The Dispatch Podcast - Exhausted American Summer

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss the state of the 2020 race as we kick off the first week of summer, and what the revelations in John Bolton's book mean for the president's administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. And we'll hear more from today's sponsor, ExpressVPN, in a little bit. Today, we'll take a deep dive into where the 2020 campaign stands here at the beginning of the summer. Head-to-head polls continue to see a drop in support for the president, but there hasn't been an equal uptick in enthusiasm for Joe Biden either. What does it mean? We'll see what the guys think. And then what the revelations in John Bolton's book mean for the Trump administration. And lastly, our conversation about sitcom characters turns out to be more just trolling Steve's cultural cluelessness. Let's dive right in.

You know, this week I want to have a broader discussion to start, a little like we do for our lives, where we just open with a big conversation and see where it takes us. Because I felt like this week, first of all, first week of summer, happy summer, everyone. This week had a lot of news, but I wasn't sure a lot of it had staying power, you know, like a lot of little news stories. So I want to have a broader discussion over where we find our social. here at the beginning of the summer. And maybe we'll do a check-in at the end of the summer as well and see how we feel. I want to start obviously with the campaign. Trump, Biden. John Thune,

senior Senate Republican, said this today. I think right now, obviously, Trump has a problem with the middle of the electorate, with independence, and they're the people who are going to decide a national election. I think he can win those back, but it will probably require not only a message that deals with substance and policy, but I think a message that conveys a perhaps different tone was his quote. The Economist Intelligence Unit, which is the Research and Analysis Division of the Economist, changed their outlook on the election, said that it had changed dramatically in recent months, quote, the odds have now shifted firmly in Mr. Biden's favor. And I want to mention one poll, although there are several that have come out today. The New York Times

see in a college poll is probably getting the most attention shows Biden leading Trump by 14 points 50 to 36 nationally. But perhaps what was more interesting diving in was that the vice president now has drawn even with Trump among male voters, white voters, people in middle age and older. And that includes a 39 point advantage with white college educated women, which was stunningly large to me for that gender gap. So, Steve, I want to start with you as we dive into this discussion. Why do we find ourselves here

at the beginning of the summer in this campaign? Is this the result of a weird 2020? Is this 2016 all over again? Is this Hillary Clinton all over again? Underestimating Trump's appeal? I don't think it's 2016 all over again. I think the issues are different.

I think we've had nearly four years of Donald Trump, I think Joe Biden is definitely not Hillary Clinton, you know, remains to be seen, obviously, if the outcome is like 2016. But it's certainly the case that as we look at the snapshot today, all of the polling that you point to, the national polling, now the swing state, the battleground state polling, moving heavily in favor of Joe Biden, some states that are not considered to be battlegrounds or haven't been to this point, are now looking to be competitive. Josh Kroshauer over at National Journal had a very good column today, so we're gathering all of this together and giving us a big picture look at this. And his conclusion, I think,

is the right one. If the election were held today, Joe Biden would win in a landslide. Now, the election isn't going to be held today, and there were times in the polling in 2016. when it looked like Hillary Clinton was the prohibitive favorite and the almost certain winner. So a lot can happen between now and November. And I hate to say it, I think a lot will happen between now and November. We have seen, I would say, the issue set shift away from Donald Trump's strengths in a considerable fashion over the past six months. You know, dealing with a crisis-like coronavirus, dealing with something like the George Floyd killing and the protests in the aftermath. These are not likely to be Donald Trump's strengths in any context. They require

things of a national leader that Donald Trump has really never shown, whether you're talking about sort of inspiration and motivation and bringing people together, empathy. And I think we're seeing him suffer because of that. Now, I think you can point to all sorts of other specific things that Trump has said, specific things that he's done, the coronavirus briefings, his missteps after, as the protest started, to explain why people are so down on him right now. And the final thing, I will say, is I do think there is this just, for a certain part of the electorate, this overwhelming sense of exhaustion. People are just so tired of all of this. And, you know, whether that will be enough to motivate people to go to the polls to try to change it remains to be seen. But I think

that is something that sort of looms on top of all of the very specific things that we've been discussing. Jonah, what do you make of the fact that John Thune hardly outspoken really on either camp? He's not Mitt Romney and he's not Josh Hawley. either. But him coming out today and saying there's a problem here. Well, it's probably too soon to tell. You know, just to be clear, Jonah did not know that I was going to say that. So you just like did that. That was some dad humor. So clever. Sarah, are you encouraging? You're really encouraging this. It was dad humor is right up my alley right now. Yeah. I'm a bit, I don't want to jump the Thune on this, but no, I, look, I think it's interesting. I think that, you know, Thune, as Steve knows,

because he once did this big profile of Thune when Thune thought he was going to be a major presidential contender that I think Thune cares more about the national political climate than a lot of typical senators do because he's got an eye, he's got an eye on greater ambitions and all that. But I think it's, you know, why he's doing this. It's not entirely clear to me. You know, maybe he's just trying to send a signal. Maybe he was like he lost at the Senate cafeteria of the game of not it as the one to float this to get sent a message to the White House. I mean, I think what's interesting is he mentions both the, you know, he needs a message that deals with substance and policy and a different tone.

You know, it was sort of like all of the above is a problem. Yeah, it's sort of like the old schick about. I first heard it from Harry Anderson about how he had George Washington's acts and he said, look, this is George Washington's original acts. Of course, the handle broke in the 1800s had to be replaced, and then just last year we had to replace the blade.

But in spirit, it's George Washington's acts, right? If we could just get Trump to change his tone, his message, his policies, his personality, it would be great, you know. Look, I mean, I largely agree with Steve, and as pundits, we all have to do the usual caveats. Polls are a snapshot and things change and yada, yada, yada. But usually when people say, look, polls are a snapshot, it's to say that things can change in one direction. When in reality, they can change in both directions.

Things could get worse for Donald Trump. And right now, this snapshot of the polls is a snapshot of a trend line going down. things have been getting worse for him for about six weeks, three months, whatever you want to talk about. And this is just the latest example of it. For all we know in another month, it could be worse. And there actually isn't that much time left. It's something like 18 weekends between now an election day,

and a bunch of them are going to be already taken up by other things. And the idea of placing all your bets on replacing George Washington's acts and all this strikes me as really ill-conceived, And the primary reason it seems to me why this is not 2016 is, or are there two reasons. One is Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. We've talked about that a bunch before. Hillary Clinton was much more unpopular than Joe Biden. Joe Biden is much more likable than Hillary Clinton.

The GOP and voters knew what they were going, or at least thought they knew where they're going to get from Hillary Clinton. And what they think they're going to get from Joe Biden is more boring and less threatening. And also, Donald Trump in 2016 was running as an outsider. He was running as a challenger to the status quo. He now defines the status quo, and people do not like the status quo. And so it's sort of like his, and I know he's trying, you know, to figure out ways to impose order on the country. But it's a very strange argument to say if simultaneously that Joe Biden is both a terrible, radical threat to the United States, and he's sleepy and boring.

Those two things don't go together. And it's also weird to say, if you vote for Joe Biden, you're going to have anarchy in the streets and violence and racial unrest when we have that right now, and he's the president of the United States, and he's not stopping it.

And so I just don't know that he has got, again, things can change, but if you were a betting person, you would be far smarter to bet right now that Joe Biden wins by 400 electoral votes, then Donald Trump wins by picking the lock of the electoral college, because it is almost going just by the numbers inconceivable to see how Donald Trump wins the popular vote outright this time around since his coalition has shrunked so much.

David Reuters headline poll of Americans approving of the way Donald Trump handled the pandemic at an all-time low, but when you dig into the numbers, it's still at 37 percent approved. So yes, that's the lowest it's been, but that 37%, I mean, this is your question because you've sung this song so many times. It's like it burned into my head. His floor is so high and it's 37%, I'd say. Yeah. I mean, I think we're getting close to that floor now. And I have an idea, and I'm going to throw it out there for the two statistical Nates, Nate Silver or Nate Cohn, whoever gets it first, Nate Cohn at the Upshot with New York Times, Nate Silver with 538.

Here's what I think might, here's the statistical number that I think might really determine this election. We'll call it the Flight 93 Index. Which side is more determined that the world will end if they lose? And I think the Flight 93 Index obviously favored Trump in 2016. There was a real sense. if you talk to conservatives of just existential dread at the prospects of Hillary Clinton presidency, I can remember having multiple, after I publicly said I wasn't going to support Donald Trump,

I can remember having multiple conversations with people in person to person face-to-face and near tears about how the nation will be over if Hillary Clinton wins. America will be over if Hillary Clinton wins. And I think on the left, while there was a strong disapproval of Donald Trump, there just wasn't a real sense he was going to win. Like there wasn't, yeah, in theory, they were afraid of what it would be like if Donald Trump was going to win, but he wasn't going to win. And now I just see a complete flip of that dynamic.

There are just not many people here in suburbia, where I am now, who are tearfully saying Joe Biden will destroy America. you just nobody can actually maintain that argument for any length of time but there's this sort of even though you know trump is up by 12 i mean a Biden is up by 14 points in the latest poll of the real RCP average is Biden up by 10 there was this really interesting tilma alberta peace and politico where he talked to a bunch of oh we're getting to that for sure yes he talked to African-American voters and they were still convinced Trump was going to win several of them thought Trump is going to win.

And so there's this complete flip of the angst and the anguish. And I think I've talked to a number of progressive voters who look at the RCP average of 10 points. And if anything, it has increased their anxiety because they think it can't possibly be real. And so I think that if you're looking at the Flight 93 index right now, it is off the charts on the left side of the spectrum. and not really registering that much on the right side, although some people are trying. Al Moller and the New Yorker was interviewed and he talked about why he'd moved from 2016

being anti-never-Trump, never-Hillary, to being reluctant Trump in 2020. And he said, because the option on the other side is increasingly unthinkable, I don't think that's going to fly at scale. I just don't think it will. Well, let's talk enthusiasm. Steve, this weekend we saw the rescheduled Tulsa rally on Saturday with much lower turnout

than the Trump campaign had set expectations at, at least. But it was also in the middle of a pandemic. It was also in Tulsa. And six of the advance staff had tested positive and had been announced, you know, in the day before. Do you think, to David's point, is there an enthusiasm gap, a flight 93 gap, a flight 93 gap, or is this just the moment that we're in of the pandemic and once you do hit Labor Day, then you're going to get something closer to the normal situation where both sides become very partisan. Enthusiasm increases on both sides and we go from there.

So there's an assumption built into your question and that it is... Usually there is. After Labor Day, things can possibly be normal, right? I mean, you maybe meant normal in the political sense, but I would be surprised if even after Labor Day, we see the kinds of rallies that Donald Trump used to hold, you know. And the enthusiasm, I think there is considerable enthusiasm still to this day among Donald Trump's core base. They're not going anywhere. They love the man, you know, the things that he said about their loyalty to him, I think, are true. and they will be showing up at rallies and considering continuing to boost him, I think, as long as he's in public life.

The question is softer Trump supporters, more reluctant Trump supporters. And we've seen both in the national polling and then also in some of the state polling a not insignificant falloff of support for Donald Trump among Republicans and among self-described conservatives. There were new numbers out today from the Marquette University Law Poll in Wisconsin, which is considered to be one of the better statewide polls, very good, usually very accurate. And Trump has seen pretty significantly erosion among Republicans. I think it was, I think it was 10 points. I should have it in front of me. I think it was 10 points among Republicans.

That's not small. He's seen similar fall off in his approval numbers. So I think that will continue to haunt him as we as we go forward, even if he can keep that hardcore base as fired up as they have been and I think always will be. Yeah, one quick point on that. The hardcore base, everyone, there's this very strange tendency of people to say, well, he's holding on to his base, he's holding on to his base, his base got him elected. Again, he lost the popular vote in 2016.

And my favorite data point from 2016 was a Pew poll in, I think, late September that found that 11% of Republicans who said they were voting for Trump also said they will be disappointed if Trump wins. And you can't... So the people who actually put him over the top

were not the base. The base was, you know, like the base. The thing that got him to the, across the finish line, were the reluctant Trump voters, the anti-Hillary voters, the Supreme Court voters, all of those kinds of people. And, you know, I went through the numbers pretty hard with Chris Starwell on my podcast the other day.

You know, Trump won the suburbs handily in 2016. He is like 20 points behind in the suburbs right now. He was way ahead on evangelical. He's still ahead, but it's getting tight. And he's losing big chunks of the coalition that he needs to run up big numbers on. just to recreate the coalition that he had in 2016, which lost the popular vote by two million votes. And it's just very difficult to see how he turns it all around

and after four years of people knowing what his presidency looks like and making their decisions about that to say, no, no, no, things will be. I know Jared said things are going to be calm and professional in his second term. But, like, who listens to Jared about this kind of stuff? David, for instance, the president has started maybe to answer, some of this, two days ago, after the Tulsa rally, he started tweeting again

about mail and ballots. Right. Rig 20-20 election, millions of mail and ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. It will be the scandal of our times. And today, Florida noted that Democrats have opened up a 300,000 person voter advantage over Republicans in vote-by-mail

enrollment. I mean, that's a must-win state. And he's set a the undermining the election part of the argument, which I understand, but he's certainly undermining the registering for absentee and mail-in ballots at all these states among his supporters. At the same time also, and I want you to address the mail-in ballots, but there's also a problem with the tech side of this. He relies very heavily on Facebook and Twitter to get to his supporters, and, you know, Facebook has removed Trump campaign political ads and posts in the last week. Twitter has started back up tagging his posts again.

you know, they've already spent $20 million on Facebook ads so far this year. So a lot of his, the outlets for his voters to vote is getting undermined by his message. And then you also have his ability to communicate with his voters, getting undermined by the medium. Yeah. You know, the mail-in balloting question is interesting because he can get as furious as he wants to get on Twitter about mail-in ballots. But these are 50 different state elections. So you're talking about states that have state rules regarding mail-in ballots that he does not control and to essentially condemn the use of mail-in ballots in many

of these states where mail-in ballots are going to tell the difference. I mean, he should be out there saying regardless of how he feels about mail-in ballots, get your mail-in ballots in all caps as much as he tweets out law and order in all caps. Because at least if he's tweeting out in all caps, get your mail-in ballots, people can actually do something about that. They can't do.

do one darn thing about an all-cap law and order tweet. So, yeah, I mean, this is a completely wrong message if you're actually trying to mobilize. And then on the Facebook thing, can I just raise a point of order about the Facebook metrics and all of that? So I didn't, I wasn't born yesterday when it comes to Facebook targeting and the alleged all. And we very much established how old you are. Very old. Yes, I was not born yesterday on anything, but I used to run digital advocacy for a very large conservative Christian legal organization. And we did an enormous amount of work on Facebook, targeting potential supporters, getting our message out, et cetera, et cetera.

And one of the things that you know when you get into that world is the gap between. what people can promise you that they're doing with all this micro-targeting versus what they're actually doing with all of this micro-targeting is immense. And Sarah, I'm sure you know this from your campaign experiences. The world is full of people

who will come in and promise you the moon on what they can accomplish through Facebook. But what often ends up happening is what they're really pretty good at doing is serving up content to people that are already with them. And so, you know, Brad Parscale sort of like generated this reputation. He's got this sort of, you know, social media death star.

But, I mean, what is it actually doing? What is it really accomplishing? I would submit that he has not gotten $20 million in return for his $20 million investment in the micro-targeting of Facebook. There's a lot of hocus pocus around there. There's a lot of snake oil around there. And it's been used to sell an awful lot of people who don't know much about social media on the power of social media. Can I add just one quick thing on this?

Yeah. Well, two things. One, there have now, David can give me the exact number, but there have been at least three Star Wars movies based on the creation of either the Death Star or Death Star Plus or Death Star alternative. And each movie is about how this turns out to be a really bad idea and they lose. Um, forget the fact that that a star is also supposed to be evil. Um, why you would pick this as like, you know, now behold our fully functional death star, where it's like ironically begging the gods to be clown you. And speaking of beclowning, Brad Parscale has never run a campaign before.

And, um, I understand that the Facebook, I, I'm not on Facebook. I don't look at Facebook. Um, but, um, I do get an enormous number of emails from the Trump. campaign. And every day I read them to my wife for a laugh. The president was just going over our list. And he was shocked to find out that you haven't signed up yet to meet him. He's really disappointed. Can we please tell him that you'll come? Right. And like, chances that Donald Trump wants Jonah Goldberg to come meet him, very low, very low. And there, I know other campaigns do that stuff, but it is not sophisticated. I don't see anything. And again, it's email. It's not Facebook.

but presumably he's in charge of all the digital things. If this is a sign of the sophistication of the campaign, Brad Parskell has sold an enormous amount of snake oil. And, you know, he's basically a web designer who conned a bunch of con men about all this kind of stuff. And I just, I find it all pretty laughable. One last quick thing on the, I want to go on to one of Jonah's earlier points. said it's possible that Trump will do better. It's also possible that Trump could potentially

do worse. And I do think that there is, especially in suburbia, the magic is just gone. Like the magic is just gone. And I, you know, I think the permission structure amongst casual Trump supporters is beginning to shift. And the other thing that I want to say is that in the real world, Trump's foremost ambassadors, the people who are like are super, super zealous about Trump, don't do him a lot of favors. You'll have, it is not unusual for people to say, why are the biggest Trump supporters such jerks online? And they're talking about their own Facebook feed. And they've adopted a lot of the persona of the man at the top, unsurprisingly. And I just don't think a lot of the base MAGA voters are all that, are that great community ambassadors for their movement.

Yeah. And to bring, just to bring this real quick back to your original question, Sarah, you know, I think the willingness of somebody like a John Thune to speak out in the way that he has is, is revealing for exactly the reasons that you raised it. elected Republicans in the Trump era are lagging indicators, right? They are not leading the followers and moving them away. They are reflecting what they're hearing from their constituents. We've seen over three and a half years that they're reluctant to say anything counter to the White House, anything that contradicts the Trump line, and the fact that you have more and more of them saying these kinds of things is, I think, interesting in its own right. There is a report today that John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, also in leadership in the Senate,

was asked about the administration's decision to end federal funding of these coronavirus testing sites. And Cornyn said, I think it's clear to all of us that with the uptick of cases now is not the time to retreat from our vigilance in testing. Well, you've had the President of the United States over the past five days, down talk testing in aggressive terms. I mean, you know, there was this back and forth where he said he wanted the testing to be slowed, picking up on a theme that he had, has continued over the course of the past several months. The White House corrected it, said, no, the president, of course he was kidding, he was kidding. And then the president comes out and says, I do not kid. I was serious.

You know, the fact that you have somebody like a John Corn and somebody like a John Thune, in Republican leadership in the Senate, speaking out about the president and his tone and his leadership and his decision-making, you know, one of my, somebody I talked to as a Republican strategist said to me the other day when I asked if he thought this, this, all of this combined with the Bolton book was a big moment. And he said, I don't believe in big moments anymore. So it may not be a big moment, but it feels different than some of the things we've seen before. Well, let's talk about Joe Biden for a second then. David, you referenced Tim Alberta's piece in Politico magazine.

He went to Gross Point outside of Detroit and met with a group of black voters there. And here's one paragraph from his piece. She stopped herself, quote, I'm going to vote. Trump's getting back in office either way, end quote. This was another recurring theme of my conversations, a fatalism about defeating Trump this fall. Not a single person I spoke with at the cookout told me they believed Biden would win. Another voter said, I'll vote for Biden, but it won't matter.

It's never going to matter who the president is. The cops are still going to pull me over in my Cadillac and ask me, how did you afford this car? Another, there's no excitement for Biden. Trump can get his people riled up. Biden can't. That's why there's all this talk of putting a black woman on the That's not going to help him win.

We talked about Trump for the last 20 minutes because this feels like it will be a referendum on Trump. But there is a problem if nobody thinks Trump will lose and Joe Biden can't get his voters to turn out in some of these states. And particularly African American voters, like the ones that are being quoted here. What can Biden do to turn this around, David? you know that's i'm no political scientist and i'm not one one hundred the political professional you are sarah so you tell me if you think that this statement is wrong fatalism is not good for turnout yeah so i you know i think a lot of it is uh winning or the perception of winning builds its own momentum and and there is still an enormous sense of shock and a half

hangover from 2016. I mean, quite literally, the larger, the Democratic Party and the left writ large did not intellectually grapple with the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency at all in the cycle until about 10.30 p.m. on election night. And when they grappled with it, it was grappling in the context of a sudden shock. And I think there is a lot of hangover from that. And then you you combine it with the pandemic, you combine it with the unrest in the cities, you combine it with this relentless drumbeat of examples of police brutality.

And you saw some of the polling numbers that Americans are sort of unhappier than they've been in a long time. And I don't know if it's so angry unhappy can mean mobilization, but despair unhappy strikes me as a different thing and I think that's one thing

that Biden's team has got to get a handle on but I do think if the polling lead persists setting aside the vice presidential candidate if the polling lead persists and it sort of

there's this slow emerging sense that wait a minute this could actually be real I think a lot of those dynamics will change but it is just way too early

and a whole lot of people have saw this movie before in 2016 And so, you know, as I said earlier, I talked to progressives all the time who are just absolutely terrified that none of this polling leave is real. And that was backed up by that article. Jonah, I talked to a Trump voter earlier this week and just asked the very basic question because I didn't feel like, you know, he confirmed his 200 judge today. And I was like, I don't think you're a judicial voter, you know, the border wall you care about, but like if he doesn't build the border wall. So, like, how distill for me your support for Donald Trump?

And this person said, thought about it for a second, said, he's an oppositional force to mitigate overwhelming liberal ideology. At least he's trying. The Biden team has not, I don't think has been defined yet in that way of why their supporters need Biden in office. And when we're looking at his vice presidential back and forth, Kamala Harris, Val Demings, you know, will that provide the definition? It's hard to see that at this moment.

And so then you get back to the fatalism point that David just made. So how does the Biden campaign create that motivating definition, you know, the oppositional force to mitigate overwhelming liberal ideology? Like that gets this voter out of bed. Yeah, I mean, so can we put a pin in your friend's explanation? because I'm with Ross staffed on this. I think Trump is actually a motivating force for galvanizing and catalyzing the left

and to be more resurgent than it has been in a generation. He is creating a 1968 moment. He is not deterring the ascendant ideology. He is inviting it. And he's forcing moderate and left-wing coalitions to overlook their differences, to unify, to overthrow.

Donald Trump. We wouldn't be having this rounds of iconoclasm and tumult if we didn't have Donald Trump in office. I think that that premise is flawed, but he believes it and I believe lots of people believe that. Look, I'm still, again, all the caveats, things can change, yada, yada, yada, yada. I'm very skeptical of this argument, right now at least, that Biden is running a bad campaign. You know, he's surging in polls while staying in his basement. And again, I'm sort of defending my own position here months ago. Before the pandemic, I said the smartest thing Biden could do is run a front porch campaign where he just doesn't show up anywhere because people like the idea of Biden more than they like Biden himself.

And he's raising a ton of money. Barack Obama headlined his fundraiser yesterday. So he's raising money. He's 14 points ahead in the latest, you know, pristine poll and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's improving on every front, letting and letting Donald Trump flounder alone in the limelight. And one of the greatest signs that I think this is a smart campaign, at least for right now, is that Donald Trump is begging Joe Biden to get out of the basement, right? They know that if it's a referendum on Trump, Trump is in trouble.

And Biden has... And asked for an additional debate, in fact. Yeah. And I mean, they might as well be like the guy from the warriors just going around going, Biden, come out to play, because I mean they just want to fight him and he won't come out. And it may be taught, I think in the future,

he has to come out, he has to engage, he has to have a campaign, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at least for now, whether it was, you know, happenstance by accident or intelligence, I don't know, because I don't have a lot of faith in his campaigns. They've stumbled into a smart position to be in.

And, and I'm also, I'm less convinced about this, this fatalism thing because, first of all, Barack Obama won in part because a lot of people wanted the first African American president. He had huge support from the African American vote. There were a lot of white suburbanites who liked the idea of voting for an African American. The Republicans were unpopular. But a big galvanizing force that got Donald Trump, that got Barack Obama elected was that he was not George W. Bush. And he fulfilled that on day one once he got elected. It was part of his mandate. Part of Donald

Trump's mandate was to be not Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He fulfilled that. I don't know that it is true that you don't, you can't energize your base by voting against Donald Trump rather than for Joe Biden. And, you know, time will tell on all of that. I think there is, I mean, the biggest danger for Joe Biden is that he goes out and he says something really goofy and weird. And it fits this sort of narrative like.

Al Gore exaggerations and all that kind of stuff, because while Donald Trump, I think, says as many, if not more goofy and weird things than Joe Biden does, they're priced into his personality in a way that people discard them. And we can still form an impression of Biden in a way you can't of Donald Trump. But I think voters just want to vote for normalcy. And the last point is we're going to get more COVID cases. How many, how bad it's going to be. I don't know. But if and when we do, it's not going to be primarily in New York and New Jersey, it's going to start being in places like Arizona and Texas. And there are going to be a bunch of people who are disproportionately in Trump's coalition, who are either going to get sick or know someone who's going to get sick

or see their businesses closed down. And all of the stuff about saying, this is all going to go away, we've got a control on this, we don't need to do testing, all these kinds of things. There's much more potential for downside for Trump and all of that than there is potential for upside. So I, you know, again, everything can change. But if you were a betting person, I just think it's, it's kind of obvious that the given where the trends are right now, it looks really, really good for Biden. Steve, I want to leave. Oh, I'm sorry. He has priced in on some gaffes, like dog face pony soldier. He's got, he's got some room to run on gaffes as well. Let's take a short break and hear

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so you can watch what you want on a personal device or on the big screen, wherever you are. If you visit my special link right now at ExpressVPN.com slash Freedom, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Support the show, watch what you want, and protect yourself with ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN.com slash freedom. Steve, I want to make sure we leave enough time to talk about John Bolton,

another part of perhaps Donald Trump's not good, very bad week so far. Is there anything that has been revealed in the book so far that you think will be compelling to voters? You know, that's interesting. I would say the thing that I think could have the most electoral impact is the way that the book undercuts Trump's claims on China. Trump is running as the China hawk. I am the tough guy. Joe Biden is weak. Look at all of these meetings he's had. He's clinked glasses with Gary Locke. I mean, you know, this is the way that Trump campaign has gone after. after Biden on China. And it appears to be a central part of their argument on Joe Biden.

Joe Biden represents the swamp. The swamp was soft on China. Therefore, Joe Biden is bad and shouldn't be elected. The thing that struck me as I read the book was the number of times, sort of the relentless reporting that John Bolton includes. Some of it from private meetings with Xi Jinping, but a lot of it, what has happened in public with Donald Trump and Chinese leadership that just suggests Donald Trump was a wimp on China. He had, he launched a big trade war on China. And he's used that to create the impression that he's otherwise been tough on China. And everything behind that carefully crafted facade and that single issue obsession, of Trump, trade and trade deficits, in every other way, at every other time, there are examples

of Trump caving to the Chinese, seeking their support, obsequious behavior again in both public and private. And I had forgotten, frankly, maybe because there's so many of these tweets, the nature of some of these tweets, you know, remember the controversy over ZTE and the president tweeted after a series of back and forth with Chinese leadership that he was not going to be as tough as he had planned to be because he didn't want China to lose jobs. There's a tweet out there saying that. There are so many of those kinds of tweets that even if you think that John Bolton is an unreliable narrator and can't be trusted, what he's compiled in his book

that's out there, I think undercuts pretty dramatically that. Now, people will say, you know, voters don't really vote on foreign policy issues and maybe that's not going to send people in droves to the voting booths on that specific issue and on Trump's claims. But if this is, in part a contest of attitudes and a contest of toughness. And Trump is going to be the guy who breaks Washington of this swampy fever. That's a hard argument to make just given what Bolton has laid out there. Well, so Robert O'Brien, Jonah, the president's national security advisor, just today, gave a speech in Arizona, a swing state for this election, where he equated the Chinese president. to Joseph Stalin and said that the miscalculation of China,

basically was the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s, also set to give speeches on China, Pompeo, Barr, FBI director Chris Ray. So they seem to be taking the Bolton book pretty seriously, if you look at it from that angle. And to give that speech in a swing state to me means they take it seriously electorally, not just in terms of how China may view it

or other foreign allies? Yeah, I think that the era of China hawkishness is here, and the only intelligent question is whether we're going to have smart hawkishness or dumb hawkishness. I've talked about that a bunch. I do think it's kind of interesting and a little troubling how, you know, I mean, I don't know what the context of Ray's remarks, but, you know, you've basically just described the entire leadership team

of the foreign policy establishment of this administration, all basically giving speeches to fit a political campaign agenda, which used to be considered a little iffy. And I don't, it just struck me about that. Where I disagree with, look, I think they're going to make a big deal about China. They're going to try to tag Joe Biden with China. And in that context, I think Steve is probably right that the stuff in the Bolton book will be useful fodder

for the Biden campaign to push back on, the narrative that the Trump campaign wants to put out there, at the end of the day, I think it'll probably be a draw because Biden's got a bad history with China. But I think that the political significance of the Bolton book is less about the China stuff, which will, it's hard for me to gauge what the salience of that with voters will be, because it depends so much on how the pandemic plays out. But rather it's just this thing where there are a lot of people who are looking for permission to not vote for Donald Trump. And that's, you know, again, I'm not part of the Lincoln Project. I don't tweet out their stuff. I don't, you know, all that kind of thing that's

their business. But their theory, I think, is a somewhat sound one, which is they're trying to convince loyal, lifelong Republicans and conservatives that it's okay to reject the binary choice thing. Doesn't mean you have to vote for Biden, but you're not a traitor to your tribe by not voting for Trump. And when you have John Bolton, he's a flawed human being in all sorts of ways, and we can recount that from the left and the right, for him to go out and say that he's not going to vote for Trump because he's unfit for office, I think that's the kind of thing that greases the skids just a little bit for some percentage of voters to say, okay, well, if John Bolton's not going to vote for the guy, if John Bolton thinks he's unfit, not to mention Mattis, all these other

people, maybe I can just sit this one out. And I think that's the real political damage that comes from this. David, there's also some legal shenanigans around the Bolton book, of course. ongoing questions about whether Bolton will be able to profit from his book in the D.C. courts right now. But what has struck me is that Bolton has been vilified now by both sides, really. The right has vilified him for publishing a tell-all about Trump. Fine. But you also have the left not embracing this really at all

because they feel like he had the opportunity to testify during the impeachment hearing, chose not to do so. And then when asked why he didn't sort of reveal some of this at a time, it would have mattered, his answer was, you know, I didn't want to help the Democrats either. Yeah. So what is it? As you look at the legal side, what does this say about future members of administrations who may want to raise their hand and say there's a problem? Yeah. So I really highly recommend Jack Goldsmith's piece on this in The Dispatch.com, where he talked about, although the judge in the case denied the injunction. that the Trump administration sought to prohibit distribution of the book, which is, I think, compelled by relevant case law.

He indicated that there might be some punitive action coming down the pike against Bolton for not either seeing the classified information review all the way through to the end or filing his own lawsuit to have a declaratory judgment rendered against the Trump administration, which would, of course, delayed publication considerably. And I think Jack raises some really good points about concern for free speech in this kind of punitive, this sword of Damocles that's hovering over Bolton's head right now. A classified information review should be a process that is undertaken promptly and expeditiously. It cannot be something that drags out for months and months.

It just cannot. But we're talking about information that is in the public interest from people who saw history happen in real time. And the idea that an administration can drag out an approval process for months and months is, I think, constitutionally, deeply problematic. So I do think that there's a real issue here for the people who come out of the Trump administration in the future. How long are they going to be dragged through this process? Although, Sarah, I have a sneaking suspicion that if, If Joe Biden wins, that the classified information review process will suddenly get extremely expeditious in granting people opportunities to write memoirs about the Trump administration.

You know, one thing that I, and I'm going to again recommend another piece at the dispatch.com, Steve's review of the Bolton book, because what I liked about it was that it didn't focus on the big bombshells, but more just the relentless drumbeat of incompetent. of ignorance. And look, we get that a businessman coming into the presidency isn't going to know a lot of things, maybe even not know that Britain is a nuclear power, for example. But is there the intellectual curiosity to learn? Are you a sponge? Are you soaking up this information? And a lot of what you heard was, the answer to that is no, decisively no. I look at the maddest statement and the Bolton book is sort of like the equivalent of a teaser and a trailer for the movie of the

Trump presidency, like the historical look back at the Trump presidency, from two sources that really you cannot pin down as inherently and convictionally anti-Trump. And I think that that one-two punch, Mattis, followed by Bolton, you know, there's nothing that is like the tipping point. It's all chipping away. And this is another chipping away, takes another brick out of the wall of his support. And I think it's done, I'm not going to say, it's more than marginal harm, all taken together. So, Sarah? Yeah. Since you're the actual person who works on campaigns and stuff, what Do you disagree with any of this stuff? I mean, you can't hide in your bunker while we mob Lafayette Square.

I tend to think that anyone who is considering voting for the president has to write off John Bolton, in part because of the tone that he took, that he's not a particularly reliable narrative. it helps that you have leadership from South Korea, for instance, saying that they dispute some of it as well, you know, not just people of his own administration. But it goes to my, like, big question that I have. John Bolton joins an administration that he knows the president doesn't agree with his view of the world and his view of foreign policy and his views as a national security advisor. But he goes in anyway, presumably to try to persuade, the president of his views or to make the difference where he can. And then he writes this book on the back end.

And I guess I'm left sort of wondering what the motivation is. What does he think he's accomplishing? Because I don't think it'll have huge electoral consequences, I guess. In part, because I don't think people vote on those issues. I think they do vote on coronavirus and Floyd and just an overall sense of, are we heading in the right direction? Am I, you know, is this all sort of out of control, status quo? all of those things that are far more amorphous

than, you know, does he know whether Britain's a nuclear power? But then I don't really understand what John Bolton's goal is. I mean, Steve, do you... But, like, that's not an impressive goal to me. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think he's perfectly open as a messenger to be attacked,

but that doesn't mean he's lying, you know? True. And... But it means he has a motivation to exactly, or put things in a context that would be most negative. Whereas I don't think Mattis, I don't think the way that Mattis has approached this has been that. But I feel like Bolton has invited himself to this, like, to being dismissed. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting, it's an interesting question. I think you're right that I think most people who are fans of the president

are not likely to read the book and therefore will not be persuaded by what's in it. So a little reporting um i i don't think it was as much vengeance as sort of we understand vengeance bolton had a lot of this book written when he left so that is interesting to me um yeah it reads like he went from you know meeting a stopped in the bathroom for five minutes and took no no notes, detailed, copious notes about what had just transpired, including things like so-and-so let off the meeting, so-and-so responded to this particular point, this particular way, so-and-so left early. The meeting ended at this exact—I mean, it is—it's possible he's got all that wrong.

It seems unlikely that he's got all that wrong. And many of his quotes read, like, direct quotes. which I think gives it this error of authority. I think the big, you know, the question that Jonah raises, I mean, to me, the biggest flaw in the book is related to what Jonah is saying. I mean, you know, we all knew who Donald Trump was more or less and what he believed when John Bolton went and worked for him. And Bolton is pretty clear in the telling of this story that he was, that he's ambitious,

that he wanted to either be National Security Advisor or Secretary of State, and he did want to take anything else. And he had a campaign. I think he may have even used the word campaign at one point to describe his efforts to get into the administration. So John Bolton is ambitious. We've known that about John Bolton for 20 years. What I found the biggest flaw or the weakness of the book is his revelation on the one hand. I mean, you could almost read the book. You could go in and pluck out sentences and, like, or highlight sentences and use a fluorescent yellow highlighter on the one hand and a fluorescent pink highlighter on the other. And two different stories will emerge.

The first is basically a prosecutorial brief. Donald Trump is crazy and he's bad for the country. And that's the case that John Bolton is making. The second, and there are times at which it's almost totally divorced from the first, is the United States should be much more hawkish in its foreign policy posture. And all of my advice to Donald Trump was to be more hawkish in the following ways. And you can imagine John Bolton writing that second part of the book, whether he had served John McCain or Mitt Romney or George W. Bush. The arguments are the same. These are things that John Bolton has believed in for

years. And he's making those arguments to Donald Trump. The problem for me is, is, as somebody who shares not all of Bolton's hawkish views, but a lot of them, just sort of generally speaking, how do you encourage somebody like Donald Trump, whom you think doesn't have good judgment on what he eats for lunch or what he's tweeted today or the people he's attacking to go bomb North Korea, a nuclear rogue state with an unstable leader who's publicly vowed vengeance in the United States. Like, there's this huge disconnect to me. If I were working in the Trump administration, I would imagine that I would have done everything I could to keep Donald Trump from doing some of those more aggressive, taking some of

those more aggressive policy steps. And the last thing, you know, there's a huge, a big chunk of the book, Bolton goes after Jim Mattis. He does not like Jim Mattis. And he's tough on Mattis. And he's tough on Mattis and that original set of national security advisors, that team Tillerson, McMaster, Mattis. He calls them derisively calls them the adults in the room and seems frustrated that they get such good press for trying to constrain Donald Trump. But if you read what John Bolton does throughout the book, he's very clearly trying to not constrain in some ways, but shape Donald's Trump thinking using, in many cases, the exact same techniques that the adults in the room were using. And, you know, with arguably more success in some ways than the adults in the

adults in the room. So it's never clear why it's really bad for Jim Mattis to act in the way that he did to constrain Donald Trump, who John Bolton is saying is crazy. But it's not, it's somehow okay for John Bolton to encourage this guy that he says is crazy to go do all this aggressive stuff. We'll give Steve the last word on this. Okay, but important final topic. And I think I'm going to start with David. David?

Yes. You are a liker of pop culture. Indeed. You watch a lot of television in one form or another. Which sitcom character of all time? I'm not going to limit it to any, particular time frame, which sitcom character do you most identify with? In all humility, I have to say that identify most with the lead character in the best comedy

series of all time. Arrested Development, Michael Bluth. And I love the thing that was so, it took me a while actually to really get the Jason Bateman role in that show as sort of of like the super flawed guy who's also like completely bemused at the absolute insanity of everyone else around him. And I just sort of felt like

if the conservative movement is the Bluth family, I feel like I might be in a Michael role of just constantly amazed at what I see. So that's my. short answer. All right, Jonah. Same question to you. So this is a very tough one for me.

And if I were going to follow true to this tradition in this podcast, I would re-ask, reframe the question and create a cocktail of various characters. Abed from community, Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza. And a little bit of a Trapper John. and from MASH. But if I have to pick one. Oh, and Dietrich from Barney Miller. But if I had to pick one character,

and I will concede I have a little Cliff Clavin in me. It's a very, very, very difficult one. And it's a weird one because the actual character was a sports writer, and I am not a sports guy, but I would say maybe Oscar Madison from the original odd couple. Ooh. Okay.

Or George Jefferson. I mean, there, that's kind of obvious. That's someone who knows, you know, that. Steve, I'm terrified to ask you this question because unlike David, like, I don't know that you're aware of any of the characters that have been mentioned so far.

I've heard of a couple of shows that you guys have talked about. Yeah, maybe I should just ask you to name a television show and that can... I mean, I watched Seinfeld semi-regularly. That's about it.

So which Seinfeld character do you identify with? That's a good question. Claylor? Elaine. In a weird way. No, I mean, the one that I came up with precisely because I'm so totally clueless is Jack Tripper on Three's Company because stuff is going on all around me and I have no idea what it is. So, to be clear, earlier today, when I was like, hey, guys, I think I'm going to ask this question.

And Steve was like, I don't, I know, know the TV. And I said, I don't know, Steve, like, didn't you watch Cheers or MASH? And he was horrified and said, what, you think I'm 16? years old like those shows weren't on and then he goes with three's company well here's the other so here's the other here's so i didn't really watch much three's company i just know that i just know that he's he was clueless right all sorts of stuff was happening around him and that wasn't the whole gag of the show like this guy didn't know it was going on so that's how i feel when you guys talk about stuff like this i don't know what's going on i don't know the characters i don't know the shows

I mean, just to defend the canon here a little bit, the character who really didn't know what was going on was Mr. Roper, the landlord, who was constantly listening in through the door and misunderstanding what was happening and thinking it was something else, which reminds me there was a joke in friends where Chandler one says,

oh, I really liked the episode of Three's Company when there was a really funny misunderstanding. And the point being, like literally every episode, with some misunderstanding, which makes me want to change from Oscar Madison to Chandler, because I think it's a little closer to it. Well, then maybe I'm Mr. Roper. It sounds more like I would be Mr. Roper than I thought that Jack Tripper was the clueless one. A little French family trivia.

I was not allowed to watch Three's Company growing up. Me neither. Because it featured men and women living together who were not married. So if you want, that would be a good, that would be a good. good future podcast. How, what shows, light topic, what shows were you not allowed to watch growing up, except we'd have to reserve it for the last 45 minutes of the podcast for me? Yeah. I mean, I was only allowed to watch PBS and I was watching Saved by the Bell one time and my mother was like, is this PBS? And I was like, yep. Nice. She figured that out pretty quickly. Well, we were not allowed to.

I was not allowed to watch Three's company, but not, I think they didn't, they really didn't. My parents really didn't like three's company because of because it was three's company um and it was you know racy humor but we my family was not allowed to watch tv on weekdays so we didn't watch any of this stuff at all um so that that i come to my cluelessness naturally see the funny thing about you not being allowed to watch three's company because it depicted men and women living together um who are unmarried is that that was sort of the premise of the show yeah and And Jack, Jack had to pretend he was gay, because that made it okay for him to live with women. Oh, yeah.

And the degree to which the new woke orthodoxy would find that show problematic is really kind of astounding. But maybe I'll do a dissertation on that someday. Well, my favorite moment of along those lines growing up was I had started liking cheers. And my dad said, okay, I've got to. watch this with you to see if it's okay. So he watched it, and it was the very first episode that Sam and Diane got together. Oh, no. And he laughed so hard all the way through. I mean, just busted a gut. And then at the very end, it goes, yeah, yeah, we're not watching that again. So I saw Blade Runner because I went to go see Diner with my dad at a young age

and about five, ten minutes into it, there was a sexually risque thing going on. And my dad was like, let's see what's playing next door. Took me out of the theater. And it was fine for me to see Blade Runner. but a diner was just too much. All right. Well, back to the original question. We'll see.

I mean, we can just exclude Steve from this game. Who will guess what mine is? Hey, nerds. Who's got two thumbs speaks limited French and has changed a bunch of diapers today, this moire. Well, obviously, Tina Fey from 30 Rock. Thank you. Yes, Liz Lemon, Liz Lemon.

who's sort of being self, who's sort of self-cancelling at the moment, but, you know, that's another reason. All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Listeners.

We will see you again next week. And definitely subscribe to the podcast. You don't miss an episode. And check out the dispatch.com, which David plugged several times. We have some other podcasts. We have lots of great articles. Steve even wrote one this week.

So that's big for us. Normally he just edits our stuff and puts in snarky comments. and Joan is out with a new G-file that you can get on there. There's just a lot of good stuff. So we'll see you next week. Thanks. You know,