The Dispatch Podcast - Chekhov's Gun

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

How is Amy Coney Barrett holding up in her Senate confirmation hearings? Well, her record is squeaky clean, she’s held fast to the Ginsburg rule, and she’s remained calm and collected despite the Democrats’ best efforts to break her composure. Another benefit from this hearing, as Sarah points out, is that “the media has finally come around to understanding that the Affordable Care Act is not going to be tossed in the trash.” On the flip side, the language of court packing on the left has shifted in the opposite direction, where Democrats now argue that the term simply refers to the act of filling existing vacancies with conservative judges they don’t like. On today’s podcast, Sarah and the guys walk us through the evolution of court packing in recent decades before giving us a temperature check on the presidential election, several competitive Senate races, and the unmasking probe commissioned by Attorney General Bill Barr. Show Notes: -Morning Consult poll on ACB’s confirmation, the Cook Political Report, and David’s latest French Press: “Amy Coney Barrett and the Obamacare Debacle, Explained.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, David French, and the Jonah Goldberg. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit the Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and all these podcasts. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. And on today's podcast, we've got a lot to cover. We have the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in all of their boring, wonderful glory. We have a, the election, trying to take the temperature down. Maybe it won't be as bad as everyone says. What's going on with the Senate predictions? Where is the majority going to lie? And finally, what's going on with some of those investigations that have been lingering out there like unmasking? let's dive right in jonah you're going to take us live to the most boring supreme court confirmation hearing to ever happen three weeks out from an election or almost any time out from an election uh um i think i think the hearings are going very well for um what's her name amy connie barrett uh sorry i'm kind of sleep deprived and um I think they're going very well. I think that this has been fairly embarrassing to the Republic for all sorts of reasons, which I could diatribe about.

But since it's going on, the last day of her testimony is today, I figured we should open up with just how do you guys think she's doing? And is there anything that could derail it at this point? I think that it is, in fact, going so well for her that I think normally we would say that a draw would be, a win for her, but I actually think she's putting points on the board, which is shocking to me coming into this. I think that that is because she is sort of showing this combination of high intellect, high empathy, and there's, I mean, she's just squeaky clean on a bunch of the policy, tough third rail issues. What is interesting to me is that normally, and I'll see

what David thinks about this, normally I would say that is not good for a judge to be this good at a confirmation hearing. It's sort of like how someone who's a great presidential candidate, I often think is not necessarily a great president. They're just two very different skill sets, but somehow we require the one

in order to do the other. But I actually think she's good in a confirmation way that actually does make me think she's going to be a good justice, which I just, I've come away shocked and pleased. I'm curious about David, though.

Yeah, I, she, She's doing really, really well. I mean, she's doing so well that I would think, if I were the Democrats, I would just say, let's go ahead and end the hearings right now. I mean, we can't stop this. We're not scoring any points on her. Let's get Trump back fully in the news cycle and move on. She's just really good at this.

I mean, and, you know, she reminds me of some of the better law professors that I had, this person who can combine just a really person. personable communication style with a first-rate intellect, and she's just good. I mean, there was a reason why I was arguing all the way back in 2018, nominate Amy Coney-Barrant, nominate Amy Coney-Barrant. This person is really, really good, and she'll be excellent on the court. I don't think, as I've written extensively, I don't think she's going to be revolutionary on the court. I think that she'll be evolutionary in the sense that she'll solidify some

pre-existing trends, but I don't think she'll be revolutionary, but she'll be somebody that, you know, 30 years from now, 40 years from now will look back and as having not just a track record of a formidable track record of jurisprudence, but also being kind of an ambassador for the court in an interesting way, somebody who's going to be a relatable human being on the Supreme Court of the United States. So I think it's, from her standpoint, it's going really well. And I guess from the Democrat standpoint the best thing that they can say about it is they're not doing any harm to themselves right now in the presidential election they haven't created that viral gotcha moment they've just been i would say mildly annoying steve just to back up david's point with some numbers there's a new

morning consult poll out this morning that shows that 48% of registered voters say the senate should vote to confirm uh amy coney barrett as a supreme court justice today that's an increase of a couple points from a poll a week ago, and there was other polling that showed more skepticism. So this is clearly moving in the right direction in terms of the public mind, and I think that's a reflection to some extent of how she's handled herself, both in the pre-hearing phase and the arguments that Republicans put forth in the pre-hearing phase, and then also, obviously, most of the hearing has taken place after that poll but suggests that this is that this is a good moment for her and a good moment for Republicans um i'm gonna i'm going to i'm going to uh

shelve my pre-plan rant about various things um and actually ask a couple ask a follow-up question on this um it's not like i don't have opportunities that sarah looked shocked when i said that as if i would ever forego a rant but uh i do have other outlets to rant um But I'd say the one bad note, one thing I really did not like from yesterday's hearing, we're recording this on Wednesday, obviously, is I understand the strategy. And I even understand the need, according to the canon of ethics or, you know, the grandmeister of the Citadel or whatever it is she's invoking, that she is not supposed to offer a legal opinion about something that could become before the court.

I get that. I really did not like her answer, though, about whether, I think it was from Booker, the question, can you agree that the, you know, she agreed that racism is bad and she agreed to denounce white supremacy. And then he asked her, do you agree that the President of the United States should be mindful of a peaceful transfer of power, should be in favor of a peaceful transfer of power or some words to that effect? And she did her whole, I'd have to like, I'd have to hear briefs. I'd have to blah, blah, blah. and I think that's BS. I mean, I honestly do. And so my question, particularly to David and Sarah, is, was that necessary in your mind? Or, I mean, it seems to me that if you're not having a peaceful transfer of power, it's because things aren't going to the court. So you don't have to worry about, like, prejudicing yourself if it's between two different competing groups of mobs with pitchforks who aren't taking things to the court in the first place. And I think, and as I, as I suspected it would, that has become central already this morning on MSNBC as the scary thing that she did. So what do you guys think? I mean, was it really, would it really have opened a door that you would have to answer other questions about, you know, some arcane, you know, forgotten Commerce Clause stuff?

If she had just said in America were a democracy and we believe in the peaceful transfer of power? So I think the issue was. commenting on something that a potential litigant had said. It was not the substance of it. Trump has commented on white supremacy. I mean, he's commented on, you know, racism. I mean, peaceful transfer of power, it seems to me, is something that is sort of free legalism.

But what he actually asked was, do you believe that every president should make a commitment unequivocally and resolutely to the peaceful transfer of power? and what she said was, well, Senator, that seems to be pulling me into this question of whether the president said that he would not peacefully, to the extent that this is a political controversy right now. As a judge, I don't want to express a view on it. It goes on from there, obviously. She goes on to talk about how, like, the peaceful transfer of power is really important. What she was refusing to get into was a, the comments of a potential litigant in front of her because if there is an election controversy that goes up to the Supreme Court and those comments were part of the opposing brief and she had said that those comments were reprehensible or something, you know, some people would say that was not great.

I'll go back and look at the text, but I'm sorry, David, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, I agree with Sarah. I think there is a way she could have said, that she could have perhaps up front and very clearly said the peaceful transfer of power is a cornerstone to our democracy. And I think she could have answered that better, frankly, but I do. And then said, but I'm not going to comment. You know, your question was specifically about whether a president should say that and I'm not going to comment on that or something.

Right, right. And I think it is just a reality that there is a very good chance that you're going to have Donald Trump as a litigant, in extremely urgent, extremely contentious litigation in front of the court in a matter of weeks. And there is a case for an abundance of caution and what you're going to say about one of these litigants beforehand. But did she, I think, you know, if I had to fault any one of our answers, that's the one you would fault simply because there was a way to finesse that better, I think, that there

is a way where you could have led with generalized statements about the vital importance of the peaceful transfer of power and then segue into, but I cannot get into condemning or passing judgment on any given statement of a potential litigant in front of the court. Yeah, and I think she could have just said, look, the whole point of the Constitution is that. Yeah. That's what the Constitution is about is the peaceful transfer of power. You know, everything else in some ways is secondary to that. And I think she just, she gave a talking point where she didn't need to because all of the caveats she gave after that. That's not what ended up in the cycle.

And so far, she's been really, really good about denying people talking points. It's also worth noting that that exchange happened at roughly 5.30 p.m. when a hearing started at 9 a.m. As we know from Saddam's torture chambers, you always get the best results after like, the 11th hour. I mean, that's, we knew that. It's also worth noting that this is a discussion with a Supreme Court nominee at all. I mean, think about, think about the fact that she has to be careful to embrace the peaceful transfer of power. Right. Because it might get her crosswise with the president of the United States, who has just come out against or not against, but has raised questions about how important it is. It is a moment. It is almost as on par,

maybe slightly less ludicrous than asking her to take a position on whether or not we should fire bomb North Dakota. You know, I mean, like, what's your position? Is that, would that be constitutional, right? Because I mean, that's as weird as asking should the president be in favor of the peaceful transfer of power. So I have a question for you, Jonah, which is, I thought that the media coverage of this yesterday was fascinating because all of a sudden, thanks to me and David, I assume, the media has finally come around to understanding that the Affordable Care Act is not going to be tossed in the trash

no matter who's on the court at this point. And so this talking point that the Democrats really stayed on all day, Monday, and for a good chunk of yesterday, was that by having her on the Supreme, Court, it was going to strip health care from all, you know, millions and millions of people, preexisting conditions were going to come back, the parade of horribles. And that by and large, most of the headlines I saw rejected that yesterday and said, you know, started actually getting into the legal analysis that that was simply not how this case really could even turn out. On the flip side, the language of court packing, I feel like shifted perhaps the other direction

in which court packing can now mean stacking the court with judges rather than adding justices to the court. And I was wondering what you thought of that, Jonah. You know, I told you I was going to forego my ranking and here you were baiting me. People can't see, but she's literally holding up a dripping piece of flank steak in front of me. All right, so first of all, the strategy,

the Obamacare strategy thing, which allowed them to do everything shy of having small children with cleft pallets inside dog cages while they played Sarah McLaughlin in the background. What really, really tedious after a while. I mean, like, you would think that their entire constituencies are full of, are like from the burn wards at the orphanage hospital or something. Anyway, on this language thing, that and also this stuff about sexual preference,

it is driving me to the point of vexation. Explain the sexual preference thing quickly. Okay, so at some point, Amy Coney Barrett had said something about, you know, discrimination against people according to their sexual preference, which literally up until 48 hours ago was a fairly normal thing for people to say. Joe Biden has said in the last year,

Every leading, people are, you know, like Batman to the poll, people are heeing to their Nexus Lexus machines to look up all the Democrats who have used the phrase sexual preference within the last 365 days, and they are Legion. And if this is true, I saw this was turning on Twitter with screen caps of it, screen caps of it, so I assume it's true. Webster's literally yesterday decided to change the meaning of sexual preference to say that it was a pejorative or offensive phrase to use simply because of these hearings, which is super, super Orwellian and creepy. And the same thing goes with this court packing stuff. The New Deal in FDR are like one of the few things in history that I actually know quite a bit about and that whole period. And every liberal

historian in America for the last 70, 80 years, there were only like three things you're allowed to criticize FDR about. And the court packing thing is one of them. At the time in the 1930s, it was considered a major, it was a major attempt to make us more like Germany and Italy. It was considered a fascistic authoritarian power grab, and that's why it failed because Democrats recognized it as such. And he was abandoned by countless progressive leaders because of it, and has been remembered as a huge blunder by FDR ever since. But at least FDR had the freaking decency, the lie about what he was doing. FDR said, oh, I don't. want to expand the court for political power. I want to help the court because too many of them

are too old to handle the workload, which was proven to be a lie. And so he said he wanted to add people below the retirement age, add an additional justice for everybody over the age of 70. It was all this canard that he was doing it for efficiency reasons to youthen up and make a more efficient the court. The people who in the last 72, 96 hours, because Biden screwed up on his messaging on this stuff, who have embraced this idea that core packing, quah, court packing is just a good thing, is astonishing to me. And not only of that, but that's what the Orwellian thing with the messaging of the sexual preference stuff is, is not only are they in favor of actual court packing, which has been denounced by, you know, everybody for two

generations. They are now saying the real court packing is when you fill existing vacancies with people we don't like. And they've sufficiently muddied the waters because AP and MSNBC and the cable news networks are carrying water for them like Gunga Dinn in the desert. And I just, we've had more Orwellian terrible moments with language perversion and memory holing and unpersoning in our lives, but to see this kind of thing in the last 72 hours crescendo like this has been driving me crazy and it's why I'm cutting myself. I can see the the flex of spittle on Jonah's camera now that he's finished. I thank you all for wearing masks. It is really, I think it's a very good point. It's really been something to watch this happen in real time and to follow the

language. I mean, you know, if I went to the grocery store and forgot a carton of milk, the Democrats would accuse me of court packing. That's court packing. Anything that you do that they don't like is now court packing. And, you know, the AP had this story that's caused some controversy where they, in effect, talked about the Democrats' efforts to expand the court to depoliticize it, as if as if the court packing was the politicization of. The court, I mean, it was really, it really is remarkable. And you don't want to make too much of, you know, of one story. But I think it's been more than one story and the acceptance of this. Obviously, Democrats were looking for a way, I think, to capitalize on the, on this moment, understanding that they were not going to be able to block Amy Coney Barrett. They were looking for ways to capitalize on this moment three weeks before an election. One of the ways in which they thought this would be appropriate was during the hearings to focus on Obamacare. They focused on Obamacare. They had. pictures of people who would be denied health care without Obamacare and accused Republicans of wanting her on the court in order to torpedo Obamacare.

But the other thing they did was to try to sort of, you know, jujitsu the court packing charge so that it wasn't Joe Biden and his refusal to answer on court packing for more than a week. that was a defiance of norms, it was Trump and the Republicans who were abusing their position by court packing all over the place. I don't think it's, I don't think it's going to work because there's a general sense of people know what court packing is, and you saw the numbers about Amy Coney Barrett. Oh, it's going to work. It's going to work. You think it's going to work in, for the election, electoral purposes? I mean, what it's going to, what I'm,

what I mean by work is I mean, I don't mean, I don't think it's a convincing argument. I think it's ridiculous to say that filling actual vacancies that exist under the law with speed and efficiency is court packing. That's not court packing by any normal definition whatsoever. But the way partisanship works now is,

can I supply a talking point to get us through a news cycle. And in that sense, that's what you have. Here is our talking point to get through this new cycle. Well, maybe Joe Biden works out a better answer for next time. But I think, you know, one of the most frustrating aspects of the current political environment is that that works. I'm going to supply a talking point to get through the news cycle consistently works, no matter how ridiculous the talking point is.

And so, you know, I think as you saw it sort of come all over Twitter over the last, you know, and it's all over social media, all over cable news, over the last, you know, 72 hours, last three, four days. It was clear that they'd picked up this mantle. And, you know, for people who don't pay close attention, here's what they hear. Oh, what? Republicans of Court Pact 2? okay and I mean it it gets people through the moment so and it so in that sense I think it

works it independent of the merits of the argument I mean the argument is ludicrous it's just ludicrous if you're going to blame anybody for this huge flood of Republican judges I mean blame Harry Reid he created the conditions you know and Kate Bettingfield the deputy campaign manager for the Biden campaign was on Jake Tapper on I believe it was Sunday. And he asked her to respond or explain the quote from Joe Biden that this was unconstitutional. Right. Right. And she said, well, the people should have a say our constitution is about electing senators and therefore what's happening now is unconstitutional. And Jake's like, that's not unconstitutional. And she said, you know, pointed to a poll of people who thought the

seat should stay open until after the election. Jake said polling isn't in the constitution. And so I, you know, I think that that's tied in with the same argument that if you just say it's unconstitutional, you kind of flim flam around a little bit when called on it, it gets you through the week. I think David's spot on on that. And let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor, the Acton Line. Acton Line is the flagship podcast of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, dedicated to the promotion of a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. With episodes released every Wednesday, Act Inline brings together writers, economists, religious leaders, thinkers, journalists, newsmakers, and more in conversations that bridge the gap between good intentions and sound economics. By demonstrating the compatibility of faith, liberty, and free markets, conversations on Act in Line reveal how economic freedom is essential

to creating an environment in which religious freedom can flourish, but also that the market can function only when people behave morally. Faith and freedom must go hand in hand. To subscribe to Actonline, visit Acton.org slash dispatch, or search Actonline on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or where fine podcasts are available. That's Acton.org slash dispatch to subscribe. Okay. Next topic. Speaking of the election, you know, a couple months ago, I really was diving into the numbers on mail-in ballots and what a large-scale shift in big time turnout early and on mail-in ballots would do to sort of the certainty of the election outcome. And I was concerned about that because mail-in ballots get rejected or fail to get delivered at a much, much higher rate. Lots of other people were concerned about that.

They were concerned about Trump's comment on a peaceful transfer of power. It has just raised the temperature so much around this that when I now talk to people, it's universal that people are really concerned about what November 4th looks like in this country, whereas I have actually gotten far less concerned about what November 4th looks like in this country over the last six or eight weeks. Curious, if your temperature has gone up or down on the election, David.

I'm with you, Sarah, as should not be surprising since I'm your ally. Look, let me put it this way. If the, I'm looking right now at the October 14 numbers on the 538 weighted average of polling. It's a Biden 10 plus 10.6. Now, yes, can it narrow? It's good for Biden for sure. I mean, can it narrow?

Yeah, it can narrow because it's been more narrow before. I mean, on October 3rd, it was Biden 7.4. but we're getting close to November 3rd, and I'm looking at, and I'm looking right now, there's this fantastic website that tells you exactly how many people have voted early or return mail ballots, mail-in ballots. 13 million, 341,367 people have already voted. That's a 9.6% of the total 2016 turnout. So this election is fully in process. Biden right now is sitting at plus 10.6. Now, it's possible there is a polling fail of all polling fails, in which point, you know, you would call for an immediate shutdown of the polling industry

to we can figure out what is going on. But as of right now, this thing is not going to be a nail biter. This is, you know, it could very well be. At the moment, it is looking more likely that we're going to have sort of a throwback type election, one that we thought was not really possible anymore in our highly polarized time. And that's the early call and with a wave and a landslide, something more like in 1988 or 92 or 96 than anything like 2000. The polls would now have to be wrong well outside the margin of error, Steve. Yeah, I think that's right. First, can I ask a point of clarification for David? What is the fantastic website.

Oh, yeah, it's great. Electproject.gitub. Dot, I.O. And I've got it bookmarked, and I check it every day. And it's on the dark web? What is this IP address? I know, God, I think it's, I.O. is Indian Ocean. So this, you know, this could be Russian disinformation, but I don't think so.

No, I think, I think, I think it's a, if I'm not mistaken, it's a university of Florida a professor, if I'm remembering. Yes, Michael McDonald, Professor, University of Florida, yes. Yeah, you can search, I think you can search elect project and keep track of how this is going. So I guess I'm in the same position that you two are just looking forward to election day, 20 days from today, primarily for a couple of reasons. One, what we're seeing with the polls themselves.

It's not just in the national polling that Biden seems to be pulling away. Let's just put it this way. That the tightening that we have long expected to see is not happening yet. Now, it could happen. Probably will happen a little bit. But he is, in fact, increasing his lead in national polling and in most of the swing state polling that we've seen over the past week. So even with tightening, as you say, it was.

have to be a sort of monumental change of trajectory and failure of polling broadly for Biden not to prevail. And I, you know, my view has been that he'll win pretty big. I think it's much more likely that Joe Biden will win in a landslide than that Donald Trump will be elected. The second reason that I'm a little bit, and I'm talking specifically here about avoiding the kinds of nightmare scenario post-election fighting that we've worried about on this podcast and in some of our writings. So that's one reason. If the margin of error is bigger, it makes complaints about a potential stealing of the election, I think, less persuasive or matterless. The second reason actually is COVID. I think it's the case that the president contracting the

virus being taken out for a week or partially taken out for a week, gives him in part an excuse that he can use if he loses in a significant way. Now, I have no doubt that he's also going to say the Democrats stole it and the whole thing was rigged and all of the things that he's been saying all along. But I think it will give the president, and importantly, some of the president's other supporters a softer way to explain a bad loss than just fueling conspiracies about the election having been rigged. And that in and of itself. I mean, I have no doubt that you know, really strong Trump supporters, if he loses in a big way, will be very upset and we'll hear a lot about it and the president will egg them on. And all of that, I expect this is going to

happen. But I think it takes maybe the marginal Trump supporters, some of the Republican elected officials who might have been inclined to either not distance themselves from that kind of talk or maybe even embrace it in a very close race, it makes them less likely and gives them something else to point to. Jonah. So going back to the question is framed from Sarah at the beginning. I think basically the concern about election night is all. basically a stand-in for confidence in the polls, right?

I mean, there's this tight correlation. If you really think these polls are right, then you don't have to worry about election night because, as Sarah says, if it's a blowout, you know, Trump will lose decisively on day of returns, never mind the mail-in ballots, and even if there's spoilage and all that kind of stuff, and we won't have the kind of, you know,

tanks in the streets that, you know, of course, Amy Coney-Barrick can't. cannot offer an opinion on and um but uh i see what you did there you like that uh i will say though that i think there is i think it's good i go back and forth about whether or not it's going to be a blow out or not and um you know one portentious sign was that was Nate silver seemed to be having some sort of moment the other day where he was sort of laying the groundwork for why the model might be wrong in his model that everyone is relying on, which has a very deja vu kind of feel to it.

But also, I'm sure all you guys are familiar with the concept of Chekhov's gun. Yes. In theater, for the listeners who don't know, Chekhov made this argument that extraneous elements in drama should be trimmed and that everything that is in the story should be used in the story later in the story or get rid of it. So if you see a gun on a table in Act 1, it has to show up in Act 3 or there shouldn't have been a gun there in the first place. And, of course, the Sopranos broke all of this because we still don't know what happened to the Russian and the Pine Barron. That said, I've never seen these Spranos.

I really think that Amy Coney Barrett is going to get appointed to the Supreme is going to get confirmed to the Supreme Court. And because Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he's relying on her to break the tie in his favor, or insinuated, I should say. She's going to get on the court, and then she's going to rule against him. And because that is the way you tie a bow on this entire storyline. And if it doesn't play out like that, then, you know, what are we all doing here? So that's my only. Then maybe God just isn't the reality TV show producer you thought he was. Why do you hurt me?

Well, Jonah, you just, you're just edging into my, I have a unified theory of Trump judges that is, you're going to see a lot of repudiation of Trump-era, challenged Trump-era policies from Trump judges who do not want to be saddled with him as the defining part of their legacy. I think that's right. I think in some ways, but my point is it's sort of a Ghostbusters thing.

Choose the form of your destroyer. He chose Amy Coney Barrett, and she's going to destroy him. Amy Coney Barrett as a stay puff marshmallow man is everything I needed for this Wednesday morning. And that Steve has no idea what I'm referencing. That's important too. That's Ghostbusters reference. Yeah, he said that though.

Good, Steve. Wow. Good Steve. Let me give you a cookie, Steve. So here's my take. I have two different points on lowering the temperature on the election. One, the, you know, in a snake map of the electoral. states that are really in question, as in you put the states that are redder and more likely to go

to Trump on one side and in order, and then all the way over to the left. The three states that are most likely to go for Trump are Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. They are also the states that count their early mail-in ballots before the election day. Florida already started. They started on Monday. And so on election night, we don't need to wait for that bulk of absentee ballots, they're already going to have them counted. Now, the ones that obviously arrived that day, things like that, there's going to be some outstanding ones, but we're going to have some really good results on election night from those three states. If Trump loses one of those states, interesting. If he loses two of those states, I am willing to say that I

think it will be over early. And if he loses three of those states, I think it's 100% over as soon as we know that. Now, the states that are harder for Trump to win, just from a general historical perspective, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, they do not count in advance. At least as of now, there's some pending litigation on this. But they're the states we need to know the least about on election night. And so, yes, if it comes down to those, it means we were going to have a close night anyway and that the polls were incredibly far off. So let's get to the polls. I, to this point. You're totally right that the people who are most nervous about electionite are the ones that don't understand how polls really are even functioning these days. So clearing up some questions

that I've gotten in my inbox the last like couple weeks. Yes, pollsters call cell phones and landlines, the good ones, the ones that we use in our averages and stuff like that. So it doesn't, it's okay that not too many people have landlines anymore or use them. Two, there's this big, like, who's answering this? Because the people who email me are like, I never answer numbers that I don't recognize. And so I think that's relevant. And look, pollsters only get, you know,

below a 10% response rate when they run these polls. So when you see that a poll talk to 1,000 voters in Florida, they had to call 10,000 people or more. And that may seem bad. But it's only bad if the 10% who do answer the pollster don't represent or have some difference in the rest of the 10,000 voters. And so far, that has not really been the case. There's no particular partisan divide in who picks up the phone for a pollster

and answers those numbers they don't recognize. Pollsters, by the way, also leave messages. And so some people just call back when they found out they got a poll. So I think that the big way that the polls could be wrong, and I still doubt that they would be 10 points wrong, for instance, is if this year, as opposed to any previous year, there is a difference in who answers those polls, and the difference is not bound up in their partisan affiliation.

As in, it's not just that Republicans would answer the polls less or more because we obviously know people's partisan affiliations in a lot of states, and that's not showing up. It would have to be that within the partisan affiliation that people who are more likely to vote for Trump and identify as Republican are less likely to answer the poll than those who are not going to vote for Trump

and identify as Republican. It's possible. It doesn't seem all that likely to me, but more importantly, it doesn't seem like it would make a more than four-point swing in the polls. So that's my taking the temperature down on November 4th. It's going to be okay.

God bless America. Well, I am I am rooting for as little turmoil and strife as possible. But Steve, I will say this. All that said, that does not help these Senate races. For all those states that don't count mail-in ballots ahead of time and that difference in spoilage on mail-in ballots. So I'm turning it over to you. Yeah.

And that's sort of the key point. I think one thing we can say about what we've seen in the public polling is that it's being mirrored in the private polling. Talk to Republican pollsters who are working in these swing states, either for groups that are affiliated with the president in his campaigns or his PACs or whether you're talking about Senate races, House races, people who are doing polling in the states are seeing the same thing. You know, drop-offs, the drop-off for the president and for Republicans on the generic ballot, which means if a pollster says, do you prefer Republicans or Democrats, happened precipitously immediately after the first debate and significant numbers that they're not seeing tick back up, at least at this point, you know, six, seven, eight, nine-point drops in the generic ballot. kind of drops in support for the president. Consistent with that point, if you look at the analyses and the race ratings from the Cook Political Report, which has a very good track record

on these things, and I think is worth paying attention to, Jessica Taylor from the Cook Political Report tweeted, quote, we are also increasing our current Senate projection from a gain of two to seven seats for Democrats, which we think is a range for Democrats. That's not great news for Republicans. So my question is, how many seats do you think Democrats are likely to pick up on election night? And are there places that we should be paying closer attention to as we get near the election where safe for Republicans or Republicans thought to be safe will be threatened

or potentially lose on election night? Jonah, I'll start with you. I think at this point Democrats are going to take the Senate and I don't know that they're going to get seven seats but I would what are they so you know if Biden wins they only need what three is it three or four because of the vice president I can never remember but I had a very plugged in guy text me the other night asking my god is dan sullivan really going to lose um for people don't know he's the um he's a senator

from alaska who's uh married to a lovely lady that my wife went to high school with and um uh and i i will be shocked if he loses but if he loses my god that means it's going to be seven right because that should not be a seat in jeopardy and the same thing with the sort of the georgia seats and whatnot so but i'm going to i'm going to say four But Dan Sullivan would be my big shock of the night. Sarah? I use Iowa as a bellwether because they went in really confident into that Iowa race that Joni Ernst was just fine, barring some huge electoral wave that they couldn't overcome at the top of the ticket.

And their heads are bouncing below water a little right now, bobbing in the ocean of that way. So for me, it doesn't mean that if Joni Ernst loses, it's a seven seat gain for Democrats, but to me that means that there was such a wave that it is going to wash out senators who were actually pretty safe as of even six months ago. I, for whatever reason, I do predict, though, a big wave. and I think that it will swamp out a lot. I don't know whether it will reach Alaska, but I also just look at the 2022 map

and think it's fascinating that Republicans also won't be able to really pick up seats. That map is horrible for Republicans in 2022. The pickup opportunities will be if they lose the Arizona and Georgia specials. They can pick those back up in theory, but the states that are actually out there and available, you know, are Wisconsin. They're going to have to defend.

North Carolina is going to be an open seat, the Burr seat that they're going to have to defend. And then Democratic pickup seats, okay, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, that's an uphill battle in any day of the week. So I think there's going to be a huge swap level, tide rising moment as of right now in the Senate. I think it'll take a while for us to know all of details of it. But then I think that Republicans will not be able to even get some of those back in 2022. And add to those 22 seats, Pat Toomey seat in Pennsylvania. You're right. Yeah. Which you just announced last week. Yeah. So they'll be defending Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and

North Carolina while trying to win in New Hampshire, Colorado, and Nevada. I don't think so. That's hard. Yeah. David? Yeah, I mean, I would say, I keep thinking, okay, that what would be the sign of the apocalypse? And the one state that keeps for Republicans, the one state that keeps coming back in my mind is Texas, both for the presidency and for Senate. I mean, Cook has, Texas as lean Republican, just as it has Sullivan in Alaska. To be clear, if John Cornyn loses in Texas, it's not a seven-seat game. Right. Right.

Like the entire Senate, like they have a supermajority. They don't need to get rid of the filibuster. They are the filibuster. Because, you know, otherwise, I would have said, well, if Lindsay Graham loses, that would be a sign of the apocalypse. But I don't, that's a complete toss-up now. I mean, under present conditions. I guess if you're looking at what would surprise you, what's the leading edge indicator that we've missed it

in the sense that we've been overly optimistic about Republican chances and we're not, we haven't been super optimistic, that's Cornyn. And I guess one of the questions that I have, and this is a really important question going forward for the Republican Party, was how much was that nail bider between Beto and Ted Cruz,

an outlier versus a harbinger of future events. And I think that we're going to learn a lot about that. And I still see Trump winning Texas. I still see Cornyn winning Texas. But for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that that's going to happen. And if the Democrats were to flip Texas,

that's the point where the Republican Party just sort of says, whatever we did for the last four years to put us right here, we can't do that anymore. It has to change. Well, so, I mean, back to Steve then, in 96, at this point, you had senators saying, you know, we need a check on Clinton. And people have been prophesying this switch for Republicans' tactics for a long time. We saw a hint of it in a debate from Tillis, where he said something along the lines, you know, like if heaven forbid Trump loses or Biden wins, we need a Republican Senate to be a check. But that's not abandoning Trump quite yet.

Do you see that coming or is that just that chip of sale? You know, it's a good question. It's so difficult having talked to folks who are working on a number of these competitive Senate races across the country. The challenge they face is the challenge. Republicans have faced in some ways for the past four years. They don't, the people who are hardcore Trump supporters are so supportive of Trump that they don't brook any space, any distance between a Senate candidate and the president. And if you look deep into the numbers, Lindsay Graham's numbers, the reason that he's in

trouble, to some extent, is not just that he's alienated, sort of centrist and independent voters in South Carolina, but because the president's hardest of hardcore supporters do not believe that he's as supportive of Trump as he certainly seems to have been in public. There's a very interesting article by Perry Bacon about this on 538 not long ago, and Graham's approval numbers are consistently. seven, eight, ten points below what Trumps are. And that explains some of the softer support that he's seeing that could imperil him. We have seen, I mean, we saw Martha McSally stumble through some answers in her debate,

not wanting to reembrace Trump, but not wanting to alienate Trump either. And I think we're likely to see a lot more of that. I would not be surprised in a couple of these states to see Senate candidates. it's take for tactical shots at the president, if the president, when the president does something that they're asked about, just to create some distance. I can say without fear of contradiction that in the fundraising world, that argument is being used directly and pretty aggressively. Sarah and I talked to Jonathan Martin about this on Friday, and it is the case that people raising money for Senate candidates are saying Donald Trump is going to lose. He could lose very

badly if he loses Republicans need to control the Senate because otherwise the filibuster is gone. And the argument that you'll get is, you know, if it's close, you probably have some institutionalists or centrist Democrats who would not vote to do away with the filibuster if Chuck Schumer moves in that direction, which I would expect he would. Folks like Joe Manchin and John Tester and others. But if the margin balloons beyond, you know, a one or two vote margin, you know, it's not a filibuster-proof majority, but it would be enough to allow Chuck Schumer to get rid of a filibuster.

And that's an argument that Republican fundraisers, at least, are making directly behind the scenes. And now a quick word from our sponsor, Express VP, That's right. We're headed to the bathroom. And when you go to the bathroom, you always close the door behind you, I hope. You don't want random passers-by looking in on you. So why would you let people look in on when you go online? Using the internet without express VPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door. Did you know that your internet service provider, like Comcast or Verizon, knows every single website you visit? And what's worse is they can sell this information to add companies and tech giants who will use your data. to target you. ExpressVPN puts a stop to this. It creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so that your online activity can't be seen by anyone. ExpressVPN works on everything, iPhones, laptops, even routers. So everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can still be protected even if they don't have ExpressVPN. And the best part is using ExpressVPN is as easy as

closing the bathroom door. You just fire up the app, click one button, and you're protected. ExpressVPN is the world's number one rated VPN by CNETWired, The Verge, and countless others. So if you believe your online activity is your business, secure yourself by visiting expressvPN.com slash freedom today. Use my exclusive link, X, PR, E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash freedom, and you get an extra three months free. That's expressvpn.com slash freedom. Happy bathroom breaks, listeners. All right, David, we're on to our Last topic. Hit us. I'm so excited. Okay. Well, it's been an interesting few days for those who are looking for sort of the last minute

bombshell exposing SpyGate, Obama Gate, Russia Gate, all the gates. So just to kind of sum it up, we learned that U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is investigating the circumstances surrounding the commencement of the Russia investigation in 2016, that that there's not expected to be any prosecutors or any indictments prior to the election or a report. We also learned that the unmasking probe that Attorney General Barr commissioned has concluded without any charges. There won't be any sort of public report. And then in a really kind of amusing development, we found out that this much vaunted declassification order that Trump has tweeted about saying that we're going to get sort of all of the, Hillary email matters and all of the documents related to the Russian investigation into the

public square, that there is no such declassification report. Fourier requests yielded a declaration from the DOJ that says this. The White House Counsel's office informed the department that there is no order requiring wholesale declassification or disclosure documents. The department was further informed that the president's statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification of any particular documents.

I've got to go with my fellow legal podcast nerd, Sarah, what say you? I have said repeatedly on this podcast that tweets, that the executive branch does not consider tweets to be orders. And it felt nice to know that that is still the case since I, you know, left 18 months ago or so. Yeah, there's a reason tweets aren't orders.

So, so many reasons. But I guess what's frustrating to me is that it works, right? Like he says this and everyone, everyone across the aisle, actually, of all media stripes, of all Twitter stripes, everyone's like, oh, my God, he declassified this, it's terrible, or oh, my God, he declassified this, it's awesome. And the whole time, I just feel like I'm just, shouting in the wind going, no, he didn't.

I mean, I don't want to interrupt this, but I have a, I think an important clarifying question. Do we, A, think that Donald Trump doesn't know that he has to do more than just simply tweet? I am calling for the declassification of all these things. And if not, then, I mean, is it possible, I can't do ABC on this. It is not clear to me that Trump doesn't understand that just saying something on Twitter doesn't make it so. And if, if, and so do you guys think that his, this is a deliberate political strategy where he is saying he's going to do something and deliberately not doing it? or do you think he actually thinks he did it and then doesn't realize

after four years on the job that that's not how you do the job? I mean, it's an honest, sincere question. I have an answer to it. Okay. And it's an answer that I actually was surprised about myself because I think if I were in shoes outside of the executive branch,

I would have assumed it was the latter, meaning that he thought he had declassified it and, like, just simply, like, didn't figure out that it hadn't been declassified. That is not the case. He knows that it has not been declassified. And, in fact, yeah, he very much knows it has not been declassified and has agreed to not declassify them. And so the strategy is to seem like he's been thwarted while his idiot followers who take

him at his word on Twitter on everything go out and, like St. Rome before the masses and preach the gospel of the true tweets? I mean, what, what, what, what, what, what? It's a con. He wants to declassify them. But then when experts come in to tell him why that's a bad idea, he agrees with them and then doesn't declassify them. And yet continues to tweet that he has declassified them.

That he's declassified them. It's a con. It's a con. And so what ends up happening is that his followers, um, including, including people who know better, we should be honest about this. They're not just idiot followers. They're people who know better who claim to be quite sourced within the White House. I think we might know who some of those people are. Then continue this by saying that's all being foiled against the president's orders by this, you know, nefarious deep state. And it is being

foiled in the sense that there are people who bring in those experts to tell him the ramifications of declassification, and then he is persuaded not to do it. They consider that to be foiling for what that's worth. But that's not what they're saying. I know. Yeah. What they're essentially saying is that the president is issued a legally binding order that is being blocked by the deep state,

not that the deep state has persuaded the president not to issue a legally binding order. Those are really different things. And in case B, their beef is with the president. But the president apparently cannot fail. He can only be failed. And so here we are. But Steve, you've followed a lot.

And you're no fan of, and I don't think there's anybody on this podcast who would be considered a real fan of the Obama National Security and Intelligence Establishment. What's your read on the sort of the bust or the poof of the, macro large scale Obama gate narrative, at least at this point. Yeah, I mean, I'm still interested in seeing if these reports are released,

what they say specifically, what they provide in terms of details. But you're right. I tangled with the Obama national security team both on the political side and in the Intel side. And, you know, while I don't, I think the claims about a deep state have gone well beyond what's warranted, there's no question that there were prominent intelligence officials leading the most important intelligence agencies who were, I think, manipulating intelligence for President Obama. And I would include in that John Brennan, I would include in that James Clapper. There were others who, I think, acted in a deeply political way. So it was always plausible to me that some of these folks would have been thumbing the scales on their way out. I mean, it was never entirely crazy, but what really mattered was the evidence. Could we prove it? Did we see it?

I would still say that there, I have questions about what we, I have questions about the unmasking process generally. there seems to be anomalies in the process, and there seem to be a number of requests that I think are inconsistent with the good practice of unmasking. Unmasking is, you know, revealing the identities of somebody who's captured in our communications intercepts. And I would still like to see a definitive accounting of what happened there, because I think there were serious questions, but I was skeptical of the broader. conspiracy theories that were that were spun about them on the on the more specific question of gina i mean the allegations from trump world broadly and this this echoed throughout the

president's sort of trump media complex were that gina haspel was uh blocking the declassification that trump had ordered that trump wanted that the white house was because it would damage her, it would damage the CIA as an institution, and she wanted to keep a job in the Biden administration if Joe Biden is elected. Those were specific claims. They got a lot of attention on the center right, the pro-Trump center right media. And it turns out that there was no declassification order. That's not a small problem with that story. That's the center of the story being false. And, you know, I think it also means that all the sources, if they exist at all, either were so low level that they assumed the tweet meant a declassification order was in the works, or they just didn't know jack feces about anything.

And which tells you that either the sources don't exist or they are, you know, the guy who sells you, the, the guy who sells you, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. Washington Post and a pack of lifesavers in the lobby of Langley. Yeah, so, I mean, having spent a fair amount of time reporting and I think probably talking to some of those same sources, I think the sources are probably, you know, what we would call in a position to know these things, but either misunderstood what was happening because they didn't take the time to ask the questions. There's a sense in that world in sort of the center-right intel world right now that everything always is about the president and everyone everywhere is trying to get the president. And it's just not the case. As I say, and I say that

as somebody who's watched some of these top intel officials go after presidents or defend President Obama. So I think it's possible that there was just that this was based on a series of assumptions and then offered to reporters as certainties when the certainties didn't exist. But it's telling to me that a lot of the places that ran with this that amplified these claims have been on a warpath about the use of anonymous sources when it's the New York Times or the Washington Post or anyone else, but relied entirely in building these stories, it's now shown to have been false on their own anonymous sources. And the problem with, I mean, there are all sorts of problems with anonymous sources.

We talked about it a few weeks ago. We got a lot of listener feedback, actually, that people were very interested in what that means and how it worked. The problem with anonymous sources is that you, obviously, you don't know who the people are and you don't know what their motives are in speaking, but you can't deploy anonymous sources for political ends. You can't have an anonymous sources that you listen to

so that you can defend the president, but condemn anonymous sources who provide information that's somehow damaging to the president. The rurus shouldn't be true either. And unfortunately, I think we've seen too much of that. Can I have a little rant moment? Yeah, I was going to ask you

because you had this knowing, you kind of had a knowing look on your face. Here's my Rant. During the Obama years, a lot was made over the politicizing the Department of Justice. Understandably so, I think it's a really bad thing to politicize criminal investigations, etc., etc. We don't need to rehash that. Here's what's happened in the last three years that annoys me and annoys is an understatement. For political purposes, to win elections,

the right has thrown dust into the air, as you say, Steve, based on anonymous sources or innuendo or whatever else, over things like unmasking the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, the investigation into the Russia investigation, all of these things. Uranium 1,

I don't know if you remember that little nugget. The list goes on and on. And each time they asked the Department of Justice to look into these things, and it dominated cable news at night on the right. It dominated Twitter. You know, there's all these stories and hoopla. And the Department of Justice is left holding the bag

investigating these things. Then when the Department of Justice closes the investigation and says, we found no wrongdoing, it gets no attention from either side. And so it actually, politically, was a smart thing to do. It was all upside for the people who did this. And the downside is to the credibility and the institution of the Department of Justice, which I love with all my heart and have worked there three different times.

And to walk into that building is an honor. And one is in awe of the majesty of what our Department of Justice in the United States of America has been, capable of bringing to this country and and there is political advantage to what they are doing that is going to destroy the Department of Justice because it will be deployed by both sides now because it was so effective rant over um two quick points and i'd be interested in a response from any of you guys um one i am i am i am of the mind that the most remarkable thing about this is that the president of the united states has said repeatedly that this was an attempt to overthrow the government his words that this was a coup the greatest crime political crime in

american history and with the exception of us and maybe 300 500 more people um No one really cares very much about it. And I don't even say I care very much about it. So maybe I'm low-balling that or high-balling that. I think that it's the idea, the premise of so many people who have emphasized so much in this stuff, you know, that the Durham will save us, right? I mean, it's this whole kind of thing. It all presupposes that there are an enormous number of voters out there.

who will be flipped if the narrative, the sort of Trump, Federalist Info Wars, whatever narrative is confirmed, or that if it's repudiated or refuted. I don't think either is true. But that's my point. It's not based on that.

It's based on being able to talk about it endlessly. They don't actually care what the report ends up showing because if they did, they wouldn't want said report. because everyone knows who actually is around this stuff that their report was never going to show anything, which means it was all about the talking point. And that's what's so frustrated to me

because either then the Department of Justice can decline to investigate something that a lot of people now believe was true, which would undermine faith in our government, democracy, republic, et cetera, or they can investigate it, find nothing, and then nobody notices. And so it's a catch-22 for the department, And, you know.

One second. That leads me in my second point really quickly. Let's let me stipulate that if the Department of Justice found nefarious unmasking procedures or other things, Bill Barr would have given a press conference. Bill Barr would have done something to help the Trumpian narrative on this. And I, look, I think the left gets Bill Barr wrong a lot. I'm just done defending him because Bill Barr is too uninterested in protecting the reputation of the Department of Justice or himself to fight, you know, to stand up for himself. And I'm sure he's got a really interesting series of rationales about why he has to do it that way.

But is there nothing wrong with quietly just waiting for the Washington Post to get this little scooplet about the fact that there's no report, there's no findings of wrongdoing. I mean, why not have a press conference saying, hey, you know, we've been told, you know, I know a lot of people, a lot of people have been concerned for the last four years about these nefarious things allegedly going on. Turns out we found no evidence for it. I mean, it seems to me that's a public service, too. Why can't the DOJ do that? Oh, look, I think they could do that. It is, however, when the Department of Justice closes an investigation without pursuing charges, despite what Jim Comey did in 2016,

it is the policy of the Department of Justice not to comment on it. So they would have to break policy to comment on not bringing charges. I have to say, just look, yeah, go ahead, Steve. Go ahead, David. No, no, no, no. You were, you were about to push back on. So, yeah, so let me, yeah, let me push back a little bit on some of this. It's not the case.

And look, we're speaking in very broad terms here. So we're not, you know, we're talking about the, The questions about the specific cases we're talking about here are the questions about unmasking and the allegation that the Deep State or Gina Haspel or others blocked the president's wishes to declassify all this material from before. But it is the case that DOJ and the FBI and individuals were found having behaved or acted improperly in certain respects of what happened before the election. And so it's not it's not entirely crazy to say.

say, boy, this is troubling. I mean, whether you're talking about the texts back and forth from Peter Strzuck and Lisa Page, whether you're talking about the changing of the FISA applications, the changing of the language, whether you're talking about even the provenance of some of the Steele report and how that was handled, there are real problems. I mean, DOJ and FBI, federal law enforcement officials, I think in some cases, made bad mistakes, And in some cases, we're dishonest about this stuff. And we've seen that in previous IG reports. So I don't want to be misunderstood as saying, you know, all hail the DOJ, this stuff is all made up.

It's not made up. And unfortunately, that's what I think, that's to your last point, Sarah, that's what makes this so difficult is because everybody can have their own slice of the truth and then build a mountain of falsehoods on top of that. And that's what we're seeing here. And that's where this is so bad because you can see people have made legitimate points about concerns with the texting and what that meant. And then growing that into this huge conspiracy that Gina Haspel is trying to undermine Donald Trump so she can be CIA director under Joe Biden. I mean, there is, there are elements of truth to the broad claims and even some of the specific claims about federal law enforcement mistakes. and I think nefarious behavior, but it's not in these specific cases

that we're talking about here, applicable, apparently. You know, one thing I think, from the beginning, two things have been true. There were valid reasons to investigate the Trump campaign, and there are valid reasons

to investigate the investigation. I think both of those things are true, and what we're in the grips of and what we're in the grips of for a long time are two competing, maximalist Russia conspiracy theories. One was personified by the steel dossier of Trump as an active operative of, essentially

Trump and his entire campaign, just essentially an extension of Russian intelligence and the existence of all this compromise and all of this stuff that you heard repeated and parts of the left ad infinitum. And then, but there was this other competing conspiracy theory on the right, which was there was never anything to investigate at all, that the whole thing. is a hoax and that the real scandal is that everything that occurred. And I've heard this. I've sat down and shared a meal with somebody who just laid this all out, that this whole thing from day one was a nothing more than an entrapment by the Obama CIA. There was never anything

to investigate. There was never any wrongdoing. Nothing. It was all 100 percent in Obama CIA operation for fire insurance or flood insurance or whatever. It was an insurance policy that if Trump won, you were going to be able to cash in on the insurance to remove Trump from office. And what you end up with is discovering after all of this investigative reporting, after IG reports, after the Senate Intel report, after the Mueller report, what you find out is that, yeah, there was some really, the Trump team was doing some really shady stuff. None of it apparently criminal, but really shady stuff. And also, we learned that some of the investigators were doing things, for example, some pretty

shady things, especially around the Carter Page FISA, but neither of the maximalist theories is being borne out here. And that, I think, is what's causing a lot of angst, is a lot of the people sort of invested in this notion that what was happening was the equivalent of some sort of hidden coup when in reality it was a investigation where some members of the investigating team cut corners or perhaps lied but they were also investigating they were validly investigating some really problematic stuff and that's a messier reality that people don't like to embrace and with that let's move on to our fun topic today.

During the confirmation hearings, Amy Coney-Barritt's family has been under a microscope. And when you look through that microscope at the nitty-gritty details of her family, what you find are seven of the most delightfully well-behaved children that I think have ever existed on the planet.

So I'm just wondering, and they didn't stay for the whole day yesterday, but if your children had to sit there for eight plus hours and listen to that, what would we be seeing behind you? Steve, I'm going to start with you, and I'm most curious, I think, about your middle daughter. Yeah. I mean, there's only one way to answer this, right? If I say, look, they would be sitting there with hands folded in their lap looking like angels.

that'll be a very self-serving answer. And it would be true, though, for like five minutes. I think it's more true than not, honestly. I mean, you know, we take our kids a lot of places. We travel a lot with them, and they're generally, but pretty well behaved. I'll say this, you know, for now, there's a lot of growing up to come. Yeah, I think the, I think they would, I think they would all be, they would all be able to handle it they wouldn't quite get why anybody cares what dad has to say which is which is true now

probably why they identify so much with jonah either that or they're sort of the same intellectual level as jonah i don't know the the the youngest would probably get fidgety after after a little bit yeah yeah she would she would get fidgety and uh and probably take over the entire hearing room and have people eating out of her hands. I think that your middle daughter, there's a decent chance that actually to help you, she would just start dancing as a way to distract the senators, win you some votes, and get you out of the hot seat. Jonah?

She could win votes, for sure. Yeah, when Lucy was a younger girl, I think there's a, like, the bookmakers in London who, you know, will take bets on anything, they would give very, it would be even money that she would get on all fours and start crawling underneath the chairs all over the place. That was her go-to move in every airport we'd ever been to, which is one of the reasons I think she's acquired a lot of immunity

to various diseases. But these days, if you gave her, if you allow her to have her phone, you just see you're looking at her phone for 11 hours. I mean, she'd do that anyway, so it's not a big. She wouldn't even notice she was somewhere else. I think it's weird that you went to Lucy with that question. I was assuming we would get some Zoe and Pippa responses.

I asked about your children. Oh, that's true. Well, for the purposes of this, I thought I should lead with my bipedal child. Although saying your bipedal child would be on all force. That's true. It's a convergence. Pippa would surely bring tennis balls to each and every one.

of the centers except for maybe Sheldon White House because he's scary. True story. Very quickly, Cosmo, the Wonder Dog, my previous dog, the one who's got the party had in my Twitter feed, he had a thing for fat people, just like fat people and would go running up to fat people, wagging his tail

to say hello. He knew they knew where the food was, clearly. Like, evolutionarily, you should have been attracted to fat people if you're a dog. One day my wife comes home having uh walk cause in the calorama dog park which we were barely really went to because it on the ritzie side of of pandemic avenue when we lived down there and she was like really disappointed and then i said what's going on she says well your your dog betrayed us i think she might have said son um and i said what happened she said well there was this fat guy who got out of a van with a chucket and a

bunch of portuguese water dogs and i'm like yeah and kazi ran over to say hello and hang out with him And it got along great, and I was like, okay. And he says, yeah, it was Ted Kennedy. So anyway, there you go. David. Yeah, so my kids are older. I have two college-age kids, one, 21, 119. The 19-year-old, my son, has an extremely expressive face.

And he would not listen impassively if I was sitting there and I was getting what he would consider to be unfairly, unfairly grilled. So that would be an, there would be obvious disapproval. The memeification of the little French. Oh, there would be many, yeah, there would be many memes.

Now, my youngest, she would look at it as perhaps the ideal opportunity to showcase the latest parts of her wardrobe. And the sheer delight and joy at planning out each day, in the hope that it would receive some sort of comment, you know, maybe in page six or something,

Naomi French stunning the gallery with her, yeah. But they'd all be extremely, you know, appropriate and well-behaved with the exception of the memeification. But that would be, you know, that would be kind of fun. So in my visualization, we don't have a lot of toys for the brisket. He turned four months old on Monday. and so he doesn't need a lot of toys but the one thing that we have for him

is the baby Bjorn bouncer it's like it's literally like a piece of metal that has fabric over it and the child can be basically leaned into it and that's where you can put them for a while but he thinks this is the best toy in the universe and has figured out that if he swings his legs

like you would on a regular swing he can bounce himself to the point that he is very close to catapulting himself out of the baby bouncer, and it brings him infinite delight as he gets more excited, he bounces more, et cetera. So I think that what we would do right now is move a chair out, put the baby bouncer in and just let him do that. And I think he could do it the whole time. Sure, he'd fall asleep a little, but then he'd wake up and start bouncing again. As the questions got more heated, he would just bounce harder.

And you could judge how I was doing based on the speed of bouncing until during the White House 30-minute rant on dark money, he would catapult himself into the panel. You know, what would be actually a really good look with all of that is if you also gave him a child safe gavel to teeth on, that'd be a good look. They tell me that one tooth is starting to start to come in, starting to start to come in, basically. That's our brisket excitement. Who's the they? The pediatrician. A monitor of teeth watchers? I took him to the pediatrician.

She walked in. Oh, no, it was a 789, 476, 234 on Twitter. So we went yesterday for his, you know, shots or whatever. And the pediatrician walked in. He was, like, sitting on my lap. And she goes, so he's, what, about nine months now? And then looked at the chart and went, four months. Oh.

It was a nice moment. He's in the 95th percentile for height and weight. Wow. And undoubtedly for intellect and looks and all of those other things, too. Oh, for sure. So his grandmother tells him. Very advanced. Very advanced, yes.

All right, listeners, thank you for joining us. We will see you again next week. appears that we will not have a debate tomorrow night for Dispatch Live. But if that changes, if we have a last-minute debate, Steve, can we do a dispatch live? We will adjust as necessary, yeah. It can be like that Brady Bunch. We can put it on the show right here. It's great.

But assuming there's not one, we will see you on Wednesday next week. Same bat time, same bad place. Have a great week. Brady Bunch was a TV show, Steve. Oh, I saw that. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.