The Dispatch Podcast - Circle the Wagon

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah return to talk about Trump’s indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Also: -Dispatch Editors: The GOP’s Trump Choice -But her emails -Conservatives should just say what they believe -Biden administration violates the Hatch Act -Pe-cahn or Pee-can -Biden’s estranged grandchild Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgher. That's Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. Okay, dokey. Well, we've got some things to talk about this week. And yeah, if you're sick of hearing about the indictment, I'm sorry. This is not going to be your podcast today. But we are going to talk about the various components of it, the political components, the legal components. Even if you've already listened to AEO, we'll try to keep the legal stuff short. So let's dive right in. I'll give a little overview here. So last week, after our last podcast, Donald Trump was indicted on 37 counts,

one through 31 related to the willful retention of classified documents. I think it's relevant that those charges are not him taking documents from the White House. All of those charges stem from after the FBI asked for the documents back. Then, interestingly, 32 through 37 are your lying, false statements, obstruction, all the things he did to try to not give the documents back, including, along with his personal aid and former body man at the White House,

who was also charged in one of those counts. All right. So, Steve, I'm going to start with you because we had our third ever staff editorial that was published today. I thought maybe you'd want to introduce some of that. Yeah, we had been discussing since the indictment came down, weighing in on this.

We did not do an editorial related to the indictment in New York, which I think virtually all of us agreed was rather flimsy, somewhat political and illegal reach with its bank shot approach. But this one seemed much more substantive, much more notable, and historic. So we looked at both the indictment itself and what we make of the charges, particularly in light of the reaction that we've seen from,

the mixed reaction we've seen from elected republicans, and then also sort of the broader context into which this indictment fell with Donald Trump looking like he may well end up being a convicted felon at some point. And also, if polls today hold, Sarah, you'll win our bet and he would be the Republican nominee. It's a weird position to be in, certainly, not, I guess, unexpected if you've been alive for the past eight years. But we just thought it was worth saying sort of this willingness of some Republicans, including people like Kevin McCarthy and Marco Rubio and others, to downplay or dismiss the indictment because they don't like Joe Biden

or they don't like the Department of Justice or they want to talk about Hillary Clinton's emails is unwise given the strength of the indictment. And we fall much more closely to the views expressed by Bill Barr, former attorney general who said this is a damning indictment, and if half of it's true, the guy's in trouble. Jonah, let's start on this side of things, then, which is the indictment itself, the reaction to it, the media reaction to it, I mean, sort of wherever you want to start.

Where do you think this leaves us as a country if we're indicting a former president? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you after wherever you want to start. Because most of my conversations with Jonah go. Don't say wherever you want to start. Only insofar as, you know, a lot has been said already about all this. Not everybody has said it, but we're almost there. One of the few things that people haven't pointed out,

Steve mentioned the brag indictment. We were all critical of it. You, Sarah, were probably among legal commentators at the bleeding edge of critical of it. And a lot of people, you know, are making this, you know, a lot of people are critical of it are saying, see, this proves I am not a reflexive anti-Trump person. I am making distinctions here and all the rest. But what we're not hearing from a lot of people who were critical of it are some I told you so. and part of the argument at the time

against the Bragg indictment was it will have an inoculative effect on a lot of people. People will look at it, say this isn't very serious, this shows they're just out to get Trump and it'll make it easier for Trump when the next indictment comes

for him to say, look, it's just another one of these things that is purely political and unfair and witch hunt and all that kind of stuff. And I think that criticism has been proven right that for a lot of people, they've already been trained up to dismiss this stuff as part of the witch hunt

and as unfair and unsurious and all that. And it proves that Bragg should not have brought the indictment. You know, that's where prosecutorial discretion was advised. All right. That, I told you so, a point out of it. I think it's terrible to, you know, to actually answer your question. I think it's absolutely terrible to have a former president indicted. I think it's even worse to have a former president who's indicted running to be president again,

which is, you know, an important distinction here. I mean, it would be one thing if they were indicting George W. Bush, you know, it's another thing if they're indicting the guy who's the frontrunner and the GOP raise. and what that says about the GOP in the country is embarrassing. It's just embarrassing and worse than embarrassing. But what about the idea that the current president is indicting, the current president and presumptive nominee of his party for the next election is indicting his most likely competitor?

Yeah, I have almost zero tolerance for this argument. I think that it is amazing to me, I mean, it's not quite hypocrisy because most of the people who are most talking about how this is election interference never believe that Joe Biden actually wants to run against Donald Trump.

But basically, the wider world of people who are serious about politics and not in the tank for Trump, we've been saying for two years now that Biden, his only way of winning is to run against Donald Trump. So the idea that Biden is trying to take Donald Trump out of the race

with this prosecution just doesn't make sense to me at the most basic like we can assume all the cynicism deep state chicanery you want about Joe Biden it is against his interest

to take Donald Trump out of the race but wait can't both be true that Joe Biden again let's use the most cynical version of this okay Joe Biden indicts Donald Trump which again I'll talk about the difference between what the White House

even knows about this versus the Department of Justice. But my most cynical version. Joe Biden indicts Donald Trump because it basically guarantees him the Republican nomination while at the same time making him easier to beat in a general election. It's a two-fer.

Yeah, okay. Possible. Also assumes that Joe Biden is a 3D chess master and has figured out how to do that and also figured out how to get Jack Smith to do his bidding. and a thousand other things, right?

I mean, again, the people who are saying this is electoral interference aren't making that argument, right? The people are saying this as electoral interference, including Donald Trump, are saying this is Biden's way to take the frontrunner out not to guarantee the frontrunner the nomination. So you have to find me someone

who's actually making that argument because your argument's better than their argument, but it's also wildly implausible and you don't actually believe your strawman argument making in the first place. So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it's just a fantastic debating point. But just more broadly, I think that there's this, this, just this, I think people get it wrong

on this two-tier justice system thing. I think it's a really unpatriotic and deeply cynical and pernicious thing that a lot of people are doing, just throwing the rule of law under the bus and saying it doesn't exist because unless you let Donald Trump get away with committing crimes, the rule of law doesn't exist is not a good argument. And the person who benefited from a two-tier justice system was Hillary Clinton. It's not Donald Trump. Even Bill Barr was making this point on special report this week

that the way to restore the rule of law is not to continue to make exceptions for politically powerful or popular people. it is to get back to the business of applying the rule of law. And what people are implicitly and sometimes explicitly saying is if you're not going to have the rule of law for Hillary, you can't have the rule of law for Donald Trump. And I think that is garbage as an argument. Steve, jump in.

Yeah, no, I'm where Jonah is on that. Sarah, can I ask you for a clarifying question on the legal stuff? And I think it's appropriate for you to give us a non- lawyer-targeted Steeleman argument for this claim that Trump hasn't in fact

broken the law, that this is all a bunch of Huey. What's the best case for that? I mean, if you look at the people who are either defending Trump directly or downplaying or

dismissing this, their arguments take one of several different paths. One is sort of, yeah, Yeah, he did it, but it's no worse than what Hillary Clinton did, so we shouldn't. There's this double standard that Jonah, I think, just mentioned. There's another that says, yeah, he did it, but there's no evidence that it actually caused any damage. So really, we should let it slide, and we haven't really looked at this seriously in the past.

And then there's another group, I think it's a smaller group, and it's a smaller group, it might be for a reason, who's basically saying, nope, everything you did is legal. Everything's on the up and up. Presidential Records Act says he can take this. The second he touches a document, whether it's a war plan or a description of a nuclear facility, it's his personal document. He can take it and keep it.

He can do what he wants with it. Can you address that last one specifically? Well, let me address them all a little bit, which is there were 37 charges. I think there are real non-frivolous arguments. to one through 31, that are all the same. They're different documents, but each one is the willful retention

of a different piece of national defense information. I'm going to circle back to that. However, I haven't heard any defenses to 32 through 37, the Trump getting in his own way, once again, being his own worst enemy, and flooping around, sending incriminating text messages between staff and all of that.

that. That's the lying, the false statements, the obstruction stuff, the moving the boxes. So even if you knock out one through 31, you're left with five real jail time-infused charges. And those are going to come down to the evidence that the government has to present a trial. Yes, the speaking indictment, such as it was, laid out a lot of that evidence. I would say, though, that there's a big difference between what the government can put into an indictment and what they can prove a trial and how credible those witnesses are and what their defenses are. So I would just note that. Donald Trump will have a defense to those. They're going to be more fact-based. And remember the difference between what a judge does and a jury does. The judge is going to decide questions of law. That's going to be one through 31. Those are going to be legal defenses on willful retention. On 32 through 37, you're just going to see factual defenses. And that's going to be.

for the jury to decide. So leave those to one side. Let's go back to the willful retention. First of all, on the double standard, we actually are talking about slightly different charges that they were looking at for Hillary Clinton, which is not worth getting that far into here.

But again, Donald Trump wasn't charged with taking documents from the White House. Why? because he was president when he did it. And for all the like making fun of Donald Trump could have declassified that, that's sort of beside the point. First of all, he's not charged with anything related

to whether the documents were classified. It's national defense information. And I think there is a real question and one that isn't going to get resolved in this case because again, he's not charged with it, of what abilities a president has to take documents from the White House. You know, under this unitary executive theory,

It doesn't matter that these agencies have said this is national defense information or anything else. At 1159 on January 20th, he was the head of those agencies. Now, at 1201, he wasn't. And then there was a new president, and that new president can say, I think that's national defense information and I want it back. At that point, Donald Trump had the ability to go to court and say, no, they're my documents now. Suck it, big guy. And he didn't.

instead he's telling his aides he wants to review the boxes themselves he's moving the boxes to the bathroom he's flying them to Bedminster that's where he makes stupid decisions okay so on a double standard thing

they're different cases can I ask you a hypothetical on this point which I got from a lawyer friend of mine just I want to give credit word to do so let's for the people who say any document he had while he was still president, he could say mine, right? Because that's basically Trump's argument, mine, right?

And so let's say in the last day in office, he goes down to the National Archives, takes out a hammer or whatever, or tells a guard, give me the Constitution. Yep. Right? Says mine. Yeah.

And then goes down to Mar-a-Lago with it, creates a museum, and charges people 50 bucks ahead to see the real constitution. Yep. Is that a real argument? Why are you giving him these ideas? It's not present right now. I mean, obviously it's a crazy hypothetical,

but it sort of fits the pattern that these people are claiming that basically the federal government is the president's property when he is president, which I think is an awfully monarchical understanding of the presidency. But it seems to me that you're saying that that's a... Not the federal government, the executive branch. Okay, all documents. No, the executive branch

So that's going to be relevant Because I'm going to push back on your hypothetical This F-16 is mine Right And the Constitution is not classified right There's nothing really classified stuff Can you say

But let's say Hey, this F-35 is awesome It would look great in front of Mara Lago It's mine now I actually think your hypothetical is real But I'm going to distinguish these examples from what would make it a good hypothetical

Because, and the reason I'm pushing back on the executive branch thing is because when you're talking about the U.S. Constitution that's held in the National Archives or that F-16, there's another branch of government involved. So remember, the legislative branch is going to trump, no pun intended, the executive branch here. So if there's some, and I don't know this off the top of my head, but I would imagine there is. How come? I mean, the military is part of the... Hold on. Blah, blah, blah. that. If Congress has appropriated money. How dare you interrupt my crazy hypotheticals?

If Congress has appropriated money or had any statute passed to take care of the U.S. Constitution or the documents that are being held by the National Archives, then all of a sudden that's going to be different. Same with that F-16. But what we're talking about are things that Congress has not had any statutory or appropriations over, and that's where you get into this weird Presidential Records Act stuff, where the Presidential Records Act says that the president, the current president, gets to decide what are his presidential records?

So, no, I don't actually think he could go to the National Archives or take the F-16, but your hypo is real. Could he? Yeah, I mean, there's just lesser examples. Yeah, I said my one pushback on your pushback on my flawed hypothetical is the printer paper on which the classified materials are printed out by the CIA is just as much paid for as the F-16 is by Congress. It's all paid for by Congress because Congress is the only thing they could pay for anything. So, and it's all paid for by statute, right? Because Congress creates all of these executive agencies and then tells the president to go run them. So I don't understand the distinction

between paying for the F-16 and paying for the eight and a half by 10 glossy paper. Yeah, again, I am not an expert on the statutory authorization for F-16s, but I'm going to bet it's a little more than just here's your cash and you can go buy an F-16, but rather what the F-16 can be used for, where it must stay, which department it belongs to. There's going to be other strings attached. Now, if I'm wrong about that, then fine, your hypo's awesome. But I don't think I am. I don't know that my hypo's awesome.

I just have a problem with these arguments that people are making. I'm now getting inundated with sort of bot people saying, you don't understand the president. It's a supreme controller of all things in the known universe. He has Thanos's glove. How dare you question this? And I think it's just all monarchical nonsense because they would never say that about Joe Biden.

Well, that's true too. But so you have this 2012 Clinton sock drawer case where a D.C. district judge who will actually have no precedential value, of any real kind down in Florida, but nevertheless, said that Bill Clinton could decide when he left the White House whether something was a personal record

or an official record, and that the National Archives can't go reclassify things. And here I don't mean classification. I mean, like, classify as a sort. Designate. Yeah, designate, thank you. And so, yeah, this is why he's not charged with taking the documents in the first place.

That's my point. and that's why there's a real argument then over the espionage act which that willful retention statute is under because the espionage act says anyone who blah blah blah blah blah blah blah well there is at least a question of whether that's going to apply to the president now he's a former president at that point again that's why he wasn't charged with taking the documents in the first place i think that it would apply to a former president. But these are all things that haven't been litigated, which is sort of back to my point about, isn't this just really bad for the country? And was there any way around this? And is this different than Ford pardoning Nixon? And what do we make of the double

standard? Steve, I'm coming back to you. Yeah, I want to ask you more questions. So, yeah, I mean, look, I think it's, I think it's horrible for the country. I'm not personally persuaded by people who argue that, you know, there should be talk of a prospective pardon right now before we go through the process. I do think these are serious offenses that he's been accused of. And I think most Republicans, including Republicans who are now dismissing them, would have thought they were serious offenses if this were a Democrat. Um, so we should apply the law. Um, and the, the fact that what he did in his efforts to retain

the documents is so clownish risks us not taking this as seriously as I think we should take it. Real quick. What about the pushback that, um, okay, fine. He willfully retained these documents, but there's no evidence or even allegation. that, first of all, that he ever intended to use them to hurt the United States of America or that anyone was able to access them who intended to hurt the United States of America. So, yeah, okay, he retained some documents.

They went and got them back. Where's the harm here? Why are we putting someone in jail for this? Why are we hurting our country and our politics and potentially the next election over something that is a paper crime, literally? Yeah, I mean, first I was, would say because those are different crimes, right?

He's either guilty or not guilty of the crimes he's accused of committing. I think the indictment is pretty strong on that. I'll be surprised if he's found not guilty. I think the reporting that we've seen contemporaneously, including from people who were around Donald Trump during this process, the reporting in this Washington Post story out Thursday morning about the number of times that his own lawyers suggested that he tried to make a deal with DOJ because they understood that he was guilty of the things that they were likely

to charge him with. Those are all reasons, I think, to treat these as separate offenses and to hold them accountable for them. It's not clear at this point. It is true that the government isn't alleging in its formal indictment that the sort of secondary consequences and arguably more serious consequences that you mentioned happened. So we don't know, for instance, that somebody was able to go into the bathroom at Maralaga and take pictures of the top secret documents that were stored there. But do we need to? And if we get to the point where the only time we would hold a president accountable for

breaking the law is in a scenario like the one that you just articulated or the one that Marco Rubio articulated where he says, well, there's no allegation that the president sold them to a foreign country. Can we stop for a second and think about what that means? If there were an allegation or evidence, the president sold them to a foreign country, we have a much, much bigger problem than we have with this. But that doesn't mean that we should just ignore what we have in front of us here. Yeah, so I just want to add one point on this.

Like, so if I didn't close the circle before, it's embarrassing, it's terrible. The only divine, everyone agree, and the weird thing is everybody agrees. It's embarrassing and it's terrible to one extent or another. The question is, where do you put the blame for this situation? and the people were defending Trump because most of them aren't most of the serious people defending Trump in one way or the other in usually anti-antit Trump kind of ways

they're basically conceding he's guilty right I mean that's what the but Hillary did a two argument means is like he's guilty but so is she if she got off he should get off um everyone so everyone thinks it's bad the question is is it bad because Trump put us in the situation

or because Biden via Jack Smith put us in the situation. And I am entirely on team Trump got us into this mess, right? And that the Washington Post piece is really fantastic because basically Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, who is not a lawyer, has an English degree from GW. I'm sure it's a great English program. GW is, as my friend Dan Foster likes to say, the Harvard or safety schools. But he tells him, because of this 2012 case that Sarah mentioned a few minutes ago, that he's figured out the secret sauce why Trump doesn't have to hand over everything.

And all of these lawyers that Trump is paying through the nose to give him advice, he just rejects all of them because it's not the advice he wants, right? That's on Trump. This is the guy who was in the President of the United States. All of his real lawyers are saying, dude, let's get you out of this. And he's saying, no, no, no, I want to fight because they're my boxes.

right? It's sort of like the Seinfeld episode where he goes, because he's my butler. And I think that there's this, you know, Steve's right, we don't know if foreign agents got into any of these documents or anything like this. But what we do know is that there were two Chinese agents who were arrested for trespassing at Mar-a-Lago. One of them got, I think, eight months in prison and then was deported to China. She was found with thousands of dollars of cash on her, like 10 zip drives, a bunch of different, phone, SIM cards, some cameras, all of the stuff that made it pretty clear that she was looking to take pictures of things.

Now, again, we have no evidence that she actually got, you know, someone like that actually took pictures, got into one of these bathrooms. I mean, bathrooms lock after all. I mean, I've told that's a really important point. But you know who knew about the Chinese spy who was on Mara Lago property? Donald Trump, right?

And if you had known that like, not only is it possible, but in fact, the property has, has been penetrated by Chinese agents and say, wow, it doesn't really matter. Let's just keep it on that stage or let's keep it in the bathroom. The dereliction of responsibility there is staggering.

And yet no one cares about that because it's Donald Trump and Donald Trump has, you know, I mean, he could come out and basically declare I have the right of prima nocta and start trying to like bed brides on their wedding nights. And there would be a significant portion of the Mark Levin crowd saying he was president once. There's really no arguing with it.

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that turn, but I'm going to take it anyway of the reaction to the indictment on the left and the right. let's start with the left because I think it's going to be a shorter conversation which is a lot of hand ringing over the judge and how she should recuse herself not because she was appointed by Donald Trump

but because she was appointed by Donald Trump and because in a previous ruling she ruled in favor of Donald Trump and in fairness in a ruling that was then reversed 3-0 by two other Trump appointees and a W appointee that said she didn't have jurisdiction to hear

the case in the first place, which is a pretty, we call it, you know, a bench slap. It's not great, Bob, but also district court judges do get things wrong all the time. So is that working the ref from the left? Are they just concerned because they feel like Donald Trump is like some cartoon character that like always gets away with it in the end? You know, should the left just like sit this one out, be quiet, let the... let the right work this out on their own, Steve? I mean, probably all the above, right?

Look, I think there are real questions about the way that she handled the previous case. On the other hand, if I were on the left and making points, ringing my hands, furrowing my brow about Eileen Cannon, the point I would make is that if this were, in fact, a deep state plot to, Barry Joe Biden's, you know, strongest likely presidential opponent, she would not have ended up with this case, right? I mean, if this were all sort of wired in the background, the powers that be the puppet masters at the DOJ would have, in fact, found a way to smooth the path to a prosecution and having it end up with her suggests that that conspiracy is

certainly not at play the way that it seems to be in the fevered minds of some people on the right. So it's funny in the Dispatch Slack Channel, which is obviously off the record, I will not ascribe names. But Jonah's about to talk about it anyway. But there's this guy whose name rhymes with peeves Schmez. No, there's, no, they're our other people, I'm not actually not Steve, but there are other people, people who judgment I deeply respect who are on both sides of this question about whether Cannon is in the tank for Trump, will prove to be in the tank for Trump, or whether this is in fact bad for Trump. I am on the, well, always open to the corruptibility of people in the era of Trump and admit she may prove

herself to be in the tank in some way. I think the recusal stuff is stupid. I think you guys covered it really well on A.O. It's just there's nothing in the law or in precedent that says she has to recuse herself yet for anything. But I think this is actually bad, like, let me back up and do the bigger, broader point. Trump's got almost no legal case, I would argue, presumably for the last six or five indictments, whatever it is, right? His day in court is not going to go well based on the facts in the law. He's got a really good political case, right? He can go

for one juror in a state where juries tend to favor celebrities disproportionately, where half the jury pool basically has voted for him, and he can just go for nullification, right? So his political case is stronger than his legal case.

It does not help him to have a woman, a judge who was widely perceived to be in the tank for him as the presiding judge over this because he can't say oh this judge hates me this judge is out to get me which is what he wants to be able to say

and I think the left is first of all they're just catastrophizing as they often do in these things I think that some of them are probably trying to work the ref but like Lawrence Tribe and Michael Beschloss and some of these guys I just think that they're in a bubble

of sort of Trump resistance catastrophization and don't actually have a serious argument to make. All right. Let's talk about the reaction on the right. Most recently, Mike Pence went on a podcast radio show and they asked him, if you were elected, would you pardon Donald Trump? And he said, look, I'm not going to answer that right now. Donald Trump has every right to present a defense. They're serious charges. We'd have to cross that, you know, bridge if we got there. and they were horrified. They pushed back multiple times,

very hard against him, saying, if you agree that this is a political prosecution, then it shouldn't matter. You should be agreeing to pardon him up front. This seems like an interesting dividing line in the 2024 GOP race for president. And I say interesting because, as Chris Sununu recently pointed

out, when the guy's 40 points ahead of you and he's been federally indicted, shouldn't you be trying to use that as some ability to move up in the polls? And yet, that's not quite what we're seeing, Steve. Yeah, and again, indicted on serious offenses. This is not, very few people are suggesting that Republican presidential candidates look at the Alvin Bragg indictment and make an argument about it. I mean, we all, I think, well, I shouldn't say we all know. I think people have strong suspicions about what happened that led to that indictment about the underlying Trump behavior there.

Ron DeSantis referred to it in sort of in passing in a kind of a puckish way when the indictment came down, but nobody's campaigning on that. And there's really no argument that Republicans should be campaigning on that. This is totally different. I mean, if you go back and look at the statements that Republicans made about Hillary Clinton and her servers during the 2016 campaign, virtually every single state, can be applied to Donald Trump, and I think the behavior from Trump is worse. And I was somebody who thought then and continues to believe that Hillary Clinton should

have been prosecuted for what she did. This is an easy thing for Republicans to campaign on. And, you know, David Drucker had a really interesting item. I think it was in the dispatch politics newsletter, not a standalone piece. The other day, we talked, the dispatch politics team talked. talked anonymously to advisors at Republican presidential campaigns and super PACs and ask them sort of why they're not running on this. Why aren't you doing this? And I found that the answer is interesting, if ultimately unpersuasive. Basically, it was, ah, people really aren't paying

attention to this right now. We'll have time to make these arguments later. There are other things that will come up. Now's just sort of now is just not the time. I think that's crazy. Of course now is the time. These are crimes. Trump is credibly accused of. There's abundant reporting suggesting just how cavalier he was about his position, about his retention of the documents,

about the handling of these very sensitive documents in the first place. And by the way, it's consistent with everything we know about Donald Trump for the past eight years. And it was funny. Marko Rubio had this statement in July of 2016 where he just really lambast Hillary Clinton. Tees off on her, highly irresponsible for keeping sensitive documents on a server

that could have been penetrated by foreign governments. It was vulnerable. And ends the statement by saying something to the effect of, you just can't have Hillary Clinton as the next president or we can't, you know, We can't abide Hillary Clinton because with the Clintons, there's always so much drama. That was Rubio's closing argument. Think about that in the context of Donald Trump. And these are not frivolous things.

I mean, I didn't think most of the Clinton offenses were frivolous things. But look at January 6th. Look at the call he made to Brad Raffinsberger in Georgia to try to bully him to steal the election. I mean, these are just monumental. offenses. And what you have is this collection of Republican contenders who are saying, in effect, man, and I don't think so. I don't think so. It's as if they all think something else is going to get rid of Donald Trump for them and that each of them, with the exception of Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie, stands to win the support of Trump's most ardent backers by being

friendly to Trump until that fall comes. And I think it's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I agree with all that. I think the sort of fundamental thing, it kind of gets back

to my point about the brag indictment. Everyone is looking at this as if you can freeze in amber everybody's attitudes and expectations and understandings and impressions of who you are until you decide to jump into the time stream and make the statement that you want to make. And the problem is that, you know,

I was out of this conversation with my daughter who likes to delay making difficult decisions. And I'm always like, you know, sweetie, not making a decision is a decision too. And a lot of these people think that they can be silent or wait for the right moment to criticize Trump's behavior. And the problem is that Trump's misbehavior is like a leaking nuclear power plant. The radiation is coming out all of the time and it's mutating people. And so like if you wait until just the exact moment to say, look, this behavior,

is terrible, you've allowed for the passage of a lot of time where other really bad behavior has gone on. And all you do is invite people to say, well, why all of a sudden do you have a problem with Trump's behavior? Was everything that came before okay? And if you don't have a good answer to that, you know, so Mike Pence's answer is yes, right? Mike Pence's answer is that up until January 5 at 1159 a.m., Trump's presidency was firing also on. and going great. And then January 6 happened and now he's bad,

right? Ron DeSantis' position is that the Trump administration was bad because it didn't live, it didn't fulfill all of the promises, but the promises were good. And the personal behavior is not worthy of comment from Ron DeSantis for the most part,

right? Only Chris Christie is saying, look, it's the whole smear. It's the whole guy that's the problem. And so just like waiting to find this moment to sort of jump into the mosh pit just exacerbates the problem of people thinking, well, you're not actually doing this on principle. You're doing this as a cynical sort of market timing maneuver. And you've basically been okay with everything that came before. And I think that that's the fundamental.

And in the process, you've looked like a beta male, right? You look like a weakling compared to this guy who dominates the field because you've been afraid to say what you think is the truth until this moment. And I just think it's a terrible look for all these guys. Since I've been randering, I'll just quote Rabbi Hillel. If I'm not for myself, then who will be for me? If you cannot make the argument that you deserve to be president more than the frontrunner, why the hell are you in the race?

And that's the problem that most of these people have been dealing with, is they don't want to make the argument that they're more qualified and more deserving to be president than the guy who's beating them. There was a column or a newsletter from Nate Cohn at the New York Times, I believe it was Wednesday,

and he makes a point that's been sort of, one of the points I've made now for eight years about conservative influencers, Republican Party leaders, what have you. And there's sort of unwillingness to speak up. Let me preface by saying, I don't think that if even the Republican Party elders and virtually all conservatives stood up and spoke out about this indictment in the way that, say, Bill Barr has, called it a devastating indictment, said the president's trouble, said these are serious, you know, these are sensitive documents, these are serious crimes, that Trump would disappear tomorrow. we saw that dynamic basically take place in the aftermath of January 6th when I think a lot of people thought this probably is the thing that does Donald Trump in and he rose again. But it is the case that when you have conservative influencers and media personalities on the right and Republican Party leaders who refuse to condemn behavior that they would be eager to condemn,

In virtually any other politician, I think, including some Republicans, the rank-and-file Republican voters get the message that there's no there there or they hear people like Marco Rubio or Kevin McCarthy or others who make excuses for Donald Trump or attribute this simply to an overzealous partisan Democratic Department of Justice when that's just not the case. I mean, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that there are, that we'll find out things in this process that don't reflect well on DOJ. We've seen this and other things, as we've discussed here before. But if you don't have leading conservatives just saying what they believe, I mean, it's not even like I would suggest they should say things they don't believe. If they would just go out and say the things that they believe, I think it would shape the way that, you know, the movement conservatives across the country, rank and file Republican voters, understand what's happening here. Because right now you have so many of those conservative influencers just dismissing

or downplaying this or choosing, even if they have concerns about the underlying behavior or would criticize the president choosing to emphasize the problems that they have with DOJ or the double standard they cite with respect to Hillary Clinton. And it gives such a distorted view of the reality. and again of what these people themselves believe that it's like they're pushing this myth on the Republican electorate and the cumulative effect is,

well, it leaves us where we are today. It feels like part of this is though that the argument, the best, there's two different types of arguments that the other 24 hopefuls could make. One, Donald Trump's a bad guy. There's just no evidence that that would stick with GOP prime.

primary voters. That's been tried many, many a time, right? But the second one that I think is more viable is Donald Trump can't win. But the evidence for that is actually pretty scant as well. Not a lot of evidence that, A, when you ask Republican primary voters who they think is best position to beat Joe Biden in 2024, they think Donald Trump is better, more likely. to beat Joe Biden than say a Ron DeSantis. And then when you look at the actual data for the question, you know, the head-to-head matchup between Trump and Biden and DeSantis and Biden, it's at least a coin flip.

Yeah, there's polls that show Biden in the lead. There's a couple that show Trump in the lead. They're all kind of within the margin of error. Maybe Ron DeSantis is a couple points ahead of Trump. But again, within the margin of error and we're quite a ways out and Ron DeSantis hasn't really been under the microscope. I mean, I would be hard-pressed to say that I think Ron DeSantis clearly is a better pick for the Republican Party against Joe Biden if all you cared about was who was more likely to win in November as of today. So how are they supposed to argue against Trump effectively? Set aside the morality of it.

What is the most politically effective argument to get Republican voters around the. electoral case? I don't know. But, look, I mean, again, this is one of these things that it's sort of what I was fronfering about before. Everyone wants to talk as if, like, this is year zero. Like, this is the world began this morning.

The past has significant influence on the presence. And so you've had a lot of Republicans who spent eight years either being silent or celebrating the flaws of this guy. So it's going to be hard. to all of a sudden, you know, find them.

No one has, very few people who are still in office. I mean, Liz Cheney has muscle memory on this. But even we should remember, Liz Cheney was not particularly critical of Donald Trump until January 6th. You know, the, and I am not, I mean, as much as I would like to see some people actually have some backbone about all this,

I take your point. The timing is hard. It is difficult in the heat of the moment when you have this rally around Trump effect to say, actually, the deep state is right about this guy. But I think that one of the arguments you can make is you can say, this is what I read about in the GFOT last week. Like, you can say, yes, the deep state is after Donald Trump.

Yes, the FBI has been politicized. But wouldn't it be better to have a president who didn't make their job so unbelievably easy? you know, what if we had a president who actually behaved in a way that didn't give indictments on a silver platter to your political enemies? You know, this is the problem with Donald Trump

is he makes the job of our enemies easier and he scares away voters that we would otherwise get if he behaved properly. He's a political problem. He may be right in his heart about this way or the other thing, but he repels more voters than he attracts

and he creates problems and drama for himself that harm Republicans going back to every election we have had since he was elected. You know, 2018, 2020, 2020, I think you can make that political case in a serious way, or I kind of think Ron DeSantis would be smart to do like an accidental open mic moment

where he airs at some of these points. but it's going to take effort because, you know, again, voter education is real, so is voter maleducation. And we are deep, deeply down the road in voter maleducation

over the last eight years. Yeah, I don't much care about what Republican voters, who Republican voters believe would be the most formidable opponent to Joe Biden because 70% of them think Donald Trump won in 2020.

And they're wrong about that. Like, they can think that, they can believe that. You know, it might affect their behavior with respect to the primary. So it's not an easy argument to say, well, you just should believe these other things. And then then things would be different. The reality is, I think it is the case that Donald Trump would be the weakest or among the weakest of the Republican candidates to go up against Joe Biden. There's a reason Joe Biden and the Democrats are desperate to have Donald Trump as their opponent.

And I think the best argument is the one that Jonah just mentioned in passing, 2018, 2020, 2020, 2021, and 2022. This is not a mystery to people. And you can go back and you can really quantify the costs of embracing Donald Trump to the Republican Party. And I think that's as good as argument as any in this current context, beyond sort of the big moral case. I think you're right, Sarah, that there are, it's not only not for, obviously, for the Trump base,

but even for many for rank and file Republican voters, they're just not going to be persuaded by the things that, you know, I might take offense to. Like, they don't care. And to the extent that they do care, they think it's an attribute, not a negative. So fair enough. I mean, I still think it's important to make those arguments. because ultimately it's good to sort of at least set down markers about what's acceptable behavior and what's not and what's true and what's false.

But as a practical matter, and we included this in our editorial, the practical case, I think, against Donald Trump, is that he's a loser. He's been a loser. And, you know, I guess I don't buy, I mean, I'm not a sophisticated political strategist and probably for a reason.

and probably I would run a lot of losing campaigns. But I don't understand why Ron DeSantis doesn't do this now. I would make that case. He already has alluded to it in the past when he talked about a culture of losing around Donald Trump. DeSantis won by 20 points in Florida. I would be hammering the case that Trump is poisoned for the Republican Party.

You're not going to beat him by imitating. And until you confront him, I think it's a lost cause. The only thing I'll take issue with there is the idea that Democrats are clamoring to have Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. A, I think actually lots are very afraid of having Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.

And then those that aren't, I would say, like that's not really proof that they know something because the Hillary Clinton team wanted Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. So, you know, nobody's a super genius who can see the future. Not on the Republican side,

not on the Democratic side. I would say they might be wrong. I literally haven't heard any Democrats who don't want to face Trump. Oh, I have all the time. All the strategists I talk to, they'd much rather face one of these others. There's just a lot more known knowns

with some of these other guys. They're regular politicians. Donald Trump brings out parts of the voter base that is a known unknown. He's unpredictable. It's 2016 problems. I think it's funny because I think probably you talk

talk to more elected Democrats and I talk to more operative level Democrats. And that's probably a pretty big divide. 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, 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 own. 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. All right. I have a few not worth your times that I want to do sort of a lightning round on, or not worth your times. A, the stories around Hunter Biden have largely,

flown under the radar in the mainstream sort of national press. And I don't mean the investigations, because those haven't wrapped up. So like, how much can you really say about an investigation that continues? I kind of mean this child support stuff. There is a child that is his in Arkansas that he didn't pay any child support to, denied the child was his, then started paying child support too, and now is going back to say that he wants to pay less child support. okay. He's paying $20,000 a month. That's, I'll grant you. Hi. But like the text messages that are coming out where he ghosts her for, you know, well before the baby's born, after the baby's born, then puts her on payroll so that she can get health insurance, then jerks her off the payroll so that her health insurance is gone. And the text messages just sounds so cavalier. He's asked a judge to block her from changing this now four-year-old's last name to Biden, which I don't even know how you could argue that someone can't change their last name.

I can change my last name to Biden if I want. You just go to the courthouse and do it. I mean, this guy, and then, by the way, and this is a tricky point I'll grant you, but the president of the United States lists his grandchildren on a regular basis and does not include this little girl who, is his grandchild. Is this not worth my time? I think it's worth your time.

Look, it's hard, right? It's hard in this political climate to figure out how to calibrate some of these things. I am entirely comfortable having, I'm entirely comfortable to say that Hunter Biden is a broken person, right? I have some sympathy that from personal experience having gone through

what I went through with my brother to what drug addicts do to a family um and uh and so that gives me a little

trepidation about you know going too high on the hog about this stuff at the same or high on horse I should say um at the same time it's obvious like like you know

One of the things that drug addiction does is it brings out the worst version of people. And the worst version of Hunter Biden is really bad. I mean, much worse than the worst version of my own brother or other drug people who have battled with addiction. It's really, really bad. And presumably he's clean and sober now. And so he has now no excuse whatsoever for being such an ass towards his own child. So I have no sympathy for him in this case. How much I'm supposed to wait this against Joe Biden in this context

when there are so many sort of easier things to level against Joe Biden that actually have to do directly with Joe Biden is just sort of a complicated thing. And I think that there's a lot of desire out there to say, oh, look at this shiny thing over here about Hunter Biden as if it's a serious argument about Joe Biden's presidency and like the Burisma stuff, maybe that is. You know, there's some of this Biden crime family stuff that has real teeth to it and is legitimate.

I don't think it has to do with Hunter Biden's child support payments. Okay, I think that's true, except for part of Joe Biden's brand is that he's this nice, empathetic, kind person. his son is a drug addict. I don't think that's his fault. I don't blame him as a father, but for the grace of God, you know, go I. However, if you know your son is a drug addict

and you know he has hurt other people, what responsibility do you then have as the grandfather of this little girl to make sure that she has support in her life, stability in her life, men in her life? and Joe Biden's just pretending this isn't happening because he loves his son I understand that but your son's an adult

this little girl's four years old and so I guess I do think that reflects on him and should tarnish that brand of like oh Uncle Joe he's just such a nice guy he's not being very nice to this four year old I agree with you on that and I find the arguments that Hunter Biden has made

or that his lawyers have made on his behalf in an effort to lower these child's award payments. Pretty appalling when you look at the kind of money that's been sloshing around in his life for a while, including the lifestyle he's leading now. There's a pretty clear contrast between the kinds of things that he's able to avail himself of now, including reportedly private jet flights to these hearings.

that suggests he should be willing to pay more money. I think the way that they've handled this, at least what we know in public realm, has been poor and they deserve criticism. On the journalistic question, which is where you started, I agree with you entirely, Sarah, if I'm inferring your point correctly,

there has been a dearth of mainstream media coverage of this. And it's easy to imagine that if the parties were reversed here, that this would be getting a lot more attention and that it would be seen as a reflection of grandfather's parenting or compassion, empathy, what happened. I say that, and then I look at our coverage or lack of coverage of it, and I think there's a meaningful distinction to make, and it's a totally self-serving one,

so people can criticize us if they like. we haven't spent much time on this. It's a real not worth your time question for us. But I would argue that we don't really do that. We don't spend a lot of time on these kinds of things. Anyway, you'd be hard pressed to go back and find much writing at length or discussion of, say, the Trump children. And there's a lot to discuss there.

Not that it's not important in some way, or it doesn't tell us important things, but just with limited resources, what we choose to put our, place our attention on. And there's this mantra, people are sick of me saying it internally. We don't always hit the mark, but the general guidance is, is this something that's going to be important in six days, and six weeks, and six months? If it is, then we're good to cover it. If it's not, we should probably move on to something. else.

I think this has, you can make an argument that this would be important enough to cover. But I guess I don't leave this conversation and think we really got to get somebody on this story. All right. My next not worth your time question mark is the office of the special counsel. Now, this is very different than the Department of Justice special counsels, et cetera, et cetera. The Office of Special Counselor are the ones who do these Hatch Act reviews, and they found recently that the White House press secretary violated the Hatch Act

when referring to MAGA Republicans. They said that that was a campaign slogan. You can't talk about that from the White House. That would be partisan politics from the White House, which the Hatch Act prohibits. The White House has since continued to talk about MAGA Republicans. They're basically just going to ignore the Office of Special Council ruling that this violates the Hatch Act. At the bottom of that note from the Office

of Special Counsel, they have a little footnote that says, we found the same thing when the Trump people were talking about magonomics from the White House as well. And I guess this is more of a like, okay, so I guess we're all just breaking norms now. These things actually do have consequences for later administrations. So is it worth my time to care about the fact that the White House, like, we're just not doing the Hatch Act anymore. I'm not that offended that the White House is using the term MAGA Republicans. I mean, I am, but not from a Hatch Act standpoint. I've always thought the Hatch Act was sort of a little bit of silliness on terms of what

you're saying, at least, that's different than showing up to political fundraisers and stuff. Is the Hatch Act worth my time anymore, or because of the Trump administration, now Biden administration like they're not restoring norms they're just going to do whatever they want to fun all right do i care jona i'm kind of with you i mean some of these hatchack enforcer types kind of strike me like toby flenderson from the office you know it's like really and it's just going to be a party too last name that's pretty impressive that you know his last name i just knew him as toby that's so fun um some of us do our homework uh

No, so I, uh, uh, I think part of the problem is, it's a camel's nose on your intent kind of argument. That's the only place you can go with this, which is that I think the MAGA ruling is kind of stupid. I don't like the use of the MAGA stuff because invariably Biden and Karene, St. Pierre, whatever name is, they, they do it deliberately with a broad rush, right? The imprecision

with which they use it is deliberate because they want to make more people MAGA than actually are and they want to make legitimate ideas that predate MAGA, scene MAGA. It's a deliberate shotgun approach to political rhetoric.

Does it qualify as campaign rhetoric from the, you know, I don't know. I mean, like, if you're going to have that standard, then half the editorial on the right and the left in this country in the last seven years are actually, in fact, in-kind campaign donation

campaign rhetoric because I'm sure the New York Times uses MAGA all the time. I mean, I don't know that, but I feel like that's true. Wall Street Journal, certainly in the New York Post, you know, National Review. We've probably used MAGA as a shorthand identifier more than a few times. I don't think

we were carrying water for one party or the other party when we were doing it. And so I think it's a bad decision but the decision to ignore the Hatch Act Flandersons is probably a bad decision, too, precisely because it sets a precedent for ignoring them the next time when they're actually right

and that it's much more clear cut, but I don't know. We're also going to have this weird thing, Steve, where they can find it as a willful violation of the Hatch Act, which is a problem, potentially. And the problem for the Biden White House is if you have set yourself up as the sort of enforcers of the standards, of the returners to norms,

you sure better return to norms, however silly you think the norms are. And the fact that this ruling came and they've basically decided, ah, screw it, we don't care. I think that doesn't reflect well on them. You know, having said that, if you look at context, it's worth noting that Donald Trump used, the White House in August of 2020

as the backdrop for the Republican National Convention. This is like, the context here is really matters. Fair point. That's a fair point. They, you know, that's what Trump did. Now, I would argue that the better course of action is to look at those distortions from the previous four years and say we do want to return to norms. And it is worth making these distinctions.

I don't think, I think the use of MAGA is a, I mean, it's a pretty small thing to focus on. I like the hatchack for other reasons for, right? Like, why would you violate the hatch act just so you can say the word MAGA? Like you have this whole, like, we're returning to norms and then you're like, no, let's give it away for this. Who cares? Well, I think it could be because Democrats really want to run against Donald Trump. Well played, Hayes. Just you and not be worth your time thing real quick, Sarah?

Yeah. Because as you know, one of my favorite pastimes is to point out bad lawyering or bad clienting to you and David and other lawyers. I just, I enjoy it in a schadenfreude-tastic kind of way. We've referenced it a few times, this Washington Post piece, about how all of the lawyers that Donald Trump had gave him one set of advice, which was, we can settle this, we can get out of this really, really easily,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Tom Fitten, head of Judicial Watch, said, no, no, no, no. We can fight this. We have the law on our side, National Records Act and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Tom Fitten, again, is not a lawyer. I'm just wondering, when you see things like this,

does it give you agita? Or do you find enjoyment of it when the lawyers are proven right and the non-lawyers are beclowned? I mean, I'm just kind of curious, how do you process these kinds of stories? No, because I think I have like the memories of being in rooms where, you know, five people are giving really good advice and the one moron has been invited into the room and gives bad advice and the principal is like, yeah, but I like the bad advice. I'm like, I bet you do. That does sound more fun, doesn't it?

And you don't win in the end because your client loses. And nobody cares that you were proven right. Yeah. And it just, I mean, you've got former Southern District of New York prosecutors saying, hey, I think we can just work this out. Let's just get this off your plate. And then, like, Lulu McGee over here is like, but what if we don't? So, yeah.

No, I just, I feel for the lawyer, I guess. You're right. I just, I, oh, but it's not a good feeling and it's not a like, aha, you were proven right. It's just like a, ah, but you know what they say about law practice. It would be awesome, except for all the clients. All right. Last, definitely worth your time. Steve, we just had a member event in Houston, my hometown, half a mile from my parents' house.

we got fajitas, carnitas, some impanadas. It was incredible. Oh, and don't forget the pecan pie. The pecan pie was awesome. Food was fantastic. We went to, I think it's, I don't know if it's to say your favorite restaurant, but certainly one of them. This was a highlight for you.

The Sarah gift game was strong when we found out that we were going to good company kitchen and canteen a canteen and kitchen and you did a very good job she insisted on ordering for the table and the food was exceptional we had dinner with a couple of our sponsors Tom Fish and Alan Hassan food and it was great dinner itself that night was great

and then we had this event the next night for I think 200 plus dispatch members and prospective members the three of us talking probably for too long up in front of the room and having a chance to do a little happy hour beforehand and a little happy hour afterwards with the members. Fantastic event.

It's, you know, we started out, I've told this to some people when we were down there, we started out doing these things thinking it was like, hey, nice, nice for the members, get out, you know, shake some hands, meet some people, talk to them. And it turns out it's really a selfish thing because I get so charged by doing this and talking to people and listening to sort of how they came to the dispatch,

what they like and what they don't like at the dispatch. And it's just, it's a really great opportunity to hang out. We are going to do more of them in the, I think, late summer and certainly into the fall as we for step up our plans. And we'll be announcing where soon. But it was a great event. Jonah, you got to experience Intercontinental Airport

without air conditioning. So that'll be a fun memory that you can keep. You're welcome. Yeah, it was like flying into the Caribbean with one of those like open air airports that wasn't open air. True story. I did an event in Texas,

I believe it was Houston, like 15, 16 years ago, something like that for National Review back in the day. and one of the gifts they gave us and they all gave us some pecan pie and I was taking it through security and one of the security ladies said what's in the box

and I said it's pecan pie and she started to make fun of me and made fun of me in front of all the other and there's big get a load of this city's liquor he calls it pecan pie it's pecan pie and you say pecan pie and so I'm kind of curious

Are you a traitor to your roots here? Or is there more room for a diversity of pronunciations of pecan or pecan? I just want to be very clear. I grew up in actual pecan country. Like one of my jobs was to go pick up pecans out of neighbor's yard so that they could mow their yard. So I grew up in Pecan Creek near Pecan Grove. Like these are the neighborhood names because it's all just pecan trees. so I don't know where you were

there are other parts of the country that pronounce it pecan but it ain't pecan country here in Texas in Fort Bend County no way no how and with that I will fight all of you in the comments section over this I will also fight you over good company can'tinas tortillas

they are incredible and we'll just take the fights from there so thank you for listening become a member of the dispatch if you want to fight me over either thing or something else. And we'll talk to you next week. I'm going to be able to be.