The Dispatch Podcast - Can We Call It Quits? | Roundtable

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Donald Trump has won Iowa and New Hampshire, but is Nikki Haley waiting until Super Tuesday before calling it quits? Sarah, Jonah, John, Steve, and David (Drucker) discuss the Haley campaign’s game plan heading into South Carolina: The Agenda: — RNC Moving to Declare Trump Its Presumptive Nominee — Trump’s veepstakes — Cui bono? Trump. — Coalition building and the politics of subtraction — The loyalty of the Trump base — Imagining a post-liberal and post-constitutional world — Voting by gut desires — Biden losing populist voters — No Labels, no future? Show Notes: — Wednesday’s Morning Dispatch — Mike and David’s reporting on Haley — WSJ: From ‘Never Trump’ to ‘Encore’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgher and we have a full crew here. Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, David Drucker and John McCormick to, I don't know, recap the primary for the Republican Party. David, let's start. start with you. Look, on the one hand, it feels like the Republican primary might be over. You had some reporting this week that we'll talk about as well. On the other hand, you talked to the Haley team and they're very clear that they saw New Hampshire as day one of their campaign in a lot of ways. And they really do seem to believe that they're continuing on well past South Carolina and Super Tuesday potentially. So why don't you tell us where you think the race is? Well, look, I don't

think we can say that this is a competitive race for the nomination with a straight face because there's been no Republican nominee in the modern era that hasn't won in either Iowa and the caucuses or New Hampshire in that first primary, right? It hasn't happened. And when you look at the establishment support that Trump has, the grassroots support that Trump has, the polling support for Trump, you just have to say that he's an overwhelming frontrunner. However, it's interesting to watch. because Nikki Haley is basically saying, I don't care what the rules are and I don't care what history tells us

and I don't care how bleak it looks for my campaign. I feel like I'm finally peaking. Money's rushing in. My support among voters is going up, maybe because everybody else has dropped out and I've outlasted them, but whatever. And I'm going to go to South Carolina and compete. And I do think that she has enough money,

particularly the way she is very careful with how she spends her money. and her Super PAC, SFA, Inc. is also this way, that she can get at least through Super Tuesday. And I think that what people should do is, you know, stop focusing on what she can't accomplish and try and figure out what she's trying to accomplish, which may not necessarily be this wild belief that I'm going to come back from the dead and surprise everybody, but I'm going to accumulate a lot of delegates. And there may be reasons why she wants to do that. and there may be reasons why she's not interested in positioning for 2028.

And mentioned briefly that story that you had earlier this week about where the RNC is on all of this. Right. So the Republican National Committee was circulating a draft resolution that would have declared Donald Trump the presumptive nominee. And it's permissible under the rules to do this, even though he would still not be the presumptive nominee, in fact, until he wins enough delegates. You need enough primaries and caucuses to be held to win enough delegates. He's clearly on path to do that. South Carolina is a winner-take-all-state, for instance. He's likely to win it, even if Haley shortens the margin and only loses close. So David Bossie, who was a co- or a deputy campaign manager for him in 2016, is a longtime ally of his.

He happens to be a Republican National Committeeman, an RNC committee man from Maryland. He's been on the committee for quite some time now, and he was circulating this proposal, which we were able to report on Thursday afternoon. And the plan theoretically was for the committee to vote on it at next week's winter business meeting in Las Vegas. My sources this morning were telling me that that thing is now dead. We saw Trump pull a support for it yesterday, some hours after our story broke.

And the important part about this is really not so much the proposal or the fact that it's now dead, and again, what my sources are telling me, but that Trump really wants to just be the nominee already so he can focus on Biden, even though he's so far ahead of Haley in all of the important metrics, it bothers him. It's sort of infuriating him that she won't go away. And we see that the RNC is prepared to get behind him. And look, he's a former president. Most of the voting 168 members of the Republican National Committee are now

versus where they were eight years ago. These are now newer people and Trump people and said that I think they were more than happy to do this except for some holdouts, particularly in states where there are primaries and caucuses to come and they want their moment of glory in the sun. But this likely would have passed. This is where I think I was confused

is because it's pretty clear to me just doing a informal Sarah whip count. There were enough votes for this to pass at the RNC Winter meeting because there's only these 168 votes. voting members of the RNC. So Trump would have gotten what he wanted this resolution. And yet the resolution has been withdrawn because Trump said he didn't want the resolution. So if he could have gotten the resolution and now he won't get the resolution, why would Trump say let's not have

the resolution? I think because it made him look weak and scared and there was so much blowback. And listen, Trump's the guy that's always screaming about rigged elections and fixed elections. and what he was trying to do was bypass the normal process. And so if you're really on track to have this big victory, which, by the way, I think he is, I mean, it's just the objective reporting of where things stand today is that that's the case, one way or the other.

What are you so afraid of? And it just was a bad look. And Trump does not like to look weak. He doesn't like things that don't look good. And, you know, Haley was actually raising and is raising a lot of money off of his threats to blackball her donors, his threats to sort of excommunicate this wing of the party from the party if they stick with her.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Susie Wiles and Chris Lassevita, his two top advisors said, hey, listen, we're going to pound her into the dirt anyway. Let's look magnanimous. You'll look like, you know, you'll look like you're not who you are, basically. And so that's why I think Trump reversed course. I also think there was some pushback within the RNC, not a lot, but enough that it just became a problem. and I don't think they wanted to see a vigorous debate at the RNC winter meeting where some people were getting up opposing the resolution and others were for it.

John, I want to bring you in here. You've also been on the ground in some of these early states. You know, fight with David. Where is David wrong? David is perfectly right. He is totally right. No, I don't know. Where can I get some disagreement here?

No, I think David and Mike were totally right that, you know, Nikki Haley's team, they say, hey, we've got a chance, we're going to stick it out. I mean, if Rhonda Santis had finished at 44% in New Hampshire, you better believe he would fight on, even if the odds were long and stacked against him. So I think that totally makes sense. I mean, I think that their team is totally realistic. I don't think that they have some fantasy that, you know, there's just going to be some huge change. I think they're going to keep fighting as long as they think that there's a chance.

You know, one question I was interested in is something that they have, you know, they've dismissed routinely. They say, no, we have no interest in the vice presidential nomination. Nikki Halley herself has said that's quote off the table. But, you know, if you listen to her closely, she's not ruling, she has not been Sherman-esque. You know, things that are taken off the table can easily be put back on a table. And listening to her on the stump, you know, on the internet, she's sort of becoming this never-Trump heroin that she's going to become Chris Christie or Liz Cheney maybe in a couple days. And who knows?

Honestly, in the next few weeks, this thing could get so nasty. Maybe she will surprise us in that direction. But listening to her on the stump, I mean, she says things like Biden is dangerous. He's taking us on a dangerous road to socialism. Even when she challenges Trump's, you know, his mental decline, she says that he is, quote, mentally fit. So I don't think that she's really crossed any lines so far where this is totally insane. And I think the logic from Trump's perspective would be that Nikki Haley has something to give him that, you know, and Elise Stephan cannot, which is votes, that Nikki Haley is obviously appealing to independent.

and moderates, and, you know, this election could end up being very close at the end and that she would be a benefit to him in a way that the others wouldn't. He wanted John Kasich back in 2016 and was rebuffed. He ended up settling on Mike Pence, who had endorsed Ted Cruz and helped shore him up with church-going evangelicals. That was a real liability for Trump back in 2016. So, again, some speculation, but I would say informed speculation and an analysis of what she is saying and has not said so far. So I think that's kind of an interesting angle. I think David is right, that they're more,

what they, what they're going to say in this, we've got a chance, we're going to a rack of delegates, who knows what will happen with, you know, the legal stuff and this guy is almost 80 years old. But I think that still really is a live possibility and that it's interesting worth examining that possibility. Steve, something I've always found interesting is the asymmetry that Trump brings to any election cycle.

Because for our whole lifetime and well before that, the point of a presidential campaign was to put together a coalition that could get you to 51%. And there were different ways to do that, right? There were policy arguments to make, retail politics stuff to do, a vice president to pick, who would maybe bring a coalition in as well. And Trump, to some extent, through that playbook out the window, and instead of trying to build a coalition and meet those people where they are, he was over. over here saying, nope, this is where I am, who wants to come with me? And it was a very different way and, you know, both successful and not successful, right? He didn't win the popular vote in 2016, but he won the electoral college. At 2020, he obviously lost. But man, for someone who's not sitting there piecing together a 51% coalition, the come follow me has worked pretty well for him. So I'm curious what you think about. John's point on now will he think about his vice presidential pick as a coalition building exercise? I mean, it wouldn't necessarily be characteristic of Donald Trump.

It wouldn't be the way that he's done things. I do think he picked Mike Pence in part to shore up his evangelical base at a time when, you know, it felt like maybe evangelicals wouldn't support him to the extent that they do now. But I would say one of the defining characteristics of the MAGA movement is the willingness of its leader. and many of its top spokesman, whether real or de facto, to not care about coalitions and, in fact, say out loud that they don't care about coalitions. And we have the Carrey Lake comment that Jonah has mentioned here before where she basically says to McCain, Arizona Republicans, we don't want you. Don't vote for me. You have similar comments.

Marjorie Taylor Green made a comment this week saying, in effect, If you're not super MAGA, you're not in our movement. We don't want your support. Donald Trump put out this truth social post this week in which he said, anyone who gives to Nikki Haley is now out of the MAGA movement. We won't accept your support. Don't come crawling back to us. So you hear these, it is sort of anti-politics, right?

I mean, this is the opposite of what most people do. I wouldn't say that he's been successful in doing that. On the one hand, Trump has had the effect of reshaping demographically what the various electorates look like, right? Republicans are now more non-college educated whites than they were before. He has expanded the number of Hispanics broadly in the Republican coalition. He's done well with black men. But in terms of building a longer, more sustainable coalition of the kind that you hear his hype men describe, like J.D. Vance and others, which doesn't exist. And when you look at actual elections, 2018, he lost exactly the kind of people that we're talking about with respect to Nikki Haley, suburban voters, traditional Republican voters. The soccer mom vote has sort of fled.

2018, 2020, 2020, 2021, and 2022, this has not proved successful for Donald Trump. The question is whether he can do it in 2024. I guess I'm skeptical. Like John's right to say, hey, we should hit pause on this, on this sort of growing narrative that Nikki Haley is going to embody the spirit of never Trump because she's been here before, right? I mean, we've had Nikki Haley on all sides of this. She's been, she's worked for the man. She's condemned him in the harshest terms.

She came back to him. She's condemned him again. She came back to him again. She distanced herself from him. So I'm open to her ending up sort of anywhere in that, in that spectrum. But I don't know that that would be enough. I mean, if you are somebody who's disgusted by this choice, this Biden-Trump choice. And as we've said, that's a majority of the country does not like.

this choice. And you have concerns about Donald Trump, either because of what you saw in the post-election period where he lied about winning in the January 6th moment where he incited violence after that, where he's essentially campaigned openly as an authoritarian. Are you going to say, even if you're incredibly frustrated with Joe Biden, they're concerned about his age or all of these things, are you going to wake up on election day and say, boy, I think Donald Trump is a risk to the continuation of the Republic. But if he's got Nikki Haley, I'm in. I just don't see that there are that many voters that way.

All right, Jonah. So I have a slightly different take on all of this. I mean, look, I agree with pretty much everything that I've heard, but I think that the, let's put it this way, I think psychological explanations of Donald Trump have more value than political explanations. And one of the things that we know about Donald Trump is he craves,

the ability to pick your adjective, win over, humiliate, you know, somewhere on that spectrum, people who... Those are verbs, dude. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. It's probably the best rebuttal you've ever had to make. And so, you know, you see what he did to Tim Scott on, you know, election night in New Hampshire.

Just explain what he did. Oh, yeah. So, like, you know, at his quote-unquote victory speech where he comes up and vows revenge against Nikki Haley and goes full festivists on everything, he has Tim Scott go up and sing his praises after he first asked Vivek Ramoswami to do it. And then basically, you know, humiliates him by,

first of all, by having him there like Keelroy over his shoulder for the shot the entire time was pretty terrible. But then he's like, you know, Nikki Haley appointed you and you're endorsing me. You must really hate her. And you could see the hamster wheels in Tim Scott's head going, this is like so contrary to everything I stand for. And it makes me seem like such a jerk that he finally has to say, he interrupts Trump and says, it's just that I love you. And, you know, you couldn't hear it on the mic, but it implied was, and I love your musk.

And it was just this utterly humiliating way to treat Tim Scott. And, but he does this with everybody. He loves the idea of forcing people. You know, he's had episodes with Romney in the past, of proving that he alpha-dogged people. And I remember his first joint interview with Mike Pence where he gave Mike Pence permission to answer a question

and permission to take a drink of water, right? I mean, like, he loves doing that dominant thing. And so it would break my heart if Nikki Haley is doing all of this to be the Trump running mate. But this is the best strategy to become Trump's running mate is to convince Trump that she is a credible critic who he can,

bend to her will and humiliate in the process and prove to everybody that he is the leader of the PAC. Now, as a political strategy, I'm with Steve. I don't think it's particularly smart for Trump to pick Nikki Haley because I think there are very few votes that he needs that Nikki Haley can deliver for him. She will completely sell out her credibility if she does this. And the only way it makes sense for Nikki Haley to be his running mate is if you think he's not going to win, or if you think he is going to be removed from the ticket or removed from office, either by an act of God or an act of Congress. But to be, to go four years as Donald Trump's running mate, she'll never be liked by the MAGA crowd. She'll always be vilified by

them. Steve Bannon will always say she's a fifth column in the White House. And at some point, Donald Trump will expect Nikki Haley to do the kinds of things he expected Mike Pence to do. And if she does them, she will be a villain in American history for all time. And if she doesn't do them, she will be humiliated and completely anathematized by this crowd. So I just personally don't think it's smart for her to do it. I think it would be smart for him to do it. I think it would be smart for him to do it because it sends the signal and all these kinds of things. But I think the reasons for it would be psychological more than they would be political. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people

you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of

families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Okay. So let's do then just a quick round the horn on whether, how do I phrase this? Like the Republican primary may be over in terms of who the nominee is going going to be, but maybe the Republican primary isn't over in terms of what Nikki Haley has to say, if I can summarize Drucker's point. From here, we have Nevada, which isn't really doing a thing, but that'll exist, I guess. South Carolina, Super Tuesday. Are we still going to be talking about the Republican primary, or is everyone basically going to shift to the general? And you can separate

us from everyone else if you'd like. Steve, I'll start with you on this. Yeah, I mean, I think people are likely to shift pretty quickly to the general pending the outcome in South Carolina, right? I mean, I think there's not been a ton of polling in South Carolina. The polling that there has been shows Donald Trump in an utterly dominant position. The latest poll, I think, was an Emerson poll that has them up almost 30. There was polling far back as October from CNN that had him up 31. So, you know, could that somehow flip for Nikki Haley because it's her home state? it's just hard to see how that happens. And if she's running a distant second, at a certain point, I think, you know,

even her donors and her diehard supporters are going to say sort of what's the point. I think it's fun, you know, I'm enjoying this, right? And by all accounts, she's enjoying this. She's decided that she's going to really take it to them. You know, I know we've had some folks talk to people in her world who say, you know, this has become a little bit personal. She's pretty frustrated at Donald Trump and his team having resurfaced these allegations that she had an extramarital affair. He's taking these shots at her.

She's capitalizing on it, literally, well, not literally, but figuratively turning those shots into dollars, really having fun fundraising. So I think it's enjoyable if you are somebody who doesn't think that Donald Trump is, you know, good for American politics. should be the next president. This is fun, but it is hard to see how it ends in anything other than Donald Trump winning the nomination at this point, unless, you know, outside events intervene. And, John, there's, look, there's some argument that Donald Trump benefits from this as well. He wants to continue to be the center of attention. He doesn't want Biden in the limelight. So, yeah, you have these criminal cases. You're going to have the Supreme Court stuff coming up. You've got the E. Gene Carroll case where he testified this week, albeit briefly.

And to some extent, then, Nikki Haley sort of is another way to keep that keepy-uppy ball in the air without giving Biden any oxygen. And by the way, point of personal privilege, but doesn't it seem strange that Donald Trump keeps orchestrating these hits on rivals that have to do with them having affairs? Like, huh? It's a real crazy pill's moment, right? I mean, again, and for those who are not familiar, in 2016, there was a National Inquirer story that Ted Cruz had five mistresses. My picture was one of them. My name wasn't in it, but I, this is a real sticking point for me. But when it talked about the other women, it, you know, was like, sultry, sexy, blah, blah, blah. And then it like got to describing me. And it was like school marmish, bookish.

And I was like, wait a second. This is deeply insulting. If you're going to include me. You never can trust the National Enquirer, can you, Sarah? Some of us like the sexy librarian thing, Sarah. So don't dismiss it completely out of hand. All right. Colin H.R.

Well, one of the other women, I won't say her to, she was a speechwriter, and it was a job that I had actually been approached about for a different senator. And I thought, man, if I had taken that job for a speaker, I could have been in this National Enquirer story. Like, I missed my shot. But, you know, where Donald Trump made a huge mistake on that one, of course, is that pretty much every reporter in town dismissed the notion that Ted Cruz could have five mistresses. Honestly, I think if he had just gone with one, it would have been more plausible potentially, like, you know, the sort of even a blind squirrel, yada, yada. But it's, again, it's sort of almost Trump projecting.

Anyway, John, back to the point, which is, what about this keepy-upy idea, that Donald Trump actually may want and benefit from a continued Nikki Haley, not, you know, not going to actually challenge his nomination, but nevertheless, staying in the news. Well, you know, David probably has numbers better than I do, but there is a history of high turnout in one party's primary as being good for it in the end that people do show up. Now, does it become so acrimonious that, again, these are all independents who hate Trump, that it doesn't really tell us much in the way that previous contested primaries. Yeah, I could see that.

But yeah, he loves getting up there and ranting and I'm the winner and he's on TV. I mean, you asked earlier whether we'll still be talking about this come Super Tuesday. I do think that if Nikki Haley even puts up decent-ish numbers in South Carolina, she's going to stick it out another 10 days through Super Tuesday, I haven't done a close examination of everything, but there actually are some states that are better demographically for her. For example, in Virginia, the demographics have turned out. 2016 were 60% college-educated, 40% non-college. Now, you rerun those numbers based on the turnout in

New Hampshire with Nikki Haley winning college-educated 56-41, losing non-college 33% to 66%. You end up with a race that Trump still wins, you know, something like 51% to 47%. And obviously these things, so, you know, it's a four-point gap and things aren't static and you don't know who exactly is going to show up. But I don't know. I mean, if the play is for delegates, why not trying to actually win a state? Well, look, I think one thing that we should consider is that this primary, now down to two people, which we haven't seen this early in a long time, also has some unusual dynamics because Trump is going to be 78 years old in June, and even though he doesn't present in any way like Joe Biden physically and doesn't have the same age issues politically that Biden has, he's going to be 78 years old. And he also has a bunch of court cases and indictments hanging over him. Now, politically, he's all been good for him. But I see a scenario, and I see a scenario in part based on reporting Michael Warren and I did in New Hampshire together in a story we published

early Wednesday morning for the dispatch, that Haley may view this as an opportunity to accumulate a significant amount of delegates, some significant amount, not enough to win, particularly if she runs out of money right after Super Tuesday, but that by accumulating these delegates, should anything unusual happen to Donald Trump that we would never be talking about? We never have conversations about, gee, what could happen between January and June? We don't have those conversations because they've never been worth having. But because they're actually worth having and considering, she accumulates a lot of delegates, and on the off chance that something does happen, she would roll into a convention fight or debate with the only other candidate with

claim to the nomination because of delegates and longevity in the race for the nomination. And given that the money is still flowing in, given that it's early, and given that there is some market for her in the Republican Party, not a majority, but some plurality. why does she have to get out and she just may simply i i think sometimes we forget there's a human element to this because of you know what we do for a living but she's like why do i have to just stop like why and we know all the reasons why she's supposed to but what mike and i gathered in talking to people around her was yeah we just don't have to and we have different motivations than people think we do, even if, you know, maybe later we'd have then different motivations

again. And so we're just going to fight this out and see what happens. Jonah, final word to you on Nikki Haley. So just so listeners understand what Sarah's referring to is David froze up for us a few times, but this software records locally. So you'll hear many of the pearls of wisdom that we will only get afterwards. Summing up on Nikki Haley, I think we haven't really talked about the the real significance of of Nikki Haley in this, which is not about her personally, but about the fact that the single most important litmus test in the GOP now isn't any policy issue, isn't any moral issue, isn't any foreign policy thing. It's purely whether

or not, you are all in on Trump as a infallible leader of the Republican Party. That is the central issue now. And if you criticize him, if you disagree with him, if you don't believe that the election was stolen, if you say he's lying, if any of those things, that is the definition of Rhino now. It used to be when we were growing up that Rhino meant that you you were like Arlen Specter, that you were squishy on abortion or you were squishy on, you know, tax cuts or any of that kind of stuff. And now it simply means squishy on Donald Trump. And that is no way to build, as Steve was alluding to earlier, a winning coalition. It is the politics of subtraction all over the place. And I think, you know, we didn't really do any

post-mortem on Ronda Santos or anything, but like this is. is this is the, why a lot of these campaigns, I think, imploded. Look, Donald Trump might have won no matter what. Probably would have won no matter what. But the idea, you had a bunch of candidates who thought you could compromise on adulation of Donald Trump, which pissed off a bunch of people on the party who don't want that compromise. and um and did nothing to win over the people who are all in on Donald Trump that's the schism and it made the people who have other priorities than sniffing Donald Trump's throne

um look weak and and um vacillating it's one of the things that undid Ron DeSantis and um and it's I think it all but guarantees that if it is is a truly a two-person race, Joe Biden wins. If it's not a two-person race, which I don't think it will be, there's a very good shot that Donald Trump can win. In 2020, 2% of the vote went for third-party candidates. There's no way it's going to be that low. And most of those third-party candidates,

I think right now you have to assume come out of Joe Biden's coalition, which is much larger than Donald Trump's, but much more fragile and much more fractious. And that's the lesson of this primary. And those are the currents that Nikki Haley is trying to surf in. And I think she doesn't get the kind of credit that she deserves for being the only successful candidate to gain support throughout the primaries other than Donald Trump. And everyone thinks it's an accident or all these kinds of things. But I just don't know what the end game is.

And I fear that it's to be a running mate, which I think would just be a bad idea all the way around. So, Jonah, I think you lay out a near perfect case for the case you're laying out in terms of... Great. All right. Next topic. But I do want to at least provide what I think is the alternative version that, again, I'm not convinced is more correct than yours, which yours is really just the coalition building argument, why you build coalitions in politics and why the person who doesn't build a good coalition loses. but the alternative is yep but Donald Trump's not trying to build a coalition and so you keep saying he's not doing a good job building a coalition duh because that's not what he's trying to do and when you're not trying to build a coalition and instead you say here's where I'm headed come with me or stay home but we're not changing to your path and we're not compromising and

we're not meeting you halfway we're not meeting you you you know five percent of the way not even two percent of the way for some people that will actually be in and of itself meaningful and so they'll respect you more because you're not willing to compromise to get their vote versus the guy who's building a coalition is willing to meet everyone halfway sometimes he's willing to meet them 95% of the way and Donald Trump's like I won't even meet you 5%. And so that's the anti-coalition building argument that yeah so when you know Marjorie Taylor Green says we don't want you you're definitely to us, the coalition side would be like, okay, you just lost those people. But the non-coolition argument is, no, no, that's actually how you're going to get those people because they'll realize

that, you know, like a used car salesman or something like, you're not here to make a deal with them. They can get on board or they cannot. And again, Jonah, I think you're probably right that there's a reason that coalitions have worked forever and that this experiment will turn out to be a failure as it has been, as I pointed out. He lost the popular vote in 2016, the midterms. Both of them didn't go well. 2020, he lost. But I just wanted to provide that alternative.

And I agree with you. I mean, I totally agree with you. Except I think, and I don't think you were doing this, but people could make the assumption that you were ascribing strategic sophistication to the things Marjor Taylor Green says, which no one should ever do. I mean, other than a land war in Southeast Asia

or getting into a contest to the death with a Sicilian, that's like the third grade is blunder. But it comes intuitively, right? So, like, and again, maybe I'm just, I'm having some toddler problems over here, right? If you give a mouse a cookie. Yeah. If you give a mouse a cookie, he wants a glass of milk.

Right. You know, that's Biden's whole problem in some ways. But it's also how he's going to build a coalition. It's why you're calling it a larger coalition, but a more fragile one. And Donald Trump's like, I will not give that mouse an effing cookie no matter what and some mice are going to be like well okay i respect that by the way sarah to

your point i interviewed donald trump in in the oval in 2019 and i was asking him about his reelection and you know was he concerned about i didn't use these terms but it was kind of like don't you need a bigger coalition don't you need more people and what he told me was that his base is bigger than we think, bigger than I think. And you could tell that he was very keyed in toward believing that the way he wins is a base-oriented strategy. I think the problem for him and people that support him comes if they care about policy outcomes, because as we saw, his greatest, his best policy achievements, his most significant ones in his term were all based on it, all through executive action. And so none of the immigration changes he made, none of the foreign policy

changes he made were legislated, were treaties, were things that couldn't easily be undone on day one by Joe Biden. And that's the point, by the way, Haley's been making this point, but it's a point to be made nonetheless that when you do win with a big enough coalition, as long as you have the stones to go forward with legislation, you can actually fix things and change things in a permanent way that are really hard to undo. And so many Americans are upset because Congress isn't solving problems because the government isn't solving problems. And part of that is because a president comes in and solves a problem for a day and a half and then his successor, his successor, just undoes it. And so problems haven't been solved and people remain frustrated.

And it's a vicious cycle. And so coalition politics is actually a way to fix this big problem we have that has fueled all this populism, but, you know, very few people seem to want to do it. I think, Sarah, if it's to your point, I mean, there's real historical evidence here, right? I mean, if you look at the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, one of the sort of big takeaways was that Republicans were shooting themselves in the foot by being too tough on, on border issues. And you had Sean Hannity famously say in the days after that election that he was going to be for amnesty. You had to be for amnesty.

we have to win Hispanic votes or the party's going to collapse. You had virtually every Republican consultant and pollster making some version of the Demography as Destiny case, right? Like you have to do these things. You have to make these policy choices to win over this growing Hispanic population of the party's done. And Donald Trump, of course, comes in, does exactly the opposite. It's more confrontational on the issues where he's supposed.

to be compromising. And as I said, that the share of Hispanics for Republican voters has increased. Now, I don't think Donald Trump, to Jonah's point, I mean, this wasn't a strategic choice. Like, I don't think Donald Trump sat down and said, I am going to make the following policy arguments on the border so that I can increase the share of Hispanic voters that Republicans have. I think he did the sort of to hell with it. I'm going to say, say what I believe, and, you know, in his case, to the extent that there was strategic thinking involved, I think it probably was, to David's point, I can grow the base. I can grow the sort of Republican base here. And whatever his thinking going into it, we can see what's happened. So I think

your point is a good one. I think the real question is, at what point does that end? Like, it It is, I think people found Donald Trump refreshing because he's not doing this kind of coalition building. He's not doing this kind of strategic thinking. I mean, you know, there's a, there is news that's broken since we've been on this podcast recording that the Biden administration is offering a temporary pause of liquid national gas facility approvals. And immediately, I think anybody who hears this news is following these things closely, says, ah, this is Biden pandering to young voters concerned about climate change because he's losing young voters who are concerned about Gaza. And I expect that one of the things we're going to see from Joe Biden over the next 10

months is just a series of this kind of aggressive pandering to the young voters who are skeptical of Joe Biden because they don't agree with him on Gaza and Israel. So I think, I mean, I think we're likely to see massive. giveaways on student loan issues like anything that you could do to appeal to people no no more like i think way more anything that he can do to to appeal to young people he he thinks he's losing who they think are key to this coalition he'll do so Biden and frankly most of the rest of the political world practices this coalition politics in this kind of naked open and aggressive way that i think a lot of people strike a lot of voters as gross and trump doesn't do that and i do

think that was one of his appeals was sort of the not to hell with it i'm going to do what i think anyway and that does i think people do come around to that now i i don't think that's going to work this time because he's driven so many people out of that broader coalition but yes i i agree with all that and i agree that that's part of the appeal of donald trump um the only time i ever got a note from him thanking me for a column was when i pointed out that he didn't sound like a focus grouped guy and it was so funny because he was like i had also said in this column that that that the New York Post had always been his pool of narcissists that he'd like to see his reflection in.

And he circles the next paragraph, talking about how he doesn't sound like he's poll tested and cuts it out of the New York Post and sends it to me and says, way to go, Jonah or something like that. So he hears what he wants to hear, particularly in the New York Post. Anyway, be that as a may.

I think the distinction here is, it's kind of like this is like the difference between minor leagues and major leagues or some other kind of, you know, this be bold and great forces will come to your aid, don't bend, don't compromise thing, appeals to a huge, huge chunk of the GOP electorate, right? That is his superpower. He's always had vastly more power to destroy Republicans than Democrats.

He's always had vastly more power to make it a Trump party, but not a majority party, right? Because in the sphere and the microcosm of GOP politics, he's the 800-pound gorilla. But then he thinks in the bigger pond, you know, it, sorry, that's a really mixed metaphor. But he thinks in the major leagues or whatever that it is a, that he has the same power. And it turns out that in national presidential electorate politics, the things that make him so powerful in the GOP make him weak. in the national electorate. It's, again, he's the salesman who thinks, yeah, I lose money on every sale,

but I'll make it up in volume. He turns off more voters at a national electorate than he attracts. He attracts all sorts of people on the base, all sorts of people in Republican Party, all sorts of people. He exploits the vestigial loyalty of party people on the Republican Party

who are like, well, I'll have no tribe. I'll be homeless. I'll have to subscribe to the dispatch if I get kicked out of the Republican Party. And so they cave and they sign up and they get on board the Trump train. That can work inside the coalitions of the GOP. I just don't think it works at scale with a national electorate in a two-person race. But if RFK is running, depending on who else is running, I could very easily see Biden losing to

because Trump's coalition is smaller, but it's harder. It's more insoluble. And so going into an electorate, going into an election where you only need 44% of the electorate, he wins. And that's the situation. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business,

business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero 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.

So there was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week that was entitled from Never Trump to Encore. And, you know, subhead, in 2019, I wanted him impeached. Now I've become convinced that Biden is worse. And Jonah, a little bit, and Steve, I guess, to this overall point,

you know, Steve, your argument is that sort of like, come with me is going to work well on the front end, but it wears over time and you just start losing people. But again, there's this reverse argument that actually, sometimes it takes a while for your toddler to start kicking the floor and that eventually

they give up and they do whatever you say. And this op-ed, I'll be honest, was not the most persuasive thing in the world by any means, but someone's telling you what they're going to do. And they're saying, I was a never-trumper who's now voting for Trump. And it's not the only person who I know of like that. I know other people who did not vote for Trump in 16 or 20 who are going to vote for him in 2024. And I have to wonder, you know, they will try to tell you the reasons and, you know, Joe Biden's worse, the people he's hired are catastrophic for the economy, all those things. But at the end, I do wonder whether some of it is they have come around to realize, like, nope, he's not meeting you halfway, he's not compromising with you. And I've seen a little of

this play out at the Supreme Court as well. You have the chief justice, for instance, who has long said his priority is to build the largest coalition possible for. any given case at the court. And that's, at least reportedly, how you get the Obamacare case where he switches his vote, comes out on the other side to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare as a tax. When he was the swing justice, right, he had back in the day voted to uphold an abortion restriction in Texas. That same restriction comes up in Louisiana when he's now the swing justice. He votes to strike down the abortion restriction. And it's this idea that, that if everyone knows that you're out coalition building,

they can hold a gun to your head, right? Because you're willing to do something to get their vote, their, you know, buy-in of some kind. And then you've got the Thomas Gorsuch-Elito folks out there that are like, nope, there's nothing you can do to us. We're not interested. We'll go this alone if we need to. And so they're not held hostage, so to speak.

And so to watch this play out in a few different institutions, is becoming pretty fascinating to me and something that maybe we can revisit down the road. Well, I think that's, I mean, look, I mean, I think there's something to that. I just, I guess I see a limit to it. Like, I don't, I'm, I will be shocked if, if the day after the election, the night of the election,

the week after the election, we're looking back at exit polls and we see any real sizable group of Clinton, Biden, Trump voters. So Clinton in 16, Biden in 20, Trump in 24. I will just be shocked if that's the case. And I say this is somebody who thinks Joe Biden's been an awful president. I think he's been a very, very bad president. But to jump in on Trump at this point,

but I think you have to be, you have to believe that you have to sort of accepted that we are in our post-liberal, almost post-constitutional world. and that this is now nothing but power politics, and you're going to pick, quote, unquote, your side. And Trump is going to pound heads more than anybody else on your side. I talked to one of these voters on exactly that question, Steve. And again, sort of broadly summarizing, what I think this person would say is, no,

the Trump presidency, the possibilities of a Trump presidency are on a pretty big spectrum, maybe a larger spectrum than what we've ever seen from a potential president. Biden's is a pretty narrow spectrum. You know what Biden's going to do. You know what a second Biden term will look like by and large. Trump, look, there's the better end of the spectrum

where it looks a lot like Trump won. And, you know, there's good people in a bunch of these agencies and administration positions. And, yeah, maybe Congress doesn't get a lot done, but you get the executive acts that at least move the ball forward on some stuff, some good regulations maybe. and yes, on the other end of the spectrum is the really bad stuff, the like really, really dark stuff. And so I'm making a gamble between the sure thing that Biden is bad or the upside of Trump,

which is better than the sure thing of Biden, and I'm betting that the downside version of Trump is just far less likely. And if you wanted to make them all equal, you've got the, you know, one-third Trump is better, one-third Biden bad, one-third Trump bad, and then you pick Trump. Now, I think they would say that they think the likelihood of the Trump bad part of the spectrum, like the really bad part, is very low, like 5%. And so, again, they're just thinking of this like a Vegas bet. So do you that, I mean, there's a sincere question. I'm not trying to be snarky. Do you think they're really thinking of this? I mean, you actually think that this is a reasoning process that they're like got a piece of paper and a two by two box and they're figuring all this of it. Or is it this is something that we've seen quite a bit of in the last. nine years. People, I am now in the Sarah Isger patented lizard brain explains all things.

Yeah, I was going to say, you feel like you're making my argument here. Yeah, so like, well, because like, it just, this whole argument that you're presenting here feels like a retroactive rationalization for a gut desire and not like, you know, these people are Vulcans who have just done all the cost benefit. analysis and come out with this sort of decision. But I think that's totally fair. And look, I think, look, I've talked to voters in the past couple of weeks, Trump supporters, and they just look at it as, in a sense, cold hard policy on what, right?

Like they just, on the issues that matter to them, I was speaking to people that are in the, in the energy sector. And from a regulatory standpoint, Biden has been very bad for them, therefore their pocketbooks, and Trump will be the exact opposite. I've spoken to voters who, like his policy, And when I say, what about the things that people worry about with him, such as, you know, the dictator stuff and all of that? And they just, like, it's not true. But he's going to serve his term and he'll be termed out and he'll go away and he's not going to destroy. And these are, these are voters that have been lifelong Republicans, not necessarily just, you know, attracted to the coalition under Trump. And so there is a different view on Trump from many of his supporters from people not deeply enmeshed in politics and government. And all. all of the things that we talk about. And it makes, you know, from that point of view,

if you put them yourself in their position, they're making a rational decision about who they think would be the better president. Man, we've stayed way too long on this, but I do want to touch on one other thing that Jonah talked about was that, you know, Jonah's prediction, if it were Trump versus Biden, but that it's not going to be.

I think the conventional wisdom right now is that any third party bid would take more from Biden's coalition because it's more fragile because it's larger for all the reasons that you've all said so far and so any third party attempt that actually has wind in its sales

will hurt Biden and help Trump. Is there any argument on the other side? Is there anything you'll see where a third party bid hurts Trump, John? I could try to argue that it will be easier for Biden to message, to bring back the Kennedy defections back into the fold by pointing to his kookiness and his craziness, and that basically you could end up in a situation where the Kennedy voters are just this sort of, you know, conspiracy theorist type voter who

actually are taking from Trump. Now, that's not what we're seeing right now, but I could, I could see that happening in the long run. I mean, I think the best, no, I mean, I think in the spirit of sort of our approach to the 2024 election from the beginning, anything can happen. So we should be open to any possibilities and we should be reluctant to draw straight line projections on almost anything, which is why even as we talk about Nikki Haley in South Carolina, I think you have to say, well, boy, the polling is really bad for her. The race is really tough. This seems like an impossible hill to climb. And yet we're not going to close off any possible outcomes. On this, I mean, I think that the,

very simple case that there is a coalition of non-Trump or anti-Trump voters that is higher than 50% plus one. And the more candidates you have, the more options these non-Trump voters have, the less likely it is that Joe Biden prevails. Having said that, yeah, is there a way that you can imagine somebody making some of the kinds of populist arguments or critiques of Biden that Trump is making and eating into some of his support. I don't think they're going to peel off the sort of diehard MAGA folks, but peeling off some of his support, sure, I think that's possible. I think the better case for being enthusiastic about a no labels style candidate is these candidates

are both awful. This is an election that's unworthy of the American people. And as long as there's going to be chaos in the following 10 months and probably the next four years, we might as well have some good chaos. And good chaos would be a bigger debate, the kinds of election that would involve other discussions of other issues than these two guys settle on. If it were a, you know, center right challenge on the no labels ticket. And we know that no labels have said they prefer to have a Republican up top their ticket. You know, would that person help shape the debate for what would be a post-Trump Republican party or a post-Trump center right in the country? I think those are the reasons to potentially be enthusiastic about that kind of a challenge, much less than

that it's likely to succeed out its own terms. Two last quick points. One is, you know, if you believe as I do that the better prism for thinking about Trump and Trumpism is psychological rather than political or theological, part of the strategy could be simply that Nikki staying in forces errors out of Trump, that he has, gets so enraged, he says things about her as a woman that turn off even more voters, that make him look desperate, that make him look unhinged, and that then has its own. knock on sort of catalytic effects

and drives him to have the equivalent of an open mic moment that people have been talking about and prophesying for all these years. Which is exactly what the Niki team, by the way, will tell you. Yes, and that is their plan. And by the way, as we've been recording, she went out and tweeted, going after

him on his mental fitness, without using those terms, saying, did Trump just say the person suing him is quote, running for office? Is he confused again? And then she goes on to just goad him and bait him. Nice. Okay. And then the second quick point, and I just, I defer to you guys because you know the granularity stuff better than I do. But because I disagree with Steve in a certain sense about the idea that a third party candidate running on the center right could hurt Biden.

I mean, it could hurt Trump more or something simply because Biden may need those center right votes to make up for the crazy left wing votes that he'd lose. over say Israel and or just or front to RFK in a four way race or whatever um but so the only strategy I can see where a third way candidate a third party candidate actually delivers the election to Biden is as a favorite son thing where someone runs just to deny a specific state that Trump needs to get to 270 in the electoral college I don't know what state that is I don't know if that state exists. I don't know if there's a candidate that could do that. But like if I think it's obvious at this point that Trump is planning another electoral college strategy, more than a popular vote strategy, or at least the smart people around him are. And so that's the only place I can

see where if there was some candidate who take Michigan, take Minnesota, take, you know, one of these states that he's counting on to get to 270 off the map for him. Uh, other than that, I just don't see how a third-party candidate helps Biden more than Trump. You know, there is one version where I think it could happen. So first of all, there's the like RFK. I don't think RFK is going to get a huge percentage, but there's a real argument that RFK is such a jump ball in terms of where he falls on the ideological spectrum that you don't really know where he's going to take votes from and maybe it'll only be two or three

percent, but that two or three percent could come from anywhere. The no labeled argument that we're going to do like Larry Hogan at the top of the ticket, or something, yeah, I think quite clearly that would hurt Biden more than it would hurt Trump. But let me give me a totally different scenario or example, which is there were a lot of those Bernie Sanders, Trump voters, i.e., if you get someone who's anti-establishment and outside the system enough, that could actually draw more from Trump because the establishmenty people who are more comfortable with someone who's a politician, frankly, will stick with Biden. So again, and it maybe even feeds into your favorite son thing, Jonah, which normally I would say is just dead because we've nationalized politics so much. There really isn't a whole lot of state pride except for one state. Do you know what state has more state pride than anyone else?

Oh, for God's sakes. Matthew McConaughey for president. Favorite son. I really think it would be very interesting to see where he would draw votes from. I think it would be hard to know because it would be all over the place. I don't know. I'm really high on the Matthew McConaughey for president, and I mean, super high on it. With that, you know, my not worth my time question this week, I just don't know that we have enough time to really dive into it, but I want to give you, we may just have to do this over two weeks. So here's the question. David French and I were positing this idea that lots of people online, in conversations, will act like they know a whole lot about politics and football. And David's point was they'll act like they have the same amount of knowledge about both. It turns out they actually do have more knowledge about football.

They watch a lot of football. They know the rules, et cetera, but they know so much less about politics. So the gap is bigger in politics. Well, not surprisingly from the flagship podcast, a listener who has played for Oklahoma Utah State and Michigan State, said that was total bullshit. In fact, people know nothing about football who are talking about it.

And this was actually David showing his Dunning Kruger effect where just because he thinks he knows a little about football, he's overestimating his knowledge of football the same way that a lot of people overestimate their knowledge of politics. So I was just curious what you guys think. Do people who think they know a lot about politics, and football actually know more about politics or more about football? John, I'm coming to you. I would say way more about politics. I mean, I was a mediocre high school football player

and I just watch the Packers every week. I watch one game. I'm happy when my team loses. I'm sorry, I'm happy my team wins. I'm sad when they lose. It goes on for 24 hours. But like, when I'm watching the game, I'm not like, oh, they're in a cover two. They're in zone. They're in man. I'm like, I'm not like watching on that high of a level. Or I mean, sometimes they get angry about, you know, they're doing a stupid thing. But I think most people, yeah, most people are not watching football. You're not watching a football game as, like, a coach or a real expert would. You're not doing the Tony Romo analysis of, like, how they're lining up and what's going to happen for each play.

You know, I think most people, yeah, don't know a lot about football, which is, which is very complex. It's like, you know, chess, chess meets wrestling, you know. Drucker? Well, I'm going to answer this way. I think it's easier to fake it about football than it is about politics. Ooh, interesting. You know, it's, and related fun fact, when I'm talking to voters, what I like to tell them to sort of put them at ease is, hey, listen, I'm just a color commentator, really. I've sit up in the cheap seats.

And, you know, I can tell you if a quarterback's footwork is good, but I've never actually done it. And that seems to get them going. But I do believe that it's hard to know the answer to your question for sure. but I think it's a lot easier to sound intelligent about sports, including football, than it is about politics, at least when you're with people that actually know something about politics. All right, Jonah, which one's the bigger Dunning Krueger effect? Politics or football? Well, so I was the wrong person to go last on this because I am fully, like, and transparently, obviously have to say I know very little about football compared to even people who are faking how much they know about football, right?

I mean, like, I haven't followed football closely since, you know, high school, college kind of thing. And so I know how the game is played. One of the most difficult things I ever had to do was teach a room of chemical factory managers in Bohemia, the rules to American football. And I'm still scarred from the experience. But I think, because I'm an inveterate eavesdropper on people's conversations, I think it's not so much whether they think they know more about one or the other, it's that the level of confidence that football lends itself to over politics is really, really remarkable. And maybe it's because I know, look, I know less about politics than a lot of people, a lot of people we know, right? Maybe a lot of people on this podcast. But I have a

pretty good sense of being able to tell who actually knows a lot about politics versus who's faking it. Like you can just pick up on things, you know, when they, there's so many tells. when people opine about politics that for people like us who've spent our lifetimes in it, all you need is one or two little slips from them and they're like, oh, so you don't actually know what you're talking about, right? And in football, that's harder for me to pick up. But I also think football lends itself less to that because most of the other people listening are equally ignorant. Most people who are talking about in real life who are talking about football, are talking about football with other people

who've never really played the game, certainly never coached, never been on the field, certainly in the NFL or any of that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, the people that we talk to about politics, we talk to a lot of people who have done the equivalent of those things, and we know how to tell who's full of it and who's not. So that would be sort of my incredibly lame escape routine

from this question. I love this because I think the answer is probably something like identical. And because look at how our culture is built around it, right? We have cable news networks, dedicated to both the sports of politics and the sports of football, frankly. In both, you need to know quite a bit of history to sound fluent in either one. And so you can know right away if someone, you know, isn't citing something from 20 years ago that's relevant to the

conversation because in some ways, because the football season has so few games in it and because the political season, you know, is every two years really, like you need that historical arc to actually come up with good examples for a lot of things. But if I have to pick one, I'm going to argue that it's the football people who know less than they think they do. And this email from a listener just convinced me. So I'm going to read you this paragraph. To give an example, on any given play, does any armchair QB you know notice the safety rotation combined with press coverage to see a likely boundary corner blitz coming? Which really means you're likely getting a cover one shell, depending on a wealth of variables, but this is just a hypo.

And the playside receiver is now hot and he and the QB must both notice. and signal one another, and the O line should likely check to a slide pro, knowing they're going to have to leave one unblocked, and the RB has to abandon his original assignment because he's got to chop the backside, DE, if the line is sliding the protection. And now I know what people think when I talk to them about what I do. I've never heard. I've been walking football for 30 years. I've never heard anyone, my dad played college football. I've never heard anyone talk like that you know it's like pick up the blitz you know that's kind of that's the kind of like high level like and actually i will say one thing if you want to watch football from a high level it really helps

to see the whole field if you're high up in the stands the way that we watch football games on tv now they cut to all these different camera camera so you can't see the whole field you don't see before the play how it's lining up and i actually recently watched a game uh where like ESPN3 or watching some college football streaming and all it had one camera and it's like watching you remember like do you guys ever play video games tecmo football you know it's like you can actually see the whole play unfolding. I mean, I watched the Michigan and Alabama game. And I knew exactly how it was going to fail. I knew he was going to go to the middle. Anyway, you can, that's how Tony Romo does. He sees the whole field. We're all a disadvantage watching it from all these

cut angles. This is how I ended up asking my husband the other day. I was like, I'm just really curious. When you watch football, are you watching it totally differently than me? Because I watch the ball. It seems very possible that a whole bunch of people watching football who actually know what they're doing, don't watch the ball. They're watching the offensive line to see. who the first read is and the third read and everything else. And my husband was like, yes, Sarah, you don't always watch the ball. I was like, huh. Interesting. Interesting. He's right, by the way. Yeah, I really feel like I. But why do we have that expression? Keep your eye on the ball. I mean, come on. And there's so many equivalents in politics. So yeah,

I think, though, that because, I don't know, maybe it's just because people vote or maybe the Dunning Krueger effect when you're on the other side of it, like when you actually are an expert. you have more grace for the people who are a little bit behind you. You think they're closer to you than they actually are. But I think that the people talking about politics, by and large, know more about politics than the people talking about football. That's where I've come down. I got a very social sciencey point to make about that really quickly. The stigma on talking about politics versus talking about sports is completely different.

No one ever says, you know, at the dinner table, there's no talk of football. And so it is much more inviting to have opinions. And it's much lower risk premium on having wrong opinions than there is in politics. And actually, sports rivalries between friends can be very enriching to the friendship. And whereas we have seen lately, political rivalries between friends and family are debilitating. Although I do have this amazing story where I want to anonymize this as best as possible. possible. A friend brings her boyfriend to my house to stay for a few days. And we all go to the Washington Monument when it reopened, where you could go to then the top of the Washington

monument. It had been closed for a long, long time. So to the point, I'd never been to the top of the Washington. We do that. And we get to the top and the elevator doors open. And of course, there's this thing that's like about George Washington and whatever. And the boyfriend turned to me and sort of as an aside, it wasn't really to anyone or for any purpose said, huh, so they're listing George Washington is the first president. And I have so many questions. So many. And I was frozen in that moment because I didn't want to be the Dunning Kruger asshole.

So instead I just had to, I had to let it go. Because what question can you ask at that point that doesn't make you the jerk? Yeah. But I now, I live with this so many years later wondering, was it a conspiracy theory? Was it, did he not, like, did he think someone else was? I don't know. Now that boyfriend is a federal judge. All right.

Thank you, listeners. We'll check you next week. That was a weird It's very strange, the whole thing. Start to finish, strange. I thought it was fun. You didn't like it. Oh, I think people will like it.

You think other people will like it. You didn't like it, but other people will? I liked how it was Jonah Goldberg, take three.