The Dispatch Podcast - Conspiracy Central | Roundtable

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Is the Jeffrey Epstein issue blowing up the MAGA base? Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and David French join Steve Hayes to discuss the Epstein files and their implications for Vance 2028, delayed resolve toward Russia, and the Supreme Court’s apparent greenlight for Department of Education cuts.And, of course, an extended Not Worth Your Time on soda. The Agenda:—Jeffrey Epstein catch-up—Little Epstein, big Epstein—Why can’t Trump shut this down?—Kudos to First Lady Melania Trump—Putin’s dark determination meets Trump’s hurt feelings—Monday’s SCOTUS decision looks good for Trump administration—for now —Stuart Stevens’ on killing the DOE—The Platonic ideal of Coca-Cola Show notes: David’s July 13 New York Times column Jonah’s June 6 G-File: “The Inevitable Splintering to Come” Mike’s piece: “The Epstein Conspiracy Eats Its Own.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or go to explorevolvo.com. What a run! This champ is picking up speed! But they found a lane. Phenomenal launch into the air! Absolutely incredible! Air Transat! Fly the seven-time world's best leisure airline champions, Air Transat. Welcome to the... the Dispatch podcast, I'm Steve Hayes, joined today by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Michael Warren.

We'll cover three topics today. Jeffrey Epstein, something we haven't spent much time discussing on the dispatch podcast, is the conspiracy right eating its own? On Ukraine, we'll explore whether the president's actions match his new and changing rhetoric. And finally, a Supreme Court ruling that seems to give the president more flexibility in dismantling federal bureaucracies. How should we think about the ruling? And finally this week, a very sweet not worth your time. Let's jump right in. Welcome, gentlemen. Mike, I want to get right to a topic that we haven't spent much time, if any time on the dispatch podcast discussing over these past five plus years that the dispatch podcast has been a thing.

What is the latest on Jeffrey Epstein and should we be talking about it? Okay. I think I'm ready to go through this. So let's start in media. rest, last week, the beginning of the week, the Department of Justice issues a memo in which the Department of Justice and the FBI present conclusions, some of which are things that we already knew, that Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted child sex offender, former financier who died in 2019 while in federal prison, did.

in fact kill himself. We have known this, but this memo states that that had is indeed what happened is the truth. The memo also went on to say that there is no evidence that Epstein kept a client list of high profile, wealthy individuals with which he could blackmail because they were involved in the child sex trafficking ring that he was engaged in. But there's no evidence that he had this list and that there is no evidence that any third parties need to be investigated in relation to Epstein and his list or his file or what have you. Okay, that established either things that we already knew or established that there's nothing to, there's nothing actionable in the investigation.

So why were we here? We were here because Donald Trump and his surrogates have spent years. in the MAGA media universe, and particularly in the 2024 election, claiming that there was some kind of conspiracy behind the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and that by electing Donald Trump and by Donald Trump putting into place his people into the federal government, that that conspiracy would be unveiled and the truth would be outed and that justice would be served against all of the people who are guilty. This was a huge blow to a big segment of the MAGA base.

It's not everybody who voted for Donald Trump was concerned about this, but it's a loud and vocal part of the base. And there's nobody to blame other than Donald Trump and his surrogates on this. They're the ones who stoke this, whether it's Donald Trump Jr., whether it's Pam Bondi, the Attorney General. They were saying just a few months ago, Pam Bondi was on TV saying, I have the list, this list, this mythical list on my desk. I'm reviewing it and it will be out soon. This is Pam Bondi as Attorney General is saying this after the election. February of

2025. This she is, she is in the Department of Justice running the Department of Justice. So this memo goes off like a nuclear bomb in that world. People are angry. They are furious. Was it Pam Bondi? Is it Cash Patel, the FBI director, apparently the deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino, who's among those who kind of made a media career in part stoking these kinds of conspiracy theories. He was reportedly very frustrated with the way this memo came out, didn't even show up to work last Friday because he was so distressed. I'm going to remember that next time. I'm feeling distressed about something.

I'm just, I can't write this this week. I just disagree so much with what Steve and Jonah did. So there was all of this noise and anger, mostly online, but spilling out into the real world. And Donald Trump has been trying remarkably, has been trying for now two weeks to tamp it all down to try to tell people this was no big deal. Epstein is old news. Why are we even talking about this? Pam Bondi is my gal. of the Department of Justice, stop going after Pam Bondi, stop going after the administration.

Why are we even concerned about this? He's been saying this on truth, social, in public statements, you know, to the press at the cabinet meeting last week. And it hasn't gone away. And it's, it is remarkable because this is usually not the way things go. If there's some contradiction that this is, you know, there have been contradictions where Trump has had in opposition to his own self-interest, something come up and he's had to sort of distract his movement away from it. He's been able to do that successfully now for going on 10 years. This has been a little different. Some people have come to heal. You've heard Charlie Kirk, who was ranting about this as late as last week. As now said, he doesn't want to talk about Epstein anymore. Some people

are getting the memo, but it is continuing to be a problem. And the last thing I'll say to underscore this that we can talk more about it is while there was nobody else to blame but Donald Trump and his acolytes for stoking the flames. There's nobody else but Donald Trump to blame for continuing to bring this up. He continues to say, this doesn't matter, saying weird things that if you were a conspiracy theorist-minded person, you would be led to believe something was being, he was hiding something. And that's why this list, all of his people were talking about is suddenly it doesn't exist

or it's something that the Democrats cooked up, Joe Biden, James, Comey, et cetera, et cetera. He's now taken as late as a couple of days ago to referring to his supporters as, I don't have the exact quote, something like morons, for continuing to engage in this, calling it a hoax. We're going on two weeks. Let's see if he can get out of this. But he's made this bed and he's now having to sleep in it. David, the only thing I would disagree.

agree with in Mike's very excellent summary of sort of the current state of play, bringing us up to speed, is the idea that you kind of need to be conspiracy-minded to look at the things that we're hearing from Donald Trump and from MAGA World now and think that they don't really add up. You had a terrific column over the weekend. You walked through all of the Trump administration officials and, you know, people who were podcasters before they were Trump administration officials, the various things that they said to hype the Epstein files and to make these sort of broad claims about Democrats and a pedophile ring and the Department of Justice and the Biden administration. And this wasn't sort of a side issue for Maga World. This was at the center of their

effort to undermine the credibility of the deep state. Yeah. And now we're seeing, as my points out, it's just dramatic reversals. Cash Patel, who was hyping this as much as just about anybody, puts out this really kind of bland, odd tweet, just declaring, the conspiracies are all untrue. They were never true. What do you make of where we are at this moment? And is it wrong?

I mean, is it wrong to ask these questions? I mean, this seems like you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist. This is just weird, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, this, I knew as soon as I saw that unsigned memorandum, I knew this was going to be big. I did not know it was going to be this big. I mean, I had been conditioned for 10 years for Maga to look at Trump, for him to flip-flop all over the place, turn back on a promise, turn back to them, back away. And nothing, nothing shake them at all. But I knew this was different.

I knew that this was so foundational to the core MAGA worldview, this sort of idea, what we'll call not the Little Epstein story, which is the main story that we know about a wealthy man who it was a serial sexual predator and also one of the most well-connected people in the world. What I'm calling small Epstein is serious enough. It's real. It's bad. It's horrible. But they believed in something else, what you might call Big Epstein. In Big Epstein conspiracy theory, it's essentially that he's the key, man. If you turn the Epstein, if you put the Epstein key into the lock, when you open it up, you're going to have sort of vindication of this theory that the global elite is, you know, our economy, our nation, our world is run by a cabal of pedophiles. That's sort of like the Big Epstein, which you might call Thinking Man's Q and on. And this is really fundamental to a part.

of the MAGA base that really sees Trump as the central figure in world history who is destined to combat international sex trafficking. And I know when you say it out loud, it sounds weird. But that's what I was just going to say. I mean, like, if you're, if you're a normie and you haven't been paying attention to this, what you just said in the last 15 seconds sounds absolutely bonkers, that the real problem with the U.S. government is that it's run by this secretive cabal of, of pedophiles who are sort of making arrangements to benefit other pedophiles around the world and making policy that would allow them to operate in secret. I mean, that is sort of core to this, to the conspiratorial mindset that many, I would say, hardcore MAGA brought to their

understanding of sort of this moment in American history and in particular the deep state. Yeah. Well, and it also helps explain a lot of people are just totally stumped by this incredible intensity around the support for Trump and the incredible hatred that they have for Trump's enemies. I mean, just hatred, demoncrats and words like that. Well, this is part of it. I mean, if you actually think that your opponents are concealing a cabal of pedophiles, you're going to be really intense about that, right? And it's going to do two things at once. You're going to look at the person who's going to save those kids. some kind of, you know, colossal world hero. And then also it's going to make you want to overlook their other flaws, you know. And so this is really deep and core. And I was, I knew it'd be big. I did not know it's going to be this big. I did not know that Trump was going to flip on this so decisively. But when you look back at some of the information from the past, you notice that it was really Trump supporters who were super eager to talk about Epstein. It wasn't so much Trump himself. There was this Fox interview with Rachel Campos Duffy where she asked him about what he's going to be classifying.

She says, MLK, yes, JFK, yes. And then she gets to Epstein, Epstein. And he goes, yes. But then there was another part he kept going. He said the non-phony parts of the file, right? The parts of the file that were real and then some's not. So already you can see, hmm, to the extent this file, you know, the extent we haven't seen parts of this file, Is it all good for Donald Trump?

Is it all good? I mean, there's a lot we know about his relationship with Epstein that's really not good for Donald Trump, which always made it very weird to think that he was going to be the instrument of justice and vengeance here. He had called Epstein a terrific guy. He had even observed Epstein's interest in young women. He'd been on the Epstein plane. He'd partied with Epstein all over the place. And so it was always a little bit weird. So I don't think anyone is putting on, I don't think the tinfoil hats are moving right to left for someone to say, this is a strange.

reaction from Donald Trump. This is, this is highly, this is something weird to then turn around and call these files written by Obama. Clinton, Biden, what, what is going on here? Are you inoculating your supporters against something that might not be so great? It's just strange behavior. Yeah, to your point about what he said about Jeffrey I've seen years ago, Trump said to in an interview with New York Magazine. I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. It has even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on

the younger side. Jonah to the to David's point about the kinds of things, kinds of things that that Trump has said over the years, he gave us interview to Jonathan Swan, formerly of Axios now of the New York Times. It was sort of became a famous interview for Jonathan Swan, did a terrific job. of the things that Swan asked about was Jelaine Maxwell, who is Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice is in spending time in prison right now. And Jonathan Swan asked about it and asked about the relationship there and Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in general. And Trump says,

I think a couple different times, I wish her well. And Swan stops the interview sort of and says, wait a second. Like she's a convicted sex. trafficker and she was a willing accomplice in the exploitation of these women. Why in the world do you wish her well? And Trump was utterly nonplussed at that moment. Should we have been paying attention, more attention to this kind of all along? You know, now it's the case that many people on the left, the sort of hardcore resistance left, are in high dudgeon over this and are pointing all of these things out about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Is this something that people should have been more focused on earlier, given those

public statements, even before the latest curiosity about the change of views of everybody in Maga World? Well, okay, let me back up and just say, yes, people who should have been paying attention is, I don't disagree with, I don't think anything that I've heard here, but like there is a tendency given, I think, our collective antipathy. towards the tinfoil hat crowd and the general tone of conspiratorial nonsense that has overtaken so much of the right that there is a tendency among our crowd to want to just wildly dunk on all the conspiracy theorist people and normally I love and I'm happy to do that I think

this whole story is weird enough that it like it is it is kind of kind of legitimate to just ask questions on this one. And I don't think Epstein was murdered. I think that that's the kind of thing, like, investigators are really good at figuring out, you know, particularly with all the videotape. And I understand there's a one-minute glitch. But like, that doesn't work in real life, right? The hit squad getting in there and getting out and the guards being gone and being

broad, I don't buy any of that. Do I think it's possible that, because the guards were. absent and all that stuff, that someone said to him, hey, if you want to kill yourself, now's the moment to do it or something along those lines. Personally, I don't want to rule that out. I'm not saying it's my theory or anything like that, but like, I think this whole story is sufficiently weird that it's plausible. Like, why is Maxwell in prison if there was no conspiracy, so no sex trafficking ring,

if there were no clients to be identified, right? I mean, I understand we know who some of the clients. are and so therefore there's no new reporting to make it seem like there's a smoking gun or hidden stuff but like there's this guy Leon Black billionaire who paid Epstein a hundred and seventy million dollars for tax consulting that's I mean like I haven't it's it's I don't know everything about the world of high finance and taxes but like let's say the guy is worth a billion to say that you're going to give, what is that, like 17% of your net worth for tax consulting? How big was your tax bill that Jeffrey Epstein helped you knock down, right?

And so I personally think there's enough shadiness and enough weirdness in this story to say, yeah, you know, New York Times should be assigning reporters to do investigative stuff, more investigative stuff on this. people went to that island, people were on that plane, and I think Pam Bondi at minimum should be fired. I mean, like, it is untenable to me, even grading on the, the Hegseth curve or whatever we're going to call it, right, the idea that you can go out and say that you, as attorney general of the United States, and say, you have these incredibly damning documents that have been at the center of this conspiracy theory for years, and they're on your desk. They're just sitting there on your desk.

And you actually orchestrate this utterly bogus Potemkin thing where you bring in these social media influencers and you give them binders that say Jeffrey Epstein documents on them. And you try to promote this idea that you're really getting to the bottom of this and then come out and say there's no there there. Like Bondi has put herself into by extension the Trump administration in a position to say either. we're lying to you now or we've been lying to you all along there really isn't like a third spot and lastly i'll just say it's weird trump has this thing where he you know that that what is it called a facist whatever it's the thing where you say i'm not going to say um you know i'm not going to say mike warden's shirt is too loud uh but you know people are saying that kind of stuff and um Trump does that kind of thing all the time.

He also will, you know, he gives, he airs his insecurities when he says things like, you don't understand. I have the best words. I have the best vocabulary. I have the best words, right? It's because he knows he doesn't. And the idea that Trump is extremely clever about this stuff, the fact that he is saying, I don't want to release this because there's a lot of fake things in there about people

written by Barack Obama and Comey. First of all, that's a wild conspiracy theory right there that the President of the United States and the former head of the FBI. And a new one, right? They got together and they forged documents and they kept them secret all of this time that were going to accriminate the political enemies. That is a wild-ass conspiracy theory

and everyone's just letting him say it. But moreover, the fact that he feels the need to constantly talk about, oh, there's phony stuff in there, there's hoax stuff in there. first of all it confirms that there's a there's there are documents there we have not seen and I am open to the idea that he is just afraid that there's fake stuff in there about him and that's why he's saying it that that he's sufficiently paranoid about things that like that's possible it is not unreasonable for us to say to infer from someone like Donald Trump

with his track record that when he says oh no the stuff in that file that's all fake about me, none of that's real, that there is stuff in the file about him that's real. I'm not saying that there is. I'm just saying, like, he, politicians normally don't deserve the benefit of doubt about this kind of stuff. Show a hand here. Who thinks that Trump deserves extra special benefit of the doubt? I mean, it's just, and so I personally, I am, and I am glad David brought up the thinking man's Q and on. I think that that's one of the things, there's a valence to this story that is hard for Normies to understand. why it scratches so many itches on the crazier right.

And people don't remember. Remember Frazzle Drip? Yep. Frazzledrip was the theory that Marjor Taylor Green subscribed to in a Facebook post that said that Huma Abidine and Hillary Clinton were kidnapping like nine-year-old girls, cutting off their faces, wearing them as a horror mask to scare them to get the little girl to produce more of this hormone that they would then draw from their blood so as an anti-aging cream or something like that. Well, that one's true. Big if true. Yeah. And so, um, and that's not, that was not only a few

people who believe that. Like, for sure. I mean, I'm not saying it was a main street. It was not a tiny group of people who believe that. Right. But the whole cult of demonology thinks all that stuff is plausible or possible or we need to investigate it and all that kind of thing. And the QAnon thing, I mean, the Epstein thing is the respectable face on that entire universe. It's also, I don't want to get deep in the weeds on this, but the fact that he's Jewish also scratches some itches, right? And the reason why, like the second, there was any suggestion he worked for the Mossad, Tucker Carlson, you know, had to check himself into an ER because he was excited for more

and four hours. And so I have no sympathy for any of the people who are being screwed by this thing because they created this. They fomented this general climate. And they deserve Trump and Bondi and Patel and Bongino. They all deserve the crappy situation that they're in. But the press also I think should be more open-minded that there's something more to this than, oh, it's just a conspiracy theory.

There's something weird about this somewhere. Yeah, I mean, I listened to a recent interview with Julie Brown, who was the Miami Herald reporter who really broke this open again in sort of the 2017, 2018, 2019 timeframe. And she pointed out the forensic pathologist who looked at Epstein after the alleged suicide attempt said, this doesn't really look like a suicide. So even that, I mean, I think there are legitimate questions to ask about it. But Mike, I want to go to the MAGA part of this, and you wrote about this week. Why is Donald Trump having so much trouble this time, shutting this down? I mean, we've had many other incidents where, you know, he's brought MAGA along or MAGA has pushed him along on some conspiracy or another. And then Trump gets to a point where he's either tired of it or it may implicate him or it's no longer useful.

and he just shuts it down sort of by the force of will and they fall in line. You pointed out that Charlie Kirk has fallen in line. But Kirk in many ways is an outlier here because you have so many

MAGA podcasters, mega influencers who are saying we don't accept what you're saying here. Theo Vaughn, popular podcaster, had JD Vance on last month and asked him questions about this and Vance who had been pushing this conspiracy for the last

five years, said, you know, we need to see everything. We need to see all the files. And Theo Vaughan was talking about it this week and said to J.D. Vance, hey, man, what changed? Why can't Trump shut this down? Part of it's a lame duck situation. You know, this is, um, Trump is in the twilight of his elected political career. Um, and so there, he has sort of hatched a movement that is, has grown beyond him. I think David is absolutely right that this is a core belief of the conspiratorial populist right that I don't think Trump quite even fully understood what he was sort of teasing along here. I mean, Mike Flynn, who is, was Donald Trump's very first, very brief national security advisor. He has become a sort of, I don't know what you would call him a guru, a prophet.

for this conspiratorial mindset, whether it's Q&ON. I don't know whether he engaged with Frazzledrip, but he he's definitely engaged with the Epstein stuff, wrote this long tweet this week,

essentially saying, Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong on this and you need to get right. This is religious. This is faith-based. and not even Donald Trump is immune to those kinds of forces, those kind of psychological forces. That's my view on this.

But can I say a piece about from the other side of trying to take this conspiracy too serious. Look, I agree with you. I'm a reporter by practice and trade. So I'm all for following facts and threads that. that others, particularly people in power, deem you can't ask questions about or you can't follow that thread. I would just urge caution and discretion as people ask questions about this because I like David's framing of Little Epstein and Big Epstein, that those are kind of two different

threads. On the Little Epstein story, on the Little Epstein investigation that might need to continue, there are so many threads to pull. Why in 2008 did Alexander Acosta the then, believe, a U.S. attorney in South Florida? What sort of deal did he cut with Epstein? That's like a legitimate question that needs to be probed a little more. Everything going on in South Florida, Palm Beach. I mean, Virginia Roberts, who was who died earlier or actually died last year, was sort of one

the big whistleblowers against Epstein. She met him at Mar-a-Lago when she was working, like, as a pool girl at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida. All kinds of questions about that. Donald Trump's on record, as Steve, as you mentioned, there are photos and video of the two of them in the 1990s hanging out, and it's not just Donald Trump. There's Bill Clinton, the Clintons have these connections as well. All of that is fine to probe what I am just cautious about.

Maybe I'm overly cautious. Maybe I'm too blinkered by what's happened in the last 10 years with conspiracy theories is where in the wrong hands or with too much glibness, this can spill into and can be used as fodder for big Epstein conspiracy theorists. And that's where things, to me, get dangerous and you need to be careful. And I'm hearing from a lot of anti-Trump, liberal, democratic voices. out there who are, I believe, being too glib about this and suggesting that not that Donald Trump would be embarrassed about his name showing up in these files, which would not be unexpected, given everything we know about their past relationship, even if the file simply said that Donald Trump's name came up and there was no connection between what, between Epstein's child sex ring and Donald Trump. just the question was asked during some point of an investigation.

It's, to me, it is too glib and it's falling into the same traps that conspiracy theorists on the right have fallen into, which is taking a nugget of something that doesn't have context and extrapolating into something that just isn't true. Maybe I'm being too precious about this. It just, it bothers me. No, I mean, I think it's exactly, it's exactly what you'd expect to hear. from a globalist elite who's trying to downplay these things, right? I mean, that's who you are, Mike. David, just quickly, your column, you wrote this moment is significant for another

reason. It allows us to peer into the future of MAGA and see its potential crackup. After Trump has gone, this movement could tear itself apart. Its very existence is premised on a series of fantastical assertions about America and American government. One, can you explain what you meant there? And two, how many times have we thought the same thing? And again, why is, why would this be different looking forward? Not now. Why is this different looking back? Why is it different looking forward? So what I was talking about looking forward was post Trump. So I'm not going to be sitting here going, okay, we got him now. You know, like, okay, we've been through this a bunch, you know, this sort of idea that, well, this is the scandal. This is the one. Now, I'll admit that there's much greater mega negativity towards Trump than. in any other scandal yet for all the reasons we've talked about. So that was not the point. The point was not to say this is the thing that will undo Trump. That happens. That would really, really surprise me. No, what he was talking about is this. What is Maga like after him? And is this really a

generational change for the Republican Party? Or is this a unique moment for Donald Trump? How much Trumpism survives Trump? And what I was trying to point out of my piece is this coalition he's assembled, which is Trump 2.0 is different from Trump 1.0. Trump 2.0 was he really pulled together about all of the different strands of disgruntled America. You know, people who are anti-vax, people who are anti-Ukraine, people who have conspiracy theories about global elites. It's the coalition of mistrust. And so he's pulled them all in. And what you have is this really interesting thing where the Democrats have hurt themselves by saying, well, everyone, by making all of the litmus tests, having such a long litmus test, the Republicans have helped themselves by having one litmus test,

and only one, and that is, do you support Donald Trump? Well, guess what happens when you remove that one litmus test? What is left? You're left with basically a bag of scorpions. That's what you're left with in the GOP. And these are not folks who are going to be terribly inclined to yield to any of the other scorpions. And you can already see this emerging. There have been interne scene fights over Iran. Now there's a little civil war over Epstein. Now, as a general matter, it all settles as as soon as Trump speaks. But who is the person who's going to speak and settle it after Trump? And so that was my, the reason why I was writing this is to say, look, it's Lucy with the football. I'm not going to be Lucy with the football on Trump. But don't think that,

there's this really coherent ideological unified movement, ideologically and temperamentally unified movement. No, no, no. It's a bag of scorpions that's after Trump. And they could absolutely rip themselves to shreds. Yeah, so very quickly on this. Yeah, well, so two points. One, I take Warren's cautions to heart, and I agree.

I actually think following the sex stuff is not a waste of time, but it's just, it's too juicy, too distracting, too difficult given the victims, all that kind of stuff. I mean, we kind of know what happened on that front. Go back to the standard journalistic model. Follow the money. How I still have never had anybody explaining me how this guy got so freaking rich. You know, it costs a lot of money to buy the largest home in Manhattan. It costs a lot of money to, I'm open to correction on this. I believe it costs a lot of money to buy and staff a Caribbean island. Just throwing that out there, right? So like, And that stuff, I think those threads definitely should be pulled on more.

And there are reporters out there who really know how to do that forensic financial stuff. On David's point, I agree entirely. I wrote a very similar column in the wake of the Trump-Musk Wars. Because I think that was the first sign of the Trump coalition, by definition, a cult of personality coalition is going to have disagreements. once that personality is no longer at the center of the cult, right? I mean, Trump came out of the clear and decisive and obvious and predictable by my life winner in the Musk Trump wars, and Musk seems to be very upset about this, but like only

one of them is president, and like it just wasn't going to go any other way, really. But I think the most relevant place to look at this, if we're really going to do post-Trump punditry is it's not musk it's not even this epstein stuff it's vance and this idea clinging some very close friends of mine who are very close politics watchers they just sort of glibly say well vance is the heir apparent the most likely person to be the next president of united states all of these kinds of things and i think that is true in the extent that if you're betting against, if you're just taking the field, like he's one of the only person with identifiably good odds to become president of the United States. But I would bet I would take

a thousand to one in favor of the field any day of the week over Vance. You can see it with the fights between Rubio and Vance. Trump doesn't even want to say that Vance is going to be his successor. and Rubio has a different wing of MAGA that he's trying to appeal to while Vance is trying to appeal to sort of the cranky Appalachia, my grandfather has fought in the Civil War crowd and Rubio is trying to aim the transracial working class thing. My only point is that there's nobody that can hold together that coalition that Trump has and the post-Trump future is going to be it could be it could easily be uglier than the Trump present but like this will not last and this is just another I think this is another

really good sign of that and you just think so you think about how what a bag of crap Trump is handing vans on on the Epstein stuff just to put a bow on this let's just say it becomes dogma on the right that on the conspiratorial right that Trump will was part of a cover-up, but we're going to forgive him because eventually he gave us Pam Bondi's head, and we'll get to the bottom of this later. So Vance is going to run. Was he part of the cover-up? Did he was he out of the loop? What is it? You know, like he, he doesn't want any side of this issue, but he has to be on a side because he has to take the president's side and everything. I don't think that sets him up well. At the very least it opens him up to vulnerabilities come

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Yeah, I want to move to another issue on which we've seen at least a pretty profound rhetorical change from Donald Trump over the past. two weeks, and that's Ukraine and Russia. Jonah, back to you on this. If you look at what Donald Trump has said, he sort of had it with Vladimir Putin, he said probably more aggressive things or criticized Putin in a way that we haven't really heard from Donald Trump. We have conversations now from the administration about providing additional Patriot missile batteries or not providing them, but allowing Europe to pay for them and provide them. And then this week, we started to see, I think, in more practical terms, what this might mean and what it might not mean with Donald Trump saying he's giving Vladimir Putin 50 days. We've heard these things before.

It's been I'm going to impose sanctions. I'm going to call out Vladimir Putin. He's got two weeks. Again and again and again, we hear this and then it sort of gets kicked down the road. And if you pay attention to what Russian state media is saying, they don't seem to be taking Donald Trump very seriously at all in terms of what this is likely to mean for the war. Having had a couple weeks to process this and look at what the administration is now doing, is there a change here or is this just Donald Trump talking? I think it's somewhere in the middle of the two things. I don't think it's quite a change. First of all, let's just be clear, a 50-day window in the middle of the most intense summer offensive of the war, might as well be a 500-day window.

It is not a high-pressure thing on Putin. For all we know, he was planning on, like, digging in for the fall and winter after 50 days from now anyway. I mean, like, it's kind of silly, particularly given that, you know, Trump thinks that two weeks is a magical period of time where you can change your position 50 different ways or whatever. So I don't put a lot of stake in that. I also don't put a lot of stake in the it's good. Some of the things that he said are good and we should celebrate that he is saying them. As my friend Ramesh Prenu always like to say, it's not so much that I'm against flip-flopping.

It's that you just want the politician to flop to your position and then stay there, right? So like the more anti- Putin he's becoming, that's good. You don't want to criticize him. Oh, you keep changing your mind. When he changes his mind to your position, I get that. I just, don't put a lot of faith that he's going to stay on this position. Cudos to Melania, who apparently is driving this policy, at least to some degree, because Trump would come home and brag, according to Trump, Trump would come home and brag to his wife that he talked to the president of Russia, which he still thinks is like a super cool thing and had this great conversation. And Malani would say, that's great. He bombed another city today. And apparently that makes Trump

feel like a fool in front of his wife. And so he's doing something. Great. That said, you know, people hate this point about foreign policy generally, but there's a lot more continuity in American foreign policy than there is change. And in many ways, I think what Trump is doing is just basically extending the Biden policy of doing enough to seem like you're helping, but not doing enough to help Ukraine win. And even if this NATO stuff goes through, which we don't know that it will, it's not enough. It's not nearly enough. And the supply chain, the amount of time it takes to get these Patriots over there and all of our ass, it's just too damn slow.

We're not reorienting our economy to our military production capacity to actually treat this thing as if it's something that we have a national interest in winning. And so I kind of feel it's more half-assed than anything else. And I think in many ways, so was the Biden administration about this. I mean, the rhetoric of the Biden administration was much better, but the follow-through was the huge gap with the huge gap with the, a follow-through. Here, the rhetoric is kind of half-ass, too, and it matches the policy more. So I'm very depressed about it. I think what we are doing towards Ukraine is fundamentally not in our interests and profoundly dishonorable. Yeah, David, we've seen the Trump administration not enforce sanctions. In addition to the rhetorical difference between the Biden administration

and Trump administration, we've seen the Trump administration not enforce sanctions. We've seen them talk publicly about withholding additional weapons systems. How would you assess the differences between the Biden administration policy, which I would care. I agree with Joan. I would characterize it as sort of getting to the right point, but getting the right point six months late pretty consistently and rhetorically better than the Trump policy. But in terms of actual practical positioning on the war itself, how would you compare Trump's actions over these first seven months with the Biden administration. I think one of the key differences with the Biden administration is at no point did you doubt that the Biden administration wants to help Ukraine

at no point. The question was, how effective were they going to be in doing it? How risk averse were they going to be in doing it? And this was something that was making a lot of us who were supporting Ukraine just pounding our head against the wall was how cautious, not wanting to extend the regional weapons into Russia, not wanting to provide certain kinds of weapons. We seem to fall into this pattern of you argue, argue, argue, and then six months later, they approve a weapon system. They should have approved six months ago. And it was very frustrating, but at no point did you doubt that Biden wants Ukraine to prevail

in the conflict, that Biden wanted, that Biden saw the states of the conflict very, very clearly. It was just the implementation. Now, with Trump, I think the way you look at it is you're looking at an administration that has multiple factions. One faction absolutely positively wants to cut off Ukraine and keeps trying to do it sometimes reportedly surreptitiously. You know, so you had a temporary stop in weapons deliveries that, you know, reporting indicates that Trump didn't even know about. So if you're Ukraine, you feel like you have to make the case to Donald Trump's administration every day just to hang in there with them, to some degree at all. And so that's the difference is it feels fundamentally

unstable. And then the other thing is it's not just fundamentally unstable because of factions within the administration, ideological factions, it's fundamentally unstable because Donald Trump is fundamentally unstable in his approach. And, you know, right before he took office for a second term, I was talking to some conservative Ukraine followers, experts who made this point about Trump. And it proved to be incredibly prescient. They said, Donald Trump is going to walk into office and be surprised at the Vladimir Putin he encounters. That he's going to remember the Vladimir Putin of his first term, who had not already been in the most horrific grinding military conflict in Europe since World War II.

That Vladimir Putin, two years or more into this conflict, is hardened. And he's also figured out that he doesn't need Western economies for his nation to have a war economy. He's also figured all the workarounds to these – he's figured out workarounds to sanctions. He's got the entire, you know, cult, he's got the nation oriented towards this war. This war is his defining characteristic. He is not going to be open. He is not going to be open to any compromise unless he's made to compromise. And I think Trump walked into office not aware that that he was facing that degree of dark determination.

And right now what we're seeing is the fruits of him feeling personal. insulted, not so much persuaded about the rightness of Ukraine's cause. And when you're making your strategic assessments on that basis, that's inherently unstable. Yeah, that's a really important point. You don't get the sense that he sat down for 80 different intelligence briefings and now has a better understanding of the war. It's just that Putin has made him look like a fool again and again and again. And Donald Trump doesn't want to look like a fool. However, Mike, that seems to have worked with some Republicans on Capitol Hill who had been increasingly sort of leaning against supporting Ukraine, both rhetorically and in terms of policy. There was a rather abrupt shift in

tone and rhetoric and maybe policy on Capitol Hill this week among Republicans. Where do you, what's your sense of where Republicans on the Hill are? There's legislation to impose additional sanctions. Trump has opposed that legislation repeatedly sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina and Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic from Connecticut. He's pushed back on that, so we don't need it. They've signaled more openness to that now. Where are Republicans on the Hill on this? I think there's a lot of fingers sticking in the wind on this, right? There are two polls within the Republican conference in the Senate on this. There's the Lindsay Graham side. You could throw Mitch McConnell, John Thune, other sort of establishment or national security

conservative types. And then you have the Josh Hawley's and the Mike Lees who are sort of ideologically opposed to this. And the rest of the conference is like in the middle and sort of at the whims of what they're learning from briefings, from news, following where Donald Trump is on this and trying to maybe even predict where he might go, which is a fool's errand, but that's what they're trying to do. There is, it's a bigger part of the kind of ideological fight that's happening across the administration, particularly in places like the Pentagon, the National Security Council, such as it still exists in the White House, it's not much of it left.

And so it's all touch and go. The problem with all of this, whether it's Donald. Trump's whims, right, that are influenced by Melania or his, his ego being hurt or his dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize slipping away thanks to, thanks to Vladimir Putin, continuing to do what we all knew he wanted to do and would continue to do if given the opportunity. That's one aspect of it. The fact that foreign policy and defense policy does kind of continue to move in the same direction, the sort of the way that the bureaucracy of the Pentagon continues to kind of keep moving

no matter what people have said about shaking things up. That's an aspect of this. There's also the dysfunction at the Pentagon where you have a secretary of defense who is, I mean, by all reporting and all people that I talk with about this is sort of his hand is not, you know, at on the wheel at the Pentagon and you have people ideological people like Elbridge Colby who have really kind of consolidated a lot of power and who are who is appears to be the one who was behind stopping the missiles that order to stop delivering the missiles and material to Ukraine a couple of weeks ago and and what's actually happening on the ground like all of these things are

are not based in any kind of stability or principle. They're all just different forces that are banging up against each other. And for instance, I was talking with somebody this week who pointed out to me that Bridge Colby's effort, you know, to stop the shipment of the missiles to Ukraine might have worked and he might have gotten away with it had it happened two weeks prior. If not for those meddling kids. If not for those meddling Russians bombing the crap out of Ukrainian villages. I mean, this is, it's unnerving and frustrating to see that our national security policy is driven by all of these different forces, some of which are getting to the right place, some of which are trying to drag us to the wrong place.

And when they all collide, it's all unpredictable. and you don't know what's going to happen next week or the week after that. That is, it's really kind of counter to the way that Donald Trump's rhetoric suggested he would run things in this term. That things would, you know, finally at long last, you know, Donald Trump would be in control because Joe Biden was so checked out. Other people were running the government and Biden didn't know what he was doing. Well, different circumstances, but kind of the same thing is happening in this. administration. I just add one wrinkle, one variable to that, which is like, I've now heard from like either on in public, you know, on TV or podcasts and a couple of times in private, a bunch of

people who say that one of the reasons why Hegseth and Bondi won't be fired is because Trump doesn't want to quote, give a win to the media. And like that's, look, on one level, I get that on the other level, the idea that it's, I mean, if you'd say give a win to the Democrats, that would be one thing, but like give a win to the media by, it just shows you how much of the Trump administration is in reality show mode and just thinks that the producers of the show are hostile to it or something. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the frustrations that Donald Trump had when his nomination of Matt Gates to be attorney general was withdrawn, was he didn't want to give a win to the media, and it didn't even really get to giving win to the Democrats at that

moment. David, before we go, I want to take advantage of the fact that you're with us and talk briefly about this Supreme Court ruling on Monday that the Trump administration can continue to unwind the Department of Education. The New York Times called this a significant victory for the administration that could ease President Trump's efforts to sharply curtail the federal government's role in the nation's schools. How should we understand what the court did on Monday, both in terms of law and then in terms of what it will mean for policy? Yeah. So essentially what the Supreme Court did is it vacated an injunction that was blocking the Trump administration from its reduction in force while the case continued. So in other words, it did not rule that the reduction

in force was lawful. It just said, we're not going to stop it while the legal challenge. to it continue. Now, there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, and here's one thing where I'm going to completely agree with critics on the court on this decision, that the majority didn't explain itself. It didn't explain why it did it. It just allowed that, it just lifted the district court injunction. And then you have, I believe it's a 19-page dissent from the joined by all three of the liberal justices. There's pretty stinging dissent. And once again, you had one of these dynamics for the majority of silent. The dissent says what wants to say. And, you know, when you have silence versus an argument, it's kind of hard to

defend the silence. But let me put it this way. So what the silence leaves open is a number of possibilities. Did the Supreme Court deny this stay or lift this injunction because it believes that the Trump administration has the right to do this? That's one line of thinking and is likely to ultimately prevail. That's one question. Or is it because this is actually something that didn't need to be dealt with by an injunction. So an injunction is actually considered to be an extraordinary remedy, a remedy only available when money damages are insufficient to compensate for the harm, when irreparable harm is at stake. Well, traditionally, when somebody is fired wrongfully, you do have money damages. Reinstatement

and back pay is a very normal remedy in employment cases. And so part of it might be that the Supreme Court was saying, well, this is not an injunction case. This might be a damages case. And so even, you know, maybe it doesn't side with the administration believes that the remedy is to provide damages, reinstatement, back pay, et cetera. So there's a lot of different strands here. And the cases at such a preliminary stage that it's really difficult to know precisely where it's headed. However, however, all the signs you're pointing good for the administration now beforehand? No, now. Yes. So if you are thinking what the administration, the Supreme Court will ultimately hold that the administration's actions were unlawful, you're going to have to

feel a lot more doubt about that now than before this ruling. But again, it's not over. So this is a situation where I'd really wish the majority had written on this. That We've really seen what what they're thinking was. The three dissenters did write, but the majority did not. They wrote in very, I'd say, strong language. Mike, let me ask you about the policy implications of this. Stuart Stevens, who is a Republican strategist or former Republican strategist, helped run Romney's campaign in 2012, had this to say on X.

What connects ICE, referring to the immigration enforcement actions, and killing the Department of Education? Republican base is now non-college-educated white voters. That's the fastest declining large demographic. In 2000, it was 60% of the electorate. Now it's 39% and dropping. ICE is trying to make America whiter. Killing the Department of Education is to make America less educated. It's not complicated.

It won't work, but it's evil. I got to say, I don't find that analysis terribly compelling. I have wanted to shudder the Department of Education for decades because I think the facts make pretty plain that the Department of Education hasn't helped educate America's kids. It's failed in its mission and has become, in effect, a bureaucracy promoting teachers' unions. Is it the case that if you want to have states take a greater role in education across the country, you want to? you want to make America less educated? No, and I will say I share your view that it's not very compelling, and Stewart has sort of made a career at a new career at sort of claiming that everything

he once fought for and believed, it was all a lie. And anybody who does that is sort of automatically on my suspect list because these things are complex and complicated. The Trump Coalition, as we've discussed on this show, is big and varied and has lots of different people coming to it with different ideas about what Trump can do for their issue. And I don't see what Stewart is talking about except to the extent that the coalition can dictate in some ways sort of what becomes a priority. And so conservatives have been trying to shut down the Department of Education for a long time. I don't think without the confluence of a lot of other things like the populist sort of suspicion of institutions, the sort of everything that happened in the COVID pandemic to so distrust with kind of the education establishment.

that's all helping to get to a point where it's politically feasible for a Republican administration to do this and have the firepower to get away with it. And that is in some parts because the coalition is less trustful of those institutions. And some of that comes from the education attainment levels of that coalition. But to me, that's more descriptive than of the coalition than descriptive of a plan at work here. And I think we should be cautious about that. Yeah, Jonah, I mean, this has been sort of core to Republican politicians' rhetoric for decades now, including, I believe, including Mitt Romney, you at least said we're going to take a careful look at this. Yeah, look, I agree with everything Mike says about this.

I mean, Stuart Stevens is right that the Trump administration is responding to incentives from its base, okay, but beyond that, it's sort of a cartoonish idea to say that they're doing it because they want to make people dumber, right? I mean, like, that's just not the argument for getting rid of the Department of Education. And I would also argue that this is one of these stories that's a lot like you had Republicans in the Biden administration going around insisting. that we've stopped pumping oil in this country, that we no longer produce oil and gas in this country.

And Republicans, it made Republican-based voters really angry and want Donald Trump to get elected because he was going to turn the pumps back on. And Democrats let Republicans say that lie because they wanted it to be true too. Biden wanted to tell the green base of his party that they weren't in the oil production business when the reality was we were producing more oil

than we'd ever produced in the history of this country under the Biden administration. I think this destroying the Department of Education thing is a little bit like that. Destroying the State Department is a little bit like that. They're messing with it, to be sure. They're firing people, but they're not firing people in a way that makes the agency go away completely. But Trump wants his people to believe that he got rid, that he's getting rid of the Department of Education. And the Democrats want their people to believe it as a scary story. similarly with the NPR stuff.

If they defund NPR, NPR is still going to be here. They defund PBS. Big Bird's not going anywhere. But Democrats want you to believe that they're going to go away. And Republicans want you to believe that they're going away. Neither is entirely true. And there's so much to legitimately criticize about this administration. You don't need to come up with sort of fantasy scare stories to,

to fill your day with criticisms. And so I just don't like the entire sort of genre of this stuff. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply.

Learn more at MX.ca. Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection,

and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. We're back with the dispatch podcast, but before we return to the roundtable, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere here at the dispatch. This week on The Remnant, Jonah, is joined by the host of the advisory opinions podcast, Sarah Isker, to review the recent Supreme Court term. They discussed the court's middle element, nationwide injunctions, and Congress's inability to alleviate pressure on the judiciary. Search for the Remnant in your podcast app and make sure you hit the follow button. Now back to our conversation. Finally, today, I'm not worth your time. David, I'm going to come to you first. Donald Trump put out a statement.

Unclear exactly why he felt the need to weigh in on this at the presidential level, but he announced that Coke is going to be switching to all cane sugar. Coke put out something of a clarification saying, well, maybe not quite that is not what we're saying yet. setting aside who's right on that and I tend to trust Coca-Cola on the information about its products does it matter if there are cane if there's cane sugar in in sodas does that make it better number one number two what's the best soft drink on the market today in your opinion and three should we call them sodas soft drinks pops or coke Okay, so number one, you cannot measure my concern for whether they use high-fructose corn syrup or whatever or sugar, curcane sugar, with an electron microscope.

Like, I do not care in the slightest, and I don't know anything about whether sugar or corn syrup is better for you. I just, there's sweet, sugary drink. So that I don't know if I opened my mouth to express even one-tenth of one percent of an opinion on this difference. You would have like all kinds of experts flooding our comments about French doesn't know anything about sugar. Anyway, so I'm not going to say anything about that. I don't know about it. Number two, the best drink is Coke Zero. Like, Coke Zero is a miracle drink.

It is the closest thing I've ever experienced to a zero-calorie. drink that tastes exactly like the real drink. I mean, it's shocking how similar they are. So Coke Zero is phenomenal. And number three, they're all Cokes anyway. So, you know, you go. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I'll have a Coke. Yes, I'll have a Coke. What kind of Coke, Dr. Pepper. That's, that's how you order a Coke. So I'm not going to weigh in. I'll wait till the end to weigh in to tell you who's right and wrong. Mike, can we get your thoughts on this important question. So, first of all, of course, David, you know, New York Times, you're so out of touch with

where Americans are on sugar in their sugary drinks. I know. The, the, there is a test case for this, which is Mexican Coke. You can buy Coke that's made in Mexico and it's made with cane sugar. It is not made with high fructose corn syrup or any of the kind of corn syrup. And it is better. It tastes better. It tastes like a Coke should.

It is the platonic ideal. of Coca-Cola. And so that's just a fact. Whether this is a place where the president should be weighing in, I mean, in some ways, it's the ultimate place a populist president should be weighing in because it's the kind of issue that the majority of people, if they only knew, would get behind. I think there's a whole story we could go into. Maybe, Joni, you'll talk a little bit about why we use corn syrup.

It's a story of protectionism or favoritism on the part of the federal government for our corn industry. And it really has nothing to do with taste or with cost even. But, okay, putting all that aside, the absolute best soda. And I know I'm from the South. I'm from Atlanta, actually. I should be a Coke all the way guide. I do like Coke. And I have heard people call it anything Coke.

But I call it soda. It's just how I was raised. But the absolute best one is one that maybe a lot of you haven't heard of. It's called Cheer Wine. Cheer wine is a... Oh, I know Cheer Wine. I knew you would know it, Dave. I guess it had gone on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains.

Okay. That's good to know. Cheer wine is a North Carolina-based cherry-flavored soda, cola, that is flavored cane sugar, by the way, not with high-fructose corn syrup. When I was growing up and going to Boy Scout camp in North Georgia, it was my first taste of cheer wine. It was like this thing that had migrated slightly over the border from North Carolina into Georgia, and it was a revelation. And since then, it has basically started to spread. I can now buy it in Northern Virginia at certain specialty shops.

It's delicious. It's great. You can find it at all sorts of fine North Carolina base. restaurants like cookout and dario you can find it there it's hard to find otherwise cheer wine is the way to go and and like I said it's it's to me it's soda yeah so very quickly because i know we're running short time uh Mike's absolutely right about Mexican Coke the one thing he left out about Mexican Coke is that one of the reasons why Mexican Coke other than the fact that it has normal sugar in it um taste better is because it's in glass bottles and plastic bottles are a bane

on the soda drinking community in this country. They do not hold their chill very long. They're terrible. And also, you know what? It's very sad to me. The switch to bottles not only is a huge cause of pollution, it means that there's so much less sea glass for our grandkids to find

on beaches. The other thing that you left out is that this is partly a sop to the Maha Bobby Kennedy wing of the coalition. And it's one of these areas where they kind of have a point. And lastly, the best soda, I'm a big Coke Zero fan, and I agree with David that it really is so much better than Diet Coke and better than any other diet mainstream soda.

But I will say it's really weird. In the last 10 years, I've become a huge fan of fresca. It's refreshing. Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. It's a great solid. I know people in Costa Rica.

They love Fresca and Costa Rica. It's like the caddyshack tax on it that kept me from like re-embrate, re-experimenting it with it because I thought it was just the kind of thing that Judge Smalls was pushing on people. But I think Fresco is fantastic. So you're, uh, you're all wrong. The best soda, and it is soda by far is, is, is Coke, um, just a Coca-Cola. And I'm glad I could bring some reporting to this discussion. I was down in Orlando for several days this week.

and sort of traipsing around Disney World and Universal Studios in 100 plus degree heat. And I finished one of the days with one of my daughters. We stopped and we got a fountain Coke for five bucks. I'm so opposed to buying stuff at these places because it's so expensive and crazy. But I was exhausted. She was exhausted. We stopped and we split a fountain Coke on this 100 degree day. And I think it's the, it might be the best beverage.

I've ever sipped in my life, including, you know, Vegas, Sicilia, Spanish wines. So the right answer is Coke and in particular in that environment. I will say as part of my reporting excursion on this trip, we stopped for dinner last night at a Orlando airport restaurant called Cask and Larder, which was fantastic, actually really outstanding airport food, which you don't find very often. And they had cheer wine glazed Brussels sprouts, which we ordered. Cheer wine glazed Brussels sprouts with Parmesan, spectacular side. So if anybody's passing through Orlando, do yourself a favor and get a fountain Coke

at Disney World and stop for the cheer wine glazed Brussels sprouts at Cask and Larder. They are not sponsoring this podcast. I'm not sure that was worth our time, but it was worth, it was worth a moment. at least walking through some of these possibilities. Thanks for joining us on the Dispatch podcast. We will be back with you again next week. Have a thought or want to share a comment or question about what you heard today. Please email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com.

That's Roundtable at the dispatch.com. You know,