The Dispatch Podcast - Economy Contracts, Manchin Makes a Deal

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David are back to discuss big pieces of legislation coming down the pipeline. Will the Inflation Reduction Act find footing in the House? The White House’s stretched definition of a recession is digging the administration into a deeper hole of messaging problems. Plus, Is President Biden gunning for another term in 2024, and are ordinary Democrats distancing themselves from his leadership?   Show Notes: -The Dispatch: Who Decides What a Recession Is? -G-File: Merrick Garland’s Playing It Right -The Current: The CHIPS Act: Far From Perfect, but Still Very Good -The Dispatch: Dem Campaign Chiefs Tell Different Stories on GOP Primary Meddling Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by the Fab Four, Jonah, Steve, and David. That's actually three, but I'm the fourth. We've got plenty to talk about today. We have the new GDP numbers out. Is it a recession? Is it not? And right before those numbers were announced, a deal on the hill, Joe Manchin calling the White House to say he and Chuck Schumer have found a path forward. And we'll talk a bit about what Joe Biden's strategy is right now plenty, as I said, to munch on. Let's dive right in. Let's sort of go in chronological order here.

We had a huge announcement that there might be another pretty big piece of legislation coming down the pike? Yeah, pretty big deal. I think virtually everybody assumed that the build back better Joe Biden domestic policy proposals were dead. Joe Manchin seemed to be uninterested. He did say that he was still open to talking, that he was still having conversations, but virtually nobody believed him. He earned the score of Democrats in the Senate. They were sort of openly criticizing him. Progressive activists were going And after him, very, very few Democrats like Joe Manchin over the past couple weeks. And then all of a sudden, in what seems to be a Chuck Schumer broken promise, Joe Manchin

and Schumer announced this big package that they are calling an inflation reduction package, I think, somewhat questionably, yesterday. And Democrats celebrated, Republicans were angry. Part of the reason Republicans were angry is because you had, I think, 17 Republicans who had agreed to vote for another bill. Republicans in the Senate had agreed for a vote for another bill, the Chips Act, which would help industry, help the United States, subsidized purchasing of chips. and Republicans agreed to that vote, I think on the assumption, promised that this billed back better, these new spending packages weren't going to happen, and then they happened anyway. This is not Republicans are eager to point out to you the first time Chuck Schumer has gone back on his word.

He did this at the very beginning of the Trump administration on several Trump cabinet secretaries who were supposed to pass by voice vote, and then Schumer allowed objections, which I think really helped sort of poison relations, even at a time when relations were already contentious. So this is a big package, it's a big change, Republicans are angry, Democrats seem happy. Democrats don't have a huge margin in the House, so there's some, I think there is still some suspense as to whether it will pass the House, but I think there are reasons for Democrats to be optimistic this morning. about it.

Jonah, just substantively, you know, Larry Summers, who predicted that we would experience pretty high inflation, sort of no friend messaging-wise of the Biden administration a year ago, was part of convincing Joe Manchin that this actually, at least wasn't going to increase inflation compared to the help that it would be to the economy overall. Substantively on the merits, is this bill good or bad? Yes. I think a lot of the climate stuff is problematic

insofar as even if we get all of the returns on it that we think that we're allegedly going to get the benefits in terms of the actual climate are decades out I don't think it's necessarily the right priorities right now it's much more of a political messaging thing even though they're real dollars attached the expanding Obamacare, all that

I mean I can't go full wonk. on it without looking at it more closely but i was on cnn last night with rocana and when he was talking about all the things it was going to do and how great it was going to be for everything and everyone for all time throughout humanity um i was skeptical and i remain skeptical um i think what is more sort of interesting to me is that this is basically proof that joe mansion is not just like the decisive factor in the senate but he really is at the center of american politics in a way that Joe Biden is not. Joe Manchin is more popular than, certainly in his own state, but also just more broadly.

Joe Manchin is more popular than Joe Biden. And, you know, liberals are saying that Manchin moved more towards Biden than Biden moved towards Manchin. I'm not sure that that's entirely true. I think this position's Manchin to remain the kingmaker in Democratic politics. And I think the mere fact that it's even called. the Inflation Reduction Act is a sign that Mansion is more in charge of the messaging on this thing than the Biden administration.

Yeah, so David, they called it the Inflation Reduction Act. And here's, this is an example I keep pointing to, but, you know, a year ago, a Democratic congressman said that we needed to forgive all student loan debt because it would help jumpstart the economy. And then two months ago, he said we need to forgive all student loan debt because it would help bring down inflation and cool down the economy. If you're pitching the exact same policy but saying it solves whatever the current political or substantive problem is, I don't believe you. You don't have credibility. This is the same bill from a year ago, but now they're calling it

an inflation reduction act. And, of course, it's announced, I mean hours before we get the new GDP numbers that show a 0.9 decrease, percentage decrease in GDP, which would be two quarters in a row of a GDP decrease, which colloquially has meant that it's a recession. It does not literally meet the definition of recession because there's like 50 other inputs, but it puts the White House in a sticky place. So, David, how sticky is the sticky place? Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about this, this White House is that he has so little popularity. I mean, so little popularity, in part for some good reasons, and in part for some bad reasons. So the good reasons, I think we've talked about

quite a bit on the podcast, beginning with the precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. And, you know, the fact of the matter is we tend to hold presidents accountable when there are recessions. And I'll just continue to use the definition of recession. I've been told for, you know, 53 years, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth. There are good reasons why Biden is really unpopular, but there are also, it's also interesting to me that if you actually go and look at his legislative record, he's been better than most recent presidents on signing legislation, actual legislation. So there was an infrastructure bill that Trump could never push across the finish line.

There was a compromised gun control bill that was the most significant gun control in decades. He's about to get a climate bill that I think is mixed. I sort of share Jonah's view on it. It's got some good parts. It's got some bad parts. I particularly like that there's some money in there to keep nuclear plants open. I've never figured out really understood the green hostility to nuclear power, which seems to be a great way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

He may well sign an Electoral Count Reform Act if the Democrats in Congress aren't absolute idiots. When you start to look at these slowly accumulating legislative wins, he's delivered some stuff. I mean, he's actually delivered some policy here, but it's being swamped. It's being swamped by the chaos in the world, and the more importantly, the crushing inflation at home.

And calling this the Inflation Reduction Act, when as near as I can tell, I mean, what's the justification for it? Rebates on electric cars? Well, also the corporate minimum tax, which allegedly is going to raise money that, again, I don't necessarily see the connective tissue to reducing inflation, but that's something that they're saying won't have some effect on inflation.

Right. I mean, the Fed is far more, it's going to be impacting inflation far more. But the naming, Sarah, I've long ago given up on the names of acts. I mean, the names are just messaging tools. That's all they are. I mean, the Electoral Account Reform Act is pretty accurate. But aside from that, it's all messaging.

It's just all messaging. Yes, Sarah, can I ask you a question about this messaging thing? A very loaded question? where I preface it with my own position and then turn it into a kind of a question. No, just more seriously, this, it's not a recession thing, right? Sort of it's the, it's not a tumor

of, you know, White House messaging. If they had just said, it seems to me if they just said, look, the standard definition is that this is what a recession is. So yeah, technically we're in a recession. They're not going to change people's minds about the state of their personal lives anyway

in their pocketbook issues. But by doing it this way, they actually got people to talk more about recessions and use the word recession more in headlines than they otherwise would. And it seems to me like this is a, just like the Inflation Reduction Act thing, this is a perfect example of how

when you think all of your problems are messaging problems, you actually make your messages worse. Am I missing something? So the Barbara Streisand effect on the definition of recession, I mean, the percentage of- Barbara Streisand effect?

I will. For Steve, can you explain who Barbara Streisand is and then what the effect is? Jonah proud for his Barbara Streisand knowledge. Hey, she canceled her subscription to the LA Times in protest when they picked me up as a columnist. You're damn right. I am proud of my Barberstrizan knowledge.

I'm going to get the actual underlying problem wrong, but like what in roughly the 80s? Barbara Streisand sues over libel. Nobody knew the thing, the underlying photos or whatever she was talking about. But the lawsuit got enormous headlines and then everyone knew about it, a thing that would have passed unnoticed. It's sort of interesting, too, because it's like, well, if you have been wronged at law and you actually want redress, you're saying you shouldn't go do that. But that's a whole other thing. We now just call it the Streisand effect, meaning you call attention to the very thing you didn't want people to pay attention to.

The recession thing is just so obvious. to me. But they've also had another problem here, which is there was polling recently about the first build back better infrastructure bill. And that basically nobody, including the vast majority of Democrats, don't know that it actually passed because Democrats were doing so much hemming and hawing and delaying and how bad it was and how it wasn't enough that nobody noticed when it actually happened. And so they think that Democrats just totally dropped the ball on it. I will be curious whether they fix that problem this time around because while I totally agree with you that most things aren't a messaging problem, like not only is this not a messaging problem, but most things are not a messaging problem. Sometimes there's a messaging problem and your own voters not knowing that you passed a major piece of bipartisan infrastructure legislation actually is a messaging problem and one that will be very easy for them to repeat this time.

The recession thing, though, was just hilariously dumb. The percentage of Americans who now know the definition of recession has surely ticked up by 20 points. So I should jump in and point out that we have a very good explainer from our intern Augustus Baird on the website, on the dispatch website, walking people through this debate and defining and explaining the back and forth. I think you're right. On the other hand, like, I mean, I think it was stupid for them to pick this fight. Janet Yellen was on Meet the Press this weekend and sort of signaled that this was where they were going. The White House had put out a paper last week, sort of trying to frame the terms of the coming discussion of a recession, I think, in anticipation of these bad numbers. I think they were going to get bad, but I don't, I think you're right about the strides and a fact.

I'm not sure this was a good messaging strategy. the, you know, the alternative is everybody uses the definition of recession that everybody's already used and declares that we're in a recession. I don't think that they're necessarily in a better place for having not had that argument. You're the president holding the recession bag. You're screwed on that front. But imagine if they put all this energy to pointing out that Europe's in a recession and that all these other countries are. So clearly, Joe Biden did not cause the recession instead of the definition of recession, which sort of implies that it is his fault if there is a recession. And to the David's point, I don't think it's

Joe Biden, like Joe Biden did not cause us recession or else we'd have to use Joe Biden to explain everything else that's going on, just like the move to the right that Western Europe's experiencing isn't Donald Trump. Right. So I think they're thinking, and I haven't talked to anybody there, so this is, I'll be clear that this is me speculating. What I think they're trying to do by having had the fight rather than just concede that two consecutive quarters of negative growth of the recession, which, by the way, many Biden top economic advisors have said in the past, they have used that sort of technical definition of recession, and they're now disputing their own previous characterization of it. But I think what they're trying to do is highlight the fact that this is a weird

economy, right? I mean, it's not good. People are not excited about it. There's a lot to be frustrated about. Inflation is crazy. But there are these things that are outliers. And Sarah, as you point out, you have people I would regard, you know, certainly I don't agree with them on everything, but people like Larry Summers, Jason Furman, the president, President Obama's former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, who I regard as intellectually honest, center-left economists, who have been critical of the administration on all this stuff, will point out these other things in the economy and say, well, you know, it is the case that that inflation is way too high, that they mishandled this, but look at these four things. And I imagine that the thinking

was, let's at least have a fight over the definition so that people recognize that there are these other inputs. At the end of the day, I don't think that that matters either. I'm just trying to explain their thinking. Ultimately, like, the president is, the president is president, two consecutive negative quarters of growth. And this was a bad report, probably worse than the top line number suggests. I mean, you had Powell, the Fed chairman Powell, say, we expected bad numbers. This is worse than we expected. He said that this morning. So it's a bad report. I just think there might be some at least thinking behind their strategy if I'm not convinced that their strategy is right. Look, I agree if the proposition, I just had a long talk with

Dave Bonson about this on the run of yesterday, I agree if the proposition is the White House has an argument to say that this is a weird economy, that this is sort of unprecedented coming out of COVID coming out, all of this kind of stuff, and that this does not look like your normal recession, and there's a lot more good stuff going on than during a normal recession, including near full employment. That's a perfectly legitimate argument to make. My only point is, is the second you say, you know, it's not a floor wax, it's a dessert topping. Totally. Everyone starts having an argument about it, and then they start doing this, incredibly tiresome media hypocrisy game.

This is how the AP described the recession in 1982. So now everyone's being a hypocrite. And they should just, it just seems to me if they're like, oh, man, we're going to eat it. They're going to call it a recession. So yeah. Okay, so this meets this one technical definition of recession. And then talk about how there's, but don't worry, right? I mean, it's very similar to sort of like the original arguments about whether like it was a pandemic.

Is it a pandemic? Is it a pandemic? what is a pandemic, yada, yada, yeah. And it's like, yeah, okay,

so this meets some technical definition of a recession. Bill Clinton could have just said, hey, look, it's, yes,

it meets this technical definition of a recession and that's fine, but look at all these other shiny things. And these guys just don't have that, those kind of messaging sophistication. No,

I agree, I agree. They made a semantic argument and a technical argument, the centerpiece of the spin on this, which I just think was just one more example of stupidity. I guess my only point is, would you rather be arguing about whether or not this is a recession, even if you're probably on the losing end of that argument,

or arguing about just how bad these numbers are, this report is? I mean, if you've got the Fed chairman saying, this is worse than I thought, and you've got these indications that the contraction is greater than people had anticipated, I'm guessing that their thought was, let's, I mean, they didn't, you know, we don't know how much they knew the specifics of these numbers, but we know that they knew the bad numbers were coming. Their thought was better to have a debate over whether we're in a recession or not than have been sort of concede the debate on the terms that this is awful in these numbers. The contraction is getting much, much worse.

And I think Bill Clinton could have said, whatever these fancy pants people in the belt way want to call this thing, what I know is people are hurting, right? And I feel your pain. And sort of like back when really Giuliani was sane and a good politician, when he was asking how many people died on 9-11, on the 9-11 attack, he just said, more than we could bear. And like, the subliminal messaging of having this technical argument where all the pointy heads get in and take their different points of view just makes Washington and the administration seem out of touch. Because nobody actually gives a rat's ass. about whether it's called a recession or not.

They care about their taxes, their gas prices are too high, their groceries are too high. And that's my point about the bad messaging of the White House, is they want to message how this is going to be talked about on Nicole Wallace's show at 5 o'clock, not how people are going to be talking about it in their living rooms around the country. It's a cable news, Twitter news cycle messaging strategy,

not an American messaging strategy. And it's particularly damaging because it's so symbolic of all the stupid other arguments we have about regular words now. So, you know, we're in this world where you can't even agree on what racism is anymore. It's not a recession. It just identifies as a recovery. Well, and the White House does have huge credibility problems because of, you know, what they said about inflation, right?

I mean, inflation was going to be transitory. They told us in Afghanistan that the Taliban weren't going to come back into control. I mean, they've made these claims again and again and again. So I think people look and say, I'm not going to necessarily trust their definition of inflation. Okay. So given that, let's do one more little moment on Joe Manchin because, David, I think you mentioned how low Joe Biden's approval numbers that Joe Manchin was actually more popular than Joe Biden. Maybe it was you, Jonah. And that's true.

But what I find interesting is when you get into those Joe Biden numbers, it's really with progress. that he is most unpopular. It's the Republicans, obviously, very unpopular. And then within the Democratic Party, it's progressive that he's not popular with. And I'm curious, I don't think that the recession affects progressives' thoughts of Joe Biden nearly as much as it affects that middle ground of Democrats, potentially. And it was also interesting to me that it came out that Joe Manchin had not talk to Joe Biden since the talks last fell apart. And then calls, you know, this week, like, hey, good news. Chuck and I figured this out, which fascinating, by the way, that the White House has not been talking to their swing vote, if you will, at all. And second, that they had

nothing to do with this actually coming together, that this is Chuck Schumer's win alone. And you combine that with progressives already being mad at the president. I'm not sure they're going to think this is some sort of. fixy thing. And then the recession, some sort of fixy thing, I don't know. I feel like this has actually been a bad week for Joe Biden. Yeah, I think it has been a bad week. I mean, the recession thing is just such an own goal.

I mean, it's just, you know, the stric end effect was such a perfect analogy. And by the way, I do want to say that I skipped my style guide earlier. I referred to Joe Manchin, Joe Manchin third of his name, Lord of this coal-soaked Hills, the man who's essentially running the United States of America now. But I think you hit on something

that's really interesting, Sarah, because earlier I said there are a number of actual bipartisan compromises and Biden came in and said, hey, look, I've been a senator forever, I can do bipartisan compromises. But time and again, you don't get the sense he was involved in them.

So, you know, you have the infrastructure bill. He wasn't, didn't seem to be the captain of that ship. He wasn't the captain of the ship on the, on the gun control compromise. He's definitely wasn't the captain of the ship on Electoral Count Reform Act. This one he seems to be informed about. So unlike, say, an Obama, who always put himself at the head of any sort of legislative initiative, it seems as if Biden is reacting to what coalitions of senators are doing. And it's the coalitions of senators who are driving the bus on these legislative reforms,

not the White House, which is a logical reason why he's not necessarily getting all the credit. But Steve, is this a, it'll be amazing what you can get done if you don't care who gets the credit. And so Joe Biden understands how the Senate works and is pushing this actually on. to Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin because he just wants to get it done? Or is this just really bad politics? Yeah, it's very interesting. I definitely think there's an inside out problem with the way that people think this will all play. Because in Washington, you can sense that Democrats have a spring in their step again. Everybody's happy. Elizabeth Warren is saying nice things about Joe Manchin. That doesn't happen very often. And there is this sense, I think you can detect it in some of the reporting,

too, that wow, this is a big win for Joe Biden. This brings back his domestic policy agenda. He's back on track. You know, that is not how it's going to be seen. I mean, I think I can understand why they took the strategy they took in terms of messaging. But I don't think at the end of the day, it's going to make a difference. I mean, people do care what they see and what they feel. And things are not going well.

They're certainly not improving. and they seem to be on a track to get worse. And we believe the reports this morning, accelerating decline. So I think it's not necessarily a good week for Joe Biden at all, but you're going to hear from a lot of people in Washington who say that it is a good week for Joe Biden. Can I call it quick audible on this? I know we're not supposed to talk about it,

but we weren't planning on talking about it. But the Griner proposed swap thing in Russia, I don't quite get it, and it sort of plays into this, because... Can you explain what? Yeah, so what's Greiner's first name? Brittany. Brittany, Brittany. So, WNBA star was arrested in Russia, allegedly for having, or I guess she has admitted

it, hash things in her, hash vape things in her luggage, and basically it's a you know, celebrity hostage taking by Putin's government. And Anthony Blankin revealed yesterday that in June, the United States offered to trade this really heinous arms dealer, nickname Merchant of Death. They made a bad Nick Cage movie. I know that's some people think that's a contradiction in terms about the guy's life. And in an attempt to swap for Griner and this guy's former Marine named Wheelan, who was arrested on alleged spying charges.

I'm willing to cut the Biden administration, lots of slack on this kind of stuff, because this is just like a no-win thing. It's a terrible situation. He didn't cause this, you know, and all that kind of stuff. I'm not sure it's the right decision, but the only reason I bring it up is that they're releasing, giving out word that they tried this and they never got a response from Russia. And I find the politics of that really fascinating because I don't think you get a lot of credit with anybody when you're trying to get an American hostage home by saying, at least we try.

I don't know that you get it from the progressives. I don't know. You're not going to get it. You know, that's not going to be the message on Fox and Friends. And it seems to me like it's underscore, it underscores this, this narrative of Biden being ineffectual. And I just, I honestly don't get what the thinking was, was this. this going to, like, add more pressure on the Putin regime to find out that, like, they're not returning our calls? I mean, I honestly, I just don't understand it. I think the chronology

and somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. I think CNN broke the story and explained that this was the offer from the Biden administration and had been the offer back in June. And Blinken sort of didn't actually confirm it, confirm it, but the administration acknowledged, in effect, yes, this is what happened. So I don't think the administration was out touting it as part of a bigger strategy. I think that to me, this raises a real substantive question about what he's doing. I mean, if you're willing to make these kinds of deals, and Victor about it's a very, very bad person, targeting Americans, that was the point of what he was doing with. Are you not incentivizing this kind of hostage taking?

Yeah, I agree with that. And make these swaps. I just think it feels to me, I mean, to go back to the comparison we've made before here, feels to me like Jimmy Carter, weak and in effect. Or Bo Bergdahl. I mean, there's all sorts of ways that could go south on them politically. I just don't get the strategy of it. I didn't, that's not the how I remembered is that CNN scooped it and then I may be admitted

it. But if you're right, that helps explain it. All right. One fact-checking note, because there will already be comments in the, comment section of people who didn't get this far, and I want to correct a falsehood I said about the Streisand effect. I said it was from the 80s. It wasn't, it's just that Barbara Streisand is from the 80s. It was actually 2003, that that lawsuit happened, which feels so late to me. And it was, it was a photographer. It was about privacy and her mansion. She wanted the photos

taken down. Mention, Mention. Mention. Yeah, that's blog. Yeah, that's blog. Yeah, isn't that weird? Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months.

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Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash Dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. So moving forward about Joe Biden making weird decisions, we were talking about this a little. Here's a quote that Joe Biden gave in his first Rose Garden address after his COVID recovery. When my predecessor got COVID, he had to get helicoptered to Walter Reed Medical Center. he was severely ill. Thankfully, he recovered. When I got COVID, I worked from upstairs. Now, without any context, that really sounds like he is cruising for a bruising from Donald Trump.

It just really wants to egg him on and get some reaction. Like, in context, I do think it was a little different. He was saying, you don't need to be president to get these tools for your defense. He was talking about, obviously, the vaccine, booster shots, home test, easy to use, effective treatments. We got through COVID with no fear. I got through it with no fear, a very mild discomfort because of these essential life-saving tools. And then was saying, you know, when President Trump got it much earlier, he got much more sick. And I didn't. Nevertheless, Steve, that's not how it was covered. It seems like he could have used any number of people or just not a real person. But he chose to use Donald Trump and say that Donald Trump got helicopter to Walter Reed and he worked upstairs.

in a suit, does this mean Joe Biden's running for president? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting because what makes me interested in this is that it's not an isolated incident. This is part of a pattern from Joe Biden, really in the past week. We talked about this a little bit on Dispatch Live on Tuesday night, and if you're listening to this podcast and you're not listening to Dispatch Live, you should become a member and join us for Dispatch Live every Tuesday, 8 o'clock, it was a fun and interesting discussion, I think.

Joe Biden has been picking fights with Donald Trump. He picked fights with him over law and order issues. He went after him a couple times, both in speeches and on Twitter for January 6th. He's going out of his way in the past week to tweak Donald Trump, I think seeking to provoke a response, which we can be pretty sure, is coming. Why is Joe Biden doing this? I mean, I guess I've been operating under the assumption after having had conversations with Democrats around town that Biden was not likely to run and that he was keeping open the possibility that he was going to run again because he didn't want to be treated as a lame duck president,

not because he was likely to run again. I mean, I think, you know, even Democrats in private moments will tell you that they get worried about Biden, that they don't see him as an effective leader, that they share the concerns of everybody when he gives a speech that he might end up down one of these verbal cul-de-sacques and not know where he is or why he was there. And many of them think he won't run for president. So I guess I was assuming that that was the case. This raises questions to me. Why is he picking these fights with Donald Trump? Is he seeking to elevate Donald Trump so that Donald Trump takes him on? There was a New York Times poll that shows that even with Joe Biden's approval ratings pretty low, he would beat Donald Trump

and a head-to-head, 44-41, I believe the numbers were. So does all this suggest that Joe Biden is, in fact, running for president? It wants a second term and we'll go. I would say maybe it does. The point, the problem, the concern I have is that it comes at the same time that we're hearing these stories about, or reading these reports about Merrick Garland supposedly expanding the investigation, into January 6th and related issues and asking questions about Donald Trump. Jonah had a really good chief file last night saying, of course, Merrick Garland is going to be asking

these questions, and that's correct. But if it's the case that the Justice Department is going to include Donald Trump, and I think given what we've heard from the January 6th committee witnesses, they will have to, it's really risky, it seems to me, for Joe Biden to seem to be picking more personal fights with Trump at this particular moment, whatever the potential political benefit. Sarah, can I ask you a question about that that we talked about sort of offline? I think would be interesting for people. What is the justice, what's your understanding of what the Justice Department would tell Joe Biden if the investigation were expanding to include Donald Trump and Trump's activities as it relates to January?

reached it. Nata. I think that the White House, it would not be outside of protocol for the Department of Justice to give the White House a 30-minute hour heads up before announcing an indictment. But even then, oftentimes the decision gets made that it's actually not in the White House's interest to have to say that they were given a heads up. And so just to not do that, you know, Obviously, the choice to prosecute a former president for the first time in U.S. history carries so much historical, political, all this other weight. I won't be surprised if that moment actually comes that there is a discussion within the Department of whether, in fact, that has to be a call made by the president himself and not by the Attorney General under sort of a unitary executive theory. I would say that absolutely that is a decision that Joe Biden as president needs to make, not merit guard. Garland. That being said, in terms of the investigation, nope, nope, nope, nope. I don't think

they're telling them anything. Of course, I've said I don't think they're actually doing anything unusual here aside from asking witnesses at this point questions about Donald Trump. But wait, can I press you on that? Yeah. So you think Joe Biden would have to be the one to make the call to investigate Donald Trump? No, no, to indict Donald Trump. To indict Donald Trump. To charge a former president with a crime for the first time in U.S. history, I think that call needs to be made by the president. Wow. I'm not sure that's right. I think that's an entirely defensible position, right? I mean, it's just such a what about if Trump were president? And his attorney general goes to Donald Trump and say, hey, you can tell us who to indict. So you know, you can't indict a sitting president. No, if Trump

were president and we were talking about, I mean, Donald Trump would probably like to indict a lot of his political opponents. Oh, oh, okay. So we're in the, yeah, guys. Got it. So can Donald Trump indict Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? So I think the Hillary Clinton example is interesting because it was his campaign opponent, Barack Obama, obviously, a former sitting president. Again, it's actually, there's nothing in the DOJ guidelines about this. Generally speaking, DOJ would not ask permission or even let the White House know about a pending indictment of anyone really, except where it has particular national security implications. Like if you're about to indict ministers in a foreign country and the president's about to go visit that country,

obviously you let the White House know. Again, there's no rule against it. It is actually both to protect the White House and to protect the integrity of the prosecutions. But when you're getting into such a, yeah, a sui generous historical thing, it's not, again, that the attorney general doesn't have the authority to do it. I just think it would be a mistake. I can easily imagine Biden not wanting to make that decision. Nobody wants to make that decision. Isn't that the decision, right? I mean, this is, I don't want to get into Carl Schmidt and bad Nazi philosophers, but the decision not to decide is also the decision. Because You know, if Garland says, we have enough to indict, I think we should indict, but I think

it's got to be your call. If Biden says, no, it's your call, it's really, he's making the call, right? I mean, there's sort of no way out of that box. Unless Garland goes in and says, we know something about Trump, and we're not going to tell you. I mean, like, it's got to be, I don't think there's a way the president of the United States can avoid making that decision, even if he's not making that decision. So the way, by the way, that I think it would get actually presented in a meeting with

the White House counsel and the president, I think this would be incredibly closely held. I think it would be the chief of staff, the White House, sorry, the chief of staff, the president and the White House counsel, and the attorney general. It would be, we have decided that we have sufficient evidence to indict the president. And we would move forward in any other case. However, we are coming to you to basically. you would not present it as a yes or no, you would say, do you give us the order to not do this? Right. I could see that much more realistically than Joe Biden saying, I approved the indictment

of the president, which then immediately turns us into Joe Biden versus Donald Trump more so than it would be. It will be that anyway. But again, I don't think we're anywhere close. It's going to be very clear. I don't think we're close. Like not even in the ballpark. That discussion isn't happening at DOJ, in my opinion, again, not with inside information. Okay, so, David, my theory is that Joe Biden is doing this, that it's a mistake, but that the taunting of Trump, the constantly bringing him up, is actually to go Trump into announcing before the midterms because Democrats believe that will help them. And you're already seeing some of that, you know, the House numbers have stayed about

the same. this point, the Senate numbers are slipping away from Republicans. You can argue that's a polling problem, that there shouldn't be that big a discrepancy. But frankly, the Senate candidates have more baggage. There's weirder choices. And it's a lot narrower margin. You know, if, for instance, J.D. Vance loses in Ohio to Tim Ryan and then Dr. Oz loses in Pennsylvania to Federman. There's basically no way for Republicans to take back the Senate. And if, Donald Trump gets in, the Democrats, I think, are thinking correctly, that it will help them a little bit on the margin. And so why not goad Donald Trump into announcing early so he can get

out there and just whack Joe Biden every night? I just think that's, again, like Democrats funding these getting involved in Republican primaries to fund people who want to overturn valid elections, be careful what you wish for. Goading Donald Trump into running for president didn't work out well for Barack Obama, wanting him to be the nominee didn't work out well for Hillary Clinton. And so here we go again. I don't think there's one thing subtle about this

in any way, shape, or form. Even if he's not goaded into running, they're trying to goad him into asserting himself more dramatically on the national stage because the bottom line is they want to run against Donald Trump. Well, I should modify that. They want to run against Donald Trump

and the weirdo candidates. So they're happy running against people with lots of secret sons, for example, but they're very, very happy to run against Donald Trump. And the reason why they're very, very happy to run against Donald Trump is they can look at the polling that says that Donald Trump's really unpopular, even Joe Biden, who is super unpopular, according to, you know, some of the best polling out there would still narrowly maybe eke out of victory over Donald Trump. So there's nothing. This is all about poking and provoking. Trying to get him into the race, I think that they would celebrate if he got into the race before the midterms.

I think the Democrats would look at that as a big W. Of course, we're sitting here, jumping up and down, yelling what's the Jonah phrase, banging our spoons on the high chair, with exactly that be careful what you wish for statement. But I do wonder if the Trump decision is the Trump decision, and now it's just a matter of timing.

And I can easily see the Democrats thinking that if it's just a matter of timing, from our perspective, now as sooner is better than later. But the decision, as I said, this is nothing subtle. It's all about getting Trump more prominent, more involved, because Democrats think that's better for them. Yeah, I agree. There's, there's, I mean, I'm sure you could find a, with an electron microscope, some molecules of subtlety somewhere. But, but the only thing that progressives like about Joe Biden, at least prior to this mansion thing, we'll see, you know, how that plays out.

But like, as of yesterday, the only thing that progressives like about Joe Biden is that Donald Trump hates, that he beat Donald Trump and that Donald Trump hates him and that when Biden makes fun of Donald Trump, they like it. And so the more you can have the crowding out of other issues, it doesn't have to be that they want him to run for 2024. I think you're right about using them as a foil for 2022. But it's also, it could also be in the back of Biden's mind, if I can define my existence as being the yin to Trump's yang, you know, that can bolster me as like the standard bear for the Democratic Party and scare away a bunch of potential challengers. But I think it's probably an all the above strategy for them because they just,

it's the only messaging that works for Biden within the Democratic Party at this point. So Joe Biden running for president in 2024. Boy, Steve, though, seeing a huge uptick in polling questions related to what the field looks like without Joe Biden in it. Now, we've been seeing that on the Republican side, but it actually is an open field. Treating the Democratic side like it's an open field is weird. Some of this comes after a New York, sorry, New Hampshire poll showed Pete Buttigieg ahead of Joe Biden with potential New Hampshire. primary voters. Now, I want to be clear, it was within the margin, and we're talking about the difference between 17 and 16 points. So not a runaway. But the fact that they're asking the

polling question, I don't. And that Joe Biden was at 16. And Joe, a sitting president was at 16 points with his own primary voters. Steve, I don't think that you're right in terms of what Joe Biden is thinking. But boy, are you right in terms of clearly what the party is thinking? What what pollsters? I mean, what operatives are thinking? They are planning for a world. I mean, the headlines in my inbox today, governors fuel 2024 chatter amidstration with Biden. I mean, it's every article that I'm seeing. And yet, I don't know. I mean, I still stand by my prediction that Joe Biden is the best the Democrats can do because if Joe Biden isn't the nominee, he has to decide whether to endorse his vice president or not,

who everyone believes will lose to any Republican nearly. And if not, that would cause kerfuffle. And then it would create an enormous Democratic primary where they all beat each other up. Last time, it pushed everyone really far to the left where they're all talking about defunding the police and just wild far left things in a primary, which isn't good for the Democrats.

And Joe Biden beat Donald Trump last time. On the other hand, if you've looked at Joe Biden's presidency, you might come to the other conclusion that he's not the most effective Democrat, and he's not, I mean, Democrats don't want to run, Republicans don't want to run, the majority of the country thinks he's doing a crummy job. He struggles virtually now virtually every time he speaks. There is some kind of a gaff or some kind of a pause. I think this was in evidence when he ran. It's pretty clear that it's gotten significantly worse over the course of his presidency. The economy is in tatters. He blew Afghanistan. I mean, I think there is a significant reason for Democrats not to want Joe Biden to run

for president. And you've seen this in the poll. The poll I mentioned really, the New York Times Sienna poll about a week and a half ago, majority Democrats didn't want him to run. People don't want the guy as president. I think the Pete Buttigieg poll in New Hampshire was interesting. Buttigieg, I think, had 17%, if I remember it correctly, and Biden had 16. It's slightly less interesting when you remember that Buttigieg came into virtual tie, came in second in New Hampshire when he ran, and lost by, I think, one point to Bernie Sanders. So he was popular up there.

It's a strange place, but he's not the president. I mean, New Hampshire is a wonderful, wonderful place. It is a mavericky, a maverickry place. Yes. Politically strange. I don't know. I feel like you can defend New Hampshire, colon, it's a strange place and without a lot of caveats,

which, by the way, brings to another topic, which is... But I love New Hampshire. I mean, I love New Hampshire. I'm not going to... I spent so much time in Iowa, New Hampshire, in South Carolina. I, because I lived up there, I expected to love New Hampshire the most

because I think it's just beautiful. And I got to say, walking away. Iowa raised my spirits every time I was there. It was just such a pleasant, happy, joyful place to be. New Hampshire, they seemed so deeply unhappy and cold all the time.

And South Carolina just had incredible food. Okay, but speaking of those three states, the Democrats, the DNC, is meeting to change their primary calendar, by the by. Iowa clearly isn't going to happen. There's just so many other states that Democrats can pick. Michigan, I think,

is probably leading in some respects of who the Democrats would pick for their Midwest region, early state. But it's sort of interesting because if you look at that northeast region, and they've said they're going to pick one state from each region, and they're looking at diversity in swing voters, right? They don't want to just have deep blue states because this is an opportunity for potential general election voters to meet the candidates as well during a primary. That northeast region, New Hampshire is still kind of their best bet. So I think New Hampshire may stay, which makes that poll actually. more important.

All right, David and Jonah, final thoughts on Biden 2024 or literally anything else that we've talked about so far? So, first of all, I just, it's transparently obvious to me that Biden is too old to be president again. And I mean that in the sense that there are, there may be, there are people who could be sworn in at the age of 82, which is what he would be in 2025, I believe. But it's just obvious. he's just, it, this is not a slight on him, it's not ageism or whatever.

I just, it's, and I think that's going to be so unbelievably obvious to voters as we move forward. It's so obvious in the polling. Um, and it's interesting, Sarah Longwell, um, from over in, uh, I guess, Republican Accountability Project, um, she did an interesting focus group that she writes about in the Atlantic. And she points out something that I hadn't really focused on, but like, one of the reasons why some people are turning on Trump is that he would be automatically a lame duck

president when elected. I mean, this assumes he would leave office voluntarily. But what's interesting is I'm trying to think and I just thought of this now, but like, when was the last time we had a presidential election between two candidates, both of whom would be lame ducks upon being elected? and I think you add that into the general exhaustion with the baby boomers running everything

and I think that I see Sarah heeing to the Google machine like Batman going down the secret pole into the bat cave um uh I think there's going to be a much stronger impulse towards a new, younger generation politics post 2022 that I think it's in the incentive of Ron DeSantis and a bunch of people on the Republican side and it's in the incentive of Pete Buttigieg

and a bunch of people on the Democratic side to play into and the media is going to eat it up and they'll figure out a less than cruel way to hype it. You know, one thing that I think about is... By the way, the answer actually is 1892 for those listening at home and we're like, Well, the only option is when Cleveland won his second term.

And yes. No. What? Cleveland was running against Harrison. There was no limit on. There was no limit. Oh, there was no amendment yet. Oh, David.

Oh, man. It doesn't come till FDR till post FDR. Post FDR. Wait, it just like swat down that dunk. Wow. I mean, it was a hard swat. How absurd are you, SWAT? Well done.

But nevertheless, Cleveland was running against that Harrison got the renomination from the Republican. There was a tradition about that kind of thing. There was a tradition. Okay. Anyway. Norms. At this point, I have to say it's hard for me to see Biden saying I'm not running. At the same time, it's also hard for me to see when he's that vulnerable, an ambitious Democrat, not challenging him, which is, I think, something that we don't talk enough about, which is there would be a primary challenge.

There will be a primary challenge, for sure. And so in many ways, that could be the better solution for the Democrats, because Kamala Harris doesn't challenge him. That would be shocking if the sitting vice president challenged the president who selected her. And that would be incredible. So maybe he runs. And if he runs, then I would see a primary challenger. And that primary challenger would have a very good chance, depending on who. it is. And that may be the way out for Democrats from this, this, this, this, this conundrum where

well, does Biden drop out and then endorse or not endorse his vice president? And if he endorses his vice president, does that put over the top? Somebody who can't beat the, can't beat the Republican. And, you know, look, it's still in all, it's still quite possible we end up with Biden Trump, the sequel. And the question that I have, if we have Biden-Trump the sequel, does somebody come in and Ross Perrault the thing? Because there will be incredible discontent, incredible discontent across the country with that as the race. And so that's the thing I think about if there was ever a time made for a charismatic, well-resourced third-party challenger to be Biden-Trump to see. I'm not going to put a likelihood thing on this. You guys can tell me that put the bong down, that's fine.

the solution to so many of our problems other than me winning Mega Million is Garland actually does and I agree with you Sarah, he doesn't have it, not even close to having it, does find something that's truly indictable for Trump. And in a grand bargain of statesmanship, Joe Biden offers Trump a pardon for everything, works with state AGs to get them to go along with it,

in exchange for not running again, And then Joe Biden said, I was elected to stop Donald Trump. I've done it twice now. I'm done. I'm going to play with my German shepherds and my grandkids. That would be the way to solve all of these problems. And I'm not saying it's likely, but I don't think it's zero possibility either. This is Mike Pence getting all the Republicans in a room and saying,

I actually am here to protect the country from another Donald Trump presidency. That's what I was doing on January 6th, not just, trying to become president myself because I thought that the current president was obviously going to get 25th Amendment did or impeached. And therefore, none of us are running for president we're going to get behind one person. What else is that? Oh, the Chief Justice stepping down so that Joe Biden gets another nomination to the Supreme Court. Or appoints himself. Yeah. I don't think so. But the fanfic version of this series has been lit. Okay. We're going to move to Not Worth Your Time, and I feel like we have a good one this week.

Donald Trump this week sent a letter through counsel to CNN, telling them to cease and desist their defamatory comments related to the quote-unquote big lie, citing the Mule movie, 2000 Mules movie. and it also had a preservation notice in anticipation of litigation. This got reported as, you know, Trump is going to sue CNN over the big lie for defamation. Why is this not worth your time? Because Donald Trump is definitely not going to sue CNN for defamation. Remember, he also sent a very similar letter to CNN, in fact, for calling itself a news organization.

He never filed that lawsuit. either. He did sue CNN in 2019 over an opinion piece about the Mueller probe. That was dismissed. Look, this isn't going to be a lawsuit. It's certainly not going to be a winning lawsuit. To the extent they file another lawsuit against CNN, my suggestion to you, CNN, is quit trying to have these cases dismissed. You're making a huge mistake. Go through discovery. It's worth the money at this point. Well said. Well said. Thank you, David. Thank you. Thank you. I'm wondering if there would be a time when one of these defamation defendants was in these performative defamation cases.

A well-resourced defamation defendant would say, okay, all right, here are my discovery requests, here are my document requests. Please turn over all emails, text messages, et cetera. But, of course, if you're their lawyer, you're saying, why would you do that? I know. But look, the demand letter, by the way, includes this. interesting line, speaking of what DOJ is going to have to overcome and some of their indictable ideas. In this instance, President Trump's comments are not lies. He subjectively believes that the results of the 2020 presidential election turned on fraudulent voting activity in several

key states. That's the George Costanza rule of law, right? But here's the other thing. If you're a news organization and you're well-resourced, Isn't this the greatest news gathering power you've ever had, the power of civil discovery, where you can actually compel the production of documents? Yes. That's why it's stunning that they got that case dismissed in 2019. By the way, someone to follow on Twitter,

Gabriel Mallor, he's a great legal Twitter poster, and the way he posted this letter said, Anyway, Law Geeks, if you're into self-harm, here's a link to the demand letter. And with that, Jonah, you have your mouth agape. Oh, I was just going to say, it's one of these things that just reminds my favorite TV lawyer is always Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons. And it reminds me of when Homer wants to sue the all-you-can-eat restaurant for not letting him eat all he could eat. And Lionel Hutz says, Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of false advertising since my sued against the film,

the never-ending story. Okay, I actually always did think that was a really weird name for that movie. I don't, I didn't quite get it. All right, thank you so much for joining us this week. And remember, like Steve said, if you want to join Dispatch Live on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m., you can become a member to do that. You actually see us on video, and it's pretty awkward. Or you can hop in the comments section by becoming a member.

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