The Dispatch Podcast - Conservatives Turning Against Israel | Roundtable

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

The OG crew—Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Isgur, and David French—discuss President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts on Israel and Gaza, the violent text messages from Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s performance during a congressional hearing earlier this week.The Agenda:—Is the Gaza war finally over?—Right-wing antisemites—Should the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to the IDF?—Mary Katherine Hamm presents her case—Former Dispatch reporter’s scoop on Jay Jones—Attorney General Pam Bondi is scaring us—David preaches on decency—NWYT: Writing in your car alone The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is the Gaza war finally over? That and so much more this week on the dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes, and I'm pleased to be joined by my dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg and Sarah Isker. And by David French of the New York Times, Jonah, President Trump was holding forth yesterday in the Oval Office, taking questions from friendly reporters, berating unfriendly reporters in his mind when Secretary of State Marco Rubio passed him a handwritten note on White House stationary. The note said, quote, very close, we need you to approve a truth social post so you can announce deal first. Rubio was referring to the imminent deal to end the war in Gaza. And the

truth social post, when President Trump finally posted it a short time later, read as the following. I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first phase of our peace plan. This means that all of the hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their troops to an agreed-upon line as the first steps toward a strong, durable, and everlasting peace, strong, durable, everlasting, all capitalized. All parties will be treated fairly. This is a great day for the Arab and Muslim world, Israel, all surrounding nations and the United States of America. And we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this historic and unprecedented event happen. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Jonah, Donald Trump, is scheduled to fly to the region this weekend. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has invited him to address the Israeli parliament. There seems to be, at least for this moment, optimism all around. Are you optimistic? What are your thoughts on the deal? What's in it and what does it mean? So, yeah, I'm optimistic. I think Trump does, we can get to how much praise he deserves and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

But this is an unalloyed good thing on the merits, I think. If in the next 72 hours or 48 hours, about the time people listen to this, hostages are actually released, then that's just a huge win, no matter how you count it. If there actually is a ceasefire that both sides can abide by, that's a good thing. If the thing fails eventually, which I think it will eventually, this was still good. First of all, hot sages come home, fighting stopped for a while, and you got Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt to have a level of stakeholdersness. of buy-in to this problem that is very useful. And Trump deserves a lot of credit for all of those things.

Now, it's funny, my understanding, and I'm open to correction on this, but my understanding is that when the Trump administration offered this deal in the first place, it wasn't in phases. Those 20 or 21 points were just supposed to, like, materialize all at once. and both Israel and Hamas and the interlocutors said, you know, this is an interesting piece of paper. Why don't we cut it up into phases and stages? And because there was no way to do all that stuff at once,

particularly when there was, you know, we're all journalists here. We can speak and editor speak. There was a lot of TKs in it so far as, you know, like Palestinian technocrats to be named later. For the non-journalists in our crowd, the TKs mean to come. You leave it, it's a filler, and then you fill it in later.

And why it's TK instead of TC, I don't know, but... Phonics, phonics. T.C. exists in words, and TK. doesn't. So when you, like, go to find something, you'll know that TK would never be a thing. Oh. Yeah. Wow. Learn something. And so anyway, the point is, like, they had these, you know, just sort of, there's so many pie in the sky

unlikely things to happen in this plan as it is, that the idea of counting, you know, chickens at this point is sort of ridiculous, but so what, right? I mean, like, even if the first few phases make it through, that's an improvement. And there's a, I hate the word process, but there is a process going on here that is going to be a little difficult to reverse for Hamas. I am deeply skeptical about Hamas disarming and I'm very I'm deeply skeptical of the idea you know Hamas is not agreed the again the quote-unquote plan says Hamas cannot be part of any future government structure in Gaza and Hamas is not agreed to that and I like if

Hamas agreed to everything in this proposal they would fall afoul of the bobs from office space because people will be like, what would you say you do here? Right? You're no longer an armed terrorist organization. You're not part of the government. Like, you've got no reason for existence anymore. And in history, there are very few organizations, particularly militant, you know, messianic, death culty ones that agree to stop existing for the betterment of the region. And so, again, I think long term, I'm very skeptical, this works the way Trump says it's going to work or anything like that, but he does deserve a good deal of credit for what we're going to get piecemeal.

I just assumed a lot of Hamas people are going to, like, I feel like this is some movie reference, but I'm not sure I remember what, but like, you know, they're wearing a hat that says Hamas, and they're like, no, we can't have Hamas anymore. And they're like, okay, and they take off the Hamas hat and put on a Palestinian Authority hat. I think it's going to be a lot of that. I think there is going to be a wholesale switch from members of the Judean people's front to the people's front of Judea kind of thing, yeah. Right.

Yeah, but I would say even if that happens, that would be a good thing. It's all good. I mean, it wouldn't change their views necessarily their beliefs, but I would be that I would say that would be a small step toward progress, right? It's like acknowledging that their death cult is the first step. Right. But, you know, the other thing that Jonah didn't say, though, that I, I mean, he implied it. It's good for all of this and humans and the region and all that.

It's good for America. Sure. Yeah, David, headline from your newspaper this morning over to analysis by veteran correspondent David Sanger reads, quote, with Mitty's deal, Trump is on the brink of a major diplomatic achievement. So we just had Jonah praise Donald Trump, well, albeit with some caveats. We have David Sanger, the New York Times, crediting Donald Trump for potentially a major diplomatic achievement. Where do you fall on this? And how much credit should Donald Trump get? I think it'd be tough to argue this is anything but a Trump diplomatic achievement,

whether, I think there's a lot to think about in the future because when Israel, after October 7th, Israel had two war aims. It had the return of all the hostages and it had the demolition and dismantling of Hamas. And one of those two has been, will be achieved by this deal. The other one will have been only partially achieved by this deal. And depending on how it all works out, Hamas may still run Gaza, or at least the parts of Gaza that are past the lines of Israeli advance. So, you know, when you look at it like that, I don't think that this is a complete victory for Israel in Gaza. But I think that that ship sailed a while ago. When Israel chose early on in this war not to do a clear hold and build type strategy that we used in Iraq, where you move in and

you actually occupy the territory and you hold it until you have an allied force that can run it, they chose not to do that. And as the war dragged on and on and on without them doing that, I feel like that two war aims strategy that they had just was they couldn't do it. They couldn't accomplish both. And so when Trump comes into office, in many ways, the ship had already sailed on the best outcome here in the Gaza conflict. And so I do think having Trump really lean on Netanyahu, who, by the way, you know, depends on his power, depends for his power on some pretty crazy right-wingers in Israel, which I think a lot of Americans sort of have this view of Israel and a view of this very moral country. And that's largely correct. But there is a part of the right-wing fringe in Israel that is out of control, that's just out of control.

and Netanyahu depends on some of those people for his power. So I do think that it took a Trump really leaning here. And I think that that is part of – it's very interesting. If you look at sort of Trump globally, there is one region of the world where you would say that this guy has gotten some stuff done, and it's in the Middle East. And I think there's a reason for that. you know in the middle east it is it's power politics it is it is not morality politics right so if you're

going to be negotiating with the western world if you're going to be negotiating in many other parts of the world you're going to be dealing with things like norms and diplomatic traditions and all of these things that trump really despises if you're talking in the middle east it's much more raw than that it is you know i keep going back to that um the book that being west wrote back during the surge called the strongest tribe and it was rooted in this conversation that i believe it was a sunni shake had had with a marine officer as to why he switched sides to the marines and he said you marines are the strongest tribe and i think it was a combination of the idf absolutely after arguably its worst moment in history in its history when it was

when it failed to protect civilians on October 7th, it may have pivoted to its greatest victories. Arguably since 1967, certainly since 1967, where the Israeli military absolutely punished, punished Israel's enemies. And whereas the rest of the world is looking at this and saying, you know, oh, there are these, you know, in making the genocide and human rights arguments,

much of the rest of the Arab world was saying, Israel is now the strongest tribe. And when you combine those two things, the Trump pressure the Israeli military victories, I think that really set the stage for this moment. So absolutely, you know, it is a Trump diplomatic coup amongst a series of Trump achievements, both diplomatic and military in the Middle East. Hey, Sarah, let me read you a tweet from our friend. This is two social media references early in the podcast, which I don't normally like to do.

But I think she sort of captures this in her own inimitable way. So our friend Mary Catherine Ham wrote about the deal. I'm wary, of course, but it sure seems like a strong Israel with strong backing from an unpredictable kind of psycho U.S. president with B2 bombers is a better basis for changing the Middle East game than the U.N. bitting at Jews. Does that just get it? I mean, is she right? Is that what this is? That's really good. God, I love her.

That's so funny. Nobody does it better, Mary Catherine. Nobody does it better. Yeah, that's just true. And there's nothing that I can do to make that to gild that Lily. But here's what I meant by It's Good for America, because it's interesting that we sort of went to Good for Trump. I didn't mean that. Of course it's good for Trump. I mean it's actually good for America because there has been something really insane. is going on with American domestic politics and with an entire generation of young Americans because of the aftermath of October 7th, the last letter that Charlie Kirk wrote to Netanyahu, it's very, you know, much longer than I would be writing prime ministers of other countries, but it's really, really detailed. And he's describing the, I mean, fundamental problems that Israel has with an entire generation of Americans and not by partisanship, right, that conservative young Americans have turned against Israel and that the sort of anti-Israel propaganda on platforms like TikTok and others has just been all-consuming and totally effective.

I think there are fascinating reasons for that that go to some of our foreign adversaries, China, Russia, both because they don't like Israel, but also because it's a great way to divide Americans. They've done it with race relations. They will find any divide that they can to make Americans hate each other and hate their government. And so, like, this is a two-fer. Charlie was giving Netanyahu some ideas of how to counter this. One of my favorites. He was like, you don't have a rapid response team. He's like, like some Yahoo! Commissioner has a rapid response team here in the United States. What the hell comms world are you living in? Point well taken. But regardless, I actually don't think at this point that you can fix Israel's

problems with Americans by, you know, making the case better and fact-checking. I think at this point the best thing for America is for this not to be the headline leading TikTok and the news every single day. And if this peace deal accomplishes that and takes this off of the front of our conversations, it will be good for America.

Real quick. I agree with that entirely. Like, one of the reasons, one of the things that people resent about Israel and then the Jews is that we talk about them so much. And the thing is,

the reason we talk about Israel a lot is because Israel's in the news a lot. Like Israel's under threat. Israel gets attacked. Israel responds, blah, blah, blah, blah. It makes it in the news. I've yet to meet many a single Israeli who wouldn't love to be like Ottawa, right? You know, like, what was the last time we talked about, Ottawa?

Yes. Okay, but they did change their Supreme Court rogues. I saw that, yeah. They were these like Santa Claus looking things. Yeah, so, I mean, they're in my feet a little bit. Okay, but that would, that's the kind of thing Israel wouldn't mind being in the news about, right? and um yeah but this could i'm not sure like even if this is quote unquote successful and it and especially if it's successful on the terms trump's trump has been talking about i'm not sure it's

going to solve the problem the way you describe because if we start pouring money and resources and you know either blackwater or american troops to rehab gaza into mara gaza that's going to draw fire, that's going to draw criticism, that's going to keep it in the news kind of thing. By all means, spend some money rebuilding Gaza, right? Help people. I mean, I will like to note that I've seen all this video of Gaza and people in the streets reaction to it.

I'm not seeing a lot of emaciated, starving people celebrating in the street. You know, we should acknowledge this wasn't a genocide and there wasn't mass famine the way we've been told up until five minutes ago. But if Trump is serious about how they're going to rebuild, that is going to piss off the Marjorie Taylor Green types, it is going to keep it in the news. So I don't, I... Sure, did I just, with my argument, like, it's actually really good that this civil war is over. And Joan is like, wait until you see reconstruction. Ro Ro.

I mean, I think it's incredibly fair. I think that what you're going to see, if Hamas is allowed to retain control a part of the Gaza Strip is this is going to be like a really short process because what you're going to have is a withdrawal of Israeli forces. You're going to have a release of hostages. And then you'll have kind of a brick wall on the next phases because then Hamas will know, well, they're going to have to restart a war that everyone just celebrated was over. And so I do think that there's going to be some morning after that says, wait, hold on. Hamas is still running part of Gaza. You know, this celebration with the release of the hostages, 100% justified, celebration at the end of the bloodshed, 100% justified. But I think it's not a rocket science as to why Hamas agreed to this

thing, because they still have a toehold. But let me, can I just divert for a second? I think there is a lesson here. And when you look from October 7th, 2023 to October 7th, 2025. There is a very interesting lesson here that a lot of people have forgotten in the post-World War II, post-World War II consensus, the sort of the world of the UN and lack of great power conflict and relatively peaceful world that we have had is that we have forgotten how military reality can create diplomatic reality. And that's what Israel showed with the success of the IDF. when you had a situation where on October 8th, a lot of people were thinking, Israel is reeling. Israel has suffered its worst military catastrophe. It is surrounded by Hezbollah in the north. It's got a hostile Assad regime in Syria. It's got a arm to the teeth Iran. The Anaconda strategy of Iran seems to be actually being deployed right now.

50 to 100,000 people depopulated in the Israeli north. All of this is going on at once. And then what happens? Israel wrecks every single one of its military opponents. And what does that mean? It absolutely fundamentally changed everything diplomatically because Saudi Arabia and the Arab world is looking at an absolutely unchallenged military power now, an unchallenged military supremacy from the IDF. And that changed the diplomatic reality. And that's a very important thing to remember, especially when you look at people, like Putin and Gee, and I'm not comparing Israel to Russia and China, but they understand that military change creates diplomatic change. It's one of the reasons why they're so aggressive that facts on the ground dictate things. And so I think it's just an important reminder

that we often sit there and think in terms of diplomacy and public relations, et cetera, when just winning a war really makes a difference. Yeah, I mean, I think if you look back at the changes in the region over the course of those two years and you mentioned some of them David but you know Gaza has been leveled the leadership of Hezbollah Hamas have been wiped out Iran paid for its backing of terrorist groups in the region and its pursuit of nuclear weapons the U.S. approach is very different the Israelis have demonstrated incredible competence and cleverness with respect to both the straightforward attacks their intelligence operations what have you is a totally different set of circumstances two years on than what we saw at the beginning of

the war. Yeah, this is, it should be very clear to people. I think Trump absolutely made a very important difference here, but this is the IDF's victory. The IDF did this. You know what would be awesome is if the Nobel Peace Prize was given to the IDF just to see people's heads explode. So it's on, we're on the verge. This is supposed to happen in the next 48 hours and there The hostage release, not the idea of getting the peace prize. Correct. No, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to happen in the next 48 hours. Donald Trump has made a, you know, very intense private campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize

and certainly partly a public campaign. And there's some speculation that they would give it to him. Now I'm skeptical of that. Sarah, I want to go back to the thing that David raised at the beginning of his comment. just a moment ago, and that is Hamas and the possibility that Hamas will still control parts of the Gaza Strip and will be part of whatever, if there is to be self-rule again for the Palestinians. Hamas will almost inevitably be part of that. You can't escape the fact that Hamas has, in its charter, its founding charter, revised in 2017, but not fundamentally

changed, that the state of Israel shouldn't exist. Isn't that more than just a sort of minor detail and asterisk when you're talking about whether this, you know, peace, however peaceful it actually is, is in any way sustainable? How do you reconcile those two? But they won't be called Hamas. It'll be new Hamas, like New Coke. We've changed the name, Steve. It's all different now. But it won't matter, right? New Coke was actually different a little bit, right? It was worse. It was worse. Well, well, well, um, unfortunately. Unfortunately, this is the intractable problem, right? I don't see how any peace deal will solve that.

The only solution is to feel like it's not in your interest to act on your desires. And as we saw on October 7th, sometimes Hamas acts against their more obvious interests for a larger one. And look, I mean, this is going to be controversial. October 7th was a huge win for Hamas, it turns out. Huge. You think. Yeah, I do. I didn't think so in the, you know, hours and days that followed because, as you've said, David, like, militarily, strategically, in sort of any of the ways that we would generally sort of play, you know, not Sellers of Catan, risk.

it was a bad move but for what it has done to an entire generation of Americans who will come into power in the next 10 to 20 years who are incredibly skeptical would be the most generous term of Israel a world that paid attention to them

that had really tuned them out recently and by recently I mean you know the last 10, 15 plus years the United Nations all of those Hamas like my two-year-old throwing food on the ground

like on the one hand I took that he didn't want the half cookie he wanted a whole cookie and so he took the half cookie and he threw it on the ground in the short term that half cookie

then went in the trash as punishment but in the long term he screamed and made everyone miserable and that for him was the win you know and I want you to I want to also raise one thing I agree with Jonah completely

that the big word like famine and genocide do not apply to what Israel did. I will also say that Israel conducted the war initially very much in line with the way that the United States would have conducted it. I will tell you that over time, a lot of people I know and respect in the American military sort of superstructure and sort of in that extended universe were increasingly disgruntled by Israeli tactics. And it wasn't, again, the,

and the reason wasn't, it was a different reason from a lot of the rhetoric you heard in the world, because everyone was wanting you to say the word genocide. Everyone was wanting you to say, here's the uncomfortable reality. The uncomfortable reality is that the actual best way for Israel to have pursued that conflict was one that much of the international community

would have yelled about just as loudly, which would have been occupation, you know, the O word occupation, creation of a civilian and allied civilian authority, and then limited withdrawal with the allies. So that would have been a process that would have taken time, but would have ultimately been far more humane. And so what ended up happening was Israel engaged in tactics very similar that we did in 0405 in the first part of 06 in Iraq, which is going out, fighting in an area, defeating the terrorists, leaving the area. The terrorist come back you fight in the area you defeat them again and you're just making the rubble

bounce and the rubble bounce and there's things of there's several things about that one just on its own terms on its own terms it's a particularly brutal way to fight and a particularly ineffective way to fight over the long term and then the second thing is the more you do this the more it it degrades and sort of has this effect of dehumanizing your own force and there were there's too many you know things like cutting off all food aid that was wrong there are too many examples of individual stories of of shooting civilians etc that are too well corroborated to ride off and then when you have but then you have this word genocide which sidetracks everything like okay it's not a genocide but to declare it not a genocide is not the same thing as saying that

everything was kosher in the Gaza Strip. Those are not the same thing. And so I do think that it is very important to acknowledge that there were genuine reasons to critique, especially in the latter half of the Gaza operation. There were genuine reasons to critique what the IDF did without taking on all the language and everything of the far left that's just screaming at you to call it, you know, genocide or declare total famine or whatever. you can still say there were things done that were not right, that were unwise, that were wrong.

There should be some individual accountability, I think, with some commanders, for example. So I do think there are reasons sort of beyond like generalized anti-Israel propaganda for concern in aspects of the Gaza operation. Yeah, but in 15 years, and I don't think it will take that long, when we have two presidential candidates out of debate, out anti-Israeling each other, how can you not say this was a victory for Hamas on October 7th? Yeah, remains to be seen. Remains to be seen.

Yeah, there's a lot of hypos built into my thing here, but like if I'm right about that, and boy, I think a lot of things would have to change for me to be wrong, and they can change, by the way. But like, if we just continued on this trajectory, I think I'm right. And for Hamas, that would be worth,

as many lives as it took. So I don't know that you're right that in 15 years we'd have two major presidential candidates trying to out Israel one another. I mean, Donald Trump is likely to be going to Israel now speaking to the Israeli Knesset.

Yeah, yeah, Donald Trump isn't anti-Israel. That's what I'm saying, is that you now have an entire generation of conservative young people who have turned against Israel because of this. But I don't think it's fair to say that you have an entire generation. I think you have certainly big chunks of the sort of MAGA right, and we've seen that in this fight over Charlie Kirk, as you pointed out.

But I don't think it's fair to say that the entire MAGA right or young conservative movement is now anti-Israel. Certainly there's some, you know, you have Tucker Carlson, you have Candice Owens, and you have other anti-Semites who have a platform and have a following that they shouldn't have. I don't think you can draw a straight line from that to 15 years from now. the Republican presidential candidate is going to be anti-Israel. But I want to ask Joan about your larger point, which I think sort of gets at something a little bit deeper. I mean, if you look at Hamas institutionally, it's been decimated. Wait, sorry.

There's literally the headline from Politico magazine. An entire generation of Americans is turning on Israel. Young people left and right according to polling, shifting dramatically against Israel. Like, this isn't MAGA. This is reality. it's generational it's not partisan yeah i i think there's no question that you have um young people both sides there i mean certainly on the left that's been the case for a while but it's been sort of accelerated by what we've seen over the past two years and the activism that we've seen

here in the united states the anti-semitism that we've seen here in the united states i just don't think we can necessarily draw a straight line and then conclude that in 15 years uh republicans and democrats will be united in sort of an anti-Israel approach or look at the region. I don't think our high stakes can really withstand 15 years of waiting to collect on my bed. No, I don't think that's right. You can come to the home and collect. I'll just say there's a lot that could happen in 15 years.

I mean, there's a lot that we would have predicted 15 years ago that we're, that's not the reality today. Yeah, I mean, my only point, and I know Sarah won't necessarily disagree with me, but like our mutual friend, Kristen Solta Sanderson, I used to listen to speeches that she gave based on her book about how irretrievably left-wing young people were, and now young people have lurched wildly to the right. There's a lot of, I think there's a lot of social desirability bias in some of this Israel crap right now

because the loudest voices have defined the conversation, and nobody just wants to get yelled out about Israel from the left or the right, so they just sort of say something that goes, along with it. But I agree. There is definitely a timeline where people will look back 15 years from now and say, wow, that was a slow burn, but Hamas actually scored a big victory for the jihadist cause. You're now over half of Republicans under 50, unfavorable view of Israel. 71 percent of Democrats under 50, unfavorable view of Israel. That's going to be hard

to turn back. I agree. But part of the premise of your question is that this thing doesn't succeed at all and Israel is still under siege 15 years from now. If Israel is like this thriving Silicon Valley of the Middle East with peaceful neighbors, who cares whether America is more pro or, you know, it's only one, because Israel's constantly under threat that what America thinks about Israel matters. And that's, who knows? I mean, hopefully that would be a good problem to have. I think that's a great point, Jonah.

I think there's this idea that there might be a pivot within Israel. In other words, that if we actually can normalize our relationships with our Arab neighbors, if we actually have real diplomatic relationships, if we actually have real alliances, even pie in the sky, that you don't have the dynamic anymore, where Israel is sort of a client state of the U.S., completely isolated in the region, that a strong Israel incorporated within the region is much less dependent on American public opinion than an Israel surrounded by hostile states is. I think that's a really good point.

But, you know, I would say that if you go and you look at these younger generate, I don't think people are doing favors to Israel, really, if you adopt this all or nothing Twitter style of discourse where you're either declaring Israel genocide and his committed genocide or just, you know, standing with Israel in the IDF. I think that there is a reality in which we can acknowledge that the IDF, we are glad the IDF has diminished Hamas. we are glad the IDF has decimated Hezbollah. We're glad Assad is gone. We're glad that the Iranian threat is diminished. At the same time, at the same time, I think there should be accountability for some of the way in which Israel conducted its operation in Gaza. You know, and it just, there's just too much evidence. There's just too much evidence of, you know, the kinds of incidents. that we had to deal with and investigate and sometimes prosecute in Iraq. And I think that it

will be important for Israel to show that it can hold some of its own people accountable when they have violated the laws of war. And I can say that without then going and saying Israel committed genocide or Israel engineered a famine. Yeah, that's all fine. I've been saying for like two years now that I'm on Israel's side about all of this, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have to endorse or subscribe to every single thing Israel is doing or done or every policy that it has. But, like, if I'm forced to choose between taking Hamas' side, a bunch of rape gangs or Israel, you know, so I agree with you that you can have reasonable disagreements about things Israel is done or want to hold people accountable, it is worth pointing out amidst all of this that they're on the two-year anniversary of...

this murderous pogrom worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust that involved, you know, killing kids in front of their parents and parents in front of their kids. All across the West and all across American campuses, you had people commemorating the martyrs who died on October 7th with badges and signs of the hang gliding Hamasnics coming in. And as depraved as I think that is, I think the larger. thing to focus on from that is the very people who were saying it was a genocide the loudest are the ones opposed to the peace deal so their effective position is yeah it's a genocide but i'd rather the genocide keep going if it comes at the if ending it comes at the expense of ending resistance

which tells you that i don't know which is worse whether they know it's not a genocide and they've been lying all along, or they actually do think it's a genocide, they just don't care enough and they're willing to keep letting Palestinians be slaughtered because Hamas is using them as human shields and that all of this, I mean, like, when the first time we heard ceasefire was on the morning of October 8th when Hamas was still going around murdering Jews. Yeah. And they were like, how dare Israel launch hostilities against Hamas? Like, be clowning and exposing.

Republicans pounce. We have that, exactly. Israel pounces. So my point is simply that a lot of politicians who treat these people as if they are a constituency that needs to be reasoned with or co-opted or whatever, they're not doing themselves a favor because their fundamental position is a position that is impossible to accept. Israel is a non-negotiable position. They insist that they be allowed to exist. Hamas has a non-negotiable position. Hamas has a non-negotiable position.

They insist that it shouldn't exist, that it cannot exist. In that context, it gets back to the original point Steve was making about the Middle East. It's about, are you that you were making about the Middle East? It's about power. And, you know, the more powerful people are going to win that argument, and I'm glad that the more moral, I'm not saying perfectly moral, but the more moral by a long-stretched side is the more powerful side. No, I'm with you 100% on that. I think what we have found is that Hamas is a death cult.

and anybody who didn't believe Hamas was a death cult, by now, do you not see? You know, do you not see? And also, the truth be told, is if you scratch the surface of some of these far-left pro-Palestinian protesters, you're going to find a lot of death cultiness in there. They're pro-terror.

They're pro-terror, many of them. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so, you know, a lot of what we saw on October 7th and 8th was shameful at a level that is difficult, to describe and a lot of what we saw than just a day or two ago, shameful at a level that's difficult to describe. Although it's fascinating to me, I think two things are equally true. One is, I do think Israel has lost a lot of support amongst younger generations, but also I think that the encampment movement beclowned itself so thoroughly that the, you know, a last year that I think that in some ways,

though Israel has had diminished support from younger Americans. I also think that the other side really overreached last year. Yes, self-discredit. And a lot of the left on campus, a lot of the left on campus right now is discredited because of the encampment movement to extent I've never seen in my adult lifetime by mainstream liberals. Yeah, I'm rarely the optimist in discussions about our current information environment. But it's hard for me to see these becoming majority positions because the leaders on both the left and the right hold positions that are so incredibly extreme that I don't think they'll be palatable in the long run to big chunks of people, whether it's the people on the folks on the left who some of the leaders

of these campus movements are pro Hamas. They are pro-terror. They rationalize, justify, and defend the attacks of October 7th. I have a hard time believing that that becomes a majority position. And when you look up and you're a young person and you're a young person and you're you say, hey, it's not just that we're, you know, arguing that Palestinians shouldn't be cut off from food. It's that we're arguing that our leaders are arguing this was valid. This was justifiable. I think people will turn away from that. And the same thing, the same dynamic as it play on the right, Jonah wrote about it in his G-file, midweek G-file this week, where you have people like Tucker Carlson platforming Holocaust deniers or Holocaust rewriters. You have, you know, popular

right-wing podcasts giving time to Nick Fuentes, who's joked, who's a Holocaust denier himself and has joked about this. You have prominent anti-Semites like Candace Owens, who have a big following, but make extreme statement after extreme statement. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in 15 years they will have won the day, but we will be in a lot of trouble if that's the case. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back shortly. Halloween is right around the corner, and while most people are thinking about candy or costumes, a lot of people get into the season by reading and streaming great thrillers and mysteries. The problem is between paywalls and different streaming platforms, it can get expensive,

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And if you use my special link, you can get an additional four months. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash the dispatch, and get yourself four extra months of ExpressVPN. That's EX-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N. dot com slash the dispatch. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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Before we return to our discussion, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere here at the dispatch. This week on advisory opinions, Sarah Isker and David French kick off the episode by examining a conversion therapy case before the Supreme Court. It's one that surprisingly few seem to be talking about. Where are the sensational headlines claiming that the rights of LGBT youth are under direct threat or that, that religious freedom is on the verge of extinction. Search for advisory opinions in your podcast app and hit the follow button. Now let's jump back into the conversation. Let's use the discussion of what we were just talking about, this kind of ugly rhetoric to move to our second topic today, which is sort of the state of political violence and the kind of public rhetoric we're seeing from our

leaders and in particular our elected officials one month after the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk. This past week, our friend Audrey Falberg, former dispatch staffer, now at National Review, broke a story about Jay Jones, a Democratic candidate for Attorney General in Virginia. And her story involved a series of text messages that Jones had sent to a colleague five years ago to a Republican colleague in the Virginia legislature, wishing for the death of the Republican leader in the legislature in Virginia's legislature. This has occasioned wide condemnation on the political right, political ads, I think very effective political ads from his opponent

Jason Mierrez, the Republican in the attorney general race, the incumbent, and has been something that Democrats have really struggled to answer. Sarah, can you give us sort of a deeper understanding of the facts of the matter what happened and your thoughts on where we are at this moment. In this race, it's a pretty important race, a pretty important state. It's having an effect on potentially on the gubernatorial race in Virginia as well. And then also on this question of this ugly, ugly political rhetoric. And as a Virginia resident, who are you voting for for Attorney General? So remember that we have these states that have quote unquote off cycle statewide races. New Jersey and Virginia are normally the two that we focus on, and boy, are we focusing on them this year

because the New Jersey governor's race is looking much tighter than one would expect between the Republican and the Democrat, all the more so, because usually these become a referendum on the party controlling the White House. So it's New Jersey. You expect the Democrat to win. Also, there's a Republican in the White House. You expect the Democrat to win by more. We're seeing the opposite happen in New Jersey, the Republican pulling within points or tied with the Democratic candidate for governor. Okay. So that's weird. Now, people have pointed out that she's a weak candidate. Maybe the Republicans are particularly strong candidate. Maybe that's just unique. Because you look at Virginia, that governor's race isn't going to be close. The Democrat is heavily favored to win at this point. Donald Trump hasn't even endorsed the Republican candidate, which you know, means. that he doesn't think she has a snowball's chance. Okay, but then we look to this AG race.

Now, in Virginia, the incumbent governor can't run again. You only get four years. You're a lame duck from the second you win that race. So Glenn Yonkin, who won the big upset victory in Virginia four years ago, not eligible to run again. But for the AG's race, you can. So you have Republican incumbent Jason Miaras running against a Democrat, former state legislature, J. Jones. Here's the text that Jones sent to a friend talking about

then-speaker of the House Republican Todd Gilbert. Jones. Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. Spoiler. Put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know, and he receives both bullets every time. Friend. Jay, please stop. Jones. lull okay okay friend it really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them it isn't okay no matter who they are jones at that point doesn't say you're right i'm sorry in fact they according to the friend have a phone call where jones then talks about how he wishes that gilbert's wife would have her children die in her arms so that gilbert might consider reconsider his political views.

The friend then says she hung up the phone. Texted again. Chastised Jones for hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die. And he responds, yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy. He initially, when confronted with this, kind of was like, yeah, whatever. It wasn't really a double down, but it definitely was an apology. He has since come out and apologized, said,

I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize directly to him, his wife, Jennifer, and their children. I cannot take back what I said. I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apologies. Steve, a couple of things worth noting here. One, that two bullets thing that he was talking about is a reference to the office. Michael Scott is talking about, you know, bin Laden, Hitler, and Toby. Toby, I would shoot Toby twice every time. And I've seen some people push back on this of like, it was a joke. I guess the reason I read that whole exchange is because when your friend who clearly doesn't get the reference and says, this really upsets me that you're, you know, talking about killing people and violence, your response back should be, oh my God, obviously kidding, office

reference, in poor taste, you know, any number of things that you can say at that point. And that's not what happened. So I don't super care that it's a reference to the office. Because in the context, when you then pick up the phone and start talking about they're raising little fascists, she should have her children die in her arms, you've left the office reference. Two, I also think it's worth putting this in the larger context of the very lenient sentence that the would-be assassin of Justice Kavanaugh and two other Supreme Court justices received this week as well. because, again, you see this conversation, it's sort of Jonah's point about genocide, I guess. You see this conversation about how terrible is it, that all these judges are getting death threats and, you know, violent rhetoric against them for standing up to Donald Trump. And then when one of these cases actually goes to trial and there's a incredibly lenient sentence,

in part at least, because the assassin now identifies as transgender, there is just crickets. So either, this is my, you know, Jonah's genocide point, either you didn't care about the political violence and the rhetoric, and it was just a power play for your side to win elections. That's pretty gross to me. Or you do care about it, but you think that transgender status or winning this AG race, I mean, guys, it's a state AG race. I'm not saying it's not important, but it's not the most important thing in the world, is somehow more important than standing up for your principles about political violence. And I just think either way you cut this, it pulls the rug out from this whole, hey, maybe

we should all, you know, listen to our better angels because we're now just a few weeks out from the election in Virginia. Early voting has already started. And there's crickets from Democrats. Nobody's calling for Jay Jones to drop out of the AG's race. He can't be replaced on the ballot. They know that they would be costing themselves. again, a down-ballot state race, and it's not worth it.

So I think it's going to be really hard for, you know, we have one party that doesn't really talk about why violent political rhetoric is bad. And then you're going to have another party not be able to talk about it anymore because this week has highlighted so much hypocrisy. I mean, you said there are two points stick out to me, and I want to put them to you, David. One, this was not a one-off text. as Sarah made clear, this was now J. Jones offering a disgusting text to start,

whether it was a joke or not, we can debate that. It's not very funny joke if it was a joke. But then doubling, tripling, quadrupling down every time he was asked about this in real time and ending the exchange in the same place where he started it, which was, yeah, I basically meant what I said. So that's point number one. Point number two.

crickets from Democrats, Abigail Spanberger, who is the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, I think thought of as a reasonably moderate candidate in general, somebody who has been willing in the past to sort of speak truth to power, has pushed back on the sort of far left elements of her political party, has positioned herself as a moderate as she's run for governor. It seems to me this is the easiest possible, quote-unquote, sister soldier moment, moment to say, like, this is just wrong. I condemn it without qualification, and this guy should not be our candidate for AG. And she not only didn't say that, she hasn't called on him to step down. As Sarah points out, I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know of a prominent Democrat who has said publicly, J. Jones should no longer be our nominee. Have we seen that? Is there one? And if there's not, what's the explanation? Yeah, I haven't seen it. I'm not going to say that there are no Democrats who have said this. I haven't seen it. But, you know, I'm reminded of it. What was it

the quote from Man for All Seasons, you know, it shall not profit the world to lose your soul, to gain the whole world, but lose your soul. But for Wales, but for Wales, But for the Virginia Attorney General's office, like, what are we doing here? You know, look, I think the bottom line is the Democratic, one of the reasons why the Democratic Party is struggling so much right now. Because as Sarah was walking through the New Jersey race and how it was unexpectedly close, well, one of the central things that sort of Republicans have figured out is that they don't actually have to be popular. they just have to be more popular than the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party right now is monumentally struggling. And I don't think that they understand one of the reasons why they're struggling. And that one of the reasons why they're struggling is I think people, a lot of people

genuinely do not believe that they have sort of better character than a Donald Trump-led Republican Party. That there's not some inherent superior character difference. That when push comes to shove with the Democrats, they make some pretty catastrophic decisions in the name of clinging on to power. And one of those is one that we all walked through, this national, this incredibly consequential decision by a president and his senior team to try to hold on to power and deceive America the whole time about his underlying physical condition, which is a monumental character failure, monumental character failure. And so I don't think people have really, reckoned with that yet. And then you look at this situation. And yes, I fully acknowledge that you can look at

statement after statement from Trump or from other people that's horrible or terrible. And I fully acknowledge all of that. But can't you acknowledge that if you're going to say we're an alternative, that we're the party that's the alternative to this, that we're not going to tolerate in this minor office? I mean, again, this is a minor. office here. And oh, well, we can't. It's the whales of Virginia. It's the whales of Virginia. Sorry, whales. But we can't lose that one. But here's the darkest timeline, though. Here's the dark timeline is that I think a lot of these Democratic politicians know that if they do the right thing, you know who's going to punish them with a vengeance their own base.

Okay. So, David, you and I have talked about this offline, and I would like to bring it into to full light. Because you and I, when we have our little road trips and stuff and are drinking, is it high C at McDonald's or Orange Fanta? Either one. I'm transitioning from Orange Fanta to orange high C. That's important. Okay. We talk about the fact that a lot of the asymmetry feels like, because Democrats think that if it had been their party who had nominated Donald Trump in 2016, they would have stood up to it. They would have prevented. Donald Trump never would have been the nominee for their party, a Donald Trump. I don't mean literally the Donald Trump.

Right. And time and again, for the last eight years, whenever Democrats have been tested, they have proven that that's not true. That if it had been their party, they would have gone along the same way because winning the White House was more important, because this next thing is more important.

My God, the Attorney General's race in Virginia is more important than any principles. and you look at how few Republicans, how few conservatives, broke from the Republican Party, or at least remain apart from the Republican Party now that Donald Trump is back in power, if you think the two parties are asymmetric in this way, you are fooling yourself. If anything, I wonder if the Democratic Party would be more aligned than the Republican Party, because the Republican Party's always been kind of a band of anti-joiner misfits. I'm willing to squabble on that question, which one would have more holdouts.

But the answer is very, very few, whichever way. And Democrats have been fooling themselves for eight years thinking otherwise. So a couple points. One, totally down with the idea that the office popularized the joke, but I think the joke is older than the office. Because I remember hearing that joke about Al Sharpton in the 80s. Fair. Okay. two um i agree with sarah a thousand percent about the hypocrisy of democrats and all of this stuff

uh i agree with david about the whales thing i've been trying to explain to people as saying this and seen any other night that you know you can make a totally colorable plausible i think wrong but totally defensible argument that forcing this guy out of the race would be unfair right and the point is is that that for political reasons fair's got nothing to do with anything right if you're trying to fix the brand of the democratic party um a little ritual human sacrifice is fine in politics and i mean figuratively not literally the one thing i think that you know when sarah talked about the symmetry thing at the you know just now it it headed off what i was going to respond to before the line from but that we should keep in mind the line from jones where he says people don't

change unless they feel some personal political pain or some personal pain two weeks earlier that was the argument from the entirety of maga world about it's not cancel culture it's accountability culture and that we have to punish people like this is why you know know, oh, sure, this indictment is like a cheap Rolex on Fifth Avenue where the X is replaced by a K, you know, and falls apart in the shower. The indictment of James Comey makes no sense, and it's absolutely ridiculous on the merits. It's still important because we have to teach these people not to weaponize. This is the most high-minded attempt at a defense of some of the things MAGA has done is to this accountability culture because at least it has the intellectual

honesty of conceding what's what some of the things that what Trump is doing are indefensible on the merits and so they go out to this big picture thing and say sure you know yes I know like this this indictment or this firing or whatever or this humiliating attack it's not defensible it's not true or it's not justified according to the old rules but we're under new rules now that it's the Chicago way and we have to teach them that they can never do this again I've heard this from very smart very sophisticated people that is the argument that this dude was making now again he was actually talking about murder right and death which makes it super creepy um but the idea that there's any but like I'm so both sides this on so much of this kind of stuff

and people get very mad and they'll say yeah but what the Democrats are doing here isn't as bad Republicans are doing here and say, fine, but what the Democrats are doing over there is much worse than what the Republicans are doing over there. When you have two scales, the old-fashioned like scales of justice thing, the individual items you put on each tray don't have to have equal weights. It's just that the totality of the weight is fairly equal. And I think a lot of things the Trump world is doing are worse than the things the Democrats are doing. But that's because Trump is in power. And that's because Trump is, you know, this unprincipled goal. The lump, but both parties have a profound problem of figuring out how to adjust to norms.

And I know we don't have time to talk about it, but the Pam Bondi hearing, I think, was a major threshold in things getting worse before they ever, if they ever get better. Why do you say that? What about it, Jonah? Attorney General Pam Bondi, just to set the state, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe, this week, and took questions. from both Democrats and Republicans on a wide variety of topics, combative with Democrats, certainly. Yeah, took questions as a very diplomatic way of saying, was in the room when questions were asked.

Combative is actually a pretty diplomatic word, given that it was more like roasting each Democratic senator? Right. So as a part of, look, from a partisan perspective, I totally get shoving it in Sheldon White House's face insulting him, insulting Schiff, insulting these people, which Pam Bondi was doing

as a performative thing for Trump and Trump World and all of that kind of thing. And I'm not saying that she didn't draw blood or that those guys didn't live political lives that made those kinds of attacks quite easy to formulate. At the same time, it is a constitutionally required oversight hearing

of the friggin' attorney general of the United States, And she's sitting there rather than answering perfectly legitimate questions about administration officials taking a bag of cash or, you know, very, or the indictment of a former FBI director. And she's sitting there singing nanny, nanny, boo, boo, you smell like elderberries. And it was a disgusting devolution of a, we're already broken and dysfunctional congressional oversight system. and it was a mockery of a constitutional role and a constitutional requirement. And if you want to, you know, again, I get really tired of the point scoring thing,

but I'm on team Democrats on this because her behavior was much, much worse than anything the Democrats did. No Republican had any the slightest moral or intellectual fortitude to say, hey, that's a great point. Ms. Attorney General,

I may disagree with my, colleagues thrusted their questions and this is a partisan thing and all that kind of stuff and I'm very sympathetic to you but we have an institutional role to play here and you are required to periodically appear before us and I would not want to have to be in a position where if we were in the minority a Democratic cabinet secretary was treating me with this kind of disrespect screw this sort of this this popular front nonsense that anything your side does must be defended And just because it's so at the heart of the role of our checks and balances system and our Constitution, I think what Pam Bondi did, to the applause of many, was another notch in the defining deviancy down.

Sorority snaps. There's also, I would say, I mean, Sarah, to your point on asymmetry, I understand the point that you're making. But when you look at some of the things that Donald Trump has said over the years, including remember his comments about Liz Cheney when he criticized her for being a war hawk. The Paul Pelosi stuff. It's all bad. It's disgusting. The Paul Pelosi stuff. You didn't have Republicans defending Donald Trump, I mean, or castigating Donald Trump or denouncing him or condemning him. Yeah, that's my point. Democrats thought they were morally superior to that. They're not.

Right. I think I can just hear some of our listeners as they hear you make the point about asymmetry and say, well, there is asymmetry. You guys are now here focused. You've spent 20 minutes talking about an AG race that you all acknowledge is a small race in unimportant office. Yes, that's my point. You're not even willing to stand up for your principles when it costs you nothing. So you think you're going to stand up to your principles when it's for the White House, when it's for the presidency? That's my point, is that you're right. They're not symmetrical right now. My point is that this proves that there is no asymmetry because there wouldn't be. Not that it has already happened, not that the AG and, sorry, candidate for AG and Virginia is the same as Donald Trump.

But the fact that you won't do it for that, it undercuts anything about what you would do if it were for all of the M&Ms on the table. Right, right. Yeah, okay, that's good. I'm glad you clarified. I'm misunderstood. I also think there's this, since there is a feeling that I've had. or a sentiment that has been expressed to be by a lot of people on MAGA

who say something like exactly what Sarah said, I'm not going to unilaterally disarm because I know 100% that the shoe were on the other foot the Democrats would not abandon their candidate. And they'll point back to Clinton in the allegations against Bill Clinton,

which were horrific. Our most feminist president, the accused rapist. Yeah, one of the things that I think it was interesting about 2016 was some of these explainers that were posted in 2016 about like, what was the controversy in 1998 and 1999? What was that? And then you have all these younger Democrats,

because remember, this is 2016, much more moving towards the Me Too era and everything. You have a lot of younger Democrats going, wait, what? Are you what? Yes. I was there. I remember all of this. And again, I'm so... And in fairness, that was for the White House, right?

That wasn't some state AG race. Although, remember, it was in 1998. So it sort of wasn't actually. There was a question of whether he'd be removed, potentially. But it wasn't like there was an election. It was at best for the midterms at that point. Someone who's put a lot of time in there, I often would make the point. You guys realize you're blowing up your party and throwing feminists,

10 years of feminist work under the bus to prevent Al Gore from. being president. Wild. Wild. And so there is this burning conviction that a lot of people have that the other side would compromise just as much under similar circumstances. And therefore, I'm not going to be the one to sort of lay down my policy arms first. And it's very hard to counter that argument. Yep. Now, Democrats will say, David, you just went through everything about Joe Biden, and we ditched him. Yes, yes, you did ditch him after the most disastrous presidential debate. After the polls made clear that you couldn't continue with him, they didn't ditch him.

He was in a ditch and could not get out of the ditch. And it took a month after the debate. Oh, you missed a med alert, a bracelet commercial joke there. So, help, I've fallen in a ditch and I can't get up. Nice. Wow. You know, it's also the case if you look back at Democrats and, They're, in some cases, literal support for pro-January 6th Republicans in primaries. Oh, my God, you're right.

Funded. Steve, that's my favorite example. Pro-January 6th Republicans against more moderate people or, for instance, Peter Meyer, who voted for impeachment. They spent $50 million trying to make sure that the Republicans who had voted to impeach Donald Trump in the House were defeated by more. pro-Donald Trump Republicans because they thought they could win in the general. And worse, it worked. Yeah. For a while. Now they're regretting some of that. Yeah. But like the fact that there are, I think I'm right about this, Steve, right? None of the Republicans who voted for Donald Trump's impeachment remain in Congress. Two. Two or left still? Okay.

The California guy. If you include. California and Washington State. So out of 11, we've got two left. Right. Right. Congrats, everyone. Principles, yay! But I would also say, and we didn't get a chance to talk to this more exhaustively, we're also seeing these repeated and more frequent incidents of ICE using violence against protesters after Donald Trump's eight years of rhetoric calling for the police to rough up the bad guys, or according to his former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, shoot them in the legs.

And I worry that there is a pretty direct causal link between some of the things that Donald Trump has been saying over the years, justifying rough treatment and the kinds of behavior that we're seeing right now. And a lack of any legal accountability doctrine. Yes. All that. Huge problem. Come on over and listen to A.O. The water's warm. What's A.O.? Shut up.

So before we get to that word through time, David, I want to just give you an opportunity. You had a pretty terrific column in the times this week making the case that despite all, all of this ugliness that we're seeing in the moral and rhetorical spiral that seems now inexorable, there is a way out and there are reasons to be optimistic. And I don't want to be, you know, this is not our kumbaya segment. This is not Pollyanna. But I thought your case was pretty darn persuasive. What is the way out?

Dricnine? Well, you know, what I did was I took a look at this incredible moment. after the mass murder of Mormons in their own church by a man who had burning hatred for Mormons. It wasn't just murder. I mean, he tried to burn the whole place down. He killed people. He burned the whole place down.

Find out who it is. Find out he has a wife and a young child. And the most remarkable thing happened is that members of the Mormon church started a give send go, which is a version of a GoFundMe for the family of the killer because they knew the family of the killer

was grieving and had lost so much as well and they reached out to the family of the killer in love and forgiveness. And it was one of these moments, we saw this other moment very similar where Erica Kirk forgave her husband's killer, just incredibly powerful moment. This incredibly powerful moment, this incredibly

powerful moment. And what you're seeing is when a lot of Americans are at each other's throats, there are a lot of other Americans who love their neighbor. And a lot of the at-your-throats community has been dominating the news. It has been dominating our culture. It feels like we're in the grips of the hate your enemy faction. And what that moment reminded is, there is a Love Your Neighbor Faction in America. And that Love Your Neighbor faction, it might not be represented at the heights of American society and culture, but that Love Your Neighbor faction, when it asserts itself, when it shows itself, has a deep resonance and it connects with people at a deep and profound level.

And if you want to talk about a source of hope in this country, it's the Love Your Neighbor faction of Americans who will do that and will change the place by demonstrating their values and by demonstrating those values in a way that so strongly cuts against the hate your enemy faction that is so dominating American life, I just thought that that moment it was already highlighted. It needed more highlighting because it demonstrated, I think, a really deep truth in this country is that there is a well of decency. There is a reservoir of decency and to see it assert itself and not just to see it assert itself, but to see people rally to it from all across the political spectrum, there's hope here. There's real hope here.

And I'm glad you brought that up because we've talked about a lot of dark stuff. And I'm just incredibly grateful for those LDS members of the LDS Church who showed us the way on forgiving, loving, sustaining, and supporting their neighbor. I get this question probably more than any other question or about as much as any other question sort of in this ugly political moment over the past decade, what can I do? What can I do to help make things better? And I think your column, and we'll put it in the show notes, provided at least a partial answer, you look at things like, you know, Democrats unwilling to condemn or a call for Jay Jones to step aside. You look at Republicans silent in Donald Trump's violent rhetoric over

the time. You control you. You can do the things that you can do. And even if you can't necessarily affect change at a national level in this moment, you can control the things that you do. And I thought it was really a powerful column, so I appreciate you doing that. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. Honestly, I wasn't sure how good Incogni would be. I already use a similar service for the same purpose, so I was wondering what else it could do. But after I downloaded Incogny and checked out the dashboard, I was seriously impressed.

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care about your privacy or just don't want your data floating around the internet try incogni today it's the easiest way to protect yourself from scams to stay private and take back control of your personal data and the best part there are several different plan types you can choose from so you can pick the one that works best for you take back your personal data with incogni use the dispatch code at the link below and get 60% off annual plans that's incogni dot com slash dispatch we're back you're listening to The Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. We're all writers here. We have all written books. Sarah, you are in the process of finishing your first book. I would like to hear a little bit more of that. As you answer this question, I'm coming to you first. I had a conversation this week

with somebody about the writing process or what's the perfect way to write. When can you be most productive. And the conversation turned at one point to music. Do you listen to music? Can you write with music? If you write with music, can you have lyrics? Can you have singing when you write? So I'm interested, Sarah, first tell us a little bit about this book, pretty exciting. And second, what's your writing process? If you have to be productive for a day and crank out eight hours worth of writing, are you listening to music? And if you are, what are you listening to? The book is called last branch standing. It's available for pre-order already, but it's not coming out for many months. It's about the Supreme Court. Like, think of it as, you know, A.O. The Book. It'll have lots of

insidery nuggets and juicy fun stuff. There's little mini-bios of each justice. I assign them scores on institutionalism and conservatism, and we'll hit everything from major doctrine, sorry, major questions doctrine, to the Warren Court. And why John Jay, our first chief justice, didn't do us any good, right? Damn John Jay. Damn anyone who doesn't damn John Jay is one of my favorite all-time quotes. Okay, the writing process, this is somewhat relevant. I played viola for a long time, and I played in a lot of orchestras.

And so while I would love to listen to classical music while writing, I actually find it deeply distracting because even if I put it on sort of a random list, there will be some piece that comes up that like I've played in or something and then I'll just go down memory lane or like think of the different, you know, parts and break them up in my head. So I can't listen to music while I write. I really prefer to write outside, though. And it's the music of nature, Steve. It's the birds. although that also proved quite distracting because I really like watching the woodpeckers and they make noise. So like you sort of know when one's nearby.

And probably the punchline to all of this is I will be distracted by absolutely anything that they can distract me. When it comes to writing, it's like, oh, do we need to do laundry? Let's go do laundry right now. Immediately. This is very important. I mean, what about winter? You can't really write outside in winter.

That's true. I write at a window. though, and I watch them from the window. Looking outside, pining to be outside. Joda, you have some of the weirdest writing process habits I've ever heard. And I suppose that's just because you're so prolific. You have to write. You write so much that you have to be able to write kind of anywhere.

But you too like to write outside in your convertible with the top down, smoking cigars, sometimes in a parking garage. Quite often. Do you listen to music? So I have a similar view to share about music. I listen to music, but my problem is it has to be music I know so well, and it's so familiar, so like 80s, 90s rock kind of stuff that was like background noise, that it's like white noise to me. It's not that I'm getting into the music, it's that the music is filtering out other noise, right?

Because every now and then, I will actually, I'm not a huge music guy, but every now and then I'll hear some new song that I really, like. If I play it while I'm writing, I listen to the song rather than write. It takes me out of my head. So it can't be like new music. It can't be music with lots of interesting new lyrics that I don't know. But like... No fate of

Ophelia for Jonah. I don't even know what that means. That's the new Taylor Swift album, Jonah. That's great. Taylor Swift. And she's a popular singer with the kids these days who are all going anti-Israel. She's easy on the eyes.

Um, and, uh, um, I do listen to a lot of Johnny Cash, um, I love Johnny Cash, but like, there's something about how even keel a lot of it is that you can check out and listen to it for a second and then not. And like, but it, it, it keeps me in the zone. Um, I'm glad you said Johnny Cash because I was picturing you with your top down, listening to Millie Vanilly, girl, you know it's true, occasionally getting distracted and singing along. With your 80s, 90s, rock. It's more Frank Ocean. Get out of my dreams and get into my garage.

No, but... It's Billy Ocean, right? Billy Ocean, whatever. And I guess Frank Ocean was from Ocean's 11? I don't know. Anyway, for people who don't know, I write... The reason I started writing in the car

is because that is part of my solution to writing in winter if I want to be outside smoking. is I blow up the heat and I can I can stand it into the low 40s maybe before even that is not enough to compensate for it but or in the crazy DC summer I can blast the air conditioning and do it and it's what's funny about it is that for years people thought who is that freak sitting in a car working on a computer like I would park in shady spots around town and just start working once Jonathan Rauch caught me by AEI and he took a picture of me that

dude if you post that i'm in i'll kill you and um uh and uh and then covid came and all of a sudden the reaction went from who is the misanthropic freak to oh what a socially responsible good social distance to her and so anyway there you go that's my answer david what about you i have so little ability to multitask in any way shape or form that if you introduce external, like, music, I will have to choose. I have to choose between a conversation and writing, between the music and writing between.

So I zone, I get so focused that literally somebody, and this has been an issue in our family, I can be in the living room and I'm typing and my daughter will be three feet from me and going, dad, dad, dad. And I don't hear it. Like, they have to tap me on the shoulder. So no, no music, I will, I was, I will focus in on the music.

So it can't even be white noise for me. So it's, yeah, yeah. I'm the classic male who can't multitask taken to an extreme. That's so interesting. I would have guessed the opposite, in part because this is, because I do the opposite. This is back when you used to write, Steve, right? This whole thing was just a setup for Jonah to take that shot. We can just wrap up right now.

I was doing some writing this week in advance. And this was part of the reason I was having this conversation. I was listening to a band called Goose, which is sort of all I've been listening to for the past, better part of the past year, fantastic quasi-jam band. But if I listen to their live stuff, go on these jams without lyrics for a long time that make it easy to write to and you don't get distracted by the lyrics.

But I don't typically get distracted by the lyrics. There's another band I listen to a lot called Hermannos Gutierrez, which is sort of more relaxing and chill vibes, a lot of instrumentals. I do sometimes get distracted by lyrics, especially if they're sort of deep and meaningful lyrics. But I can't, I pretty much can't write without music. So I am the opposite.

of all of you. I do use music, though, to, like, wind down. Like, on really stressful days, I will need to, like, sit and do nothing but listen to music. And sit in a chair, drink a glass of wine. And what do you put on then? This is where I am, Jonah. No, I can't sit in a chair and do it. I have to sit in my car. I call it my luxury pod. And, like, I need the confined space and I need it away from all the other humans. And I sit and listen to music in my car also parked somewhere. And what are you listening to when you wind down in your car. Leon Bridges, Black Pumas.

Like, I needed to be a little moody, you know? Yeah. No, nothing about it either. Check it out. Good stuff. I will. I will. Absolutely.

Okay, we'll wrap it up. I just want to acknowledge and thank the three of you. This is the week of the six-year anniversary of the dispatch launched October 8th, 2019. And the three of you were as instrumental. as anybody, particularly Sarah and David, in bringing this thing to life. Wait, you and Jonah are the co-wounders. All right, Jonah, too. Jonah, too, fine.

We were present at the launch. We helped launch, but we are not the co-founders. It's been a very fun partnership with Jonah. Actually, Jonah and I started building this at the beginning of 2019. So it's been nearly seven years for us, but six years since launch. Seven years of Jonah Erasure. It's been Shona Erasure. I just know that you're going to take shots on.

Don't you have a podcast that we put stuff out on? You'll probably take shots on that podcast. Possible. It's possible. No, every year in October we do a conversation about sort of the dispatch, the state of the dispatch, and state of conservative media and things. And we will be recording that soon. That will go out on the remnant feed.

That'll be fun. I'm looking forward to that. I think we should probably do it in person, maybe get a couple drinks and have it out. But thank you all for participating in building this thing. It's been a blast, incredibly fun professionally, and personally made some really good friends that we've built this. Thanks again. Thanks for six years. Thanks for this podcast.

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