The Dispatch Podcast - Debt Deal Denouement?

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah wonder if the Biden-McCarthy deal marks a return to politics as normal, whether Tim Scott's bachelorhood will play into the election, and more: -Nick Catoggio on DeSantis -Brian Riedl's debt-limit deal breakdown -Mike Pence in Iowa -Dresscode redux -Voters aren't happy with Biden... but they'll take him over Trump -God's chicken goes DEI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, and we've got Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg to talk about the debt ceiling, the DeSantis entry into the race and what we've learned, what else is going on in the 2024. And lastly, we'll talk about a little focus group that was in the New York Times done by Eschelon's own and friend of the pod. Krista Saldes Anderson, here was her take. none of our participants thought Biden was a strong leader. None thought he'd be up to the task of being president

through 2028, but none would pick Trump over Biden if we wound up with a rematch. But let's start with a death stealing. Steve, It was an eventful but also totally uneventful weekend in that regard, and week for that matter. Where are we since we talked about this last week? Slightly ahead of where we were in terms of avoiding prospective default.

The House has passed in somewhat significant numbers. this compromised deal that Joe Biden worked out with Kevin McCarthy. Slightly more Democrats voted for it than Republicans, but a majority of Republicans voted for it. Kevin McCarthy is declaring victory. I think the White House is celebrating somewhat less, but happy to be through it. It will go to the Senate.

There will be probably some votes on, amendments that won't affect whether it passes or fails and the president will sign it and we will have avoided potential calamity. Jonah, calamity avoided is all well. Have we been talking about the debt ceiling for three months, for six months for no reason? Should we just skip this topic? Was it not worth our time? Oh, I think it was worth our time just because the potential downside was so huge, right? It's also like, let's put this right? This is what normally, this is what normally normalcy kind of looks like, right? Like, we're in the punditry business.

We are so used to being, you know, the functional equivalent of prisoners in Gitmo, having people wake us up every 15 minutes to, in clown suits to scare the crap out of us and screw up our REM sleep and throw us all off of like our normal understanding of life. The debt ceiling fights are like kind of, I mean, they're bad, they're stupid.

We should reform how we use the debt ceiling. We should probably just get rid of the debt ceiling entirely. These fights should happen at different points in the process. But this has happened before. I think Democrats are liberals who say that, oh, this is outrageous because it's normalizing hostage taking. Forget that Nancy Pelosi basically did the same thing in 2019, that these things have happened many times in the past.

I think the reason why Biden is celebrating a little bit less is because he lost the messaging war with McCarthy. his original position is this is outrageous. We won't talk at all. It would be a failure of leadership to talk at all. We should just have a clean thing, blah, blah, blah. And he had to climb down off of that position. So he looks like he's lost more face politically than McCarthy does,

who actually got not earth-shattering or particularly important. I mean, they're not insignificant. He got real concessions. Real spending has been cut. Much more spending has been cut by McCarthy in their house, Republicans alone then was cut by Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled House and Senate by orders of magnitude. And so it's a modest, good win. I don't like doing these things with the debt ceiling because I just think it's a silly way to focus the mind. There should be other deadlines in there. But I think one of the

reasons why we got to where we are is that the incentive structure was positive for both Biden and McCarthy. McCarthy wanted to win concessions and forced Biden to negotiate, but he didn't set specific demands. And Biden really wants going into 2024 to look like he's lived

up to his agreement, to be his promise to be a bipartisan kind of president. And it's pissed off the wing, the far left and far right, such as those labels apply, wings of both parties, which I think for a lot of

normal Americans is probably a good sign and it's good for McCarthy and Biden. So I don't think it was as important as a lot of people want to make it out to be, but it was not unimportant. And I think McCarthy comes out a winner and he should be congratulated for it. What about, you know, this idea that in fact,

Joe Biden's doing exactly what he said he would do. And to some extent, Kevin McCarthy is acting like a tip O'Neill. You know, we're back. in the era of government, getting things done, compromising. Nobody's going to be 100% happy. This is a return to normalcy. Joe Biden said he would work with Republicans. He did.

Kevin McCarthy got some concessions, but he's also not president. Is this just the way things are supposed to be, Steve? No. I mean, this is not at all the normal budget process. It doesn't involve the kinds of serious amendments and debates that we have. seen, I mean, you know, back in the Tip O'Neill days, there's, this is government by sort of crisis

and by self-imposed crisis, coming up with a deadline or having a deadline forced upon them to force them to get something done. It's definitely not the way that we want our government to be running. And it's not a way a serious country would handle this process. Having said that, I do think that Biden in particular, I mean, I think I agree with what Jonah said. I think this is a, Kevin McCarthy deserves credit for winning as many Republican votes as he did. Probably would have won more Republican votes if he had ended up meeting them. He didn't. And he kept his, he passed a piece of legislation that I think forced the White House to the negotiating table,

even as the White House was insisting in the moment that it wouldn't negotiate. on these things. Deserts credit for that. Deserts credit for keeping his conference together. I do think in the long run, though, as you think about this through the prism of the 2024 presidential election, this helps Joe Biden more. Biden is able to say,

I worked with these intransigent Republicans. They wanted to be mega extremists. They fought, they held the hostage. They were irresponsible. But ultimately, we had to do. do what we had to do, and I was the guy to get it done. There was also a Kevin McCarthy soundbite where he's asked to describe, I think it was on Fox News, he's asked to describe the process of dealing with Joe Biden. And I don't remember the exact quote, but the paraphrases something like he was very

sharp, you know, we had good discussions, he knew the brief, something like that, which I think undercuts what will undoubtedly be a main argument for whoever. the Republican nominee is running against Joe Biden. I think there's a very good case to be made that if you look at the Biden Presidents to this point, Joe Biden has not done a good job of returning us to normalcy of forging bipartisan paths, even though he's had some bipartisan legislation, of reaching out to Republicans in the way that he promised. There's not been much evidence that unity is at the core of his being or whatever it was,

he said, in the first inaugural. But this gives him some. I think he can take this to the voters and say, we got something done. These weren't all my priorities. I gave a little, they gave a little. And yet we're moving forward. So I do think in the long run, it probably helps Biden's case more than it helps the Republicans. Just follow up on that.

There have been Republicans saying that this means McCarthy doesn't have the confidence of the caucus and should be removed to speaker. Is there any danger of McCarthy losing a motion to vacate at this point? I mean, I think there's always a danger because the threshold is so low, right? Right? It's one person. So at any moment, somebody or a couple of people get pissed off at Kevin McCarthy and that's the, that's a threat. I mean, that was true from the day he won the speaker battle. And I think it remains true today. So I think it'd be unwise to shrug off that possibility. But no, I mean, I think it was always the case. There were going to be Republicans who didn't vote for this. I mean, you have Republicans who passed what I think was rightly seen as the opening. negotiating position. That's what the House Republicans passed, and they passed it, I think, largely for that reason. And then they tried to, some of them, tried to say, well, this new deal sucks because it's not the old deal. Yeah, sort of disingenuous. The old deal wasn't actually

meant to be the thing that was going to pass. I mean, nobody believed that. I think for comparison purpose, for rhetorical purposes, you can understand why they'd want to make that case. But the old deal wasn't going to be this deal. So I think McCarthy deserves some credit. And Lord knows I'm not a big fan of Kevin McCarthy's. I do think just from a really big picture perspective, from a macro perspective, this does not fundamentally alter the trajectory of U.S. national debt.

In any way, there was an opportunity to incorporate entitlement reform in this. There's always an opportunity to incorporate entitlement reform. We've seen and discussed here that neither political party has much interest in doing. that. Republicans didn't push it. Democrats, demagogued it anyway, didn't make a ton of progress. This doesn't do that. This is largely focused on some elements of discretionary spending. And as we detail in this piece today from Brian Reedle of the Manhattan Institute on the dispatch website, and we'll pop that in the show notes, this isn't even going to be as great a deficit reduction as the top line number and the early reporting suggests

because it's so filled with gimmicks and promises and handshake deals that we know are never really going to come to pass and aren't going to be permanent or even semi-permanent government policy. Jonah, at the risk of maybe getting into the weeds on this and losing anyone who even remotely cared about this topic when we started it, there's this trend. And I want to use Nancy Mace as the exact, of the overall trend.

I don't want to focus too much on Nancy Mace, but she's like such a good example of this trend, which is you know, you'll mention the fact that McCarthy probably could have gotten more Republican votes, but he didn't need them. And if you don't need them, you're going to let

your guys not have to take a hard vote that they'll have to defend in a primary or in a general election, for instance. We've seen that happen in every caucus at every point on every issue. But there's something else going on within the incentive structure of Republican House members in particular, though again, I think we've seen it in the Senate as well, of getting attention by trying to be outliers or criticizing their leadership or whatever that may be. And then in the end, voting the other way and getting away with it.

And again, I am going to use Nancy Mace as an example. So four times she now has said that she is going to break with GOP leadership on a vote. And four times she has then made all these cable news rounds. It's gotten all this attention of Nancy Mace. You know, wow, she's just this maverick independent thinker. And she's like, no, absolutely will not vote for it. She's had these incredibly, you know, strident statements. I mean, here's her debt ceiling one.

Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a president who can't find his pants. I'm voting no on the debt ceiling debacle because playing the D.C. game isn't worth selling out our kids and our grandkids. Yeah, no, she voted with Kevin McCarthy to help bring this to the floor. And she also had similar statements and then similar yes votes on removing Elon Omar. an abortion bill limits save grow absolutely not voting for this this is ridiculous our leadership has failed us and then she just privately votes yes and in the meantime she gets all that attention

all that you know social media small dollar donor stuff it drives me really nuts jonah again not a question just a comment no look i'm with you you know it's funny it as you were describing it i didn't realize that mace actually followed through and didn't and actually did vote for it. So she voted for the rule. Right. She wrote it for the rule. Right.

But against the final thing. And that means just for those listening, right? She voted to bring it to the floor, which was the more important vote for Kevin McCarthy. She helped pass it, but she had the symbolic no vote. Correct. And you know what it reminds me of is Ron Paul. Remember, Ron Paul would take all of these.

He would do sort of the reverse. He would shove in all of. of these earmarks and pork for his own district, but then vote against the final spending bill so he could say I'm against all this stuff, but knowing that it was purely symbolic vote, he kind of got to have

it both ways. I share your frustration. I'm particularly mad at Nancy Mace because she claims, I like her the few times I've met her personally, she seems like a nice lady, but super lady, as you might say in Fargo.

But shoot on Steve Bannon's show to crap all over the GOP and Washington and all of this kind of stuff. And she claims to be this very moderate, serious person who is not beholden to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you just look at that, you know, it's like every morning, the executive producer for Steve Bannon's show picks up a giant rock and then sees what creatures. crawl out and gives them a microphone.

And the idea that going on that show is a sign that you are sort of one of these common sense Republicans who is a moderate and all that kind of stuff is just really particularly grotesque to me. I don't know what to do about it. I mean, it's like this is the institutionalization

of performative politics where these guys have figured out ways to play the performative game while actually working the institutional game and no one seems to catch it, except our own eagleized, eagle-eyed Sarah Isgare. I just, I mean, literally her tweet said, I'm voting no on the dead ceiling debacle because playing the DC game is that we're

selling out our kids and then she votes for the rule. But you're right, it's nothing new. And in some sense, maybe it should, maybe I should see this as nature healing. It's a return to normalcy, Steve. Hypocrisy is the DC game. Yeah, I mean, look, this is a, this is a, there's a bigger, there's a bigger discussion. to be had here than we want to have right now, I think, but I mean...

Right. You know, this is not the first time Nancy Mace has been on Steve Bannon's podcast. And I think, you know, one of the things we're seeing, and this is not at all news, is even so-called moderate or independent, thoughtful members of Congress, like a Nancy Mace, feel the need

to bend the knee to somebody like Steve Bannon. You know, you see this all the time when you've got, was Marco Rubio, was retweeting Jack Posobiac, the Pizza Gate conspiracy theorist. And you have top Republicans interacting with Mike Cernovich, another conspiracy theorist. I mean, this is in many ways who the Republican Party is today, so they're going to be excited. I mean, or Ron DeSantis, you know, one of the leading Republican candidates, giving one of his first interviews to Benny Johnson, noted plagiarist and his hysterical sensationalizer. This is, to a certain extent, what the modern Republican has become. And while I

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Ron DeSantis has had a very busy schedule this week. And there's any number of things we can pick out of it to talk about. But I think the moment that stuck out the most to me was when Donald Trump said through a series of Donald Trumpisms that basically we need to revoke birth. right citizenship, this idea under the 14th Amendment that anyone born on American soil automatically has American citizenship. And look, I know lawyers just don't email me. There's asterisk to that already, but by and large. And that this is encouraging illegal immigration into the country, pregnancy, tourism, all of those things. And Ron DeSantis came out and said,

that's funny, you had four years to do it, cited a 2018 statement and multiple stories where Trump said he was considering it in 2018, again, when he was president, and he didn't do it. Why is that interesting to me? Because it is neither attacking Trump on sort of the big buffoony clownish, you know, name-calling, hand-sized, all of that stuff.

But it's also not attacking Trump on policy, which didn't really work in 2016 either. This is attacking Trump on his own record. And that, to me, has always seemed like the biggest change between the 2016 campaign and the 2024 campaign. Donald Trump isn't the challenger anymore. Donald Trump is the incumbent. He has a record. He has to run on and defend. He can't just say whatever he wants. So the fact that in his first week as a candidate, DeSantis is already landing some blows on that, I found very interesting. Now, whether it'll actually move numbers,

whether this will be effective, I don't know. But at least it's not trying the exact same thing that definitely failed last time. Jonah, what say you? Yeah, no, I think you're right. I mean, the way I would describe it is that DeSantis has decided that you can criticize Trump, but you can't criticize them in a way that sounds like

you're echoing MSNBC or CNN or the New York Times with the Lincoln Project or the bulwark or that kind of stuff. It's got to be from all of his criticisms have to do with the shortcomings of his actual presidency

for the most part. They don't go after his character. And I think that's, you know, let's think about writing a column about this. I still might. You know, the, when the party tried to move on from Nixon and had the advantage

that Nixon didn't try to run again um but uh you know i remember charlie cook making this point a long time ago you know the the ronald regan didn't go around saying oh man nixon screwed the party screwed the country anyone who supported nixon was a fool look what a bad guy nixon was he just simply stopped talking about nixon and moved on to like future oriented stuff again the problem is that trump is in the race so you have to talk about trump somewhere but. But DeSantis has the problem that a big chunk of voters don't like attacks on Trump's character because I personally think they don't like being reminded that they voted for somebody

of such low character. And they don't like hearing Republicans regurgitate what they think are left-wing talking points, even when the left-wing talking points are correct. But if you go after Trump on his failure to do the things he said he could do, that sounds like fair play. And even people, you know, the basic problem is that Zanda says is that that he has to win voters. You wrote about this recently. He has to win voters who like Donald Trump. And that means you have to calibrate your criticisms and your attacks very carefully. How that plays in, and I'm legitimately asking this as a question, not a rhetorical question,

how that plays in to their online strategy of, uh, no quarter given total god or damerung Ragnarok you know craziness on Twitter between the DeSantis forces and the Trump forces

why they think it's so important to win the Twitter wars is kind of a mystery to me and why they're so nasty and so ugly and you have like de facto surrogates of Trump saying you know do we really know

that Casey DeSantis had cancer you know that's that's an That's an ugly kind of argument. And yet in public, it's this kind of high-minded thing, at least from DeSantis. I just think it's an interesting strategy. And I don't quite understand how the two things go together. Steve, what did you make of the first week?

Yeah, I mostly buy that analysis. I don't think, I think when you look at the... Just to be clear, you buy the Casey DeSantis had cancer or... I don't buy that. I buy Jonah's analysis broadly. he's as right as he was on that as he was wrong on the dressing up for restaurants. You knew Steve had to get that in.

He can't let go. He can't let go. Dear listener, this has been a topic of conversation. More than you guys in the comments section has been Steve and Jonah still fighting it out over the dress code in restaurants. Not much of a fight, to be honest. That's right, because you're arguing.

interviewing with straw men rather than what I actually argue. And just so y'all are aware, Steve is wearing a t-shirt with a quarter zip right now, and Jonah is in full button-up, hair, quaffed, brushed. There might be gel in it for all I know. Yeah, but you can't see below camera level I'm wearing assless chaps. So it evens out. Can we cut that?

Can we cut that from my mind? Can we cut that from my life? That visual is... Because you want a fact-check for, in fact, all chaps have no ass on them? That is not respecting your fellow co-diner's, as you said, Jonah. Just putting that visual in our minds. God, it's going to be hard to get back to the discussion at hand after that. No, I'm not even going to prompt you.

I want to see if you can remember where you were, because you were the one who did this. I think that that analysis is largely right. I guess I would, the only caution I would offer is I wouldn't read much into the surrogate level or even the Super PAC spokespeople flame wars. You know, Laura Lumer is the one who made the comment about Casey DeSantis and she is a total nut. I don't think that she factors into the Trump campaign's strategy much. I don't think that they had a meeting and said, Laura Lumer, you go and make this over-the-top outrageous attack.

Not that the President Trump would have opposed her if there had been such a meeting. I just don't think it probably tells us much about the strategy. Yeah, I mean, one of the questions that we had about the DeSantis campaign before it was actually the DeSantis campaign was how much he would actually go after Donald Trump. And I think the evidence after the first week is that he's going after Donald Trump. How is he doing it? I think he's not doing the kind of cutesy bank shot critiques of Trump that we saw, for instance, in his opening statement, the statement he read on the Twitter thing that didn't go well,

where he had some glancing blow about politics, being about entertainment, but governing or something. You know, it was obvious for everybody who was listening what he was doing, but it wasn't a sort of direct attack. He's now both sort of on his own and his own rhetoric, but in particular when he's answering questions from journalists, actually answering the questions about Donald Trump in a way that I think separates him from all of the other non-Trump Republican candidates. I mean, we've seen this. I think, you know, we've all talked about how much we like and respect Tim Scott, he's not doing the same thing.

He is trying to avoid the topic of Donald Trump at every turn. I think that's unwise. It's very clear that nobody's going to win the Republican nomination or rest the Republican nomination away from Donald Trump by running the kind of campaign that I would want them to run for pure sort of satisfaction or making the kinds of critiques of Trump that Jonah has made over the last eight years. That's not a winning strategy. So on a very pragmatic level, we know that's not going to happen. But I do think that the DeSantis, the DeSantis arguments this past week have struck me as pretty shrewd. I do think it's smart for him to point out

the things that Donald Trump wasn't able to accomplish his president. Trump said a lot. That was one of the sort of defining characteristics of his presidency. Was he a lot? He said a lot. He said a lot. That was one of the sort of the sort of defining characteristics of his presidency. He promised a ton of stuff. Most of it didn't happen. You know, we still have Obamacare. There isn't a wall. The Mexicans didn't pay for it.

You can go sort of on and on and on and on. I'm very into the wall thing, by the way, because he is trying to have that both ways. On the one hand, he says he built the wall. The wall is done. And on the other hand, we have a crisis at the border as illegal aliens are flowing through,

according to Donald Trump. So which is it? Did you build the wall and it didn't work? Did you not get to build the wall? And that's what's causing the problem. And we need to finish the wall. But you can't have it both ways that the wall's done. So you kept your promise and it's working great.

And we have illegal aliens crossing the border. I'm pretty confused about that one. It's a very good point. But the reality is, of course, he can have it both ways. He always has it both ways. Like this is what he does. There's a logic there that I think is difficult. to refute. And I would think if I were Ron DeSantis, I would be making that argument.

I do think there's a risk in all of his talk about Florida of overdoing the Florida thing. It's not the case that most people living outside of Florida in the United States want to live in Florida. And while I think DeSantis is right to point to Florida, to point to the economic strength, can point out the Trump family move there, can point to what he did in COVID. Those are supporting arguments of kind of his main case, which is, I've been an effective governor. It's not, the argument isn't, everybody should be like Florida, which I think sometimes he sort of lapses into and he wants to replay his greatest hits. He wants to spend time relitigating the COVID stuff in a way that I think isn't helpful beyond, you know, a critique of Donald Trump on one thing or another.

He seems to want to live in the Florida debate. And I think it's much better used as a supporting argument for a broader indictment of Donald Trump's inability to govern and the contrast that Ron DeSantis offers than it is trying to make, persuade everybody that they want to. I live in Florida. Sarah, can I ask you a law person question? The, so DeSantis, you brought, you started with the 14th Amendment thing and he said DeSantis's answer was that, I didn't see the interview, but, you know, from what I've seen, the answer was he had a chance to do it and he didn't do it.

Could you have done it? Is that your question? What, no, no, no, no. The lawyer question is, should DeSantis's answer have been, I mean, I think the better answer is to say. A, Trump didn't do it, and B, Trump couldn't have done it because the president doesn't have the power to do it, right? But because, you know, Trump's position now, at least Gordon Axios. But then that lets Trump pivot to say that's because DeSantis is a P word and you damn right, I'll order the code red. So, like, that's my question is, is as a lawyer person, uh, as a, just say it, Jonah, say a lady lawyer. No, as, what was it, what was it, the mayor, the governor of New Jersey said when he came out as gay?

He was like, I now identify myself as a gay American. As someone who identifies themselves as a lawyer American, does it bother you that DeSantis, who's a lawyer as well, right? Can't or won't just actually address the underlying legal argument in the way that, because it bothers me a great deal, the number of people who extoll the Constitution. and then make it sound like if they could apply their green lantern-like will towards politics, they could make the Constitution say something other than what it says. You know, if you think the Constitution is an outdated piece of garbage that we should move on from, you can say whatever you want about the Constitution. But DeSantis kind of wants to have it both ways on this kind of stuff too.

No? Yeah, I would very much welcome that discussion from a President DeSantis, you know, once he's in office and has been fully briefed on the arguments on both sides of the original meaning and purpose of the 14th Amendment, there are real, even if I think they are less persuasive arguments, that the 14th Amendment did not include automatic citizenship. Again, I think it does, but there's real arguments. If you get into that argument, politically Trump wins this, because he then gets to move on to the merits, you have to keep it on, okay, if you said you you can do it as president in 2025, then why didn't you do it as president in 2018?

Make Trump say that he, his lawyers, told him he couldn't do it. That's not up to you to let him off the hook. So no, I think the worst thing DeSantis can do is even mention the possibility that Trump didn't have the power to do it in 2018. Because if Trump wants to say he had the power, then why didn't you do it? And if you want to say you didn't have the power, then why are you saying you would have it in 2025? Yeah, so just one last point on this, because this raises something, I think it was Ramesh, who first pointed this out after the debacle of the CNN town hall thing, which was

the way to go after Trump isn't to talk about, isn't to correct him and tell him what the truth is. The way to go after Trump is to explain how his own answers make no friggin sense. And he doesn't know how to defend himself on that kind of stuff, but no one does that. That's right. That's the wall. That's the 14th Amendment. And people let him off the hook because they want to look smart. this is the I mean frankly it's the Ron DeSantis problem too I'm impressed so far

Ron DeSantis Ted Cruz all of these guys they're really smart and they're smarter than Trump and by the way I don't think Donald Trump's dumb I you guys know that like I think Donald Trump's actually a pretty smart person but look yeah Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis you want to do like an IQ test have higher IQs I'm sure and they feel the need to make sure you know that that's how you help Donald Trump. Do not make five points, make one point, and just keep repeating it because his weakest stuff is on the logic of his own arguments. But then you've got to let him explain and not help by piling on with the four other arguments that you could make because this isn't being scored like a high school debate tournament. Neither are apparently our high school

debate tournaments anymore. But anyway, what's the one or two sentence attack on that, Sarah? I mean, And your logical deconstruction of Trump's position, I thought was very smart. It took you 30 seconds. Like what's the one, what's the one line? Yeah, yeah. So on the 14th Amendment? No, not the 14th Amendment.

But on the wall, on Mexico. On the wall? Donald Trump says he built the wall and solved immigration. So why do we have an immigration crisis? And if he didn't solve it then, how's he going to solve it now? I mean, you can do that with every single part of his presidency. If he didn't solve it then, how's he going to, to do it now because his solutions are the same

as they were for the first term. Either explain to us why you couldn't get it done or have a new solution. Not counting the year-long birthday party. You know what's a problem with that, Jonah? I love the idea of this. Jonah's referring to the fact that Donald Trump said we should

have a year-long celebration of America's 250th anniversary. That's a great idea. Period. That's the end of my comment. No, look. I mean, look, as someone who wants to peacefully annexed Greenland, I hate it when Trump comes up with really good ideas because it ruins them for people who want to actually defend the idea.

Steve, are you going to come out against America on this podcast? I mean, no, I'm pro-America. Some of us probably not use, Sarah can remember when we went through similar exercise in 1976. I was six at the time, but I do remember it. And I remember the quarters. Quarters were a big deal. That was huge when they changed the quarter for that thing.

They were. I mean, and it was a, along with baseball cards. I shiv the guy on the playground to get one of those quarters. It was huge. You really wanted the quarters, those quarters. No, I think the idea, you know, it's like so much of Trump. The idea is fine. And maybe, maybe smart.

It's a way to actually put some, some substance to the patriotism he's always claiming or some additional substance, the patriotism he's always claiming. You know, if you watch this... Daily military parades in front of him, his White House. Well, you should watch his three-minute video because he's got lots of details, Sarah.

High school athletic competitions from the best high schoolers and the best high schools across the country gathering in Iowa. I don't, I'm Iowa, just, who knows why he picked Iowa, right? Yeah, can't imagine. Yeah, there are, there are details. I mean, that's, I guess that's my point.

The main idea, if you offer it in one sentence, is fine. And then when you look at the 87 page press release and the three-minute video, he did, it's sort of less appealing. I want to move on to some of the other candidates, but before I do, I just want to mention the fact that, no, I did not celebrate in, 1876 or whenever you guys are talking about, but I very much have memories. There are videos, there are pictures, there's all the things from 1986

when we in Texas celebrated the 150th anniversary of Texas Independence. It was a hoot-nanny, I will tell you. I was dressed as we all were in full Texas regalia. We knew all the songs. There was a lot of celebrations. And I, my elementary school at that point was adjacent to part of the march that Santa Ana made on his way to San Jacinto to lose Texas. And so that was, we did the march. It was great fun. So yeah.

So in Texas, we forced March children. That's what you're talking. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I missed it. Was there Casso in my peso? So. All right, let's move on to some of the other candidates. I want to talk about something Tim Scott said briefly. This was his answer to a question about being a bachelor running for president. To suggest that somehow being married or not married is going to be the determining factor whether or not you're a good president or not, it sounds like we're living in 1963 and not 2023.

Yeah, I actually just strongly disagree with that. I haven't seen polling on it. I'm just going by myself, my gut, whatever you want to call it. I think that a good chunk of Americans are going to be deeply uncomfortable electing someone who has never been married and doesn't have kids. And by the way, I want to include in parent, step parents, adoptive parents, all of those are parents. anyone who has to put someone else's interests, you know, a little person ahead of their own, is a parent for the purposes of holding higher office, in my view. Like Trump did?

Trump was a parent. Yeah. I know. That's my point. Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be very hard to be president as a bachelor man. Sox everywhere.

Steve, you disagree. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it is a big deal at the end of the day. I just, I guess I'm skeptical that there are going to be a lot of people who care much about it, given what we've seen people not caring about in the past eight years, right? And I don't have, I don't have any insight to how Donald Trump was a father to his children other than what we have been able to observe publicly. but I do think it's hard to imagine Donald Trump making the kind of sacrifices,

or I forget your exact phrasing, putting the little ones in front of his own needs and interests in a way that you would hope parents would do. I think people are going to make judgments about that. They would have made them with respect to Trump and probably won't care about Tim Scott. No, so Jonah, I think this is the best argument against my point, but it actually still fails with me,

which is the best argument is, I would rather elect someone who's never been a parent than a bad parent. And, yeah, I think I disagree with that because even a bad parent has had to see the choices and decisions that parents have to make. Whereas a no parent hasn't ever had to do any of that. They have no concept of what it is. Yeah, so I guess I disagree with everybody. So first of all, and including Tim Scott, right?

So first of all, I didn't like the phrasing of that thing because... I agree with him to the extent that the parent, not parent thing, being the determinant of whether or not someone is a good president is way overstating the case, right? I mean, it's like we like people who had military service. We don't think that it is determinative of being a good president or not if you had military service. The question is, will people care, right? which is what he's trying to get at. And like the 1963 thing,

is that like a reference to Kennedy or something? I mean, I don't get that either. Like, was 1963 a particular year where we really valued married presidents? Or is it just because it rhymes with 23? I don't know. But at the same, so I think there was a bit of a sort of a false,

a fallacy built into his statement there. And I think you're wrong in the sense that a guy who grew up with struggling parents, single mom, all that kind of stuff, knows how hard it is, at least in retrospect, you know, and certainly in theory, has some acquaintance. It's not like you're completely ignorant about the struggles that parents go through. And I disagree with Steve's argument a little bit because I think, first of all, we know a great deal. about what a crappy parent Donald Trump is, so I agree entirely to Steve about that. But I think what abouting with Trump versus Tim Scott is not super productive.

I think the place where his, okay, so that said, directionally, I think you're right, Sarah. All things being equal, better that you have presidents who are parents who know what it's about, right? Who get it. But I think the real vulnerability is if Tim Scott ever actually catches fire, does anyone doubt that Donald Trump and his subordinates

will cast the nastiest possible aspersions they can put the worst stink possible on his bachelorhood that they think they can get away with? I mean, this is a guy who accused Ben Carson of essentially being a pedophile. This is a guy... I don't even know that you need the essentially qualifier there. For a column, I went back and looked at what he exactly said.

He said he was a sociopath because he got, when Ben Carson in his memoir talks about getting mad at his mom. And then he says, that kind of sociopathic behavior is like what you see in pedophiles. And so it's kind of like a connect the dots thing. Right. But he's making the case that Ron DeSantis is a pedophile. That's right. That's right.

And so anyway, the things that you would say about Tim Scott, you know, Lord knows, I would just think that given what a schmaltzy romantic person that Sarah is and obviously I noticed on just vibes that you love the movie the American president as much as I hated that you would just love the idea

of having a bachelor president dating that president had been married with children I don't dispute that part but the whole movie is about him dating it's not about his dead wife that's that's Look, that's fine. Sorry, I'm now. Nope, no. I win.

Are we going to go there? Are we not worth your time? I missed the intro. Not worth your time. It's not that you need to be. It's the idea of having responsibilities outside of yourself. I think there are marriages that could qualify. There are children that could qualify. There's all sorts of things. I think the pure bachelorhood for your whole life, and you're right, that given the choice between some exceptionally bad person and someone who happens to be a bachelor, I'm not always going to vote for the exceptionally bad person, obviously. Directionally, I agree with you.

I just don't think it's as big a deal as you do. The question, I think the distinction is normative versus descriptive. Because I would agree, the more experience somebody has putting other people in front of them, whether that's the parent or spouse, what have you, the better that. person will be it. I think making public policy, making decisions on family matters, all that stuff. My disagreement is that there are a lot of people that is with Sarah's claim that there are a lot of people who see this the way she does and that this will be a political problem for Jim Scott.

I just don't. That's fair. You also have a problem in that like, and I've said this before, and again, I've worked in presidential politics. So take this as a reflection on my own character, perhaps as much as anyone else's. The people who are good at running for president tend to have a certain amount of sociopathy to them. And so maybe the whole parent-marriage thing is less relevant at that level when we're already talking about

on the spectrum of sociopaths, most of these people are pretty high on it anyway. On the flip side, having a spouse is incredibly valuable. Oh, valuable, yes. I mean, just look at Ron DeSantis. He is now, he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, So I watched his Iowa thing, and he's doing New Hampshire as we tape this podcast. She is on stage for both of them, and they sort of have this bit that they're doing,

where they finish each other's sentences and go back and forth. And the Iowa one was, you know, their gas station connoisseurs and all the gas stations that they stop at and what they look for in gas stations. This was a riff on sort of Casey's Pizza in Iowa. They're talking about Buckees and Wawa. And, you know, their kid needs to go to the best. bathroom and it's this you know we're parents too type but um ch moment probably working pretty well for rana sandas there's some utility you know nick wrote about this in his newsletter uh wednesday night

which we'll put in the show notes as well um about how just having her there and having those kinds of conversation makes the generational point the generational contrast with trump without having to make the generational contrast with trump but i mean she was arguing her life was that she was hoarse because she had spent all day telling a three-year-old they couldn't use permanent marker on the kitchen table. Right. And the first thing your head goes to is like, you guys have a three-year-old? Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, my first thing was like, why are you hoarse? Are you really yelling that much? I'm not sure that's the kind of parents we're out either. But we can't let Jonah, I don't think, we have an obligation to dwell for a moment on on the

broader point that Sarah is making, because I think buried in all of that talk, she seems to be making the case for sociopaths to have kids. Yeah. Yeah. I think that even sociopaths learn something from having children. Yeah. And well, or conversely, like, if you're a sociopath, who cares that you'll be a bad parent if you have kids? Because you don't care about the kids, but you get, it's win for you, it's just zero sum, right? So like, like, just have some props around. And anyway, I agree with the things you said about the Casey DeSantis stuff. I saw Drucker on Morning Joe this morning talking about how DeSantis basically calls Casey up

and lets her riff for five to ten minutes in the middle of the speech all the time, and it works great and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, she draws equal crowds. But the point I was getting at is that for politicians who do have a touch of sociopathy, spouses are often the one person who can break through it and tell you the hard things that you actually need to hear and ground you in a way

that pulls you out of your public persona and into like the stuff that you need to hear for your soul or for the longer-term thing about how people perceive you beyond this specific moment. And I think one of the reasons why I mean, there are lots of reasons why, but one of the reasons why Trump would get into

like nasty fights with like Gold Star moms, right? Is that he didn't have a wife who could tell him, Don, no, stop that, right? And Steve and I, I think, are definitely married to women who would say, no, stop it, right? And that's a very, you know, it's good for all sorts of reasons, but it's a very useful thing for politicians to have a gut-check person. Last thing on this topic, Chris Christie,

there's been a story now that he's going to hop in the race in the next week or so. There's been a story that Mike Pence is hopping in the race in the next week or so. A lot of hopping. Hop-hop-hop-hap. Is there anything that you'll be looking for to decide? whether either of those two people change the race for you at all, or should we just wait and see whether any of that matters? Steve?

I mean, Christy, we know what Christy's arguing is going to be. He's landed on a position after a lot of back-and-forthing over the past eight years that he's opposed to Trump, that he doesn't like Trump. A cynic would say he ended up in that position because he wants the job that Trump wants. But Christy's probably going to be pretty good. at making arguments against Donald Trump.

It'll probably be pretty useful in attacking Donald Trump. Can he serve as sort of the, you know, the fullback for somebody like Ron DeSantis or make arguments that DeSantis can pick up on, can test arguments to see what's effective against Trump or not? I think that remains to be seen. I mean, he's a, you know, he's a big personality. And because he was governor of New Jersey, Media types love them.

They love to put him on air. They love to cover him. So I think he'll have maybe a bigger impact on the race than his numbers might suggest. I mean, if you look at the favorable, unfavorables of Republican candidates and prospective Republican candidates, Christy is at or near the bottom of those. So he's in that sense got a lot of work to do. I mean, I'm personally interested in the arguments that Mike Pence is going to make. I mean, Sarah, we talked to him about this.

He was, I think we were both a little surprised at just how far he leaned in to the Reagan conservative characterization. I think that's who he is. I think it's where he's most comfortable. But, you know, to listen to him sort of acknowledge that the Trump administration was irresponsible in its spending. to hear him make the case that I think everybody with a calculator can make on on entitlement reform.

But we asked him about it. And, you know, I had several follow-ups planned. He's the one who went further and went deeper on entitlement reform. I think it's very useful to have somebody like Mike Pence making those arguments that I think need to be made. And while I don't think the success or failure of a. of Pence candidacy will tell us, you know, about, what is it, zombie Reaganism, but I think it'll be good to have those arguments in the debate.

I have similar views. I guess the way I'd put it is, I don't think Chris Christie is going to catch fire. I don't know anybody thinks Chris Christie is going to catch fire, which isn't to say that he might not quintuple. even, you know, increase tenfold his current standing in the polls. But I do think his significance is that he could be a reacting agent, right, in that he will put arguments into play that will cause other candidates to have to respond to them. And he could be a net benefit if he normalizes.

criticizing Trump in a way that's effective. He could be a net detriment if he forces a lot of the other candidates to rally around Trump's defense and take positions defending Trump on January 6th or whatever because Christy sounds like he is just amplifying the anti-Trump left kind of thing. And I just don't know how that's going to play out.

I think similarly with Pence like it will be interesting to see who picks fights with him about Reaganism. If he takes sort of normal Reaganite positions, I think Pence's people are smart, right?

I mean, like Mark Shorten those guys, they know things. They have some I mean, I understand the Pence's got no he's like Richard Gear, an officer and a gentleman. He's got no place else to go. So he feels like he's got to run. but at the same time, they think they know something about what's going on in Iowa

and his ability to, like, rev up grassroots and stuff. They could be entirely wrong. But if he's out there criticizing DeSantis, picking, you know, Desantis basically endorsing, say, industrial policy, it will be interesting to see. Does Nikki Haley take Pence's side of that argument? Does Tim Scott take Pence's side of that argument? who takes, you know, taking Trump's side of an argument about actual policy is sort of folly

because his positions on policy change with the weather. But if they go after Trump's character, if they go after Trump's personal behavior, if they go after Trump's inability to accomplish things, do they reinforce the argument or do they get Trump's back because they want to win over Trump's voters? I don't know. But I think that's going to be the kind of thing I'm going to be paying attention to. All right. Last topic.

We'll do it pretty quickly here. Krista Sanderson over at Eschelon and with the New York Times did a focus group of 2020 Biden voters. These are people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. I just want to read you some of the answers and things that they found from Kristen. I want you to describe an animal

that best describes Joe Biden. If you had to describe Joe Biden as an animal, what animal would you pick? A snail, a sloth, dinosaur. I was going to say dinosaur as well. A turtle. Mitch McConnell's pissed. Do you agree with the following statement?

Joe Biden is a strong leader. Nobody raised their hand. Has he done better than you expected? Worse or about the same? Better? Nobody raised their hand. By the way, when asked to guess his age, people were pretty spot on on that.

80, 84, 79, 78, 80, someone said 86, 80, 70, 79, 80, he's turning 81 this year. That's good. Do you think Joe Biden's up to the task of being president through the year 2028? Nobody raised their hand. Who would they vote for between Biden and Trump? All of them would vote for Joe Biden. Jonah, reaction. This is no way to run a railroad.

I, one question on this, I can't remember. I didn't finish the actual New York Times piece. How many were critical of him from an actual consistent left-wing position versus just sort of like he's not the guy, right? He just doesn't have the, The oomph.

It wasn't consistent of whether they were disappointed because he had been too left-wing or not left-wing enough. There was a little bit of both. Interesting, another one, do you approve of how Joe Biden has handled the economy? Zero people raised their hand. But to your point, Jonah, I doubt they all agree on why he hasn't handled the economy well. And I saw, look, I actually think, you know,

you see these Praetorian pundits coming out, talking about how successful Biden's presidency is. And I have to say, they have points in their favor. Like, if you looked at it on paper, you could point to a lot of legislation to accomplish, you know, all this kind of the first gun thing in 30 years, yada, yada, yada. The problem is, I think that first of all, the pandemic and then subsequently inflation, those put people off their feed in one. ways that you're not going to convince people not to believe they're lying eyes about the economy when they just feel their lives so disrupted, when they find inflation so dismaying. And I think part of the problem is that Biden is a victim of the idolatry of the American presidency

that we have turned the American presidency into something that it should not be, which is like this, and was it the line from Excalibur, the king without a sort? or the land without a king. We have this idea that somehow the president is supposed to be the embodiment of the national spirit or all this kind of stuff. And when the embodiment of the national spirit looks like you can't figure out

where they're giving out the jello at the home, it puts a, it's a bummer for a lot of people. And so I think the optics of his presidency are probably more, at the end of the day, are probably more problematic for. him than the actual policies of his presidency. If you had had a young, energetic, charismatic Democrat president who had the same record

as Joe Biden, I think you'd see a lot more enthusiasm from a lot of Democratic voters. On the flip side, the idea that the Republican Party would renominate Donald Trump, forget all the reasons why he's unfit for office, forget impeached twice, Forget January 6th, forget promising retribution, forget that he'd be a lame duck. The fact that Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump should just be dispositive about why the Republican Party should move on from Donald Trump. And yet, I think this sort of gets at this point I was getting at last week. It's a problem with Republican voters.

They want things from politics and from the party that they should not want from it. And that gives Trump an enormous amount of power. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI,

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Yeah, I mean, I think if you listen to Jonah's answer, he's emphasizing the second part of the questioning from Kristen Soltes Anderson, which is that ultimately these voters as displeased as they are with Joe Biden, we're going to end up supporting. I think that's right. I mean, I think that's probably true. But there's such a massive, all caps, if in that formulation that I don't think anybody should, should, you know, if you're somebody who doesn't think that Donald Trump should have a second term and you believe that Donald Trump is the odds on favor to be the Republican nomination. A point I'm not conceding, Sarah. If Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, I think, you know, if nothing changes, there's a reason to believe that the people who answered in this focus group will end up grudgingly supporting Joe Biden as they had in the past. And, you know, as even Ron DeSantis is pointing out in interviews this week, Donald Trump is not popular with independence. They don't want to vote for him.

So if nothing changes, I think that Democrats could take some comfort in the fact that these people are going to go back to Biden, refer to Biden, and Biden, in that scenario, gets reelected. I guess I think that we and sort of everybody are underappreciating just how weak Joe Biden is. You know, he has a good moment with the debt ceiling outcome. I would say not the fight. itself, but the outcome, as I said, I think probably helps him in the long run. But this is somebody who still more than half of the Democrats don't want him to run for president. It's not that they don't support him or that he's got bad favorables versus unfavorables, and he does. I mean, he's underwater by almost 15 points in the Real Clear Politics presidential approval rating average.

his own party is not enthusiastic about it. Would they be in the case of a head-to-head competition with Donald Trump? Probably they would be because I think the possibility of a second Trump term to most Democrats would have people answering the way that those respondents answered, Kristen. But I think you can't underestimate how weak Joe Biden is now. And there's a long way between Joe Biden getting, the Democratic nomination and the general election, a lot could happen in that period.

And I think that that makes betting on Biden's re-election a risky bet. A risky bet indeed. All right, a little not worth your time, question mark. Chick-fil-A has promoted one of its employees to be the vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion. this is causing some consternation from the right who thought that that was God's chicken and somehow having a vice president

of diversity and equity and inclusion undermines God's chicken. My question to you, Jonah, is is the freak out at least understandable that this feels like a betrayal of sort of conservative values to have someone with this title at the company? Or,

should you actually wait to say, see what this person does and freak out about the actions that a company may take that you disagree with a la a bud light or a target for that matter rather than freak out about the title that someone gets that you feel like the title is too woke yeah i think it's an incredibly dumb story i think it's um i'm not saying it's not significant but uh if you look at what the the usual suspects the charlie kirk types and all these kind of people uh coming out of the woodwork about it I think a lot of them are just simply high on the success of the Bud Light thing. I recently wrote about this.

And they're like a gambling addict who's been going for, you know, 30 hours at the craps table. They just want to, you know, let everything roll, keep going, pressing their advantage. And they're not making discriminating, discerning arguments or serious arguments as far as I can tell. Do I like it that Chick-fil-A has a DEI officer or whatever? I don't like DEI. I think DEI's, you know, look, there's a core perfectly fine thing to DEI, which is like, you know, outreach, what affirmative action used to originally mean. You know, I mean, these words get polluted really quickly because of what they become in practice. But the actual spirit of it, I mean, moves against diversity, you know, equity and inclusion in the abstract is what it actually translates to his policy.

That said, the idea that, like, Chick-fil-A is going super woke when they're putting out statements saying our real mission is to glorify God. I'm just not there. And I think that like the forces on the right who love, you know, who have a hunger for taking scalps that can only be satisfied by more scalps, they would do themselves in the causes they pretend to care most about if they're a little more discerning in the battles they pick. This reminds me a little bit of the overall complaint, Steve, that you and I, I think, have felt most deeply of people saying Donald Trump

is a unique threat to democracy, but then so is everyone. else. Like, wait a second. It undermines the sky as falling narrative about Bud Light or even Target. Again, I'll grant both of those. If you're then like, also Chick-fil-A, wait a second. I had Chick-fil-A yesterday, so I should disclose that. It just, and I know it's, I'm pregnant and for whatever reason, the chemicals in my brain are telling me that Chick-fil-A is the most delicious food that has ever been created. And like every single bite, it's not just the nuggets, it's also the fries and the lemonade.

It's, oh my God, it was. I'm not pregnant and my brain tells me the same thing. Like, nothing has been more delicious than the lunch that I had yesterday at Chick-fil-A. So honestly, they can rename every single one of their vice presidents, frankly, deeply offensive things. And it will not stop me from eating there again on Saturday, which is my current plan. Chick-fil-A rice fure this week. And I'll be there.

Get my 12 count. Man, I want a chick-fil-a-bureto right now. I guess I'm a little torn on this generally. First to Jonas' point. Unfortunately, I think one of the things that we've learned over the past decade is that there are people who are opposed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the most benign sense of our understanding of the concept. And quite frankly, many, many more people than I had imagined.

You know, 20, 30 years ago, my work in the conservative movement, my work as a journalist, I, you know, this is plain true that people are against it. People would rather have a monochromatic workforce in some places. You have outspoken people who, you know, interact with members of the Republican Conference, the House of Representatives who believe this stuff. So I do think that there's a little, there's a bigger problem there. Having said that, you know, I don't like the excesses on some of this stuff. You know, there's a video making its way around social media right now.

has some moustachioed man wearing a princess dress serving as a greeter at Disney for like the princess experience. So I can see the people who are upset about, especially the stuff targeting kids. Like that makes sense to me. I don't think we should target kids. I don't think kids should have to think about this. But the Chick-Fillet thing, I think you're exactly right about that.

this is looking for the next cause, right? It's the case, actually, that this person who is in the position at Chick-Flea, a vice president of diversity, equity, inclusion, has been in that job since 2020. This isn't even a new thing. It's not like Chick-Fleys doing anything different. It's just now sort of like, where can you go next? Your chicken has been inclusive for years and you didn't even know it. Right. I mean, and some of this, of course, is you're seeing these companies having to create policies that are consistent with the prevailing laws in the places where they operate.

That we might want to change the laws, but I don't fault the companies for having to follow the law. So I can, you know, I can see the frustration, and I share some of the frustration with the excesses of this stuff. But Chick-fil-A feels like, it feels like, and I don't know this, this is just me speculating to be very clear, it feels like the kind of thing that the culture warriors on the right said we had success with Target, we had success with Bud Light. What can we do? Who can we go after that would really, really make our point? And it's Chick-fil-A because Chick-fil-A has been canceled by the left over its policies

on gay marriage or contributions on gay marriage, what have you. So I don't know. I'm still going to eat chip boy. All right. So that one, not worth your time so much. But as we leave folks today, as we're taping this, is the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riots, which is not a great name for that.

Not so much a riot as a massacre. 300 potentially more dead African-Americans and one of the wealthiest African-American communities at the time. So, you know, it would be worth your time. Just go do a little bit of a read on that today. and reflect on that piece of history and how tragic and sad and angry it should make all of us. That's actually worth your time.

And with that, we will talk to you again next week where I don't doubt we will be covering some of these same topics again because we still haven't actually raised the debt ceiling. We don't know who the 2024 nominee is going to be. And Biden's not getting any younger. He's not going to get younger. I promise you that.

That is a dispatch guarantee. We'll talk to you next week. The debt ceiling. The DeSantis entry into the race and what we've learned, what else is going on in the 2024, and we have no idea what our third topic. We never picked one. No, we never picked one shit.