The Dispatch Podcast - Courts Cancel Liberation Day | Roundtable

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Mike Warren is joined by David French, Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and Grayson Logue to discuss the latest legal challenges to the Trump administration’s Liberation Day tariffs and the most recent round of presidential pardons. The Agenda:—The Cases That Could Stop Trump’s Tariffs—Will Trump double down on tariffs?—Openly corrupt pardons—Can the courts save American politics?—Trump’s transactional politics—Russia-Ukraine peace talks—A new Putin—NWYT: Communal kid discipline? Show Notes—Ilya Somin for The Dispatch—Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on The Remnant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We've got Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. We're going to be talking about the latest developments in trade policy. the courts really just canceled Liberation Day? And pardon us for noticing, but President Donald Trump has been wielding that pardon power like it's going out of style, with all sorts of questionable characters getting their slates wiped clean. We'll discuss, and then we'll check in on how Trump and Vladimir Putin are, well, not really getting along. Is the American President finally abandoning his bromance with the Russian strongman? And of course, we'll save some time at the end for a little not worth your time. Okay, first, we'll

need to talk about this big decision coming out of the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday. And for that, we're going to bring in a ringer. Dispatch staff writer Grayson Logue is on with all of us to explain what happened and what to expect, because Grayson just happened to have written a quite prescient piece last month for the dispatch entitled the cases that could stop Trump's tariffs. Grayson, welcome back and tell us, have the Trump tariffs been stopped? We had this decision on Wednesday. The Trump administration immediately appealed. So where are we now exactly? Right now, no, but maybe in a few days, and then maybe not again, depending on where we are in the appeals process, is the short answer

to that question. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Explain a little more of that. No, I got to make sure I'm crying some, my T's and dot on my eyes with half the AO squad on this podcast. But I'm watching you, Grayson. I know, I know. I can feel it. I can feel it. So basically, there's been about a half a dozen of these cases challenging either the Liberation Day tariffs or what the court in the decision last night termed the trafficking tariffs, which were the Mexico and Canada duties ostensibly imposed to deal with the fentanyl trafficking issue. So there's been a number of these, but the case last night that we saw the decision covered both of those.

So Liberation Day tariffs, Canada and Mexico tariffs, all of those are permanently enjoined by this court decision. Now, the reason why I say that we're kind of in a midpoint here is that the decision has 10 days to cure, so the administration has 10 days to actually comply with this, and they have already filed a request to stay this decision while they appeal it. So to stop the blocking of the tariffs from actually going into effect while they appeal this to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which they've done. it could then potentially go from there to the Supreme Court, depending on how the federal circuit court of appeals rules and whether or not either party, whoever comes out on top of that ruling decides to go to the Supreme Court. But this is certainly a significant blow against the administration's reading of their tariff authority and power. And we can get

into the specifics here, but essentially both with the Liberation Day measures and the Canada-Mexico measures, the president was using the international emergency the Economic Powers Act, IEPA, which is a statue. AEPA, yeah, which it's a little self-explanatory bit in the title. And I'll just read from the court here because I think they summarized this question on their decision quite succinctly on, I believe, page one of the decision. And this actually covered two cases. So it was one case brought by the Liberty Justice Center, which is a public interest law

firm, Ilya Soman, appeared in a number of dispatch articles, including, the one that I wrote last month was co-counsel on the case also. They combined that case with a challenge brought by Oregon and 11 other states, so both were covered in this decision. And they say, the question in the two cases before the court is whether AEPA delegates these powers to the president and the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court does not read AEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenge tariffs imposed there under. And that's basically the long and short of it. The president was claiming a very expansive, effectively unconstrained authority that is not only not specified in this

statute, like tariffs aren't even mentioned in IEPA. So there are lots of constitutional issues that or constitutional questions raised by that, but just the base issue of like this isn't in the statute made it pretty easy for the judges as a three judge panel to say like this doesn't past muster whatsoever. And it was, it was a quite resounding decision in favor of the plaintiffs. So explain a little bit more exactly where things go from here because this is, this is going to the Supreme Court or is likely to go to the Supreme Court. It seems like what you just described, the arguments that these sort of libertarian-minded, the folks who brought the suit, seem almost tailored for the Supreme Court, these are arguments that this Supreme Court might find very

amenable. Where do we go from here? Yeah, I would anticipate this going to the Supreme Court. I mean, obviously, it's up to them if they want to take the case or just say that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals got it right. Like, that's an open question, whether or not they take it up. In terms of what actually happens next, I think there's obviously the question of the state, which we already mentioned, which a lot of businesses and the stock market are certainly paying attention to, like literally in the weeks beyond after this 10-day period, will the tariffs be on or will they be off? And that affects importers and small businesses and big businesses, the type of plaintiffs in these cases. That's a live question that people

are curious about, is whether or not they will remain in effect. The administration could also start to impose tariffs under traditional methods to try and kind of re-engineer this. So they could start doing the types of things that the president did during his first administration, which is used the actual laws that Congress has delegated pieces of their tariff authority to the executive branch so that we could see some new attempts in that direction. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some quite expansive attempts under those statutes based off of what we've just seen over the last three months with Aipa. And there might be further court challenges with that. But that's going to take more time. If they're doing what the statutes that actually confer a trade authority, the executive branch,

require those require investigations. They require like findings of specifics trade practices that are a necessary justification for tariffs. They aren't written to basically give the president, carte blanche, to just go ham on trade deficits because there are trade deficits. Grayson, what does ham mean? What is ham? Could you, could you, because I don't think that very many listeners at the dispatch know what ham means. It's a wonderful meat product. Yes, yes.

So I think there's two questions here. Legally, we'll see what happens with the stay. That's the most immediate question. And then if the appeals process will make its way up to the Supreme Court. And then there's the question of how the administration will respond to this from a policy perspective. And we saw so the markets open today being up, like reacting well to the news. but not way up. And if you look at some of the analyst notes from folks Morton Sandley, some of the big banks, they're hedging a little bit because they want to see what the administration

will try to do potentially with these other tariff authority. You had White House officials like Kevin Hassett going on Fox Business, essentially just calling this the hiccup and referencing some of those other tariff authorities. And we can just do this with the other things, the other laws that powers we have on the book. I think that's certainly a stretch for how expansive those laws are but that's still a live question yeah uh david you're our resident law talking guy uh first of all how to grace and dude any notes here on on his assessment of the of the sort of a legal situation here grason great job excellent i think he did yeah i think he did a good job of explaining the the background and what's happening just to provide a little bit of additional

context here this is not coming out of nowhere this kind of ruling because if you're looking at the couple of administrations, or really look back at the Biden administration, you had two big decisions that he made that were in some ways similar in the same ballpark as the decision to use AEPA to enact very sweeping tariff regulations, both in the OSHA vaccine mandate and also in student loan cancellation. It was a very similar theme, and that was you have these federal statutes that have a lot of broad language in them. But they're obviously, aimed at something rather specific. So, for example, you had, after when it was, Biden was trying to forgive student loans on mass, he was using a statute that was originally enacted to, for example,

try to help first responders and soldiers after 9-11 if they were struggling with paying student loans when they're being called into, you know, national service. This was not designed to be some sort of blanket power to forgive student loans, even though there was some kind of broad catch-all language in there. And similarly, OSHA, the language in OSHA, occupational safety and health act, there's some broad language in there, but it's all aimed at, okay, how can I make the workplace safe? And so in both of those circumstances, the Biden administration was trying to smuggle big sweeping policy through statutes that had a more narrow intention, narrow focus, and more narrow language. And that's very similar to what Trump did here. He took language like

regulate importation and used that as sort of this, oh, well, I just get to regulate all importation, however I want to do it, which was not correct in context. And so I think it's important for Trump folks or Trump sympathetic folks who might be listening to realize, okay, what's happening here is very similar to what you cheered and what I cheered during the Biden administration. which was the Supreme Court saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot smuggle into these statutes, this incredibly broad power that is normally reserved for Congress. You just can't smuggle it in through just kind of this catch-all language. If the Congress is going to delegate power to that extent is just going to have to be more precise. And even if it tried, it might not even be able to delegate to that extent. But there's a theme in what you just described, David, which is the courts. having to step in, whether it's a Democratic administration or now a Republican administration, where Congress has not only failed to do what they should be do, but sort of have walked

away from opportunities to do that, to sort of describe in more detail to get more specific about what powers the executive branch has and doesn't have along these lines. We're relying on the courts now where, as we, I feel like we talk about incessantly on the podcast, but it's like worth repeating where Congress has just completely failed, right? I mean, Joe, do you want to weigh in on this? It's not like the House is going to, you know, take a lesson from this. Speaker Mike Johnson is going to say, oh, well, this court decision, you know, really does show us that maybe we should be getting involved here and, and defining what the executive branches, policies should be on trade. Nothing's really changing in terms of that kind of dynamic.

Yeah, I mean, in fairness, asking me to talk about how Congress is not doing its job is like going to a Skinner concert and screaming Freebird. That's why I went to you. It's why I got my lighter up and everything. I mean, there are like literally people who can repeat my mantras about it. So this is entirely to the good, right? I mean, like forget that it's economically good for the country, even though it does, you know, I take Grayson's point about how part of the problem with uncertainty is even

when you put the Band-Aid back on, you know, whichever one is good in this scenario, in this analogy, putting the Band-Aid on as good or taking it off as good, if you keep doing both, the good thing still contributes to the uncertainty as much as the bad thing does, because it's the zig-zag process that's part of the problem. Still, it's always better if we're going to live in a world of zigzagging economic policy. Every time we zagged towards something smart. It's better than zagging towards something stupid. It would just be better if we stop the zagging after we were on the smart thing. Yeah, I mean, like this is, I'm getting a little tired of taking these, Steve and I talked about this a few times, taking these things piecemeal

where we talk about, oh, he doesn't have this authority to do this on trade. And here's this statute that says he can't do that. Oh, and here's the thing that says he doesn't have this authority on student visas. And here's this thing that says he doesn't have authority to do this to law firms and, you know, all those kind of stuff. I get it. That's what courts deal with, you know, is they deal with the actual person who or institution that has standing on the specifics of a single case. But that is not our job here. That is the job over at AO. And our job here is to figure out what the hell is actually really going on. And what's really going on is that Trump, in effect, wants to declare that he has war powers. Period. And he wants to, and he's looking and Stephen Miller

are looking at every statute around in every sphere where he wants to do stuff. And they're trying to invoke war powers because it's only in our system, the only place where you can have arbitrary power, where president can have arbitrary power, which the founders, is when what Edmund Burke and the founder is defined as combining the powers of the judiciary, the executive and the legislative all in one person or one institution is during a national emergency, a crisis and invasion and all that kind of stuff. And that's what they're doing across the board. And Congress put aside all the first branch stuff and the Supreme Branch and the co-equal thing is Nixonian propaganda. Congress, because it's run by Republicans, are being a bunch

of cowards, and they are derelict in their fundamental constitutional duties. They could give Trump the power to do a lot of things he wants to do, but Trump doesn't want to ask them for political reasons, and they don't want to give it to him for political reasons. And so instead, they're letting Trump vandalize our constitutional order for the sake of his own ego. That's my take on. And on that point, this isn't just a crime of omission from Congress. It's also in some aspects of crime of Commission, House leadership, Mike Johnson, directed a procedural measure to be included in some of the finagling around the budget reconciliation bill that forestalled Congress being able to vote down the emergency, the underlying emergency that the president declared, which is the

theory that he had for invoking AEP in the first place. So, like, they are not just not doing their traditional role of checking the executive branch. They are in some small ways facilitating this directly at least. No, I think that's a great point. Steve, just before, hours before this decision, a reporter at the White House asked Donald Trump about a term that's being tossed around on Wall Street. Taco. Trump always chickens out is what it stands for. Taco asked the president directly about this, wanted to get his reaction to it. And it was in reference to what happens when, you know, the financial markets, the bond market, whatever it is, when it comes up to his tariff versus sort of something catastrophic in the markets that Trump always chickens

out and backs off of these tariffs. It almost seemed like this reporter was trying to go to Trump into throwing more tariffs, you know, onto the pyre. I mean, we know what Trump thinks of tariffs. He's going to try to find a way, like Jonah says, through emergency powers. What do you think is going to happen next in terms of the actual actions of the president and the administration to do what the president wants, which is to add tariffs onto our imports so that we can all be better off in his understanding of how these things work. Misunderstanding, I should say. Yeah. So Jonah and I talked about this a little bit last night on the live stream for dispatch premium members. I mean, I don't fault that reporter for asking the question. It was a relevant question. I think she works for

CNBC. And this apparently has been the buzz among Wall Street types. And Trump reacted very angrily to it. He wasn't happy and said, you know, not only do I not chicken out, I'm really tough. And people know that I'm tough. And you did get the sense. I mean, you know, I don't want to put Trump on the couch. But I think having watched him now operate for a better part of a decade, it is the case that when Trump is challenged in this way, he likes to double down. He likes to prove it with some notable exceptions, including, I would say, Vladimir Putin. But I think coming out of that, I heard some speculation that, yeah, Trump is undoubtedly going to double down on this. And this was before the decision came down. The White House has come out quickly.

and sought to challenge the decision. As Grayson pointed out, Kevin Hass at the head of Trump's National Economic Council was on Fox business this morning, sort of shrugging this off, not really a big deal. We've got all these other places we can do this. We've got all these other ways we can do this. And you can expect that they will try everything they could possibly try to give the president what he wants, to allow him to do what he wants. The only question I have in, and, you know, I'm a little surprised the markets weren't up

more today, but I think that that speaks to the understanding that this isn't settled. I think if this had been settled, we would have seen the markets soar, but the sense that this really isn't settled, that this is going to keep sort of bumping along until we kind of stumble into a decision. You know, you do wonder at some point if, despite. Trump's affinity for tariffs, despite the fact that he loves tariffs more than any other policy position that he holds, if the markets continue to react this way and send the signals, hey, I like what you're doing here. We've gone from having conversations in the days

after April 2nd about the likelihood of a recession. And you had some banks putting it at 60, 70 plus percent likelihood of recession when he announced the reciprocal tariffs to, you know, now the market's responding in a little more bullishness. You do wonder at some point, does that click in for Trump? And he says, all right, you know what? I'm going to take this as my exit ramp. That's not what I expect him to do, but I think it's at least one of the possibilities. It feels like that's what Republicans want him to do in Congress who are defending their seats.

It's like, please just use this as an exit ramp. But they could. I mean, as Jonas said, they really could. They could do something. I mean, this is what's so crazy. This is an area where you know most Republicans in Congress don't agree with the president on tariffs. They're fine if he wants to use them selectively. Maybe we poke China and try to extract some concessions.

Do what you can there. But nobody wants this. I mean, very few of them other than sort of hardcore 10, 20 percent of MAGA. Republicans actually want this. The rest of them are, you know, either quiet about it or giving the president latitude, allowing him to do what he wants to do. They don't want to take him on in public, but they don't agree with this. You'd think that maybe they would organize a series of phone calls to the White House and say, Mr. President, we don't want to challenge you in Congress. We don't want to actually pull our authority back, but why don't you take a hint here from the courts?

and let's just move on to the other parts of your amazing, extraordinary, big, beautiful agenda. Right. David, go ahead. You know, there's one thing that Donald Trump loves more than tariffs. Just one, the only one, like tariffs are his favorite thing except for Donald Trump. So Donald Trump loves Donald Trump more than he loves tariffs. And I could easily imagine a scenario like Steve describes where you have on the one hand, maybe the Supreme Court just finally puts in a stop to these sweeping global tariffs.

And on the one hand, Stephen Miller and Trump are tweeting and posting about a judicial coup. But then at the same time, and five minutes later, Trump then boasts about the sky high stock market as validation of him when it's actually going to be a validation of the Supreme Court's decision to block all of his global tariffs if it does. And so I could easily imagine that kind of scenario. He's screaming at the Supreme Court while he's bragging about the market results because at the end of the day, he often views the market.

as a validation of himself. And you saw he couldn't stick with it. He couldn't stick with it when the markets were tanking, when the bond markets were in crime. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it because he's always loved that measure. And that measure of the market is for him, a measure of him. And so in a weird way, in a very strange way,

Trump's single-minded focus on Donald Trump can occasionally, occasionally redound to our benefit. So I'm going to push back on that just ever so slightly. Generally, I agree with all of that. I even wrote a column the second this tariff stuff started long before Liberation Day saying the markets are going to like be the restrainers on Trump that his new cabinet won't be. And I, and because historically that's always been true. This time, I think he was actually willing to tolerate bad stock market numbers.

It was, it was the bond market stuff that had Scott Besant saying, dude, fluctuations in the Dow we can deal with. If the bond vigilantes, if we get killed in those markets, we're toast and we'll get a depression. Because he had said this thing where he'd said, you know, I can handle a recession, but I don't want a depression, which is not great. You know, but anyway, otherwise I agree with you entirely. All right. Well, we're going to keep track of this issue. Grayson would love to have you back to talk about it more as we as we keep fall in these developments through the courts and from the White House. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how

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A lot of pardons coming out in the last week or so from Donald Trump. I just want to read to the rest of the crew here some of the people on this pardon list and a little bit about them. So there's Julie and Todd Crisley, these reality TV stars convicted three years ago of tax evasion, defrauding banks. They had, I think, like $30 million in fraudulently acquired money. Trump pardoned that couple. Michael Grimm, former congressman from New York, had been indicted in 2014 for not reporting a million dollars in receipts and a bunch of employees' wages from a restaurant that he owned. Michael Harris, the co-founder of Death Row Records. He had served a, let's see, 33 years of a 25-year-to-life sentence after being convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Harris is also known as Harry O. He endorsed Trump in October. There's this sheriff in Virginia, Scott Jenkins of Cole Pepper County, who had been set to go to jail on Tuesday of this week

until he got his pardon. He had been selling deputization in his sheriff's department for, you know, a few thousand dollars. He made the mistake of selling two undercover FBI agents. That's how they caught him. He's also been pardoned. Also a longtime Trump. Trump supporter. There's a lot more on this list. Steve, I want to go to you. What is going on with all of these pardons? I mean, it's pretty clear. It's almost sort of so blatantly corrupt and gross that Trump seems to be getting away with it mostly because it's all out in the open. What do you make of all these pardons? And is there any sense that you have that there might be some public outrage about? about him issuing these pardons and commutations? I mean, it's brazen, open corruption and defiling of the rule of law. That's what it is, and there's no way to dress it up as anything else. Look, one of the things that many of the pardons has as sort of a through line is, as you suggested,

Mike, either these people are open and ostentatious supporters of Donald Trump, MAGA hat wearing Trump supporters, or they have. friends who are open and ostentatious supporters of Donald Trump. And these are favors. These are favors that Trump is handing out to get, you know, warm words of approbation on Fox News and plot it's from reality TV stars. It's gross. It's the worst abuses of pardons I've ever seen.

I remember years and years ago when we spent the better part of three weeks debating, Bill Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich, which was also gross. But it was one of these. This is now a regular occurrence. And it all started, we should remember, with the pardoning of January 6th rioters, including several who assaulted police, others who were convicted of sedition, people who attacked the United States, tried to prevent peaceful transfer of power. and Donald Trump, with a wave of his hand, pardoned them all because they were Trump supporters. And I think it's gross. And, you know, I'd say it's bad enough for what it is, but it makes me most concerned about what's to come.

I mean, look at the transactionalism of it. And it's, again, it's all open. There's this, there's this guy Paul Walzac, who was preparing for his sentencing. and he got a pardon. The reason Paul Walsack, who was convicted of, he was basically tax crimes, he owned or was involved with a nursing home company convicted of tax crimes. This guy, Paul Walsack's mother, had raised millions of dollars for Donald Trump, which was highlighted in this pardon application that they submitted to the president.

Among the other things that the pardon application included was that this woman, Paul Walsack's mother, Elizabeth Fago, had been part of the effort to get the Ashley Biden diary out there, if we remember that from Joe Biden's, from the 2020 campaign, all sorts of just look at what we've done for you, Mr. President. Can you do something for us? I mean, it doesn't get sort of more nakedly and brazenly corrupt than that, David, does it? No. And look, I mean, this is just one thing of how many, you know? I mean, you've got a meme coin dinner. You have a Qatari airplane gift. I mean, you have the January 6 pardons that already happened. I mean, it just goes on and on and on and on. And I was talking about this yesterday, and there's this weird way in which the brazenness of it all is its own defense for Trump.

because, you know, most of the time people are used to scandals where you dig, dig, dig, and then, you know, think of Bill Clinton. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Leads to months of digging. Finally, there's a blue dress that's produced. And the scandal, you know, the suspicion, all there's smoke, all there's smoke, and now there's fire. And so that's the way we're used to political scandals unfolding. And Donald Trump comes in basically wearing the blue dress as.

every day. And it's just. Don't put that image in my head, David. I'm so sorry. But it's just out there. And so people are, and you'll even see Mike Johnson say, well, what Biden does stuff in the shadows and Trump is transparent. And the fact that he's just out there in a weird way kind of communicates to people that there's nothing wrong with what he's doing, if that makes sense. Because if there was something wrong with it. If the cover up is the crime, then the not covering up is the proof that there's no crime means there's no crime right yeah exactly that's a great way of putting it and so the fact that he's not hiding it and the fact that it's just wide out there in the open is sort of in a way sending a message to his people i would if this was wrong i wouldn't do it in

the open but he's just doing it in the open and and that's what so kind of it you it's almost like your circuits don't compute that he's just this brazen about it and and i think in a weird way that's protecting him. Jonah, your thoughts? That's entirely right. And it's very frustrating. Yeah. One of the reasons why I'm so exhausted with politics these days is that I'm so much more

interested in the legal stuff because the courts are like the last place where arguments are necessary and you have to bring actual facts. And, you know, the reason why, you know, we all chose this business that we're in is that we kind of think facts are important we kind of think like arguments are important um we like disagreements about ideas and all that kind of stuff and politics mainstream politics right now is so much glandular horse crap you know it is just all posing and seeing what people can get away with or whining um and there are no argument no i have not seen a single person make an actual argument on the merits in defense of anything Trump has done vis-a-vis pardons,

particularly or at least anything, the controversial pardons, it's all, well, he can do it. He's allowed to do it, right? Or you try to get him, so this is him getting, you know, it's all of this, they started it, and so he can do what he want kind of stuff, which is just not a serious argument on the merits, right? It is not a serious argument to say, well, they supported him, right? I know it's sort of like talking about Congress here, but like the confusion between an explanation and an excuse is so profound in Trump world where people will explain what

Trump is doing and think that because they've explained it, that excuses it. And I was like, no, I completely get why Trump is doing some of these things, but that's what I would put in my indictment. That's what I would put in my article of impeachment. it's not it's it's not something that lets them off the hook it you're just you're just basically admitting what he's doing and like so like you mentioned the mike johnson thing i saw scott jennings my colleague at cnnn he had this line on cn the other night where he says you know the difference between joe biden and donald trump and when it comes to pardons is that

joe biden does them in the in the in the in the we hours of the night in secret and Donald Trump does them completely out of the open and honestly or something like that. And it's like, that is true. That is a perfectly legitimate observation. It just is not an excuse for what Trump is doing in any way, shape, or form. And sort of like, you know, one guy only robs banks at night when there's no one there to stop them. The other guy goes in guns ablazing at high noon and everyone can see him do it. That's the difference between them.

Okay. Stipulate it. How is that an exoneration of any kind? Yeah. There's also this whole element of whether it's tribal or there's a kind of mob element to it as well. Like we're sort of helping our people. And that's just what happens, right? When you're in power, you help your people.

I'm thinking particularly of the settlement that was reached with the family of Ashley Babit. Ashley Babbitt is the Trump supporter who was shot and killed. She was part of the mob that was breaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She had been shot and killed. She became kind of a cause celebrity on the right. And the government just reached this settlement with her family. And it just, you know, look, it's very sad that the family lost this woman. I think she was very clear she was sort of caught up in what was going on.

with Maga World, and it's very sad that she has died, the, this civil suit that Trump's own government, like, settled with the supporters family just strikes me as all of a, you know, a part of this kind of big corruption of we're going to do everything we can, whether it's in the bounds of decency or even the law and certainly order. to help our people in a way that we would never do, we'd never even consider for the other side. It just all strikes me as pretty gross. No, I think I think you're right. I mean, look, this is how Donald Trump thinks government works.

And I don't say that to excuse what he's doing in any way. But this is how he has believed that transactional politics works as long as he's been following transactional politics. And I think he's convinced he's both tapped into sort of a preexisting feeling among many, certainly Republicans who have long believed that this is how government works, that it's all so corrupt and it's the swamp, that there's sort of no hope, that government can't be kind of honest ever. But if you think back to what he did in Ukraine that led to his first impeachment, this was what he was trying to do sort of on a global scale, right? He went to Voldemir Zelensky and he said, I want you to investigate my political opponent. And when Zelensky said he wouldn't, basically said, can you please just announce it? Because then I can use that as a, it's the same with, you know, Don Jr. saying he,

He would love to see it if the Russians have dirt on Hillary Clinton. You know, it's all about sort of anything, anything you can do in politics is acceptable if it leads to your winning. And that's the way he's always thought about politics. It's the way he's practiced the politics. I think he did it certainly in his first term, but I think we're now seeing him with, you know, sort of the governor off in the second term. And he's just, you know, doesn't seem to care about repercussions. Well, Steve, you mentioned Ukraine. So we really should pivot to discussing what is happening with regard to peace talks between the United States and Russia, among Russia, the United States and Ukraine.

Donald Trump having some words earlier this week for Vladimir Putin. He's getting very frustrated. it seems like that maybe this Putin guy, you know, doesn't just want to stop the war if he doesn't get everything he wants. On social media, he's been saying that Putin is absolutely crazy, playing with fire. Give us, Steve, an update on where things are at this point with Trump and Putin and Russia and Ukraine. Is this a turning point for Donald Trump?

Is he sort of starting to see the light about Vladimir Putin? or are we going to be back, you know, back to the bromance in just a couple weeks? Yeah, I don't think he's starting to see the light on Vladimir Putin. And it may be the case that he's actually genuinely getting frustrated with Putin because Putin is humiliating him at such a consistent level that he should be. Donald Trump would be wrong not to be frustrated with Vladimir Putin. If not for, you know, the wanton killing in Ukraine and all the rest of it, but the sheer embarrassment that he's subjecting Trump to on the international stage is pretty

amazing. But it's also the case that, you know, in recent weeks, Donald Trump has spoken increasingly about the United States just bailing on leading negotiations. And if we do that, that is in effect, I think giving Vladimir Putin what he wants. I mean, I think Putin would be happy with a couple different outcomes. He'd be happy if the United States stepped in, led negotiations as it looked like we were going to do after the Oval Office dust up with Voldemeyer Zelensky and the subsequent comments from the White House and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and everybody, if the United States would lead these negotiations in a way that was obviously beneficial to Russia, gave Russia most of what it wants.

I think Vladimir Putin probably would have been satisfied with that outcome, at least for the short term, and then likely would have taken it as a green light to do more. down the road. But it's also a win for Vladimir Putin if we step back. And we've heard now from virtually every senior administration official that if this proves too naughty for us to untangle, that the United States is just going to bail. You remember, this is the same president who, of course, famously said that he would end the war in 24 hours on day one. He later said he was being sarcastic. But he said these kinds of things. again and again and again, you know, there's now new talk because Trump said that Putin has gone

absolutely nuts. He claims that this is a new Vladimir Putin. Nobody else in the world who's been observing Vladimir Putin, even casually thinks it's a new Vladimir Putin is consistent with what Putin has done literally for decades. It's who Vladimir Putin is. But Donald Trump declared this week that this, you know, I thought I knew Putin very well. This is, you know, a new Vladimir Putin. He's gone, he's gone absolutely crazy, I think, was the phrase, he's just wrong about that and he might as well have, you know, announced in bold letters, I'm completely ignorant because that's what he is in effect saying. It's worth reminding people that if you go back to the beginning of March, so two and a half months ago, Donald Trump was

expressing public frustration with Vladimir Putin and threatening sanctions. He posted on truth social March 7th. Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely pounding Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large-scale banking sanctions, sanctions, and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached. Just 10 days ago, you had Trump with a two-hour phone call with Putin. And when it ended, Trump insisted that Russia would head to immediately to the negotiating table with Ukraine for an imminent ceasefire and negotiations that would end the war. I mean, it's just not happening at this point. And if Trump isn't embarrassed by it, he ought to be embarrassed by it. What do we make, David, of this latest onslaught? There's

been, there were, what, three days of drone strikes from Russia on Ukraine. I mean, do we have a good sense of kind of where the war is moving on the ground? Do we remain in a stalemate where Russia just every once a while comes and pounds Ukraine? Ukraine tries to fight back. And then we're waiting at the top level for how the negotiations or lack thereof kind of shake out. Yeah. For a time, we've been in more or less a situation where Russia is making incremental gains on the battlefield at great cost. And so what you're seeing is just a steady but very, very, very slow Russian advance on the battlefield. And this has been going on for months. And the reason why the steadiness of the Russian advance is not sort of caught international intention in an alarming way

is because it is very, very slow. And literally Russia could do this for a very long time without actually penetrating all that deeply into Ukraine. And again, the cost. is very high to Russia. But as Ukraine is fighting back, it's bearing a high cost as well. And so right now, here's what I'm concerned about. I'm seeing a lot of intelligent commentary, informed commentary, that says Russia is going to make a very big push this summer. And they're going to try to break open the front this summer, which might be like, well, haven't they been making big pushes throughout? Well, yes, but this is looking to be an extraordinarily, extraordinarily large effort. There has been, you know, Russia is replacing its losses.

I'm seeing numbers along the lines of 30,000 new soldiers a month that are cycling in so that even if Ukraine is taking 1,000 soldiers a day off the battlefield, like what it has done at times, Russia is still replacing those losses. Now Russia is bringing in troops beyond the loss rate. And so, yeah, Russia is suffering, but you have to understand, Vladimir Putin does not really care about the lives of his men. This is an old story in the history of the Russian military. The Russian military bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, but it often wins through the sheer weight of firepower, the sheer weight of manpower. And I think that that's what Putin is hoping to do.

And it's also, I think, one of the reasons why you're seeing Europe really waking up to its defense needs. and it's not just the Donald Trump election. There is real concern about what's going to happen on the battlefield in Ukraine. This is not a situation where people think the battlefield in Ukraine is stable and will be stable. There is real alarm. And if the battlefront collapses, which I'm skeptical that it will, but if it does, then that takes us to an entirely different state of affairs in Europe. And what are the reasons just to jump on that last point? One of the reasons that Russia is seeing this gradual improvement in the way that it's able to fight is the exponentially greater number of drones that it is obtaining something. I think I read it was, I think it was in The Economist 10 times as many drones being produced now than were produced a year ago.

And those are wreaking havoc on Ukraine's limited air defenses in a way that, I mean, We can see that you can see the damage. Watch the news any night and you can see what's happening. I didn't hear a thing I disagreed with. And I listened to a lot of different podcasts to talk about the Russia stuff. I watch a lot of the puttetry about the Russia stuff. And I'm not saying that the other complex theories about Trump's approach are wrong. I just think at a sort of like earlier when I was saying, look, forget the legal cases,

look at what is what you know sort of as Hannibal elector tries to lecture Clarice you know first principles Clarice go back to Marcus really is what does he covet right you know that kind of thing like what are the real motives here and I credit there are a lot of people who think that Trump was actually being sincere when he said that he thinks Putin's lost it he's a changed guy and all that kind of stuff and Steve and a lot of other people, including me, have brought earth logic to that statement and said, well, that's, that's ridiculous. That's like, you know, talking about, you know, I don't understand what happened to Great White sharks. They used to be vegetarians, but now they're going around eating all of

these creatures. What's going on with them? Right. I mean, it's like, this is who Putin has been since we've had any idea who Putin was, right? I agree with that entirely. But if you're trying to, and Steve says he doesn't want to put Trump on the couch, and I get it. It's like, as needs. just says look into the abyss and the abyss looks into you but like I think we got a spalunk in the dude's lizard brain and I think the only explanation for why he could sincerely think that is that I think he sincerely convinced himself that Putin was his guy and all this stuff we've been talking about earlier about how he rewards his friends and punishes his enemies and you know all the stuff that drove all of us crazy about how has he as when they first came into office

they just made all of these just crazy concessions to Putin without asking for anything, right? I mean, there's like, we'll rule out American troops on the ground. We'll rule out Ukraine and NATO. We'll rule out this. We'll rule out that. You know, like all these things, which I may agree with the policy, but like if you're going to negotiations, those are your cards, right? We're going to lift these sanctions.

We're going to close down the shop that does, you know, that traces the abducted Ukrainian children. He just gave him all of this stuff for free. And I think in Trump's mind, what he was doing was practicing politics, where he was signaling, you're my guy, I'm giving you what you want up front. And I assume when I come to you with my ask, you'll give me what I want. And what I see on Trump's face when I see him talking this way about like, I don't know what's happened to him. I used to have this good relationship with him. he was under the impression that Putin was going to be his guy and was going to play ball with him particularly after he made all of these concessions up front. He sent the basket of mini

muffins to his house without an ask. And now he's like, wait a second, you're embarrassing me when we're having negotiations and you're killing people. And I will say, as degenerate a character, deformed a character as I think Donald Trump has, he does seem to actually have a sincere dislike of war and of wanton killing of people. Like there's something about it, I think gets actually to that mob thing. It's sort of like Sonny Corleone, who thinks joining the army is for suckers because you're fighting for strangers, right? I think there's something about that in his head and always has been. I believe the John Kelly stuff, but what he said about the suckers who died, you know, fighting in Europe.

But regardless, I think he is so surrounded now by Yesman. He's so surrounded by sycophants. He's so surrounded. He's gotten all of the loyalists in the positions he wants them in. And the world he sees now is a world where everybody is in black and white except for the loyalists who are in color, right? And that those are the real human beings I care about. and he thinks because of all sorts of past history, which we all know about, that Putin was

his guy. And now it's dawning on him. No, Putin is a soulless monster who has his own interests and he feels betrayed by that expectation. Whether he actually does anything about it, I have no frigging clue. That's the question, right? That's the question. Is this stick, if you're right, Jonah or is is is is is is going to come up at some point you know like the like the the bad boyfriend and say I always loved you you know uh you know sorry baby sorry baby I'll make it right this time uh and does Trump fall back in his arms uh Steve what do you what do you think just to bolster Jonah's point think about the interview that Steve Whitkoff gave Tucker Carlson in which he described his conversations with Putin, Wittkoff represented that as a true deep

personal friendship and, you know, something that that goes beyond just two powerful men on the international stage. I mean, that's the way he talked about it repeatedly. Remember, Wittkoff got almost emotional when he related the story of Putin commissioning a portrait of Donald Trump and said, you know, it wasn't just a portrait. It was from the best Russian portrait painter ever. You know, like this shows the depth of Putin's regard for Donald Trump. And I do think, to Jonah's point, if those are the people you're hearing from or those are the people you're listening to, which are not always the same and not always the same people, you do come

to believe it. And imagine that a good part of the two hour call, that they had 10 days ago was Putin telling Trump how great he is and how, you know, handsome and how powerful. And he's impressed with the way Trump is running this. And, you know, he's really been smart. I love your musk. Yes. Statesman like in these negotiations. I mean, it really is, it really is something. And maybe it's the case that the scales are falling from his eyes. But I don't know. For me, it feels more sort of surface level than that. Like he's embarrassed.

He's just embarrassed. And he says these things because he's embarrassed. Yeah. My point is that the only place where actual rage makes any sense coming from Trump about this is some kind of sense of personal betrayal. Yeah. Because otherwise, it's not like he cares about countries, other countries killing other people. It's not like he's cared about Ukrainians being slaughtered up until now. It's that Putin is supposed to be a team player and he's not being.

And he remember he had just come back from the Middle East where all of these dudes threw him parades and dancing girls and made all these deals with handshakes and, you know, Donald's trucks, yeah. Yeah, come, let's eat a camel together, all that stuff. And he thinks that's the way the stuff, though. I know, but that's my point is he thinks. he thinks, and I think he got it in his head that Putin is another one of those handshake. Let's just do it, guys.

And Putin's not. Yes, you know, if somebody, I can't remember where I heard this. I asked you, Jonah, if we had heard it together. Somebody said, Donald Trump is the friend who goes to a strip club and comes out and say, no, no, she really likes me. She really, really likes me. And, like, she told me. People have had friends. It's like, that's how he talked about his trip to the Middle East.

It is, in a way, how he talks about Putin while Putin is just playing him sort of in plain sight for everybody else to see. You know, I think the key here is, well, one of the keys is that Trump views Putin and Xi Jinping as his peers and almost no other world leader. So he's seeking the approval of his peers. He loves the approval of his peers, and he's puzzled when he, and he'll shower approval on them. He will say good things about them. He will say good things about, he has said, you know, back in his first term, he said a lot of good

things about Xi Jinping, even if it's just sort of admiring his ruthlessness versus, you know, something like appreciating a friendship. And so he's desperate for this peer approval. And when you look at his foreign policy more broadly, it really is the world is divided into this these sectors, and we're in the club that divides the world, which is one of the reasons why he has so little interest in defending Ukraine. He really sort of sees Ukraine as part of Russia's sphere of influence. That's why I have zero trust that he would defend Taiwan, because of Taiwan would be in China's sphere of influence, is why he's so aggressive to Canada and Mexico. They're supposed

to be ours. Your hours, yeah. Yeah, you're ours. You're our. You're our. You're our. You're our junior partner here. So how dare you not do what I ask you to do? And I think it's one of the reasons why he goes and sort of blames Zelensky for the war is, well, this wouldn't have happened if you just knew your place, Zelensky. And so I think that this is a part of what's going on. And one of the reasons why I think the most likely outcome, although I hope I'm wrong, the most likely outcome to Putin can just continuing to spurn him and disregard him is that Trump just washes his hands of it all and says, that's their issue. We're out of it.

I tried to broker a piece. Putin didn't want it. Zelensky didn't want it because he'll blame them both. And then he'll say, well, then we're out of it. And I think that that is the much more likely. And I think that's what J.D. Vance would want. That's what, to the extent that he's listening, that Vance has his ear, I think that would be the Vance solution.

Yeah, just one last factor. And I haven't done a lot of a deep dive on this, but I've now heard it's one of these Washington sort of stories that it could be like one source but then you hear it from five people and you think it's coming from five different sources so take it for what you will but it's it's corroborated by the way Trump has said things in public he really really wants a Nobel Peace Prize and um all things considered it's probably good for presidents to want one rather than not want one um but I think that that another reason I need to put him back on the couch that he's that he showed some actual passion about this is he thinks Putin's screwing his chance to get a Nobel Peace Prize. And if he can't get a Nobel Peace Prize, then why bother with this crap at all, right? What has this all been for? What is it in it?

If it's not that in it for me, then who cares, right? I got better things to do. Did you see the twirling ponytails on those dancers in Qatar? I could be spending my time over there. Don't know if he was looking at the ponytails. All right. Well, maybe we can move on and follow this story as it develops. Well, let's move on.

Do a little not worth your time. All four of us are dads. And I want to talk a little bit about disciplining your kids, but not your kids necessarily. I want to talk about disciplining children in general. Maybe just children you see on the street in the park at the Little League field in the school. This is an article from Stephanie Murray at the Atlantic. communal kid discipline. And Ms. Murray opens her piece describing riding a train car, a metro car in Prague with

her two children, a six-year-old and a four-year-old. At one point, the four-year-old puts her foot on the seat, which I guess in the Czech Republic is as an affront to good manners. A 70-year-old woman sitting next to her family, sort of gently. touches the offending foot, showing her, put your foot down, get your foot off of the seat. The daughter was surprised, quote, maybe a little embarrassed, but she understood and quickly obeyed. This is the opening to an article that looks at the idea of American parents kind of, I guess,

shying away these days from the idea that the community around you, the neighborhood, other adults that come into contact with your family and your kids can and should be helping with the discipline with little things. Don't do that. You know, mind your mother, all those sorts of things that maybe in a previous era were kind of just an accepted part of living in society. I just know from my own experience, I'm at a point now with my kids where I've coached enough Little League sports and been around with my kids' friends enough that I have zero

problem if I see a kid that is sort of in my orbit, you know, walking around the dugout or at the playground behind our house, doing something that he shouldn't be doing to say, hey, cut it out. But I'm wondering what you guys think. Is this something that we should be caring about, bringing this back? Is it a good thing maybe that people leave other people's kids alone. Steve, why don't we start with you? I've said before on this podcast that I have fewer strong opinions today than I used to 20 years ago.

And this is one of those areas where I'm not going to be the guy who says, yes, absolutely, the country would be so much better if everybody took part in disciplining everybody else's kids. And I'm also not going to be the person who says, you should never ever discipline anybody else's kids mind your own business keep your discipline to yourself i think there are occasions rare and you mentioned one mike i think if you're if you're coaching a baseball team and you're you know guiding a group of kids and one you know somebody else's kid steps out of line you have every right i think a responsibility and obligation even to coach that kid not only for the team but to maybe if you

have an opportunity impart life lessons help help shape the way that the kid thinks about dealing with authority or whatever the rule is he violated. So I think in specific circumstances, or if, you know, if somebody's really acting out, if I were in the grocery store and I saw a 10-year-old, you know, knock over an old lady, yeah, I would sure be more than happy to jump in and discipline that kid. But as a general rule, you know, because the article goes on to make the case, that, you know, there were sort of obvious community values and that this woman who, in the Czech Republic, who touched the knee of the kid or touched the foot of the kid, was in effect doing that to speak for the community. And it was something that kind of everybody understood

and everybody agreed on. We don't have those. And, you know, in some cases, I think we tend to be probably stricter in our parenting than the average parents. So, you know, there probably aren't a lot of people who are less strict with our kids or who would be more strict with our kids than we are with our own kids. But at the same time, I really wouldn't want some neighborhood Karen running around, you know, telling my kids how to behave if we didn't think my kids were behaving inappropriately. Yeah, I do feel like this is running up against a sort of, I've certainly seen it into my sort of social media moments where parents do or adults, other adults in a neighborhood are coming up and saying,

hey, your kid shouldn't be playing outside and making all that noise outside, which I don't know, last time I checked, that's what outside is for, is for kids to go be loud out there, so they're not loud in my house where I am. And so is there a happy medium here that we can reach? Like what Steve suggests, Jonah? Yeah, I mean, look, I'm, first of all, I just, I have feeling that This is an overstated problem. I think there's probably a huge regional variation.

Like, David, I hope you'll forgive me for making presumptions here. But I feel like your wife has told other people's kids how to behave properly before. No? Not just my wife, this guy. I have done it. In the south, I think it's more tolerated. Small town life, it's more tolerated. And in certain pockets of communities, it's more tolerated.

And context really, really, really matters. You know, like, first of all, do you know the kids' parents? Right. And then you get, once you know that, like, if I know the kids' parents, I know the kind of chastisement or correction I can apply without crossing a line, right? It's when it's, you get into a thing where a stranger is telling, someone else's kid what to do that triggers all sorts of other things in their head. But I think it's okay.

I think yelling at other people's kids or berating them, making them feel little or small, that kind of thing will enrage me even if my kid's in the wrong, right? If someone did that to my kid, they made my kid cry unfairly, you know, by yelling at them in a wrong way, that would freak me out and I would go pound on someone's door and say, you know, bring me your kid out here. But generally, I'm okay with it. I'm okay. You know, again, context really, really matters.

It depends what they're doing. The actual physical setting matters. And I think this is largely a function of people who live in really big cities. Like growing up in New York, it was, there was just a different vibe to other people doing anything with your kid. But in like more relaxed suburban or rural areas, I suspect this still happens a lot. Yeah, David, you and I are both Southerners. That's why I wanted to come to you last here, because this is sort of a matter of, this is regular life in a lot of ways, at least for when I was growing up, but I imagine when you were growing up too. We got this thing figured out, Mike. You know it. We both know it. The basically, the way I would describe like the Code of the South is that your church community and your friend community has the explicit and implicit.

permission to engage in reasonable discipline. And then a reciprocal obligation of that is not I'm going to discipline you in the sense of like spank you or take something from you. But the form of discipline is I'm getting your mom and dad now. Right. So for example, sleepovers. I have sent kids home from a sleepover. You know, hey, look, you stop that or I'm making a call to your parents and there's this agreement, you know, even at two in the, I have made that call, Mike, at two in the morning, two in the morning, sorry to wake you up. And then the parent on the other end, who's completely down with the system is like, thank you for calling me. I'm sorry, we'll take care of this. And so. I would not want to be that kid, by the way. That is, that is, oh, no. No. And then,

but the other part of the code is in, is in the public setting with a stranger. The stranger is supposed to help, not discipline. So in the sense of like, let's suppose you're in the in the supermarket line and your kid is having this meltdown in front with the parent right beside him and the parent can't get control, the way that the stranger intervenes in that circumstance is not, hey, kid, shut up. It's, oh, hey, have you seen, look at that horse over there. Isn't that a cool horse? You know, like trying to interject into the conversation in a positive way that's sort of like the community helping each other. I think that that's kind of the arrangement, and I think that works. If somebody's in a circle

in a community that is a trust-based community, you know, parents at your kid's school, parents in your church, then there is permission to intervene, but it's a specific kind of intervention. It's not a spanking intervention of spanking some other kid or a screaming intervention. It is, cut it out, or I'm calling your dad. Yeah. I mean, hitting someone else's kid is a whole other thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Although that has happened. I have, I have been threatened with spanking by a friend's parent in my life. Recently?

That was, well, I mean, 10 years ago? I mean, that's not that reason. That's pretty recent. No, I, you know, I think the, I think as, as Jodagh said, the context matters, because what you're doing really in those public settings is you are acting as an extension of the child's parent, right? you are helping, in a sense, to just sort of shore up what presumably the parent is trying to do or would want to do or have had the time and the wherewithal and the attention, because a lot of times there's other kids that they're wrangling as well. I will say that it seems to me the

middle ground here is, do I know your parents? There was a moment just a few weeks ago in the playground, which is in the park, right behind my house. A kid that I had coached in basketball, was there independent of my kids, had come across, oh, they're playing, they're doing something. He did something he should do that. He had a toy that wasn't his, and he dropped it on the ground and started to go home. And I felt no hesitation or whatever to call out his name and say, no, no, you're picking that toy up. You're putting it back in the yard that you found it in.

And I knew his parents wouldn't have had a problem if he had run home. and said, you know, so-and-so's dad told me to stop doing this, they would have said, great, glad he said that. And I think we could all use a little more, a little less hesitation, a little more confidence when it comes to disciplining other people's kids in those contexts. That is all the time we're going to be giving not worth your time and giving this particular podcast. But be sure to check out the latest episode of The Remnant on that.

episode, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson joined Jonah Goldberg to discuss their new book, which has taken Washington by storm. Original Sin, President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again. Tapper and Thompson talked with Jonah about what top Democrats knew about Joe Biden's cognitive decline prior to his launching his reelection campaign in 2024. They also talk about the boiling frogs mentality of Biden's advisors and the media's role in reporting or more likely not reporting, this story in real time. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. That's The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg. You've been listening to The Dispatch Roundtable podcast.

You know,