The Dispatch Podcast - Donors and Grifters
Episode Date: July 14, 2023Sorry, Steve Hayes. Sarah, Jonah and Mike start with Ukraine’s request for cluster munitions and the state of NATO. Jonah cynically uses Steve's absence to flex his juvenile humor chops. Spanish win...e is wildly overrated. Then: -Pence campaign prognosis -A scavenger hunt to get on the debate stage -Ramaswamy's Mary Kay pyramid scheme -Sarah on Sesame Street -War of words and farting at RFK Jr. press dinner -GOP leads in midterm turnout -56% of voters think Biden took bribes -Not worth your time (?): Zuck vs. Musk cage match Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, and we've got Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren today to talk about all the things. I think we'll start with NATO and then we'll talk about the 2024 election as Republican primary candidates race to that debate finish line, the first debate, August 23rd. And we'll just check in with some of those campaigns. And on the other side, Joe Biden remains mired. It feels like.
in problems from his side, including Hunter Biden, whistleblowers, all of that.
Jonah wrote something really interesting that I want to press him about on that anyway.
Let's dive right in. Jonah, I want to start with NATO because I just thought we could be doing some level setting here.
there's so many headlines
can we just start with
what are cluster munitions? Why does anyone
care and why is that all I can read about
right now? So first
I have to ask you, do you ever
call
the brisket NATO?
You know what? His grandfather always calls him
NATO. I sense something.
I just, you know, NATO!
That's exactly right. So husband of the
Pod's father, so paternal grandfather
calls him NATO. Yeah. Okay.
All right. I call him Supreme
Allied Commander, because let's be honest, that's the role that a three-year-old plays in your life.
Pretty much. Pretty much. Okay, so, Quester Munitions, they can be fired from an artillery show
or they can be dropped, launch from a plane. There's basically any, it's a whole, it's a blanket
term for a whole bunch of different things. There's a technical word for the stuff that we're talking
about, which we don't need to know. And the, um, the gist is, is there basically, remember
Murves, the multi-headed nuclear weapons that turn into a bunch of different warheads,
these are sort of the kinetic version of that where one canister can be full of scores or even
hundreds of what they call submunitions and those explode. And they're very good for clearing out
trenches, clearing out, you know, for specific battlefield techniques. The problem, the reason why
they are so controversial is they have a failure rate or what people call a dud rate, which I think
is a misnomer. Because when you hear something's a dud, you think it's not going to go off,
and that's not the problem. The reality is that these submunitions can, if they don't go off
on impact, which is what they're supposed to do, they can lie basically fallow. They can lie in
the dirt. They can get washed away by rains. And even years, sometimes decades later, farmers can
go over them with a plow and blow up little kids because they look kind of cool. Not the kids,
but the munitions, they look kind of cool
and they'll pick them up and think
they're a toy or something to collect in
some countries when the kids
are scrapped collectors to begin with
and they can get maimed or die
and it's terrible and
the problem is that over
the years the dud rate on some of these
things was up to 40%.
So that's a lot
right and
Russia's which they've been using since the beginning
of the invasion
have a dud rate of between
30 and 40%.
The dud rate of the ones that we are giving
to Ukraine,
there's a debate. We say that
we're going to do everything we can to keep it
under 1 or 2%. New York
Times has some reporting that says it's like 14%.
It's controversial because they've been banned by over
100 countries. The British don't like
them. Most of the EU doesn't like them.
Most of the NATO members don't like them for good
and obvious and legitimate reasons.
The reason why I am
in favor of sending them to Ukraine,
is that Ukraine needs them, and they're asking to use them on their own soil.
They have every incentive to use them sparingly, discriminately, and with an eye towards what
the aftermath will be like, because they're planning on this being their homeland.
And the Russians, meanwhile, been using them from the get-go.
Their dud rate is a feature, not a bug, because they've been targeting civilians from the beginning.
They've been lost in cluster munitions at hospitals and playgrounds, and they want to kill civilians because they've been trying to entreat the popular will or support for the war.
And so I just don't think it's a morally equivalent thing where I do think the Biden administration deserves criticism and then I'll stop.
It's on two fronts.
One is they said at the beginning of the war under no circumstances would they send these things.
And now they're sending them.
Don't draw red lines if you don't, if you aren't going to keep your red lines.
And I wouldn't have drawn the red line.
I just would have said, we're going to take things in a case-by-case basis.
We'd rather not, but let's see what comes down the pie.
We're not going to deal on hypotheticals, something like that.
Two, there are some military analysts who say, and I have no reason to doubt them,
that one of the reasons why the Ukrainians need cluster munitions is because we're not saying
them F-16s.
Like they could clear out these trenches by other means if we gave them the other means.
And so Biden said, you know, yesterday.
the NATO summit, you know, his big speech, our support will not waver, will not weaken,
whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Morally, I think that's true and he deserves a lot of credit for the support he's given,
but on the same time, the pattern has been from the beginning, the Ukrainians have to ask for,
it's like Nate negotiating for a cookie, right?
NATO negotiating for a cookie.
Can I have it?
No. Can I have it?
No.
Can I have it?
No.
Okay, you can have half.
Right?
And better.
I'm not saying that conversation this morning.
Yeah. So I just think if you, if you're going to will the ends, you should provide the means.
And rather, in some ways, what the U.S. is doing is a little cruel to Ukraine because it's dragging out the process as it does all this support piecemeal.
But other than that, I think it's kind of a no-brainer to send them. But I think it is an honorable and morally consistent position to disagree with me on this one.
Mike, domestically, this is not surprisingly turned into a somewhat partisan issue, but plenty of people.
speaking out against sending cluster munitions. It's become sort of an easy talking point.
Again, without any of Jonah's nuance or even, I think, understanding what really cluster munitions
are. What's your vibe within, for instance, the GOP? Is this just a knee-jerk? Biden says,
yes, we say no? Well, it's a weird situation because it's not actually strictly partisan.
In fact, it's a bit of a wedge issue in the Republican 2024 field. You
We've got people like Donald Trump, and now Rhonda Santis yesterday, kind of following Trump's lead, opposing Biden.
I would agree with you in a kind of knee-jerk reaction.
If Biden is doing it, it must be bad.
But it's, let me just read what, so Rhonda Santos was on Howie Carr's radio show, I believe, in Boston.
Yeah, that it plays in New Hampshire.
It's like your number one New Hampshire, early state radio show.
exactly reaching those primary voters uh ronda santis was and this is what he said i'm just going to read
what he said when he was asked about biden's decision um to send these he said i don't want to do
this ronda santis i don't want to do anything that's going to escalate this conflict i think
that right now you have an open-ended blank check there's no clear objective for victory and this
is kind of dragging on and on um he went on to say uh that he would not send cluster bombs if he
he were president of cluster munitions.
I think it runs, I think it probably runs a risk of escalation.
So there is a theme, and it's Vivek Ramoswamy, is another leader in this, you know, in this idea that escalation of the war is bad.
And escalation comes when America supports Ukraine.
I mean, none of this, you know, considers anything of what Jonah said about who started it.
or who started using cluster munitions, it doesn't take into account any of the moral
arguments that Ukraine has on its side.
And it's interesting that there are Republicans.
Mike Pence is one of them.
Nikki Haley is another who have taken a different position on this.
It's become this wedge issue.
But I'm struck by the way in which, again, the second place candidate for the Republican nomination,
Ronda Santos is following Trump's lead.
Trump is basically saying this is escalation, this is bad.
And I think we're at a moment here where the knee-jerk reaction from Republicans is to,
not just to oppose Biden and what he's doing, but to essentially follow Trump's lead
and take for lack of like, look, I don't want to say that they're taking Russia's side on this,
but they were effectively taking Russia's side and Russia's argument that any support for Ukraine
from the West and from the United States is an escalation.
I mean, I just find I find that remarkable for Republicans even in the post-Trump era
to be taking that position.
John, obviously, we're going to return to the Republican field and all of the wedge issues
such as they are.
But I want to stay on NATO a little bit longer because as they're meeting, a lot of the other conversation
has been centered around Sweden, joining NATO,
and sort of appeasing, cajoling Turkish President Erdogan
to get on board with that,
because it needs to be a unanimous vote.
I'm confused about Turkey being in NATO
before all of these other countries
that seem much more NATO-y than Turkey.
And I don't just mean location.
I mean vibes, I guess.
I mean, Turkey has been a NATO-prime.
now since Turkey became a NATO member. And Sweden isn't a member of NATO? I was a, I actually was
surprised by that. Yeah. So just for context, Turkey only has like a toe in Europe, right? It's only on
the stuff on the, the European side of the Bosphorus is Europe. The rest is Asia. And not that we
don't love Asians and not that Asians can't be in NATO, but, you know, it's awkward. So, I mean,
got to remember, so NATO is founded as a
anti-Soviet
thing, right? That's the whole point of it.
And Turkey was a good
anti-communist country.
It is much less of a good
anti-Russian country.
And that's
part of the problem. And Erdogan
is kind of smart. I don't
like him, but he's playing a good
historic Turkish role
of being the middleman between all
these different regions, taking his
Bakshish or whatever.
from the Russians, from the Ukrainians, from NATO, from the West, and leveraging his position
because he's got very significant strategic sway here in that there, I can't remember the name
of the treaty, but basically he's the one who can allow or not allow naval ships into the
Black Sea. And he's also the guy who can allow or not allow ships to leave the Black Sea.
and so it's that's that's a good that's good hand in international poker and um so on the
sweden side the swedes uh similar but not exact to the fins the fins i think it was as it was
actually a negotiated thing with the soviet union that's where we get the phrase finelanization right
it was like they finland could not be a member of nato during the cold war because that was
part of the deal from the Russians
to leave it alone. I'm pretty sure that's the history
of it. And so Finland had
a sort of studied arm
neutrality. Sweden came to its
arm neutrality much closer to what Switzerland
has by choice.
And one of the things you got to hand it
to the Swedes is
they're not milk-toasty kind
of Swedish chef guys.
They actually have a lot of good stuff
and they've trained
for it's a serious military.
And so it was just the Ukrainian invasion that said to the Swedes, all right, you know, it's sort of silly.
We're kind of using NATO as this de facto buffer.
It's not like NATO wouldn't come get our back if Russia invaded Finland and Sweden.
So we might as well join the party.
I don't understand.
I don't believe the cover stories about Erdogan's reasons for not wanting Sweden in all this time.
he claims it's all because Sweden
because of their whole moral superpower
human rights stuff has been
too kind to the Kurdish terrorists
and harbors them
and supports them. I
have always thought that was sort of a bit of a cover
story. I mean, not saying it's untrue. I just never
thought that was a whole story.
But
I don't know that this has been reported, but there's a lot
as fact, but there's a lot of conjecture that
basically Erdogan
said he tried to get
okay, you can have Sweden in if
you let us in the EU and that wasn't going to fly. So instead, he says, send us a bunch of really cool
jets. And I think that's what the deal is or will turn out to be. But there you have it.
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All right
And for the sake of time
Let's move on to the GOP field, Mike, because, I mean, what I've been watching every day at this point and having some PTSD memories of from 2016 is the race to meet the requirements for the debates.
The RNC set out very different requirements this year than this time in 2015.
But the big one is this 40,000 donor mark.
So you have to have 40,000 unique donors, 200 and 20.
different states. Now, you also have to have 1% and three polls. There's a few of the requirements,
but those seem to be easily met. The 40,000 is sort of your limiting reagent, if you will,
if for those who are in AP chemistry this year and listening to this podcast, that Venn diagram.
All six of you. Yeah. Maybe high. Maybe I. Six seems like a overestimation.
Including retired AP chemistry teachers. Oh, okay. Remember where you like suck the stuff out of the
middle of the penny and that, anyway. So, big announcement coming this week that Chris Christie made
that cutoff. So in terms of candidates that have said that they have made that debate cutoff now,
you have obviously Donald Trump has made it, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vevac Ramoswamy,
and Chris Christie. So who's left out? The big one, right, is Mike Pence. And I think that they
certainly are working to get there. They think they might or probably will get there. But you're
running out of time and you see other campaigns trying some interesting tactics. Mike, I thought
maybe you could explain what's going on in North Dakota. Yeah, I mean, Doug Bergam, the governor
of North Dakota, who is very wealthy because he sold a company in the late 90s, early 2000s
software company to Microsoft. You may have heard of them.
And so he comes into this race as not very well known governing a small state in what I lovingly say is flyover country.
And so he is, but he comes in with a lot of money.
And so he's got this scheme now where if you donate just $1, just $1, you can get a $20 gift card from the Bergam campaign, which is a great return on investment, I think.
you know, and it's essentially, it's a way right for the campaign to get as many donors from
as many states as possible. It does, it does kind of demonstrate the way in which, you know,
when you have a weak party structure that is trying to implement some kind of, some kind of
requirements, like you have all of these unintended consequences and like people will just
find whatever they, whatever ways they can to like meet these now, what's seen now very
arbitrary, you know, requirements and thresholds to meet. So Bergam is doing that.
Well, what's sort of fun is, so just for those doing the math at home, let's assume he has
5,000 unique donors right now. So he needs 35,000 and he would be doing a net loss of $19.
So the campaign is willing to spend $665,000 to get on that debate stage, which honestly is probably
well worth it compared to what will happen if you don't make the debate stage.
But I thought Asa Hutchison, the former Arkansas governor who has basically conceded,
he's not going to make the debate stage.
I thought he had a good point, which is, look, you're, by making this the hardest, you know,
category to fit into, you're really incentivizing people with robust small dollar programs,
which are generally going to favor candidates with more extreme rhetoric,
reaching a more slivery part of the Republican base.
Now, I think the R&C response to that would be, look, maybe if you're actually struggling
to get to 40,000 donors, that's exactly what it's going to incentivize.
Or you have the high return on investment, half a million dollars plan here.
But frankly, we're not going to have a nominee that doesn't have 40,000 unique donors.
So we're trying to show Republican primary voters a debate.
with real potential options.
The fact that gaming the system would make for some, you know,
negative externalities, like, well, then don't game the system.
I don't know.
Right.
I mean, look, I don't blame Doug Bergam for doing it.
I don't, you know, he's got to find a way.
And he, he more than, more than anybody, really, or more than some of the more well-known
candidates, needs to be on the debate stage if he's got any shot.
you know, he's probably going to have one shot, if he does get on the debate stage, to say something to take off.
I'm a little skeptical. He's going to be able to take advantage of that. But so, I mean, that's the place where we are right now.
I think, I think things are so much more precarious for Mike Pence. And I've been asking, I spent several days with him last week in Iowa.
Like, when are we going to find out how your second quarter fundraising went?
And I keep getting reminded, you know, he was only in for four weeks of the second quarter.
Really, when you round it down, it's three and a half weeks.
So just keep that in mind.
That kind of expectation setting seems like bad news for Mike Pence.
What happens to the Pence campaign if they don't make this debate?
Yeah, it's a good question.
they, I think you start to have to have some real serious conversations, you know, the kind of
conversations where, and maybe you could speak to this, Sarah, better than I can, I don't know
who initiates those conversations and I'm sure every campaign is different, you know, is that
is that something where the campaign manager says it? Is Mike Pence sort of self-aware enough
to understand it? So something Karen Pence brings them, I don't know, but you do have to
start having those conversations. But if he makes it, I mean, look, he's he's all over the media.
He's on CNN this week. He's doing everything he can, not issuing gift cards, but he's doing
everything he can to get people to pay attention to him. And maybe he does it. Maybe he pulls it out.
But I just think he's on a knife's edge at this point, which is kind of surprising. But this is the
regime that the RNC is set up. Presidential campaigns are all about expectations.
And I think part of the problem for the Pence campaign is if the only people who could meet this donor requirement are, let's be a little bit random about it, but Trump, DeSantis and Tim Scott, I think Pence would actually be an okay shape.
The problem is that you have, you know, Vivek Ramaswami making it, Chris Christie beating him to the 40,000 donor mark.
I think that puts the Pence campaign in a rough place in terms of what it looks like behind the scenes.
look, no matter who calls the meeting, there will be a meeting called if, again, I think you're
probably right that they probably make it for what it's worth. But if for some reason they didn't
or, and the debate metrics ratchet up for each debate. So if they don't make some future debate,
right? What happens is, you know, after that deadline passes, there's just a senior staff meeting called
without an agenda. And then everyone sits and stares at each other until someone says the thing.
So, for the first of all, couldn't we just have a different means of picking these debates?
Like, I think a scavenger hunt would be pretty awesome, right?
And it has to be the actual candidate.
And it used to be for like things they should know.
Like you have to get your Raygun t-shirt that says, you know, Iowa picks presidents and stuff.
And there can't be any like, no staffers.
Right.
Each candidate has to be on their own running around the Iowa State fairgrounds, you
know, figuring out where the handicapped parking is, all that kind of stuff. I think it would be
fantastic. The next clue is hidden in the, the butter cow. They have to break into the butter cow.
Can I write the riddles that the clues are? I would love to do that. But, Jonah, this has been a
struggle now the whole time. It was a struggle throughout 2015 and 16 for the RNC to come up with
things that people thought were fair. Obviously, the Carly campaign did not.
think that all of the debate criteria were fair back at that point this time around instead of
polling, which I think I have written the most math heavy operative memo in the history
of presidential campaigns to show statistically why it didn't make sense what the RNC's
metrics were last time. I'm going to spare everyone how that went. How many people do you think
read that memo all the way through? You did, Mike. You read that memo. You loved that memo.
I loved it.
I put it under my pillow at night.
Speaking of AP exams, I mean, it really was.
Look, if you have two months and you say you have to have eight polls in two months,
but six of the polls are in the first three weeks, that's not reasonable.
That was the short version.
But then I had to walk through like all the math for reporters who presumably failed math.
And that's why they became reporters.
Yeah, we don't know math.
We don't know.
I think it's just remarkable how you can turn something that you clearly have PTSD about
into making it sound like it's a fun anecdote.
I mean,
look, I mean, so like, you know that
there's that scene in Scarface
where Tony Montana is supposed to be helping the assassin
kill the guy who's going to speak at the UN.
And the guy, and the assassin wants to blow up the car
with kids in it. And Tony Montana's like, no kids. I told you, no
kids. We can't give kids. And the guy just keeps saying
stay on target. I'm going to do it. And then, so Tony
Montana shoots him in the face. And then he yells at it.
I'm saying, you stupid blank, look at you now.
That's how I feel about all of this, right?
The Republican Party, both parties, chose to democratize themselves into the, you know, it's like, get me my gelding knife.
And they chose to do this to themselves.
And now they've got this thing where they somehow think they have an obligation to be beholden to 40,000 small donors.
Like, who cares? I mean, as a statistical matter, 40,000 small donors is no more morally justified than one giant donor, right? Out of, out of a country of 32 million people, it's like nothing. And this is the kind of mess you get yourself into when you ride the populist tiger and you try to, you know, and then you're like at the last second, you're telling the
I got to turn its head and cough.
And they're like, it doesn't work that way.
And you have no idea how much time is taken up in these campaigns meeting arbitrary metrics that
don't actually help them win the nomination because they'll die if they don't meet this next
thing.
And so they have to each time be meeting the next, you know, a hurdle that's only three weeks away.
No presidential candidate left behind.
I mean, that's really what it is.
It's, you know.
But it doesn't actually help you reach the voters that you need to reach.
So you're basically running two campaigns, a debate campaign.
and a, I'm trying to win the nomination campaign
and depending on which campaign you're on
and how big you are,
that percentage can get really out of whack.
It's really codifying the onlineness,
the very online, two online problem with the Republican Party
to have so much of it,
you know, so much is contingent on small dollar donors.
I mean, a smoke-filled room,
I have to imagine, would not allow women.
They take Ramoswamy.
Well, hey, for similar reasons.
No, look, I mean, here's one way to think about it, right?
Everyone knows I don't want to have to do my primaries are terrible and should be gotten rid of things.
Smoke food room is a better thing.
But let's just say the party had a rule that said, unless you have held a federal or a major political office before, you cannot run for president.
in the Republican Party.
Now, people will complain about that, right?
It would have prevented Donald Trump from being able to run.
You could have a carve out for like former generals, right?
So the Eisenhower rule or whatever, but you still have primaries.
You just say these are the people who can run in them.
And like, that's a, if you're describing it on paper, if you're describing it
on the 19th century or the mid-20th century, they would say, that's a totally reasonable
rule for a party to have.
if you imagine if you tried to propose that kind of rule today like you know every jack wad on fox
and o'an and newsmax who in the back of their head is planning on running at some point to boost
their book sales would be a whoa whoa whoa whoa you're going to deny the voice of the american
be it's all canceling me right right like larry elder would take like a vietnamese monk
in vietnam would upend a jerry can of gasoline over himself and set himself like
blaze in the middle of LA. It's, and it's all nonsense, right? Like, the parties don't need to be
democratic. They need to be responsible, serious things, and they're not. All right, Jonah, now that
you've gotten that off your chest. Yeah. Are you surprised at who has made the debate cut off?
Is the Chris Christie thing meaningful in any way about where at least a chunk of the Republican
party is? If Chris Christie can meet a $40,000, you know, small donor threshold,
That's interesting to me.
Yeah, and this will circle back to our not worth your time point, but people like blood sports.
And I think that the problem that Pence has is the opposite problem that Christy is the benefit.
Christy's in a much better position than Pence because people want to see the guy on the stage, right?
They just like the idea of Christie throwing haymakers.
I guarantee you a significant portion of the people who are the small donors to Christy.
They're doing it as pay-per-view.
They're probably going to vote for Biden, but they just want to see them on the stage,
you know, throwing haymakers.
And like, I think Pence is a more honorable guy than I sometimes make them out to be.
I have profound disagreements with him.
But like, who says, you know, please pause the DVR.
I don't want to miss a second of this.
Let me go get some popcorn.
Pence is about to talk.
talk, right? That's just not a thing. He's not, he, he is this persona that is not entertaining
at all. It's a real throwback. And so you combine that with the sort of, that's a facet of his
lack of charisma in the, in the, in the, in the Viberian sense to begin with. He doesn't
have a lot of political charisma. He doesn't cause people to want to like take a, the raise banners
for him. And that's how you, that's, that's, that's the problem. Christy, I'm sure, I'm sure Pence has
potentially a lot more voters than Christy does right now. But Christy people want to,
they want to see them on the very special episode of Blossom or whatever. Mike,
what's more interesting to me than Christy making that debate cut off before Pence is Vivek Ramoswamy
making it before so many other Republican candidates. Can you explain? I mean, there's polls
where he's now in the number three slot. He's behind Trump and DeSantis. And here's a guy who
I don't think is running for president.
I don't know exactly why he's running.
There's rumors about, you know, Ohio Senate or just raising name ID or just, I didn't have a lot to do this summer.
And yet he's, I don't know how else.
Look, the catching fire thing, I think, annoys me a little because when we say he's in the number three slot, we're talking about 8%, which in a different Republican primary is still absolutely nothing.
but this is this primary, and you've got Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and the former vice president
and Chris Christie, all these real people, and this dude is beating them.
It's a national poll where he's where he's in the third slot.
So it doesn't matter.
Right.
Not saying it doesn't matter entirely because, well, Iowa and New Hampshire will be more
influenced than they like to believe by national polls.
and by sort of where the national mood is among Republicans.
But, I mean, look, I worked at CNN for four years.
I sat in the newsroom, and in the DC newsroom, there is a bank of TVs all around you.
You have a TV on your desk, and you have TVs all above you, and you cannot escape cable news while you're working at a cable news network.
And the TVs that were tuned to Fox News, for the past four years, I would see Vivek Ramoswami on my TV several times a week.
Dayside, I mean, I usually wasn't in the office for prime time, but he was on prime time a few times.
The guy, if you wanted to be a viable presidential candidate while having no.
business being a viable presidential candidate. He did it. And he has been sort of ubiquitous
and hard to ignore if you are a Fox News viewer. The question for me is actually in a place
like Iowa. Does it, does it stick? I'm skeptical, actually, that the schick that he has, which
he's been campaigning in Iowa. I mean, he's been appearing there. But for all that I just
said about Iowa voters being swayed by national polls. They also do, Republicans take it pretty
seriously and flash in the pan candidates don't always do well. They have to fit the state.
New Hampshire is maybe a little bit different. But at the end of the day, like Donald Trump is
that person, not Vivek Ramoswamy. So maybe there's some Herman Kane, you know, going on
here, a guy who's fun and interesting and he's been on cable news. He's been on Fox News,
I should say a lot, but eventually peaks at the risk of making a prediction. I don't know.
I don't see it. So, Sarah, can I ask you real quick? Do you have a problem with the sort of Mary Kay
K style pyramid scheme that Vivek is launching to raise money? Or are you in favor of, you know,
why should only the rich bundlers
get to be able to send their wives
as ambassadors to Chad
the people should be bundlers too
I mean where do you come down on this
okay so I'm so glad you asked
and you are going to be so sorry that you did
I did not take a position
I'm saying you're going to be sorry
because like this is now going to be the rest of the podcast
I'll check out now thanks
thanks for coming everyone
so what his campaign
has said is
that you will get basically a 10%
kickback
refund of anything you raise
for his campaign if you're a bundler.
So if you get your friend to put in
your code for $100, you're going to get
$10 back. And this has
gotten a lot of, I don't know,
eye rolls, anger,
chuckles from a whole lot
of people about the amwayness
of the whole thing. Here's the problem.
In 2007, I made my TV debut.
That's actually not true.
I was in a Sesame Street commercial when I was four years old singing the ABCs.
I really messed up around that M&LOP section.
That was tricky.
It remains tricky, frankly.
Yeah, but frankly, a safer environment to mess up the alphabet than Sesame Street, I cannot think of it.
Yeah, I was very famous around my very small town for several.
days. No, it ran for like years, actually, in Houston.
People just pull your side all the time go L-M-N-O-P.
Wait, do you want to know something awful? I didn't realize I'd messed it up until you just said it.
I'm not a speller. Yeah, the M-M-O-O-P part.
Okay, okay. So, 2008, fast forward. I'm a little bit older. My alphabet's no better. And I am
actually on ABC evening news there because the Mitt Romney campaign has the exact same
program. It's for students, so it's a little more limited than this one. But, you know,
it was novel at the time and the Romney campaign said, like, hey, look, these students want
to volunteer in campaigns. We can't really pay them to do that. But this is a way where they can
sort of make money as a paid volunteer in its own way. And it was it was heralded as, you know,
novel and clever at the time by most people. Mike, you were 50 years old at that point. I don't know if you
remember it. No, I was a college student. I remember. You were eligible for it. Well, so this is
actually then very funny. I did not take advantage of the program at all because at that point,
I was a law student and there were, you know, you couldn't get paid for work and all sorts of
other drama around that. It's how Elena Kagan and I sort of bonded when she was Dean because
then there were headlines about me being under academic investigation. It was, anyway,
it's a very fun part of my overall story, but not all that relevant to the rest of this. I think
that most people are reacting this way because of the type of candidate he is and not because
of the underlying program. There's no problem with that program. I mean, think about one of the
programs that I have said is probably the most effective thing I've seen for actual
turnout on the margin and voter persuasion. And that it's been on the left, but they've
paid volunteers to talk to their friends because we know that's the most effective. Door
knocking is pretty good, but like a stranger knocking on your door is only going to go so
far. Your friend who, you know, you knew from college and maybe haven't kept in great touch with,
reaching out as someone you actually know and trust and saying, hey, I'm voting for, you know,
Joe Biden and here's why. That was incredibly effective, it looks like, in the state of Georgia
where they kind of piloted this program. And that's not that different. Paying someone to text
their friends on their phone and showing like proof of texting. It's only slightly less annoying
than getting a call from your college friend to buy life insurance, you know. This is all kind
of the same thing. And it gets to this larger point that I've, I've been making.
for the last few years, which is, if you came of political age in the 90s or even early
aughts, you were told so much about the corruption of money in politics and that the like
rich candidate always wins. That's not true anymore. We reached a tipping point where the marginal
dollar is pretty useless to these campaigns. There's so much money that it's not predictive of who's
going to win. And so you're finding campaigns trying to come up with new ways to spend the
money. And some of those ways are incredibly ineffective. Some of them are going to be more
effective. So yeah, I don't blame the Vivek campaign, Ramaswamy campaign at all for this
idea because money isn't going to decide whether they win this thing. Yeah. So, I mean, just to tie
this to the previous conversation about NATO, no, to tie it to the previous conversation about
the rules for the debates. Part of the problem I have with this stuff is, again, it's creating
opportunities to hack a system that cares too much about populist widespread popular support,
right? So you have Bergam being told he needs 40,000 donors, so he's going to buy 40,000
donors, right? You have Vivek, who trying to basically create a financial structure
that incentivizes people to have a populist following of the guy, right? It's getting to cause
backwards a little bit and it reminds me a little bit of um so since we're taking out the way back
machines um i was the founding editor of national review online i was very interested in like web stuff
at the time right this is web 1.0 um maybe 1.1 and uh and i remember when mccain and i had friends
working on the mccain campaign had broke all records because again the records were like
three years old at the time this is the 2000
McCain campaign. The 2000 McCain campaign where he raised all of this money from online donations.
And everyone's like, oh my God, this is the future. This is amazing. What a brilliant campaign strategy.
And the thing that bothered me, and I will admit entirely out of resentment and envy, was that the guy who was the web, the web guru, right, for McCain website was getting all of these interviews about how brilliant he was.
was in designing the website and creating the website, you know, and the reality of it was
is that, and then he went on to have consulting stuff. And I don't remember the guy's name. And I'm
sure he's a wonderful human being. That's not my point. I was at the time an underpaid guy
founding this thing using duct tape, right, to keep the website up. And maybe having a really popular
candidate drives traffic to your website more than using something other than Helvetica.
in your design, right? This was like they made it sound like somehow you could just design a
website that would attract people from hither and non, like they would get a beam in their heads
like the people in close encounters who had to make it the devil's tower. Oh, it's a well-designed
website? I will go to it now. And that's sort of the problem I have with a lot of this stuff
is that it is getting the cause alley back. If you're a popular candidate, 40,000 is no big deal,
right? If you're a serious candidate, 40,000 is going to be no big deal.
by setting up these rules, though, you create all these opportunities for unsurious or
unviable candidates to hack it. And I'm just a simple rules for complex society kind of guy.
By the way, just really funny footnote to your website point. The amount of traffic that actually
comes to campaign websites, like someone types in Carly Fiorena for president.com or whatever
the iteration is, like zero, it's zero. It doesn't matter how good your website is.
People, and this is true across the board for websites, for those who don't work in any of those
type of industries, people come to your website by clicking on something else. Nobody's typing it
into the URL or even Googling it for that matter. It's just not really how it works.
Yeah, I mean, you can make a really great store who looks really pretty, but if it sells
warm kale, it's not going to do as well as the mediocre built store.
that sells ice cream, right?
That's sort of the point I make.
As Threads is proving.
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All right, let's move to the other side.
It's obviously not symmetrical.
There's not really an ongoing democratic primary.
And yet there's RFK Jr.
Bopping along, getting all sorts of headlines all the time.
It's kind of weird, Mike.
What's the, do you have any comparison for what this is?
No.
Although he's not.
exactly getting the kind of headlines you'd want.
All press is good press, Mike.
Yeah, I mean, there's a, should we talk about this New York Post story about the
bizarre?
Please start with the headline and then go read it word for word.
Do the whole thing.
Well, I actually read this out loud to my wife this morning.
Correct.
That is what every marriage should be doing right now.
Because it is, it is by far the funniest thing.
I got to pull it up here.
It's unreal.
The headline.
So to be fair, this is page six.
So really the kind of highest level of journalism you can get.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. press dinner explodes in war of words and farting.
I mean, you would think that the story could go nowhere from there.
It promises so much.
It promises so much.
It delivers in a way that I can't even believe.
The lead is fantastic.
Camelot, it ain't.
Page six regrets to report that a press dinner to boost Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign,
descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting Tuesday night.
The White House hopeful attended an affair at Tony's on the Upper East Side,
no doubt hoping to impress on the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate,
his worthiness to sit at the very same Oval Office desk once occupied by his late uncle,
but a shouting match over climate change broke out between two boisterous old men,
sending the evening down an extremely unfortunate path.
I'm just going to leave it there because...
No, no, I got to hear more.
I haven't read the piece.
You went home.
So, Johnny, you have a very much.
read that. Okay. All right. Well, I will continue then. Stop me when I need to stop. The gaseous exchange, to which page six. I can't believe you were going to stop before the gaseous exchange. How dare you, sir? It's called leave them wanting more, but I'll keep going. To which page six bore reluctant witness began after a guest asked Kennedy, founder of the ecological organization Waterkeeper Alliance, about the environment. And it seems that the mere inquiry was enough to set off apparently drunk gossip columnist, turned.
Flack, Doug Deckert, the host of the event, who became enraged and screamed at the top of his lungs,
the climate hoax.
Meanwhile, octogenarian art critic Anthony Hayden Guest, see, it gets better and better,
who appeared to have been sleeping happily for most of the dinner, was roused by the abrupt
rumpus.
Hayden guest suddenly opened his eyes and denounced his longtime pal, Decker, calling him a miserable
blob.
Shut up, implored Hayden guest, he explained.
Decker continued to scream wildly about the climate change scam while Hayden guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously effing insane and, quote, insignificant.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, a prospective president of the United States, watched calmly.
I'm going to, I'm going to do it.
Okay, the whole point is that the farting has to be intentional for this to be newsworthy.
Hold on, hold on.
We're getting there, Sarah.
Is the point that, like, climate change is driven by chaos, like, methane gas?
And so they're proving a point of what it's like to live in a climate of methane gas.
If only it were that high-minded, Sarah.
The post continues, here it seems, Deckert sends the need for a new rhetorical tack.
And let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, I'm farting.
I'm sorry, I broke.
there. I broke there. Steve Hayes is going to be so mad at us, you guys.
Go to Spain. This is what you get. When Steve is away, the Dispod plays. The room, which
included a handful of journalists as well as Kennedy's campaign manager, former rep Dennis Kucinich,
was stunned, seemingly unsure about whether Decker was farting at Hayden guest personally
or at the very notion of global warming.
I farted your general direction. Totally. All right. But regrettably, we may assure, this is page
six, we may assure readers that there was no room for doubt that the climate changed in the immediate
environs at the dinner tip.
All right.
I can't go.
I can't do it anymore.
I know that several of the writers and editors over there had to pull an all-nighter
to get that out.
And I just want to thank them for their service and let them know that it was worth it.
It's really why the post exists.
Absolutely.
So the story goes on, but I think you get the gist.
So look, do I think Robert F. Kennedy has a.
chance. No, but I don't know. I'm I'm one of these who seems to think Biden is underestimated.
Not only, obviously, he's going to win the Democratic nomination, but I think he's underestimated
in the general election for all of the legitimate concerns about Hunter Biden and his age
and the position that he is in terms of approval rating, things seem to be going okay and maybe
a little better than they were six months ago for Biden, and the sort of the S show going on
on the Republican side seems to only benefit him. So that's my view. There was an interesting
headline, Mike. I was wondering if you had dug into it at all to exactly this point of like,
okay, but like overall strength heading into a presidential election. And the headline for the New York
Times was about a recent study. And it said, GOP led in midterm turnout, a red flag for Democrats in
24, even though Democrats held the Senate and other key offices, Republican turnout was more
robust. And the party showed strength among women, Latinos, and rural voters. So what that means is
that Republicans might have had a smaller chunk of the overall electorate, but they were able
to turn out a higher percentage of their chunk, basically, which is a, it's interesting from
an enthusiasm standpoint. I think it goes to your question, Mike, about.
overall strength of Joe Biden.
Enthusiasm for Joe Biden, I don't think, is increased since 2022.
But it all comes down to like, yeah, but if the chunk is big enough, you can lower your
enthusiasm and even turn out and still win.
But I'm not sure you can lose young people, Latinos, women, I mean, well, it will certainly
help raise enthusiasm for Joe Biden if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
I mean, I think that's, I guess 2022 is sort of a reversion to the standard for midterm elections, which is Republicans.
Party out of power and Republicans.
And when it's both, it's like a double bounce on the trampoline.
Exactly.
And even then, I mean, structurally, there were problems for Republicans 2020, but even that was sort of underwhelming for them.
Look, I just, I think that the reason Joe Biden is president and the reason he's,
in a good position, not going, not guarantee, but in a good position to win re-election is the
Republican Party, right? I mean, like he is blessed by his opponents. And I mean, you can
even see the non-Trump candidate, the leading non-Trump candidate, Ronda Santis, is running
to the right of Donald Trump and in so many ways. And running more populist, do we think
that Ronda Santis is going to be a more popular general election?
candidate for Trump-style populism than Trump is?
Will that, you know, will that do anything to hurt Joe Biden in terms of those young people and women?
No, I think it all helps them.
So I do think at this point, Biden is a little underestimated, and we should be giving him.
I just think he's not as bad a position as his approval ratings, maybe.
suggest. I might disagree on this. I think first of all, we should say something about the
economy thing, right? The inflation news is very good news for the Biden administration. It means
nothing right now. But like if the trend that's if it's a straight line projection from the
trends of right now through 2024, I think Biden's in really good shape. Wages growing faster than
inflation. Inflation coming down. All that stuff is very good. Okay. Check that box. Where I kind of
disagree with you about this is, so in 2020, Biden has a huge popular vote win, but 44,000 votes
in three states, but for those with Wisconsin, Michigan someplace else, it would have been a tie in
the electoral college and gone to the house, which would have been fun, right? I mean,
just like, good time, company picnic, noodle salad, and everyone, we, you know, on their best
behavior. But so, you know, so Trump and in 2016,
it was what
68,000 votes
in five states
that decided
right?
Biden running as an incumbent
is underperforming
with everybody.
You have Cornell West
running who you could see
going nowhere
except insofar as
putting it out there.
Biden's a warmonger.
Biden's bad.
What has he done for you lately?
And
Robert F. Kennedy
is sort of doing the same thing
with a
constituency they need to be enthusiastic and then you combine that with the fact that he is
underwater he's lost all of his margins it just feels to me like the election is going to be a
lot tighter even if trump is is the nominee which i think might be part of the reason why
you're starting to get some of this more palpable agita about Biden running from certain
quarters because they're like, it's starting to dawn on some people like, man, this, this,
this horse, I don't know that it's going to get us across the desert, but we're already so far
into the desert, right? There's like that kind of vibe out there. So Jonah, we have been talking
offline about the role Hunter Biden is playing in the Joe Biden administration, his potential
reelection, all of that. And you were like, oh, I want to ask you questions about this
latest whistleblower thing.
But we've gone way too long.
And no.
And the DOJ charges him as an unregistered
foreign agent for China.
And I'm like, oh, that's so great.
The Jonah, you know, really wants to dive into this.
And then I read your piece, which is totally about it,
spot on and exactly what I was going to say.
And I'm like, F you, dude.
Just that's ridiculous.
So A, I do want you to explain your piece.
But I want to start this.
off by noting that there was a new poll in terms of whether this matters. Oh, nobody cares
about Hunter Biden. Fifty-six percent of voters agree Biden, quote, likely took bribes in office.
This is from a tip poll. And for those who are like, yeah, but what's tip? I haven't heard of them.
uh ibd tip is actually given an a plus rating by five 38 they called 81% of races correctly um yeah like
this is a really legit polling company that has found that 56% of americans think that the
sitting president who's running for re-election has taken bribes and a lot of that's going to be
around this sort of smoke hunter Biden whistleblower stuff um which again i think everything
you wrote, I would just sign my name to.
So explain what you wrote.
Explain yourself, Jonah Goldberg.
I won't get into the history of Watergate or any of that stuff.
Skip. Skip.
Yeah, look, I mean, people ask me, and I'm sure they ask you guys, you know, why aren't you
guys covering the Hunter Biden stuff more?
Why aren't you talking about this more?
Why isn't it in the morning to expect more?
Why aren't you outrage?
All that stuff.
And then they fart at us.
And then there's a, you know, I was going to mention Benjamin Franklin, one of his most
famous essays was titled Fart Proudly.
See, it's history.
We're talking about history here.
Do you hate Ben Franklin?
He's not my favorite.
Let's be real.
Yeah.
A lot of syphilis.
Anyway, so what was I going to say?
See, yeah, look.
Who cares?
And so, look, part of my reluctance to follow it is, is I don't trust any of the people
who are heavily invested in this on the public stage.
I think the Republicans constantly get out over their
skis, exaggerate what they have,
straight up
mislead.
The audience is so desperate
for developments to
unfold on their
timetable, like at cocktail hour
for Fox News or whatever,
that the incentive structure
for a lot of
pundits and
TV lawyers is to,
no offense, sir,
is to give people
more than the facts can provide,
and get people worked up and excited about this stuff.
And I also don't trust the Biden administration,
which I think has been sort of obfuscating,
condescending, misleading, stonewalling on all sorts of things.
I don't trust Hunter Biden's lawyer,
who says all sorts of crazy stuff that I'm waiting to see
if I'll actually say it in court.
And so the problem is that I think it's obvious.
I think when we talked about this a million times,
Hunter Biden's a corrupt dude, right?
And they're like, by almost any definition of corrupt, he's corrupt.
Morally corrupt, ethically corrupt,
financially corrupt, whatever, politically corrupt.
But there's no evidence yet that any of it has spread into that there's no concrete evidence
that Biden has done anything that people can actually identify with some serious concreteness.
And so this is just one of these sort of stories, much like the Valerie Plains.
I mean, there are lots of these things that happen where you're just like,
we're not going to know until this ends up in a court of law about.
some of this stuff and because and the wonderful things about courts of law and this is the real
reason why sarah like my pieces was his love lawyer of the judicial branch it was like a reverse
first kill all the lawyers or what the actual meaning of the kill all the lawyers point was yeah it was
good the thing about courts of law is that you're not allowed to lie in them and there are costs
to lying there are no costs to lying on shun annity show there are lots of benefits um and uh there's
no cost necessarily, there's no law, no penalty for lying from the White House press
room. And so I think there's a lot of shady stuff going on here. I do not understand
what a plausible explanation for all these shell corporations that apparently the Bidens have
created. It looks kind of skeevy. But at the same time, I don't trust any of the narrators.
I don't trust any of the facts. We've gotten all sorts of stories that have seemed like they
were bombshells that have fizzled over time.
And it feels a lot like the, in some ways, the Trump-Stone election stuff where Trump lied
all the time, but his lawyers didn't lie in court.
And that's sort of where I am.
Do you know the two people that I trust least about this?
One, Hunter Biden.
So every time that we have some text messages or email or whatever of Hunter Biden saying
that his dad is aware of something or part of something, I don't trust Hunter Biden.
Of course not.
Hunter Biden has lied about everything.
Why would he be telling the truth when his incentives are very much to pretend that his dad is involved so that he can shake down people for money?
So I don't trust Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden told the IRS that his West Coast hooker was his personal assistant.
We don't know that that's not true.
I mean, she could have been doing both.
Fair, fair.
But the person I now second least trust is this whistleblower in the sense that like, yep.
And let me back up.
Hunter might be telling the truth.
It's just that I don't trust him
because he lies so much
that like, who knows?
Same with this whistleblower.
Jonah, as you pointed out,
the indictment had been
under seal since November.
So the order of operations
is the guy gets indicted
for being an unregistered
for an agent.
Then he turns whistleblower
against Hunter Biden.
Again, could be telling the truth.
Let's be real.
Mobsters are more likely
to be witnesses to crimes.
And they're mobsters.
Like, that's how that's going to work oftentimes.
But your incentives are a little bit different than the nice old lady who was looking
out her window at the time in terms of how much I'm going to trust you without corroborating
evidence.
So just I 100% agree, Jonah, when all we're seeing is so-and-so said this and here's the email
or so-and-so told me this, it's just, it's not enough.
When I know that there's actual financial records of all of it.
of this that should be pretty easy to trace and that frankly the Department of Justice has been
looking into now for a really long time. So I'm confused about why it's taking quite that long
on the DOJ side, but there we are. So yeah, that's why we don't talk about it more because we don't
know. We're sorry. I don't know. Can I say very quickly that to just kind of... Is it I'm farting?
Is that what you want to say? No, it's not. It's not. It would not lie. The, just a like a peek behind the
curtain here in terms of like how mainstream media kind of is having to deal with bad actors
like this, just my experience. And I want to say to preface it that I do believe that there is
bias from mainstream reporters when it comes to, in this particular case, Joe Biden and
Hunter Biden, there's a sort of knee-jerk sense among particularly higher-ups to sort of
give the benefit of the doubt where that wouldn't be the case for, say, a Republican.
All of that saying, I used to have regular conversations with Rudy Giuliani in 2019.
Speaking of famous public farters.
Exactly.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
Go on.
In which he would berate me for not reporting on Burisma, Hunter Biden, all of the corruption going on between Joe Biden and Ukraine.
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I would just say, okay, Rudy, I hear you.
Give me the evidence.
Like, you say that there is all this evidence here.
I'm a reporter.
You're calling me, telling me to write the story.
So, so tell me, like, give me what you have.
And his response was always, you wouldn't report on it if I gave it to you anyway.
So, you wouldn't believe me if I showed you the picture of my supermodel girlfriend from Canada.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally that vibe. And so, look, I just think for sort of consumers, you just
remember, like a lot of reporters are asking questions like that. And you do have bad political
actors saying things. I mean, Rudy Giuliani was going on Steve Bannon's podcast or Fox or
wherever saying all kinds of the same stuff and saying, this is why the New York Times and the
Washington Post and CNN and all the rest are not covering this.
It's because they don't want to.
It just wasn't necessarily true.
We were asking for it.
We just, we didn't get it.
So that's my two cents on that.
All right.
We're moving to not worth your time, question mark.
There is a fight brewing, maybe, between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
And I think we can skip over the whys of this and all sorts of other pretty relevant
details and just get to the facts, which is that according to totally unreputable Google
searches, Mark Zuckerberg is 5-7 and maybe 154 pounds, and Elon Musk is like 511 or 6-2,
again, depending on your Google search and unreputable source, and probably a little over
200.
You've got, oh, no, sorry, they had them at 180 on one of these.
So, like, maybe there's only a 25-pound difference, but a height difference.
Maybe it's a little bit more.
you can look at some pictures of the two of them.
Zuck looks, you know, pretty cut at this point, all things considered.
Elon Musk looks a little blobby.
You also, though, have to factor in that a lot of,
it's become a bit of a roar shock test of a lot of people just disliking Musk
for reasons that have nothing to do with his fighting capability.
And I'm just curious how much time you and your friends have spent deciding who would
win in, and I want to be clear, this is MMA-style fighting between the two.
Octagon?
Yeah, so, like, we're not doing a boxing ring here.
Like, I think that that has weight connotation, you know, implications that, like, aren't
going to be present here necessarily.
Because the answer for me is, like, quite a bit.
Like, I didn't actually ask David French's permission to have this conversation,
but David and I spent a long time talking about this, just the two of us, just, you know,
what we do.
David and I disagree pretty profoundly.
I'm curious on what you guys think.
So the answer to your initial question is no,
my friends and I have not been discussing.
This isn't the Warren pillow talk as you're falling asleep.
Baby, how is your day?
Well, I spent a lot of time to keep up.
The dudes group chat spends a lot more time talking about,
you know, an issue that Mark Zuckerberg is very into,
smoking meats and grilling.
So, but if you're asking my opinion, I saw that recent photo of Zuck.
No, the cut photo, yeah.
You know, where he's got like an eight pack and he's got his trainers.
Like, I don't care about the height difference.
I'm taking Zuck in that fight, nine times out of ten.
Interesting.
So you think the little guy who is muscular beats a big dude?
Yes.
Okay.
Jonah?
Yeah. So I've talked about it a good deal. It's really, it's like, it's, it's interesting. It's either not at all or a lot, right? It depends on the person. Right. It's not like, it's not like the submarine where everybody talked about it at least a little bit, right? I, you know, my understanding from my deep researches, which I've been to many of the same sites you apparently have been to, Sarah.
is that Zuckerberg is legit into jiu-jitsu, is that it, right?
And, um, and Musk said he basically took some karate and judo lessons when he was a kid.
And so, uh, all things being equal, I think you, you generally bet on the bigger guy, right?
If they're in reasonably equal health, you bet on the bigger guy just so they have bare reach.
They're, um, Musk is also, what, 10 years older?
Yeah. But if Zuckerberg actually knows
legit jiu-jitsu or I think it's
jujitsu. Legit jujitsu, though, is the name of my
band. Well, no, like, I know people who
have taken real jiu-jitsu and like if you're actually getting belts
and doing all that kind of stuff, I think Zuck cleans
Musk's clock. Do you know the Vegas line is the other way?
Is it really? Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not Musk. I'm sorry.
Zuck. Yeah, I mean, the Vegas line is favoring Musk.
And I think it's interesting that all of my friends think
that Zuck takes this
and I just wonder whether the like
political valence of not liking Musk
is just clouding people's judgment. I don't know, Mike.
No, but listen to this. It's not jujitsu.
It's Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is a particular
discipline. Oh, well, that changes everything.
Maybe the Vegas line doesn't know about that.
Excuse me. Listen to this.
From May 9th,
2023, META CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, won two medals
in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament held out
a Silicon Valley High School Saturday.
Okay, so case closed, Sarah.
So, but like what I think is sort of interesting about all this is the absolute zero sympathy anybody has for either of them in the sense that like, look, a lot of hard scrabble guys coming up on the wrong side of the streets.
They have to become boxers to keep their grandma from getting evicted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
power of one, that book about the South
African. Yeah, exactly. You know,
it's, or like Cinderella, man, I got to get
the electricity turned back on to my depression era
home, you know, and that's why I have taken to
these, these fisticuffs.
Like, these guys have zero
reason to ever fight
anybody ever, right? They have
all the security they'll ever need.
When you think about evolutionarily, it's the whole point of
becoming wealthy, is to not
subject yourself to the potential of physical
violence. They can have like
Praetorian samurai. I mean, all these things
surrounding them, right? And so, like, it is purely the dumbest form of male ego involved here.
I mean, really just the crudest, they might as well just take an ice cream scoop and pull out
their lizard brains from each of them and just see who's is bigger because that's all this is
about. And I kind of have an Iraq, I ran Iraq Warf Kissinger vibe about this. I don't want anyone
to die. But, like, if they could both hospitalize each other, that would kind of
be for the best. It would maybe teach a lesson to all those other little boys out there who
are thinking of solving their problems with just fighting the dude, perhaps. Elon Musk at one
point responds, let's have a literal measuring contest. I have, and we can't. For their hands? For
their hands? It wasn't their hands, Mike. It wasn't their hands. Figuredly speaking, they wanted
to measure their Matt Gates. If we were to have an all-female despod, we would
spend the next 20 minutes talking about this, but I'm not going to wrap up, don't we?
We got to wrap up. We do. We do. But Steve is going to be like like frigging Darth Vader's
sensing a disruption in the forest any second now if you start going down that rabbit hole.
No, I just want to be clear. That makes no sense. You guys, and I mean males, have been doing
this forever. And again, there is no correlation between that and anything else. Certainly not
your procreative abilities, the likelihood of your children surviving to adulthood. Like,
Nothing. Why are you measuring that? Why is that the benchmark? I don't know. Why? And no one can, I don't want
you all to answer that question for me. I want to leave it hanging out there. The next time you're
on the remnant, we'll figure out a way to, we'll figure out a way to talk about this.
I'm Homer Simpsoning back into the hedge. And that's where we're going to leave it, listeners,
because I hope that y'all appreciate what happens when Steve Hayes has gone. I think,
these are some of our best quality
podcasts if you are judging
quality by number of
uses of the word fart per
hour. Unquestionably
highest. Highest quality that you can
get. Couldn't go fart,
ther. Couldn't.
Thank you, Jonah.
And
we'll see if we have jobs next week.
So, yeah, become a member of the dispatch
and tell Steve that this
is the content you've been waiting for.
And just don't, or maybe just
tell Steve this happened. Motif we tell him that we just didn't do one this one. Yeah, I think he's
going to listen to it. That's the problem. Maybe not. We'll find out because if he doesn't say anything,
we know he didn't listen. For sure. And then that'll be great because then we'll be able to call him
on not listening to the content when he's gone. Yeah, just to make sure to test this, Spanish wine is
wildly overrated. Okay, so now we'll know whether he listened to it or not. Bye, everyone.
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough whopper.
I fart in your general direction.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
Thank you.