop. Wow.

I want to be very clear, all remakes, all remakes reboots of the Grinch are hot garbage and should be rejected entirely and basically just assumed not to exist. The original cartoon is awesome. The original book is awesome. Leave it there. Don't touch it. I don't know. I like the soundtrack of the new one.

That's fine. That's on songs I don't mean. I just mean the actual plot lines where like the Jim Carrey one where basically it turns out the only reason he was a Grinch was because the people of Whoville were mean to him. And that he had to be like the real lesson to stay true to yourself and not. like become a good like you don't want to try to make your heart grow three sizes too big because like that would be inauthentic and at odds with your Rousseauian true self and it just makes me want to be a frigging mass shooter. I hate it so much. Okay. Okay. I actually agree with you on the Grinch which I find concerning and Grinch like actually. But can we agree that

the original Rudolph is terrible makes no sense and that they haven't redone that one which is insane? They've redone that. Haven't they redone Rudolph a billion times? Like, they're animated Rudolph. Do you mean the... The stop action whatever, original Rudolph, to the extent they've remade it, they have not done a Hollywood production

remake of Rudolph. Maybe there's like some TVE ones, but I'm not aware of any, and I have looked because I hate original Rudolph. The screeching in that original Rudolph when the nose goes, the screeching And he's just like awful. And there's, to coin a term by the kids, there's some problematic stuff in it now.

It's not on the four. It's not like anything too major that probably kids even pick up on. But like, don't love it. Really? Like what? The relationship between Donner and his son Rudolph is not great. That's not okay. Because he's too demanding, doesn't love him, just.

Well, everyone's mean to Rudolph because he's differently abled, right? I mean, there's a lot going on there. There's a neurodiversity, like, element to this whole thing that's sort of like, why can't you just fit in? Yeah. You guys both sound like the kind of people who are, like, totally annoying to consume pop culture with, where you're always seeking deeper meaning, like, just go there and sit through it.

Like, be annoyed at the screeching of Rudolph's nose when he tries to fly, but like. The first time I watched Rudolph with my son. I just found it to be annoying. The 17th time I've watched Rudolph with my son, you're right. I'm looking for deeper meaning. I'm looking for anything to not lose my mind when they get to the island of misfit toys. And you're like, what is this song? And to be fair, I'm guilty of what I've just accused you guys of doing.

Sometimes. But like, don't you get sick. Sometimes I just, I don't want to think about the deeper meaning in some of this crap. Look, I'm a man of the people. I'm watching Landman right now. Like the controversy over Baby It's Cold Outside, wasn't that like the last year or two, a couple years ago? Everybody. That was like Me Too Movement era.

Like, no, Baby It's Cold Outside is an awesome, hilarious song. Yeah, like, light nothing, everybody. She's not getting roofied. She's making a joke about is there something in my drink. She's not saying there actually is something in her drink. It's a joke. We've all made that joke. So, like, somebody did.

It gets better than that. So, like, the great thing about Baby It's Cold Outside, not to like revisit Bush era leftism and whatnot. But what's his name, Alcatub? basically the founder of Islamic terrorist doctrine, the reason he hated America and found it too morally decadent was the lyrics to Baby It's Cold Outside. And that's what made him create

basically the school of Wahhabi jihadism against the West because he thought it was so grotesque. And then fast forward like 20 years, Barbara Streisand is talking about how come they can't make great songs like Baby It's Cold Outside anymore. And then fast forward five more years and feminists are taking the Khatub position

that this song is outrageous. They like missed the point of the song. The song is that she wants to stay. They think that she wants to leave and he's preventing her from leaving. The point is she wants to stay and she's like sort of throwing out these fake reasons

that she doesn't really mean. Like it's a fun song. Yeah, but in the director's cut of that song where the male voice, first you hear them locking all the locks on the door, it changes the tune considerably. That's dark.

That went dark fast. Well, you started with eating children and we've ended with there's a comedian who did a compare and contrast between baby it's cold outside when it was in the process of getting canceled and there were, you know,

op-eds on every op-ed page condemning the song. And any rap song? comparing it to directly to Wop. Yes. RDB. And like would read one line from Baby It's Cold outside and then read that. Like, where are the off-eds about that song? Or literally any song by a male hip-hop artist from, I don't know, like 1995 to 2005.

Not Christmas and Hollis. Also a great Christmas song. Okay. Well, listeners, I would apologize. but what's the point? We've done it before. We'll do it again. We hope you have a great holiday

and I'm sure the comment sections will be filled with thoughts on only this part, not the first hour. Happy New Year, y'all. I'm Mr. Heemiser. I'm Mr. Heemiser. I'm Mr. Son.