The Dispatch Podcast - Democrats Split on Capitol Hill

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

All eyes are focused on Capitol Hill this week as the debt ceiling, government funding, and infrastructure talks continue to heat up in both houses of Congress. Also happening in both chambers is testimony on Afghanistan from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie. Sarah has the week off, so Steve, David, and Jonah discuss it all on this week’s episode. And for dessert: the future of the Republican Party. Show Notes: -TMD on Afghanistan testimony -Uphill on what the heck is going on in Congress -Jennifer Graham Afghanistan reporting -Robert Kagan on our constitutional crisis in the Washington Post -The Eastman memo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. Sarah Isker has the week off. The focus in Washington this week is squarely in one place, Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are scrutinizing a decision that gives shape to the Biden administration's foreign policy and where they're debating the key components of the Biden administration's domestic agenda. We'll start there and then we'll pull back the camera a bit to talk about, well, threats to the republic and the future of the country. Let's start with Afghanistan and the hearings that took place on Capitol earlier. You've had the Secretary of Defense, the head of Central Command, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sitting before the Senate of Armed Services Committee, being grilled by senators, some of whom seemed to, actually want to understand what happened in Afghanistan better, some of whom seemed determined to get their face on the cable news evening shows with manufactured outrage. But we learned some things, I think, from the hearings. Joan, I'll start with you. What did you learn from the hearings yesterday? I'm going to push back on that a little bit. I think we confirmed some things that we had a high level of confidence that we were right about it's sort of you know it's it's what's

learning something is like kind of implies being surprised by information and instead what we learned was that Biden was not telling the truth when he told george stephenopolis and the American people on other occasions that um there was uh no pushback on his strategyry in all of this and that the um and that the generals you know he had said basically or he left the impression that the generals um did not resist the idea of pulling everybody out did not want 2,500 troops there and what was kind of surprising was to see how the generals and um and the secretary of defense yesterday almost as if they knew like got to get right with history and just be straight on this stuff.

And also because probably if they tried to play games with it, they'd be leaked thermonuclearly from orbit by the bureaucracy at the Pentagon. They confirmed that what Biden said was simply not true. And I think that was important. And what was shocking about it was that they did it without much ornamentation or obfuscation.

Beyond that, I feel like I must be forgetting something else that maybe we confirmed. But it seemed to me that, I mean, something important, but in reality, a lot of the things that were confirmed were the things that are the most depressing about politics is that most of the senators were interested in grandstanding. We confirmed something that we already knew, which is that Mark Millie had talked to a bunch of reporters about for their Trump books. which some people wanted to make the real story. And I think I should say we kind of confirmed that we were right here to hold back on the Millie's a traitor. He's a Chinese pawn kind of spin that came out when the Woodwork book first came out. Because it turned out that his explanation is right, that the book story overhyped it. The Wright's reaction to the hype was way out of line with the reality.

and what Millie did, we can still criticize, but it wasn't treason, it wasn't outside of the chain of command or any of that kind of stuff. It was a debatable policy choice given that Trump put him in a very weird place. Get telling, I think, David, that that wasn't the center of the hearing. I mean, I think, you know, when that story broke in the Washington Post, I think some of the problem was the way that the Washington Post wrote it up, which was, these were secret calls with his Chinese counterpart and, you know, suggested that we'd give them a heads up on on any potential attack without a lot of the context that Millie has been able to provide, that some reporting, particularly from Fox News's Jennifer Griffin provided in the days after that story

first broken that Millie further provided yesterday. But if we went back and we had had this discussion on the day that story broke, just judging from the reaction, mostly from folks on the right, we would have assumed that Millie might not even survive until this hearing, and that if he did, we would be talking about virtually nothing other than that claim in the book. And it was sort of a throw-in. You were listening to questioning from people like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who focused on other things and then kind of wedged it in.

but didn't really spend a lot of time on it. Did that surprise you that it was such a small part of the hearing? And was there anything else that surprised you? Well, no, that didn't surprise me at all because that story blew up. I mean, the story blew up as far as the narrative, the traitor narrative, almost immediately. I mean, by the time we recorded our dispatch podcast, which was less than 24 hours after that story started,

we'd had some of the additional reporting from Josh Rogan, I mean, was a Josh, no, wait. Yeah, from Jennifer Griffin, from Rogan at the, gosh, why am I blanking on his name at the Washington Post? I keep wanting to confuse him with a podcaster. Josh Rogan had some, yeah, he had some additional context. Yeah, yeah. Jennifer Griffin did a lot of that. Seth Rogan had some really interesting insights as well, but that's different.

Joe Rogan, I was thinking about Joe Rogan anyway, whatever. Okay. I'll get better. I'll get better. Anyway, so it had already a lot of that initial story, the trader timeline, and story had already just blown up. Now, I am wondering if some of the media critics who are so rigorous in their attacks on the mainstream media for hot takes have retracted any of their treason allegations that they made one minute after the reports were made from the Woodward Costa book we'll have to go check that out but anybody who knew

anything about bilateral communications with military commanders of opposing or rival great powers knows that this is there was probably a whole lot more to the story that was a whole lot more conventional than normal than people

were thinking so that it didn't surprise me at all that that was less important I will tell you it did surprise me a little bit about how frank these guys were about saying that there had been advice that had been giving about keeping troops in Afghanistan, how frank, for example, they were about the limitations of the over-the-horizon sort of anti-terror possibility. Millie says, quote, the withdrawal makes it much more difficult for us to conduct intelligence,

surveillance reconnaissance. It's not impossible, but it'll make it more difficult. And, you know, this comes right on the heels of one of these, you know, over the horizon strikes that ended up striking civilians that we've talked about before. So, yeah, this was, I think the Jonah point of history has its eyes on you. It really makes a lot of sense to me, because here you have military commanders, a withdrawal was undertaken seems pretty clear over their objections, leaving them, leaving us with less capacity to, to conduct anti-terror operations. And they just wanted that known. They wanted that out there. And, you know, it's interesting to me, what this suggests, and I've been saying this for a while, this suggests in a way, kind of how normal the Biden presidency is

in a couple of ways. And one is he doesn't have a cult. So the kind of absolutely impenetrable floor of support where there's nothing that can be done that will cause his support to drop, that doesn't really exist the way it did with Trump. And then the sort of the combination of fear and terror that Trump could strike in subordinates

and others, to tow the party line, at least tow the party line while they're still, you know, in their, working in their official capacities. And that's not there either. And so, you know, there's some interesting ways in which we're seeing a return of some of normal Washington in response to, frankly, a real disaster in Afghanistan. I mean, the finger pointing hasn't waited for the memoir. So let's just put it that way. Yeah, I think my main takeaway is.

I, too, was struck by the candor that we had from, in particular, General Millie, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to a lesser extent, General McKenzie. But it was, I think it was candor often in service of a kind of C-Y-A agenda to use the military parlance. I mean, you had, on the one hand, General Millie acknowledging, in a very blunt assessment, that the war in Afghanistan had been a strategic failure, that's a huge deal. I mean, that's a moment when you have the top general saying that. Now, he then put it in broader context and said, look, there have been numerous secretaries of defense.

We've had numerous on the ground commanders. We've had numerous chairman of the Joint Chiefs and staff. In that time frame, this is a, you know, this is blame that should be widely shared among the military, which pushed some of the heat off of him. But in other ways, I thought he was misleading, almost deceitful. Our friend Bill Rogio from Long War Journal had a long thread on Twitter, pushing back on Millie's claim, something that was obviously part of his talking points in preparation for the hearing, that Afghanistan fell in 11 days. And nobody predicted that Afghanistan was going to fall in 11 days. and while that was a blind spot in terms of our intelligence assessments,

there really wasn't much you could do if Afghanistan fell in 11 days. The problem is Afghanistan did not fall in 11 days. The Taliban offensive started May 1st. You had people like Bill Rogio and our own Tom Jocelyn, including in his vital interests newsletter, saying, hey, this Taliban offensive is underway. way, we should be paying more attention to what the Taliban are doing. They are not waiting until the United States has left the country to take it. And you had numerous outside observers

making those observations. And I think it's just flat out dishonest for General Millie to suggest that this really just happened in 11 days. And at one point, I can't remember with Millier or McKenzie said, you know, there are just a couple hundred Taliban guys who showed up on motorcycles and took Kabul. And that's how Afghanistan fell. I mean, it's such, it's almost like an insultingly simplified picture of what happened. I think the strategic and many tactical failures that led to that moment, that led to those 200 jihadists on motorcycles, that led to those 11 days, got a little bit short shrift in there. And there are follow-up hearings in the House of Representatives.

I expect that we'll see the same dynamic. Some people asking serious questions trying to actually understand this. Some people grandstanding as elected officials are want to do. But I do hope that somebody follows up on that point. This wasn't 11 days. This was a broader strategic failure. And you military leaders really need to own it. Well, I mean, how could he not say it was a strategic failure?

I mean, that was possibly the most obvious point at all. I mean, you know, in his full sentence was this was a logistical success, but a strategic failure. And to me, I read that as pushing the blame up to the political leaders. Because if you really read between the lines, the logistical success, what part is that? That's the military part. that's the military part we could by golly we could airlift 120,000 people in just a few days we can do what we're told to do and then the strategic failure that's the fall of Kabul that's the that's the withdrawal decision so I looked at that not as an admission against interest by

the military I looked at that as a pointing a finger pointing straight upstairs straight upstairs and it was I thought it was slyly done, to be honest. And because calling it a strategic failure when the Taliban are running Kabul is about the most obvious thing in the world. It's like looking at Saigon after 1975 and saying, yeah, strategic failure. But it directly contradicted the line from the White House. I mean, I think that's what made it sort of eye-opening. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so I disagree with you guys a little bit on this. I agree it was very sly, but I think the slyness came in its political ambiguity because the White House gets to say it was a mistake to be there. Biden rectified the mistake because the strategic failure is why they wanted to pull out in the first place, that this was a war that had lost its mission. For people like us, we hear strategic failure was that fact that we had to get out because he screwed it up and Biden messed up everything. think it was one of these things that everyone could hear it the way they want. I listened to a lot of MSNBC yesterday and the strategic failure thing was not being seen as an indictment of Biden. It was being seen as an indictment of 20 years of a war, I'd never, you know, an endless war that we shouldn't have been in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Biden was the guy who recognized that

and pulled the plug on this strategic failure. And then you switch over to Fox and it's like Millie suggests that the pullout was a strategic failure. It plays both ways to both audiences in a clever way. What bothers me about it is that, look, if you're running a business, let's say, by way of analogy, and you hit a rough spot and you say, screw it, I'm declaring bankruptcy, that's a business failure. But the choice to make it a business failure was your choice to give up right you like it it becomes it becomes a definitional thing it's a self-fulfilling thing when look there were plenty of times during world war two where the war looked like and certainly world war one you know lots of wars where which we won that looked like if we had

stopped right then they would have been failures that we would have been lost most of the civil war and i would say you guys would know this better than me like half of all sports at one point in the game or another one team is losing that ends up winning and you know so like the second you basically decide to crash the car into the side of the embankment you can say ah this this trip was a failure but you don't know that it would have been wouldn't have been a failure if you kept driving and so there's a sort of a metaphysical tautology to this where you get to declare it's a failure because you made it a failure? I think there's another reason that the Biden administration MSNBC spin doesn't work

on the question of strategic failure. And that's because of the additional details that Millie and McKenzie in particular furnished in the hearings, which is this is going to be a problem. We have made the problem worse now as it relates to the threat from jihadists. And And they were, again, in rather unambiguous language, clear that the threat is escalating. And McKenzie was asked directly, does this pose a threat to the U.S. homeland? Because one of the arguments has been, has been made prominently by many top Biden administration officials, this is an over-the-the-problem problem. We can use this over-the-horizon strategic approach. And we can sort of keep them at bay with this kind of middle-neutral.

approach to this. Mackenzie was very clear, Millie was equally clear. This is not an over there problem. The threat is most certainly going to increase, and we will have to be addressing these issues in the years to come. And I think it makes it harder for the Biden team to argue. I mean, they made a lot of, I thought, silly arguments in response to this yesterday, Jen Saki kind of embarrassed herself trying to dance around the fact that President Biden had lied to George Stephanopoulos. But I think it's hard for them to make the argument that the military leadership doesn't think this was a strategic failure when they gave reasons for what that strategic failure will meet. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of

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Democrats arguing about the infrastructure bill, the narrowed infrastructure bill, and also doing so in the context of this 3.5 trillion behemoth spending bill. Jonah, do you want to talk us through that? Sure. Let me, in part because I have a column out on some of this stuff. Let me start at 30,000 feet real quick, and then we can get to the, the, the, the, Policy, nitty-gritty and the rank punditry. I'm on above frame of mind that Joe Biden came into office with, I hate mandate talk.

I think we all hate mandate talk because it's kind of nonsense. But there's a reason we do it is because it sets of, you know, people run on a certain set of platforms and it sets a frame for how we judge them when they become president. And he ran on fighting COVID and being a normal. guy, right, being not Trump. And I think because Trump cost the Democrat, the Republicans two Senate seats in Georgia, they were blindsided by Georgia. They were blindsided by the fact that they actually took over the Senate. And Joe Biden let John Meacham and a bunch of historians whisper in his ear, instead of whispering in his ear, thou art mortal, they whispered in his

ear, thou art FDR. And Joe Biden decided to go big, really, really, really. big, in part because the progressive base of his party was saying, go really big. And the idiocy of this, and I use idiocy advisedly, where you had, you know, FDR, I think, in 34, Democrats had gained massive, massively in 30, 32, and 34. And by the time FDR really hits his stride with the New Deal, he's got like, in a Senate with 96 seats, something like, I can't remember the exact number, but let's call it 82 Democrats. And in the House, he's got like a super, super majority. You know, I think they were down to like 89 Republicans in the House.

And FDR still had to cut deals and work his way around. LBJ, sort of the same dynamic. Barack Obama could not have gotten an Obamacare past, were it not for the fact that he had super majority, he had major major majorities in both houses. And Joe Biden, with the narrowest Senate and House arguably in history, or at least tied for any time in American history, thinks he can spend more money than the New Deal. And the progressives believe it. And the progressives are now filled with the spirit of, they're basically, I would argue, becoming sort of a left-wing Tea Party, left-wing House Freedom Caucus, where they think their job is to make the perfect the enemy of the good on every legislative question. And that gets us to where Biden's predicament is.

He misjudged the moment badly. And now he let progressives convince themselves that they were owed $6 trillion, which is their original asking price, but they're willing to be reasonable and compromise for $3.5 trillion. And for this human infrastructure stuff. And now to get into the basic nitty-gritty part of it, the Democrats are stuck in the situation where the House left-wing caucus, which is very, very, very large, they're willing to trust House moderates.

They're not willing to trust Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema in the Senate, and they're making noise that they're willing to blow up the voting on a traditional infrastructure bill if they don't get their $3.5 trillion or somewhere thereabouts, human infrastructure bill.

I think this Gordian knot is probably uncutable. and one of the reasons why I decided to start with such 30,000 foot generalities as we're recording this on Wednesday and allegedly there will be a vote on all of this on Thursday and if we get too specific we could be overtaken by events really badly but so with that in mind you know David is there is at what point did the Democrats make a strategic blunder that they found themselves in this situation? in your minds? Or did they not make a strategic blunder? And, you know, this is this is a product of being a majority party in an age of polarization. I mean, I'm still in this sort of sense of denial that surely, after all that we've seen about zealic caucuses disrupting parties over the last decade, that surely that they're, surely they're going to look at the last decade, Stop calling you, Shirley. They're going to take a lesson from that last decade,

push through the pocket the win they've got, break up the $3.5 trillion into the bite-sized portions that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema will support, and get a win, get a win. But, you know, as of right now, it looks like, I think your analogy, like to the Tea Party Caucus and Freedom Caucus is really good, Because it seems as if the actual thought process is the following, which sounds familiar from the 20 teens in the GOP, the actual thought process seems to be, if we in the House do the right thing and we jam through what you want to jam through, through some combination of media pressure and Twitter pressure and magic, we can make the Senate bend to our will.

that Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema will come around. We shall twitter them to death, and they will come around. And that seems to be just sheer fantasy. And then here comes Bernie Sanders, giving them fuel for that fire yesterday, essentially saying stand firm, stand firm, stand firm. You know, and this is after the progressives led the Democratic caucus into a dead end,

a cul-de-sac a couple of days ago with Iron Dome funding, where they go through this, you know, 24 hours of a bad news cycle before they split out the Iron Dome funding and show how small that progressive caucus, the core of that progressive caucus really is and makes, you know, AOC weepy. But this is something that you sit there and you feel like you're watching people just go ahead and decide to have a training.

wreck. It's like you're watching them say, yeah, you know, we're just going to go ahead and derail this thing. And I think the train will work off the tracks this time, this time. And that's why I'm kind of in a state of denial about it. And I kind of think, and against everything that sort of your eyes are showing you right now, they're going to pull it out of the fire. And that brings us, of course, to the Republicans, because Pelosi could pull it out of the fire if she could just get a few Republicans to vote for the Senate infrastructure bill and the way a few Senate Republicans voted for it. If there could be just a few folks who break ranks, then she doesn't have to worry about

Ilya Omar and Rashida Taleb and the group. But I don't know. I'm looking at this just really amazed in some ways and supremely disappointed that here we are again with an incredible amount of seemingly ridiculous, just dumb dysfunction, not just dysfunction, but just dumb dysfunction. Yeah, I mean, you know, first of all, I think to underscore Jonah's point that nobody really knows what's going to happen here, talking points memo, which is a progressive website that does a lot of, I think, very good reporting on what's happening inside the progressive movement,

what's happening inside the Democratic caucus, had a post at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, the we have no idea what's going to happen either blogging to tee up their day. So even the people who follow this most closely can't make any predictions about what's going to happen. One of the things that strikes me as we watch all of this unfold is Joe Biden's seeming detachment from all of this. I mean, this is his legacy. This is it. This is his Obamacare. And, you know, it was news that he canceled a trip to Chicago in order to stay in Washington

to have another meeting with Kirsten Cinema. But he's otherwise just not been very involved by all accounts. And there's a report in Axios this morning that sort of jumped out at me where the interview an official. And we don't know who this is. so we should caveat it with all of all of the the caveats that apply to anonymous sourcing unnamed officials, Axios does pretty good reporting. They're pretty well plugged in. But the cite an official saying of Biden, he's not going to beg. His view is your Democrats and you're with your president

or you're not. And I just, I mean, again, by most indications, that is his, that's an actual, accurate description of his approach to this. No doubt his legislative affairs people are working Capitol Hill very hard. He's got his top staffers in the White House are constantly on the phone with these two factions trying to strike some kind of a compromise. But other than stepping in the middle of it by linking the two packages publicly in a way that Democrats had strongly implied, but Joe Biden, I think unwisely actually did, saying in effect, look, this is going to, if there's going to be a bipartisan infrastructure bill, there also has to be this massive additional spending bill, the soft infrastructure bill. He really doesn't seem to have been that involved. And it's hard to come

up with a real explanation as to why that would be the case. He seems detached. And I think it could end up having long-term consequences if this thing gets scuttled. Yeah, I was just going to say, you raise something interesting because this is now president number two in a row who's been kind of detached from truly significant legislative fights. I remember when Trump was, when the Obama repeal effort was underway, and there were people, I remember being on a National Review cruise, and people were saying Trump really worked that. He got on the phone a few times. And then someone who was around in the Obama White House and said,

There were Obama staffers who had cots in the House office building because they were literally staying there 24-7 working the problem and twisting arms and try to push this thing over the line. It's as if we've defined presidential effort down pretty materially. And yeah, I mean, his absence looms large, at least so far in this, with all the caveats that there are hours to go,

and we could see anything happen. So my theory about this, other than the fact that both parties now think that we live in a parliamentary democracy, and if you take over parliament by one seat, that means your agenda gets passed without any negotiation or obstruction of any kind. But is that Biden doesn't know how to read the room. And the way I put it in this column the other day is that, you know, everyone, everyone, I'm sure you guys do, everyone's got stories about how Biden talks too much. Everyone's heard stories about how Biden talks too much.

I mean, one of my best friends was tell me a story about how he was at a tribute to some guy who retired and everyone is, Ted Kennedy's there and all these people. And Biden, Ted Kennedy talked for five minutes. That was what was asked of them, right? And all these other senators talked for three to five minutes. And Joe Biden talked for like 45 minutes. And John Bedardt tells a story about how Biden answered one question meeting with the editorial board of the Washington Times before the hour was taken up. And those stories, they're all accurate.

He has his motor mouth and all that kind of stuff. They miss the fact that that's a symptom of the larger problem. He can't read the room. This is the guy who said to a dude in a wheelchair, stand up, take a bow. When he was talking about the Afghan withdrawal, his, he was, you know, he was defiant and, and, and defensive when he should have been humble and apologetic. He was angry. You know, he's just, he's, he, he doesn't know how to, like, read the room. I think he does not know how to read the political moment. And this is weird for a president. You know, even, even Donald Trump tacked around a little bit and changed his tune when he couldn't get what he wanted. But you compare them to Bill Clinton, right? Bill Clinton gets shellacked in the 94 midterms, declares the era of big government is over and, you know, and changes his course and starts running towards the center again. You have, you know, normally presidents from FDR onward pick sides within their own party and lend their weight to one side of the party.

or another that is more, you know, simpatico with their agenda. Biden does not know how to do that. He does not know how to adjust to new facts. He should have taken, you know, he got $1.9 trillion in COVID relief through without any Republican obstruction. He got a, you know, the really telling thing was the day he hammered out that bipartisan deal on a trillion dollar infrastructure bill with 19 frigging Republicans in this era of polarization and no one can get anything done, but Joe Biden said he knows how to work

Washington. He goes up there. Everyone's slapping each other on the back about bipartisanship, yay, look at this historic victory for Joe Biden. Let's just get this through the house. And he says, yeah, so this, nothing's going to happen with this unless you vote for the other thing because they have to go in tandem. And that was the moment in late June where his poll numbers start to go down. He can't read the room. He doesn't know how to declare a victory move on because he is bought into this idea that he's going to be a new FDR or something like that or you just can't admit that he was wrong. We all know he's got a very defensive sort of thin skin about admitting when he was wrong. And he's locked into this weird position not looking at where things are. He was

more angry at CPB officers on horseback than he was at one of the most presidentially crippling catastrophic policy failures at the border. You know, he's not angry about all these illegal immigrants coming in. And we can have argument about whether you should be angry or not, but you should certainly be angry at the policy failure. And instead, he's just much more comfortable talking about guys on horseback being not who we are. And I think he just doesn't know how to read the national climate or read the national moment. And I think what makes it so striking is that this moment that we are in the middle of right now is what he, He said repeatedly that he was best at in the Democratic primary.

He said, this is what I can do. We live in this polarized moment. We live. People can't get along. I've got Republican friends. I've been able to work with Republicans. I can bring people together. I know how to get things through the Senate on and on and on.

He gave a press conference in sort of a great Joe Biden moment. Press conference in March, late March, he was asked about, you know, working the Senate and the filibuster and, you know, it's 50, 50 votes plus one with Vice President. Can he pass his agenda that way? And Biden said, and so I'm going to say something outrageous. I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done in the U.S. Senate. Oh, yes. It was the inverse of what he had said throughout the campaign, which is, I'm really, really good at getting this stuff done. And it appears, look, it's early.

They could certainly, I think, stumble their way to some kind of a compromise and come out with something. I think it's pretty important for Democrats that they come out with something. But the fact that he's not been deeply engaged and the fact that, you know, even given the difficulties of the close margins in both the House and the Senate, the fact that he's not been more out front in forging these compromises. in getting Democrats to a deal, I think suggests he's, he's failing at what he said he was best at. If it, on June 24th, he declared victory, right, and just said, I delivered what I promised. I made Washington work. Here is your bipartisan deal on infrastructure.

You guys work out the rest of it. But I delivered 19 Republicans to you guys in an era where you said I couldn't get one. And then he pulled a George Costanza and said, leave him on a high note, I'm out of here. He would have been in great shape, but instead, he went a different way. So do they get it across the finish line? Do they get the original bipartisan infrastructure bill across the finish line? I'm going to say yes and might be proven embarrassingly wrong quickly. Probably.

That's my out on a limb prediction. I think it is really hard to know, but I would guess that they get something. I mean, there are, just before joining answers real quickly, as New York Times piece today by Jonathan Weissman, pointing out, there are differences among Republicans, too, right? And you've got Senate Republicans, moderate Republicans in the Senate, and some conservatives pushing for the passage of the infrastructure bill, and you've got House Republican leadership whipping hard against it.

Of course, you have Donald Trump who's threatened people repeatedly for being part of such an infrastructure bill. bill, after he himself pushed an infrastructure bill. I think that helps us understand the dynamics in the House, where leadership there is pretty servile to Trump. But, you know, getting some of those votes could be a challenge, too. I mean, the votes are there, the Problem Solver Caucus, House Republicans, have been a part of that, have been in favor of this.

But I think there's sort of a challenge all around. I'm very tempted to do a Brian Fantana sex panther math here and say there's an 80% chance they get 60% of what they want. I honestly don't know. I would be, six weeks ago, I would have been shocked if they didn't get the infrastructure thing. I'd still think it would be shocking if they didn't get the infrastructure thing. But with a margin of three seats in that. house all you need is three progressives to say hell no you know and so i don't know but i've i had to based on nothing but just gut instinct i would say they get the one they get the traditional

infrastructure and they might even get a little more of the human infrastructure stuff um than you'd think you're even using the language the human infrastructure stuff come on man the all right let me put it this way. The modestly defensible infrastructure will probably pass and the completely indefensible. I think it's all into much better. We're like at 125% debt to GDP ratio. We're not in danger of a recession. We're in danger of inflation. We are already spent more than, adjusted for inflation, the new deal, the original new deal and spending, and the new deal is about more than just spending, but was a little less than a trillion dollars in today's dollars. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've spent like five, six new deals.

The idea that like what this country desperately needs right now is more spending. I know Jen Saki says it's all free, but I just don't think we need it. But we're talking about the politics of it. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Free-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply.

Learn more at mx.ca. slash Y Annex. David, last topic to you, Republicans and the future of the Republic. Yeah, so this every now and then, you get the essay that everyone is talking about. And so we have one this week. And really, I mean, this week, last week, it's by Bob K. Robert Kagan, Washington Post, and it begins like this. The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable

chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy, and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things, there should be no doubt. And he begins first with Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate for president in 2024. Now, I think it's a little strong to say no doubt that he will be the GOP candidate. I'd say it's a strong probability at this point.

But he also says something. So that sounds all pretty alarmist. But he says something that is, I think, very important that a lot of people who write in Washington don't get and don't understand and why I think he's understanding something that's out there that is very, very dangerous. And he says, the banal, banal, however you want to pronounce it, normalcy of the great majority of Trump supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on January 6th, has befuddled many observers. though private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the attack, 90% of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. The majority were middle class and middle-aged. 40% were business owners or white-collar workers.

They came mostly from purple, not red counties. Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors, and solid members of their communities. So this is the thing that I think that in an interesting way makes people, underestimate the radicalism of what's happening often at the GOP grassroots is because you have people who are normal, upstanding, good citizens in every other arena of life. You would go to them if they're your dentist. You would hire them. If they're your carpenter, they are not people who are often some enclave in Michigan training with AR-15s. They are normal people who that when it comes to this issue or issues surrounding Trump or sort of

Trump adjacent like masks, masks, vaccines have been radicalized in some pretty profound ways into some pretty profoundly wrong ways of thinking about the country and some pretty profound degrees of hatred for their opponents and alarm about the direction of the country. And I thought that was the key insight that Kagan has that a lot of people don't have is that we're not talking a bunch of militias out here. What we're talking about are a whole lot of solid citizens like the kind of people who make up the grassroots of the GOP who believe wild things now. And I mean wild things. I've told this story before, but a GOP committee member in a county not far from me. It said, look, I mean, Joe Biden brought in 250,000 Chinese communists, and Trump was only

able to kill 50,000 of them before the election. But there's still 200,000 at large. I mean, I don't know if we can fact check that, Steve. But like, there's wild things that are being, and this is inherently destabilizing. So anyway, y'all read it. Let me just start with you, Jonah, Bob Kagan alarmist or properly alarming? So I've been asked by, I don't know, a dozen people, including many dispatch readers, what I think of the thing. My standard answer has been, I think it is directionally right, but has some analytical flaws or leaps in it that I don't necessarily agree with.

And I should just say in the spirit of collegiality, our friends over commentary on the commentary podcast, they were uniformly skeptical of this in a thoughtful way. You know, John Padorz and those guys, they're good friends of mine. But I text to John when I listen to him and talk about it and I said, I have some real serious disagreements with your takes on this and we've been meaning to talk about it. But if you want, if listeners want to hear skeptical take on it, I recommend that episode. and we'll put the we'll put a link to the to the piece in the show notes so you can go and read it for yourself so i i think he's wrong to to flatly assert that trump is going to run in 2024 i don't think trump knows whether he's going to run in 2024 and i think but i think more more crucially he is misdiagnosing the motives for a lot of the people

doing what I think we all agree is ridiculousness when it comes to voting stuff. I think some people are laying the groundwork to steal the election in 2024 if Trump runs. But I think some people aren't. I think some people honestly think 2020 was stolen and they're trying to figure out, you know, and they're, they want to get the truth out and all this kind of stuff. And I think part of the problem is, and there are a lot of people, and Steve and I have talked about this a bunch before, a lot of these state legislators, I think, made a profound political error, but it was a good faith error in the sense that shortly after the election, a lot of these legislatures picked up the issue of voter integrity as a way to placate the Trump base without

out actually buying into the big lie stuff. And the problem is, is that they thought this was a way that they could separate themselves from Trump, but not Trump voters. And I think it was a wild miscalculation. But I don't think that everybody who went into like these voting reform kind of things were doing it so they could steal the election in 2024. I think they made a terrible political error that let the mainstream media report on it uniformly as if this is all in furtherance of the big lie when the,

The original intent was not that, at least for a lot of them. And now it's gotten out ahead. You know, now it's just, it's a hot mess all over the place with a real diversity of motives. And, and so the, to me, it's like, remember at the early days of the Tea Party? There was all of this thumsuckery about how brilliant the Tea Party was organizationally because it had no leaders. It was organic bottom up. It was one of these things that you couldn't attack a single, you couldn't demonize a single leader. because there was no single leader to attack because it was so organic and split up into cells

and chapters and whatnot. That's the kind of thing you get when something isn't being directed. Donald Trump, I don't think he's saying all these things so he can steal the next election. He's still nursing his wounded ego about the last election when he talks about all of this stuff. Now, this doesn't let him off the hook because I think he tried to steal the last election. And this is another place where I disagree with the commentary people. Too many people focused on January 6 as the coup. It wasn't, that was, Donald Trump went into the election as he had in 2016, saying if I lose, it'll be illegitimate.

Why? Because any election I lose must have been stolen because I don't lose. And he started laying the rhetorical groundwork for the election being, you know, being declared illegitimate long before January 6. January 6 is just the coup de grace in a way. It's the, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, was the. inevitable product of a campaign of lies from a very long time. And I think Washington is too focused on January. I mean, like if you're an inside the Beltway person, of course you're going to focus on the mob that attacked the Capitol. I mean, it's like literally attacking the

heart of the Beltway. But the more concerning stuff is that was the steady attempt to basically pull off what do the Latin Americans call on Aldo Volpe, you know, a self-coup. And that's why I think Trump should have been, was rightly impeached the second time. It's why they should have voted to bar him from public office for all time, because he was willing to steal an election. And I think the only way you for sure get him to run again is if Jason Miller and all of those other remiras and, you know, members of the lowest political coprophagic phyelms that we have could convince him that regardless of how the vote turns out, we'll steal the election for you. And because, like, he just doesn't want to risk losing twice in a row. And,

So, again, I think Kagan is directionally right. We should be really concerned. I think Kevin Williamson had it better about three weeks ago in the New York Times where he said the coup is still happening. And he basically made the same argument a little less hysterically than Kagan did. But I think analytically, Kagan simplifies stuff too much. So, Steve, I think the Eastman memo here, and for those who aren't familiar with the Eastman memo, this was the memo by former law dean, Fedsock, practice group chair,

John Eastman that sort of laid out a constitutional pretext for Mike Pence to declare victory for Donald Trump on the January 6th meeting. This is where I think the Eastman memo has significance because there's a difference between a Donald Trump who is furious and angry. It doesn't know anything on the phone with whoever will pick up the phone demanding that they do things that they don't have the authority and the power to do. And a law professor sort of functioning as the court intellectual, crafting a frame for a coup, which is what it would have been, that is ludicrous to anyone who knows anything about the Constitution. But for the 99.9% of Americans who are not familiar with these constitutional nuances, it for all practical purposes

looks like bold legal maneuvering. And I think that, you know, this is one of the things that happens it's you know even if the tanks roll in in like a third world coup there's often a legal pretext there's often some procedural reason why the the big power grab is made and one of the things that concerns me and makes the the kegan issue the kegan essay more directionally true i agree with what jonas was saying is now you have an intellectual framework for disrupting uh election results. You have certainly the will. And then the one thing that Kagan missed, which in a way makes this all more dangerous, it's not that average Trump supporters are thinking we need to disrupt democracy. They're thinking we need to save democracy. You know, that the vote was

fraudulent. The vote was rigged. So we're saving democracy. We have the reason. We have the will. And then with this Eastman memo, you have a way. And those things to add. add those things together. And I know that the Eastman memo doesn't precisely apply now because Kamala Harris would be vice president, but it just demonstrates how you will find some court intellectual who will provide you a roadmap and a pretext. And that's what makes me much more in the Jonah camp of this is all directionally true versus the commentary camp of, nah. Where are you? Yeah, I'm probably closer to where you guys are. I mean, I think he overstates the case in a couple of important areas, most, especially right at the top. I mean, David, what you said at the beginning

that it's certain that Donald Trump is going to be the 2024 Republican nominee and everything, sort of his reasoning flows from that assumption. I think it's a flawed assumption. I think there are many ways in which we can look at where Donald Trump is today relative to where he was, even six months ago, and make a compelling case that he's weaker, that he doesn't have the hold on the Republican Party and Republican Party voters the way that he once did. I mean, if you look at the CNN poll a couple weeks, weekends ago, asking about Trump as the leader of the party and whether Trump should be the nominee in 2024, and I believe it was 5149 pro-Trump versus someone else. That's not a small finding and it's consistent with what we've seen in other polling. And there

are other questions that I think give you the same understanding of where Trump is. Having said all that, what team Trump has done and what Trump-aligned Republicans have done at sort of the grassroots level, the party level, local Republican committees, state Republican apparatuses. been to take it all over. And those are the people who are most committed to not only Trump, but to Trumpism, and to this entire fake claim that the election was stolen. So they are implementing in certain state. I mean, the state legislatures have tried to shift power away from secretaries of state

to legislatures, particularly in place. is where Republicans dominate the legislatures. There have been these reforms that if adopted would be meaningful changes in the way that we would conduct our elections. And I think hugely problematic way that we would conduct our elections, changes to the ways in which we would conduct our elections.

I just am not as convinced as Kagan seems to be that this is inevitable. If I were, I would probably, be alarmed at the same level that he is, but I'm not. And the final point I'll make, and he didn't spend a lot of time on this. In his essay, we don't spend a ton of time on this in this stuff that we write about in our conversations here. But there are sort of three legs to this stool, and this comes from, this observation comes from a conversation I had with a very smart Republican consultant about this article. You know, there's Trump. There's, there's

the Republican base, but then there's also the pro-Trump media. And the extent to which the pro-Trump media remains on board with the, you know, the fake election conspiracies and then pushes for measures that would go beyond Trumpism in a more authoritarian direction, I think is hugely problematic. And I'll leave with one example. from Tucker Carlson's show last night, J.D. Vance, Senate candidate in Ohio, appeared on the show to talk about left-wing foundations, funding things that he deems anti-American, anti-founding, anti-princi-princi-princi. And at one point in the exchange, J.D. Vance says, we should seize the assets of the Ford Foundation. And he is quite

explicit about the fact that he wants to seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, this left-wing foundation, because he disagrees with the arguments that they're making. I mean, there's no, we can't even call that quasi-authoritarian. That is authoritarianism. That is a full embrace of nutty right-wing authoritarianism. Tucker nodded his head along with it. And you've seen in the, you know, it's been barely 12 hours since. One after another, after another of these new right figures rush to endorse what J.D. Fance has said. So you could think, well, maybe this was a slip of the tongue. Maybe what he really meant was just, let's not give them this, this nonprofit tax-exempt. Right? Yeah, tax-exempt preference. That was the context for the discussion.

so you could read it as him, this being a slip of the time, him civilly overstating his case. But that's not what he said. What he said was seize their assets. And then he followed it up with the tax exam status. And you've seen people having had this spelled out for them fully embrace, seizing the assets of institutions that we don't agree with ideologically. That is crazy. And that's where I think Kagan makes a good point that.

we ought to really be alarmed by that. That stuff isn't, that's the kind of stuff that five years ago or 10 years ago, we would have laughed off as fringy. Nobody would have paid attention to this kind of thing. Instead, we have it being made by one of the leading candidates to become senator from Ohio on the Republican side and amplified and endorsed by all of these other figures on the new right. That I find alarming. Well, and then let's just talk about a sitting senator. Marco Rubio introduced legislation. It's one of these big, bits of performance art legislation. Everybody knows it's not going anywhere.

But he's a sitting senator. It's Marco Rubio, who nobody in the universe who would have called a fringe Republican figure has introduced legislation that's essentially wanting to empower private citizens to be woke to woke police publicly traded companies. In other words, if they do something you don't like on diversity training or whatever, then you're going to have the ability to come in and sue them. and which, you know, if you're a constitutional, if you're a First Amendment lawyer,

you're looking at that and saying, wait, what? Where's the ability of the state to declare out of bounds, these private institutions advocating for this or that idea? Can you not see how that would, how that would, never mind be unconstitutional on its own, but if somehow it passed through and made it through constitutional challenge,

how that could easily backfire on private institutions that you like. And yet, it's the same dynamic on the right, which is there is nothing that is too radical anymore. It is, what can I think of to punish the left? And as soon as I think of it, any dissent from the idea becomes evidence of weakness,

that you don't understand what's really going on. And you're unleashing things that are dangerous. I mean, Sarah and I on advisory opinions, we walked through what was happening in my home county where there has been a rebellion against quote-unquote CRT, when there's no CRT within hundreds of miles. And some of the books they're targeting a CRT are things like Dr. King goes to Washington or Ruby Bridges goes to school by Ruby Bridges. They're even targeting the Norman Rockwell desegregation. painting. You know, that very famous Norman Rockwell painting of the little courageous

black girl who's desegregating a school in the South, I believe in Little Rock. It's just incredible, you know, it's one of these pieces of, you know, Americana that's incredibly memorable and valuable. And that's at the, like this grassroots fight, there isn't a grassroots fight in many jurisdictions, or if not most jurisdictions. It has been fought and it is over and the radicals have won and they have they occupy the ground and again that's one of the things that i i think it's harder for people to see in many cases unless you're living all around it and you see it and then you know that the folks who are great folks you know they've been solid republicans their whole lives the kind of people you want involved in the GOP the kind of people

you want running for office the kind of conservatives that really are going to bring kind of the kind of governance you want into your state, a lot of them are just retreating from the field because is it worth it? Is it worth it on a personal basis to fight these fights at these, you know, town levels and city levels and county levels? It's kind of hard to overstate in many ways how radical some of these key base institutions have become. So I know I'm not known for, first of all, I agree with you entirely. Kevin Williamson and I talked about this recently on the Remnant about how a certain kind of Gresham's law to politics is taking effect where, you know, Gresham's law, bad money chases out good money.

Bad politics is chasing out good politics because people who are like decently moderate, normal people, even if they have strong, conservative, or liberal convictions, they're just like, I can't be part of this stuff. This is crazy. So they leave and they hand the mic over to the fight between the crazies. But I know I'm not normally the voice of optimism or hope around here. Give us some. Well, I mean, so this gets back to the point about why I think Kagan is too narrow and too convinced of a straight line projection of where politics is going.

The great irony here is, and I would be so happy if you guys want, since Ms. Isger isn't in school today and the students get to go crazy, if you want to give me 20 minutes to go nuts on JD Vance, I will. But the great irony here is that you now have this rising caucus of assinity in the Republican Party that wants to be statist, that wants, you know, for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law kind of approach, you know, which is very cesarian. And the very seriously, probably the biggest hindrance to them being able to at least try some of this stuff is Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump doesn't care about defunding the Ford Foundation. He doesn't care about any of these policy things. He doesn't even really care about the immigration stuff other than to say, I was right, Biden is wrong. The stuff he's talking about on the stump is still how he was robbed in 2020.

That's where his ego is. That's where his narcissism is most acute. He can't handle the idea that he lost to a guy that he said was a sad sack and a loser. And he's still like writing letters to the Georgia Secretary of State. saying you have to recall the election is the cyber ninjas come in, you know, they get out of their clown car and say Biden actually won Arizona and Trump takes away from that proof that the that he won Arizona. I mean it's so the problem is he's he is now the GOP's worst enemy about at least for 2024 about winning an election taking back the center or holding

on to the Senate in the house because he you know came very close to basically endorse Stacey Abrams over Brian Kemp in Georgia the other day because he's still mad at Kemp for not going along with his BS about the election being stolen, even though if if Trump were animated with concern about policy stuff, even authoritarian, you know, let's bring urbanism home to America policy stuff, he'd be talking about that. But he is so selfish and so self-absorbed that in the same way that he was kind of like Mitch McConnell's worst enemy about getting things done. He's now the Trumpy's worst enemy about getting things done. And I think that the Kagan essay kind of misses the clownishness and the contingency about this. And

basically my view from the beginning is that any theory that hinges on Donald Trump being a strategic thinker is flawed. And it doesn't mean that the whole theory has to be thrown away or that we shouldn't be concerned. And that's why I say Kagan is directional. right. But if you think Donald Trump is sitting there with, you know, spreadsheets and plans and calendars and grease boards thinking about how he's got this plan to re-sees power, when he wasn't able to do it the first time, then you're just investing way too much in him. It's, there's so much just sort of, let's see how the things unfold to all of this. And that's, it's a cause for some hope? And there's, there's just, I'll add a little tiny ray of hope on top of your, your optimism.

You do wonder if there comes a point where some Republicans look around and say, um, just exactly on the point that, that you're making there, Jonah. What is Donald Trump most concerned? As we, as we enter this crucial election year in a month. We're 13 months away from the 2022 midterms. As we enter this crucial election, you know, we're Republicans look to be able to take the House of Representatives, fight for the Senate, have a good outcome. Joe Biden is weak. Where is Donald Trump investing his time and effort?

And it's all about Trump and in particular punishing other Republicans. Right. So this guy isn't, he's not taking. the fight to Democrats at rallying behind the GOP flag for Kevin McCarthy and the we've all got to look forward crowd. It's all backward looking. And you wonder if at some point, some of these Republicans who are so afraid of Trump and who make every decision based on whether they can avoid an attack from Trump or scrutiny from Trump or being one of the Liz Cheney's and Adam Kinziger's and Anthony Gonzalez's who Trump publicly criticizes, publicly targets.

You wonder if at some point they go from that fear driving decision making to this realization. Trump isn't about the Republican part. Trump doesn't care about the things that you lay out, Jonah. You know, I mean, as you say, he is about Trump. And, you know, this, if it's an epiphany for these. folks, it's an epiphany that comes five years too late. This shouldn't be an epiphany. But you wonder if we're getting to the point where it becomes more and more obvious as their day-to-day job is focusing on Joe Biden and what Democrats are doing, spending, Afghanistan, and these things.

And Donald Trump's day-to-day rhetoric focuses on Donald Trump in 2020. Well, you know, watch watch far-right media. Watch right-wing media. Because I, you know, at some point I'm not, at some point I'm beginning to just basically be convinced. I'm not sure that Trump leads the base so much as he's writing the properly senses where the base is going and is sort of like that potentially apocryphal French Revolution quote, where are the people going? I'm their leader. I shall follow them. And that he's just very good at sensing where the base is and connecting with it. Which is why you won't talk about vaccines anymore. is because he can't get ahead of the

Exactly. He did his little focus group test. They booed vaccines. He's not going to talk about vaccines anymore. And so where is far right media going with this? Where are the bright parts? Where are the newsmaxes? Where are the talk radio hosts?

What are they doing? And that's where I think you're going to see a lot of the temperature because they're not really leading either. They're afraid of their own audiences as well. this thing is kind of taken on a life of its own at the grassroots and no i i agree with you that it's all about trump it's all about trump for right now i mean we just saw this arizona gubernatorial candidate with a picture of her waving a trump flag apparently in front of her house like this is her intro to the arizona gubernatorial race i mean this is a you know

cult of personality been really dangerous before but one thing that's one other thing that I would say is, you know, this point about them being relentless about punishing people like Liz Cheney, like just relentless. This is classic behavior for movements that are authoritarian. They go after the in-group dissenter with every bit as much, if not more vengeance, than they go after their political opponents. I mean, this is classic stuff. It's not, it's a sign of destabilization, not a sign of the weakness of the movement itself. well it's great to be able to end on such an optimistic note we can call this we can call this the optimism episode i try but david had to clutch drag it back down into the muck of probability

i think on balance we were more optimistic than than pessimistic thanks for joining us in this episode of the dispatch podcast we will include um all of the uh articles that we talked about in the show notes and we will look forward to having you join us on Friday and then again next Wednesday. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

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