The Dispatch Podcast - Extraordinary Measures

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Sarah, Jonah and David wonder what's left of fiscal responsibility in the Republican Party as the debt-ceiling deadline hits Congress. Who’s serious about digging in and balancing the budget? Will taking on the "weaponized" beauracy make a dent? And, haven’t we been in this before? The crew also tallies which countries are providing tactical support to Ukraine (and how much). And of course, stay tuned for an extra salty Not Worth Your Time. Show Notes: Watch: White House Press Briefing on Debt Ceiling Brian Riedl for The Dispatch: How Republicans Can Get Serious on Spending Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg and David French. We will be discussing the death-sealing fight and what budget hawkery might look like in this new era of conservatism, arming Ukraine, where things stand, and of course we'll end with some politics. Let's dive right in. Jonah, where are we on, I don't know, the national debt, the debt ceiling? Can you just, like, do some level setting for us? Sure. So, and I know that everyone always goes to me for this kind of granular accounting

and fiduciary fiscal analysis. But I did talk to Brian Reedle this week, who's like my budget guy, so it's a little fresher in my head. So we have a lot of debt, trillions and trillions of dollars of debt. And every few years, because Congress does things stupidly, they have to raise the debt ceiling, which is the limit on the amount of money that the federal government can borrow. And since every day we borrow a couple hundred billion dollars more than we have on spending every single day. And there's actually some cool little daily reports from the Treasury that sort of say,

this is how much over your limit you are every day, we end up hitting the ceiling on that ceiling. And so if you can't borrow on a daily basis, that means all of a sudden you can't meet all of your obligations. And so now apparently the day of reckoning is today. And the term of art from the Treasury Department is that they will use extraordinary measures. This sounds both more scary and less scary than it should.

extraordinary measures is actually the term of art for moving some stuff around to keep the lights on. And they can do that for a little while. We don't know how long they can do that for, but the shock clock is now on. And the Republicans, there's mixed reporting about this, but I think the consensus is that Kevin McCarthy promised a bunch of people to get voted for a speaker that he would make a big show. of protest about the debt ceiling hike in order to claim to try to get concessions from the Biden administration to cut spending. The problem with this as an economic matter is, and McCarthy likes to talk about how, like if you had a kid with a credit card and they hit the debt limit on it, you wouldn't just keep raising a limit. You would talk to them about

their spending. It's a perfectly fine analogy as far as it goes. The problem with it is that when you you still have to pay the stuff that you already bought, pay for the stuff that you already bought. And the debt limit, the debt that we already have is the debt that we've already spent money on. And it is a really dumb thing to play chicken with this

because financial markets around the world will freak out, are starting to get scared already. If we defaulted on our debt, which is the end worst case scenario thing, you could have a global financial, crisis. It's just it's running with scissors

on a tightrope to prove a point kind of thing and there are better ways to do this and the best way to stop, the best way to cut spending is when you're spending, not after you've already bought stuff. Is that okay for a level setting? Yeah, but David,

could one be forgiven for feeling this is a little bit of a chicken little situation? This isn't the first time we've had this conversation. I mean, literally we could have had this exact conversation a couple of years ago, and I don't think we would have need to change a single word except maybe Kevin McCarthy being speaker. Yeah, well, except a couple of years ago, you had, you know, at the onset of 2021, you had a Democratic majority in the House and tie in the Senate,

and this wasn't who was going to stop the debt ceiling hike. I mean, so now you have more of a repeat of going back to 2011, right, where there was some, some brinksmanship, some consequences in the stock market. And, you know. But that all worked out fine, too. I get it. Like, I'm not saying it was consequence free, but it was consequence light in the grand scheme of things long term.

We don't sit here sitting around talking about how we really should have, you know, been up on that debt ceiling thing. And then we wouldn't be eating our pets for dinner. Well, true. I kind of have two thoughts about it. against a background if I'm not losing sleep. My two thoughts are we're about to endure something that is going to be somewhat, you know, maybe near-term consequential for the stock market.

I don't know about how long-term consequential. Pretty ineffective when it comes to any sort of actual restraint on spending because fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. the idea that the House GOP as some sort of real spending discipline is just hilarious to me considering the four years of the Trump administration. I mean, as I said on Dispatch Live when we talked a bit about this, I have a memory longer than a goldfish. And so I remember the Trump years.

I remember it in time of peace and prosperity, even pre-pandemic, of increasing deficits every single year. I remember being mocked for being retaining some sense of fiscal discipline during the Trump years and for being a fiscally conservative Republican, which was considered to be dumb and out of step with the times because everybody knows that it's all about spending now. It's big government conservatism. And so here we go, oh, wait, now we're the party fiscal conservatism. I just, who buys this anymore?

I mean, really, who buys any of this? So this is just the fight. This is the fight. This is what this is. And we'll get through it. We'll muddle through it. But I don't believe for a second that the GOP is a party of fiscal responsibility, not for one second. So, yeah, I'm done.

I'm ranting. So, sir, I take your point. I wrote something very similar about how stupid all this is. I agree that it's all very stupid. but doesn't it make the stupidity worse that we're doing this again, not better, right? It's like, you know, the last three times we played this stupid game with the debt ceiling, it didn't lead to a catastrophe,

so let's do it again and see what happens. I mean, like, it's sort of like it reminds me of there's a, there's a there's a great book by this guy David Lamb about about Africa from 25 years ago and there was always this thing in it that I always thought was really interesting about how in certain parts of the third world cause and effect isn't understood the same sort of way and like so if you're going up a mountain road and you take a hairpin turn at 70 miles an hour on this mountain road and you just miss knocking a school bus off the side of the mountain killing everybody but you don't the lesson.

some people take from that is that worked, right? And it seems to me like this is more stupid because we know that the best case scenario is that it won't work, right? And that it will work on either side, right? Like, it won't work in the sense that not raising the debt ceiling isn't a good idea, but it also won't work in the sense that it also hasn't curtailed spending. Right. Again, we don't sit back.

and say, man, thank goodness back in 2011, we really ended runaway spending in the United States on things we can't afford and borrowing money from China. Like, in both ways, we don't look back and see any turning points in any of the times this has been tried on either side of the ledger. I agree. I agree. To David's point about not believing any of it, you cannot, cannot say that you are suddenly in favor of fiscal rectitude and living within our limits and all of that and also say Mitch Daniels has got to be purged from the Republican part.

Explain the background of this. As long time listeners of the remnant, no, Mitch Daniels is my preferred president on earth too. And arguably the

archetypal linchpin budget-cutting successful Republican governor of the last quarter century. Just an amazing record in Indiana. And then at Purdue, he is basically the only guy. And you know, as you guys talk to him, right?

Like, he's the only guy who's actually managed to raise revenue while freezing tuition for a decade and improve the school in every single way while cutting costs and not having a talent flight, turn Purdue around from the second most expensive school of its category to the cheapest or least expensive. and so he's just like he actually succeeds and Club for Growth is going after him as a sellout to the swamp

there's a piece in Politico this morning talking about how he's a rhino and a squish and doesn't want to win and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and to me this is my point in my column this week is that it shows how so much of this budget fight in Congress is really about being disruptive

and owning the lib and sort of having that take on the establishment ethos than it is about any actual hope for success because a party that takes seriously the idea that Mitch Daniels needs to not be part of the Republican Party anymore isn't a party to be taken seriously on this stuff. And I quoted that great Mulvaney interview

that we did on the dispatch podcast where Mulvaney explained how the House Free Caucus, which is driving a lot of this stuff on the hill right now, completely caved the way David is talking about into big spending because when push came to shove, according to Mulvaney, he was one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus. When push came to shove, they were more about being anti-establishment

than they were about any of these actual, like, principles about limited government or cutting spending. Sure. And the second, it didn't seem like cutting spending was cool and anti-establishment anymore because it was against Obama. they endorsed wholeheartedly Trump's big spending agenda. Right. I wonder whether we are obscuring parts of our conversation moving forward

by talking about Republicans, the way we talk about the media, for instance. It's sort of well known now that to say like, the media does this when it's made up of all these different individuals with their own incentive structures, you're largely obscuring your meeting often. And I wonder if when we keep talking about, you know, Jonah, what you were saying, Republicans aren't serious about this. Is that really helpful anymore to say Republicans?

There is no person in charge of the Republican Party. God knows it's not Kevin McCarthy even in charge of his own caucus. So to either of you, I suppose, do you think that we should divide the Republican Party into, are there some people who actually still care about this stuff and have been principled about it? Well, that's my point. Mitch Daniels is one of those people. And they're trying to chase them out on a rail. Well, you know, Sarah, you do raise a really interesting and good point that I think would be more interesting and better if we didn't have House rules that allowed, say, the elected leader of the Republican caucus to decide when a vote is coming to the floor and refuse to bring a vote unless he's got, say, majority of this caucus on board or that he's allowing a minority of the caucus on board or that he's allowing a minority of the caucus. caucus to perhaps help him block a vote.

Look, if... And this is part of we still don't know all the deals that were struck to make Kevin McCarthy speaker. There were process deals that we don't know, some of which I think I'm going to be highly in favor of, but I don't know what they are. Yeah. There were clearly some substantive deals around the debt ceiling

and associated spending cuts. We don't quite know what those are yet. I'm sort of shocked we're still sitting here weeks later. and don't know those things, by the way. Yeah, it's weird. It's really weird. And part of the reason why we have a conversation like this is because if it was a situation where, look, if a majority of the majority of the House wants a vote and

they're going to get a vote and they're going to raise the debt ceiling, but there are factions within the Republican Party that are going to be voting against a debt ceiling hike futilely because everybody knows the majority of the House is for a debt ceiling hike. Well, then we can talk about the factions. But when the caucus decides, perhaps, that we're not even going to vote on debt ceiling, even though some members of the caucus might be in favor of a clean increase in the debt ceiling,

but they're going to prioritize complying with whatever deal Kevin McCarthy made over their policy. I'm totally fine saying Republicans are not. Let everybody vote, and then we'll talk about the faction. But that's just not the way the house works often. I guess the next question is, I don't think either of you are in favor of continuing to spend more than we have. Is that correct? That's correct.

Yes. But Jonah, for instance, you said that this would be the wrong way to do it. Instead of tying it to increasing the debt ceiling, you don't tie your own spending limits to not paying your credit card bill. fine, but the time to talk to your kid about how much they're spending might very well be when that credit card bill shows up. And so maybe this, I don't know that this isn't the right time to make a deal about spending limits and separating it and just doing it on a budgeting process when there's no stick, right?

Budgeting process is kind of all carrot. Don't they have a point tying it to this? I, look, I get it. And if I thought, again, this is. part of my problem where on these kinds of fights sort of going back to your first point about haven't we been here before it is very very difficult in these things to start with a fresh face just off the bus gosh i love this thing we call politics where everybody's you know like you can't be leslie nope about this right yeah and um the the the all the

Only safe harbor is cynicism about these debates because we know where everybody's coming from, right? And like, shame on the Democrats. They passed that grotesque on the bus bill thing. They could have gone after the debt ceiling then. They wanted the Republicans to have this problem. You know, they are constantly saying that the Republican Party are a bunch of dangerous kids

who are playing with matches around a lot of gasoline. And then they keep saying, so how are we going to get them more matches? Because they want Republicans to screw up and to be more chaotic. And so it's cynicism all the way down. But the simple fact is that we know from the power dynamics of this stuff, if the government starts to go into default or the government starts to go into a shutdown or any of that kind of stuff, the people who are forcing the situation are going to get the political blame. They might get the political reward from their own bases,

but it won't be, it's very unlikely that they'll be successful. And to take the Republicans who are making these points at face value when they weren't making these points when they were actually in charge, it only makes the cynicism more important. But yes, I agree with you. In principle, I agree with many of the things Kevin McCarthy is saying. I agree with many of the things that the House Freedom Caucus is saying, particularly about some of the procedural stuff,

but also about the debt and the spending thing. But this is the point that Brian Riedel makes in a great piece for the dispatch this week. It's sort of like when, which often happens to me, when I'm going through a particularly corpulent period of too much excessive drinking and eating. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to take things seriously. And I go whole hard, hard, hog for some like crazy diet fat where I'm going to fast because I'm going to lose 60 pounds and 30 days, right? Whole hog is a funny metaphor for that.

Fair. I'm going for that sort of ironic contrapose. But so my point is, like, rather than actually taking things seriously and starting to trim the sales and move things in a responsible manner, we have these fits and starts panics about debt and spending that actually don't change behavior the way taking this stuff seriously every single day would. And the trick is to take it seriously every day. We are not going to get to a balanced budget anytime soon. But if we can get the, this is again the Brian point, but if you can get the debt-to-GDP ratio down below 100%, like to 95% of GDP, that reassures bond markets. We can keep borrowing money.

It's particularly important to stop the borrow and spend stuff right now because interest rates are going up and we are on path to be spending a trillion dollars a year in interest payments alone. which is bananas. So yeah, I agree with you. In principle, they're all right, but I'd rather see some consistency about this from both parties

when they actually can make these decisions at the decision points. So, David, I'm wondering if you have an opinion between, there's actually been quite a few ideas thrown out there, but let me mention two of them. So Chip Roy, for instance, says he would settle for a plan for a balanced budget within a decade.

That will take $11 trillion in savings. an alternative from Ralph Norman. Spending cuts to match a borrowing limit increase dollar for dollar. Are any of these feasible? No. Okay. No. I mean, no.

And that's the thing is this is, again, I'm going back to full me once, shame on me. I mean, you know, full me twice, shame on me. I remember all of this then that tea party era. this is our plan for cutting this is our plan we're going to be a balanced budget in X, Y, Z years and then also let's just let it be known we're not going to cut,

we're not going to touch Medicare, Social Security, or national defense. Okay. All right. So that you're not serious. And look, there might be a congressman or two out there to your point, Sarah, who's willing to say,

all right, let's dig in. Let's dig in. we've got to dig into entitlements, we've got to dig into Social Security, we're going to have to dig into defense. There might be congressmen out there. But even Chip Roy put out some sort of Twitter thread recently saying, hey, we're not going to do anything you hear about us taking on defense is a lie. Okay, you're not taking on defense. Well, what about Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid? What about those things?

Are you going to take those things on? Because if you're not touching defense and you're not touching those things, what are we even doing here? And so, yeah, it's great to be able to go out and say, I can, you know, I'll balance the budget in 10 years. Well, how? By taking on the woke, weaponized bureaucracy. Nope, that's not going to get it done. That's not going to do it.

And so at some point, you're just like, I'm not, you're just not serious. And maybe you are, you one out of 400 plus, you are serious. Maybe you are. But of the caucus, no. And look, while we were talking, I went back and I looked at the deficit numbers. So here we have the Republican Party triggers a debt ceiling showdown in 2011. The deficit does drop considerably during the recovery, during the Obama years. It drops down, down, down to less than half a trillion dollars when he leaves office.

So the Republicans who forced fiscal discipline come into power. And what do they do? During peace and prosperity, Sarah, during peace and prosperity, they increase the deficit every year of the Trump administration. And they do it to the point where before the pre-pandemic year, before the pandemic spending, which I don't think anybody's blaming anybody for, but before the pandemic year in this great economy, the Trump, the budget deficit was double what it was when Trump came into office. double. And so it's just what it feels like to me is we're fighting. This is what we're doing now is we're fighting. And I agree with you. It's likely going to be all theater with some maybe short-term pain attached to it. But I'm just so deeply profoundly cynical about all of these ambitious comments because they're never accompanied, except maybe here's one representative here or who's one there by a real plan that will actually enforce fiscal discipline

because remember, all of that's Paul Ryanism and we can't go back to that. That's Mitch Danielsism and we can't go back to that as the Club for Gross tells us. I don't think I like this cynical David. There's like a whole different tone of voice. It's very scary. I know, dark timeline David is awesome.

Yeah. Well, moving to the other side of the aisle, the White House has also been pretty clear, that they won't negotiate. Okay. I don't totally understand that either. They say they want a clean debt limit increase with no monkey business.

We're not going to do any negotiations. It should be, again, done without conditions. But Republicans control the House of Representatives. So what? Yeah, I agree with you. And this is one of these places where I know that like if your experiences as a pundit Washington person are even remotely like mine, either of you, you have been asked or told somewhere around 3,000 times by somebody that government should just run like a business, right? That people will tell you, why can't they just all get around the table and work this stuff out, run things like a business? politicians have been running on the claim

that they can run government because they know how to run a business for about 200 years is a very old tradition of this and it's just a bad analogy and so I agree if we were a family which is another thing people like to say America is

and it's not or if we were a business or if we were any sort of normal responsible organization of any kind like including the dispatch which we're not which we're not we would I would say that the obvious thing here is to have a serious conversation and say, holy crap, look at how much money we owe, look how much we've been overspending. Let's figure something out. And so, yeah, shame on the Biden administration. Shame on Democrats for doing that. The problem is that that's not the political incentive structure that exists today. It's not how the parties work. And because we've been through things like this so many times in the past,

The White House is just working on the assumption that they have the whip hand and that eventually the Republicans are going to have to cave because they're the ones who are going to be causing, forcing a crisis if they don't blink. So, yeah, again, shame on everybody. But cynicism, cynicism is the lantern in the darkness, Sarah. It explains all of this. No.

No, I reject cynicism. Skepticism is healthy. Cynicism is the bad place. I have a whole album side on what the Lincoln Memorial is for and it's for fixing you two right now and especially you David I am disappointed I expect this sort of nonsense from Jonah look you it's healthy skepticism Sarah

this is healthy skepticism it is robust skepticism well-earned skepticism your skepticism has been taking some creatin with scars Yeah, that's right. My skepticism has been taking creatin. It's bulked up. There's no question.

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Russia, they're increasing warning signs that Russia is going to launch another very large offensive. It has mobilized a ton of folks. And, you know, Joan and I both, I think we sometimes are just listening to the same podcasts all the time when it comes to Ukraine. But one thing that I have been hearing from folks consistently for the last six weeks, eight weeks or so is, look, on the West, everyone shared these stories of these thousands and thousands of Russian men being mobilized and they don't want to go and they're drunk and it looks chaotic. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are going, wait, that's 300,000 new people. Like, that's a lot of people. That could alter the balance of power. That's a lot of people. And now there are reports that Putin may raise an

additional 500,000 troops. And so there's a real concern that, to use that Stalin term, quantity is a quality all its own, which is sort of a classic Russian way of war, that Ukraine is on the verge of a major offensive with numbers that would be difficult, at least in the short term, to fend off. And so there's real concern in the West. about Ukraine's ability to respond and also about how could this war potentially come to an end? And the British are stepping up and supplying Challenger 2, a small number initially of Challenger 2 tanks.

What is a Challenger 2 tank? There might be, I'm sure there are some tank experts, armor experts in the listener community. So forgive me if I butcher some of this. but Challenger 2 would be sort of a peer level. It's a British tank. It would be a peer level tank to our Abrams tank, maybe not at the bleeding edge

of our most highly modified versions of the Abrams. But it's a peer level competitor to the Abrams tank. It's going to be superior to virtually anything the Russians have fielded so far, considerably superior, better armor, better armed, better technology. But as my, I served with tankers in, not tankers, tankers in the 3rd Armored Catholic Regiment when I was in Iraq. So all my guys were armor officers.

And look, their point is really clear. A Western tank without Western tank tactics is not a game changer. So what has to happen is Ukraine has to be trained up in Western tank combined armed tactics. And so don't just look at new. about provision of tanks and equipment, also look at news as to how are Ukrainians being trained to use it? And so I think what you've got is a small number of challengers here

combined with some training. And, you know, there's the potential of more, but it's tough to over-emphasize, I think, how much Ukraine actually does need offensive weapons, weapons that can help it go on a sustained offensive. Challenger 2s are one of those weapons. Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, which are being supplied by the U.S. are another set of those weapons, but you have to marry weapons and training to take full

advantage. And that's very difficult to do midstream in the middle of a war with a massive Russian offensive looming. Right. And also part of the reason why you need to do it if you want to get out of the situation is there's a real, there's a real serious possibility that the front. line turns into another de facto border the way, like the front line in Donbos had been from 2014 until this invasion, where you have checkpoints, Russians really dig in, becomes facts on the ground, and then you can see a decade of this just grinding gross kind of thing.

And so this is the moment, some people think that if Ukraine can be put, you know, on its front foot, given this stuff. they can break through that line and actually deliver conceivably a defeat to Putin. Now, there are all sorts of what does a defeat look like? What does Putin do if he's defeated? You know, that can go down a lot of dark timelines. But what's sort of fascinating to me about it all is the way in which all of a sudden the West is realizing, wait a second,

we have a lot of this stuff for a reason. It's basically been built, designed, and conceived to fight Russia. Now, admittedly, it was originally for, like, the Soviet Union, but, like, that's its job. That's what it was designed for. And the whole idea was, well, we won't have to use it because Russia's not going to invade another country and, you know, it's not going to invade West.

again and of course it has and you're seeing it's dawning on a bunch of people in western capitals that this is the moment to actually use this stuff and actually defeat Russia and you know at the beginning of this you know almost exactly a year ago next but in two three weeks it'll be exactly a year something like it a month it'll be a year um it was like people were freaking out should we even give them you know handguns or whatever and now people are talking about giving them tanks the polls want to give them a whole bunch of tanks but they have to get permission

from the Germans to do it because they're all these like riders on weapons and stuff there's this conversation going on on the Telegraph podcast which apparently is going on in the highest levels of the British government about the Brits

conceivably just giving their entire tank stock of tanks lock, stock and barrel to the Ukrainians because these challengers while they're really good tanks they're getting old

and they're not designed for the military of the future and the conflicts of the future And so to take a gamble and say, okay, well, we'll take five years to rebuild our tank supply. But the Ukrainians need this stuff now. And if Ukrainians are willing to fight and die to defeat Russia without using, you know, NATO troops, that's pennies on the dollar in terms of military strategy for, like, doing what this equipment was for. Now, you shouldn't fight wars simply because the weapons you have were designed to fight those wars.

But Russia and Putin have revealed themselves. to be really, really bad actors. Yeah. And there is no got to hear both sides about this invasion. And so, you know, and just this morning in the New York Times, there's this report that the Biden administration has decided, okay, taking back Crimea should be on the table, which is a big, big deal.

Makes me a little nervous, but at the same time, I would love for the Ukrainians to take back Crimea. So, you know, things are getting pretty serious. David, you know, reports coming out of the World Economic Forum in Davos that the German chancellor said absolutely no, Germany not sending any transfer of tanks until the U.S. agrees to give its own. Is this representative of a flagging will in the Western democracies, or is it representative of a strained relationship where the U.S. was expected to lead? isn't. And what does that say about sort of the move from, you know, a Trump administration to a Biden administration where I think everyone was expecting a very different U.S. foreign policy, and in some ways it doesn't feel that different. No, this is a German issue. Like, we've led.

We've led. Between us and the Brits, we have led. The Germans came out of the block. We're going to increase our defense spending. We're going to, and the Germans have been dragging their feet big time. I have my beefs with the Biden administration, for example, while I support completely sending High Mars, we should have also sent the Attackams missile that can strike deeper into Russian territory. We should have been providing Bradley fighting vehicles, I think, earlier. We should be, and we had a great piece in the dispatch a few days ago, Rebecca Heinrichs and somebody, oh gosh, I'm blanking on who else wrote with her about the kinds of weaponry

that we need to be sending, that we can do better, and I think we should do better. But we've been leading. I mean, we've been, without us, without these stocks of weapons, there was just a New York Times report that came out that was really fascinating about how we've tapped into these huge, little-known stocks of weapons

that exist in Israel that we've had, that are our ammunition stocks and prepositioned in Israel, ammunition stocks pre-positioned in South Korea. We've been leading. But if that's all the case, this isn't much of a game of chicken for the Germans. Like, we'll give tanks only if you do. And we're like, yeah, great, we already did.

We'll give more. What's your point? That's my theory is that this is about domestic German politics. And that we have told the Germans, hey, you can dunk on us. And I'll make it look like we're following your lead. And so, like, you give these pronouncements. and then we'll say, okay, in coordination with our allies,

we're going to give these tanks that we're planning on giving anyway, and then Germany looks like, hey, look, we're like asserting ourselves. Because, you know, what the world craves is Germany asserting itself on the global stage militarily. And so I think there could be a lot of behind the scenes kind of like will help you by playing bad cop and this or that thing. But I could be wrong. Yeah, and one thing that I think that is, you know, look,

Not all of these tanks are exactly the same. So, you know, the Abrams tank has a gas turbine engine. It is an extreme, that's our tank. The Abrams is our tank. It is an extremely sophisticated piece of machinery. Yeah, it was developed in the 80s, but it's something that are 70s and 80s, but it's something that's very different

from what the kinds of equipment the Ukraine was operating. The Challenger, too, has a diesel engine. that might sound like not a huge distinction, but it is easier to operate. And so there are a lot of subtleties and nuances and different kinds of equipment, but this idea, look, I'll say it again, I do think the Biden administration has been stingy

with regard to some weapons. Of course, we've opened the floodgates on other kinds. So it's not that we've failed the lead. We've not done all that we could do, but we've certainly led. but look, Germany, just look at the numbers. I mean, Germany's the largest economy in Europe by a pretty good bit. And look at how it lags in financial help, look at how it lags in material help.

I feel like this is a Germany issue more than an America issue. And I have my issues with how we've supported Ukraine. Okay, let's move on the document gate for buying. and the White House continues to move apace. There's a special counsel, more documents, you know, uncovered. But we sort of feel like we're moving into phase two, which is now sort of the recriminations of how did you handle it this poorly from the Democratic side.

You know, on the most forward-leaning edge, Democrats are defending President Biden, saying that it is just night and day difference between this and what former President Trump did. But behind closed doors, Democrats are pretty annoyed with this. It's put them on their heels. Yes, there are factual differences between Trump and Biden. But at the sort of headline level, you know, as I've said before,

the main difference is that one set of classified documents was found in a garage next to a Corvette, and one set of classified documents was found in a desk under a picture of Celine Dion. Totally different case law covers these two. Yeah, there are factual differences. They're just not really. Relevant factual differences. Look, the obstruction stuff is different, and it's very relevant to bringing obstruction charges.

But when you're talking about the removal of classified documents from secure location, it's hard to argue that in either of these cases, classified documents weren't removed and brought to unsecure locations. But I don't want to actually talk about the details of any of that. Instead, I want to talk about whether and how this will change the calculation of,

Biden running for president in 2024 because we're sitting here right now and everyone's just sort of assuming he's almost probably certainly running but no one's really sure. Jonah? So let me, you said whether, what was it, weather and can run again?

I think it was weather and how? Weather and how. Yeah, I mean, I think we should add just sort of a should in there. Like he should not run for president. again. Right, agree. Like he, just on the age argument alone,

A. B. Stutter and I talked about this at length on the remnant this week. It's just irresponsible for him to do it, just on the age factor alone. But moreover, on the can part, I get very, very frustrated with this, these arguments that you'll see reported uncritically

in, you know, on TV and on Politico about how, the phrase is often things like he has the playbook to beat Trump right and like he knows how to beat Trump he's here to beat Trump blah blah blah blah blah I think he can beat Trump but the playbook

from 2020 had him in his basement for almost the whole campaign right the playbook had him talking as little and a good excuse to be in his basement because of COVID I mean that's the important part that's exactly you just can't you don't have the atmosphere to run that same playbook that I'm putting in quotes again. Right. Completely different fact pattern going on. He wasn't the president then.

He was a former vice president who was at least implicitly and often and occasionally explicitly saying he would run on a return to normalcy. After four years, there are a lot of Americans who don't think, I want to be a little fair, who think this is not the normalcy I was promised that they've seen over the last four years of the bottom issue, whether it's Afghanistan or the student loan stuff or the trillions of dollars of this, that and the other thing. And so yeah, maybe he can beat Trump. I think he can beat Trump. But it's not going to be the same playbook. And if you believe that Trump is a singular threat to the health of, you know, quote unquote, our democracy, a phrase I cannot stand. But if you think he is a singular threat,

It feels a little like, you know, Sarah, we've talked a zillion times about the cynical strategy of signal boosting the most MAGA, most election denying Republicans in the 2022 primaries in order to have easier opponents to beat and how cynical that is in a climate where you're also saying these people are Nazi adjacent. And it feels to me like there's a little bit of that coming out of. of the Biden White House of we'd rather run against Trump. So let's kind of make the Trump thing happen. In part because you see this polling that says there are a bunch of Republicans, at least Ron DeSantis, would defeat Biden, right? So Biden is useful for only, you know, he's a very specific kind of wolf spain that's only useful against the specific

werewolf. And I just, I think it's grossly, irresponsible. And also, I think it's harder now because he can't, he just can't do the confidence thing. I am sure they had all sorts of ideas about how they were going to talk about how reckless and irresponsible Trump was with classified documents and how, you know, he's this guy who takes and Biden's this guy who takes everything very seriously. And that talking point just took a huge, you know, whack with all of this. And rightfully so. David, I want your initial feelings. One super fast initial feeling. I'm really,

not super interested in all the pieces that compare the Biden conduct to Trump because the Trump isn't the standard of behavior. It's just not the case that everything better than Trump is okay. You can be better than Trump and still a criminal in some circumstances. So let's just get that out there. Yeah, on the political point, I hate to reference Saturday night live as possessing some sort of blazing political insight. But they did have this really hilarious skit where you had the group in the skit that you had this group of Democrats sitting around terror and that was portrayed as like a horror movie, terrified of Biden running again.

And then each face that came up as a Biden alternative, they were more terrified by until they came back around to Biden, well, he's okay, right? And it's always the compared to what analysis. And I agree completely he should not run again. But the fact that he's not said so has kind of put the Democratic Party in a state of paralysis. I think of only really one person who's very aggressively positioning himself, and that's Gavin Newsom. He seems to be ready to run the very instant. There's a glimmer of opening to run.

But aside from that... You don't think that the FAA computers shutting down and shutting down air travel nationwide was like a bank shot of Pete Buttigieg upping his name ID. It's just crazy enough to work. I mean... We all paid attention to him, didn't we? If we said it, it's like you mention it.

We all know George Santos's name now. That's true. It's like getting in a drunken brawl just to increase name. But yeah, so there's this, they have this problem. Nobody seems to want Kamala Harris, but who else? I can think of, you know, Jared Paulus of Colorado, but that's because I'm, you know, I'm a conservative,

and he seems to be one of the more conservative-leaning Democrats in America. Yeah, there is still a primary. Yeah, there's still a primary. Andy Bashir is probably a better pick than Jared Paulus in terms of governors who were not talking. a lot about, but who could really make waves in a Democratic primary. But even Andy Bashir probably can't make it through a Democratic primary in the modern age. Right. No, you're right. You're right. So, you know, my, I just keep going back to, I don't think he should run,

but he's not saying that. And, and part of the problem is if you're him and you don't feel like you're really losing your fastball, maybe your own subjective judgment is, oh, yeah, maybe, you know, I need to get a bet a little earlier, but I'm still me. And let's say inflation is going down. Let's say the interest rate hikes have stopped. Let's say unemployment is low. Let's say that the economy is still growing. And you're thinking that Donald Trump is your likely opponent.

Who's going to talk him out of it? That's one of my question. Who can sit there and say, Mr. President, thank you for your service. you like Liam Neeson taking on Eastern European thugs had a particular set of skills for this moment and now it's the time to step away who's got the stature to say that who will he listen to perhaps Jill Biden

but I just don't know who talks him away from running I'm going to do this McLaughlin style and tell you why you're all wrong so nothing politically changes the Biden calculus health-wise obviously could but nothing politically changes the Biden calculus because nothing changes the Harris calculus. And if Joe Biden steps aside,

he has to, the first question is, are you endorsing your vice president, Kamala Harris, who nobody thinks can win in a general election? If he does endorse her and she loses in a general election or loses the primary, right? Neither one of those are good for Joe Biden, his legacy, the Democratic Party, nothing. If he chooses not to endorse his sitting vice president,

he risks angering an important part of the Democratic base and having a free-for-all in a Democratic primary. It's not like there's someone other than Harris who would be obviously better and would win the Democratic primary. And so the ensuing chaos that would damage Democrats heading into a general election would almost certainly favor Republicans winning at that point.

And that means that Joe Biden has to run again, barring any political change on his own, you know, stature at this point. So I think that's a done deal. All right. We're going to do Not Worth Your Time. So here's my question to both of you. I feel that there are certain snack foods that aren't worth my time. There are some great snack foods out there. Hot take.

But, yeah, like, and I mean some, like, really popular ones. So I'm going to name two snack foods that aren't worth my time. Like popular ones. You can't name unpopular ones in this, okay? We don't want obscure snack foods. Potato chips and donuts. Because, sure, the bites you're taking taste good and feel good, but the taste that it leaves behind in your mouth and the almost filmy residue,

do. Not worth it. Now, eating potato chips with a sandwich or a burger totally changing the game, that's not then a snack food. But I don't know, like that donut taste in my mouth for the next two hours is really miserable. And so I don't do it. And I'm just not worth my time. What are the snack foods that are not worth your time? That's a good question. I'm going to agree with you on 99% to potato chips, with the exception of Pringles, original Pringles. I can get a tube of that and consume it in one British crime drama. That's a road trip food for me. And then I'm strongly going to disagree on donuts, but they only taste good in the morning.

And then I'm going to propose an alternative snack food. Okay. Eat honeycomb like popcorn while watching movies. Honeycomb cereal in lieu of popcorn, yes, very good. I have one of the, like, it's the size of Nate boxes of goldfish. You know, it's like an industrial goldfish. Goldfish for some reason, don't fall into that category for me. They're delicious all the time and perfectly salty.

Jonah? So, I think there's an excellent question. I wish I had time to prepare for this one. I would have brought out the grease board. There's some things I've got to work out in my head. But weirdly, I agree with David about Pringles, and I agree with Sarah about Pringles being a road trip food more than a watch TV food. Pringles also are one of the few things like that that I kind of find disgusting,

but I still really love because they were never chips. At some point in the production process, they were in ooze that was poured into a mold. And that bums me out. It's like, I have been upset. I stopped eating jello entirely like 35 years ago when I found out that jello will still congeal into its gelatinous form at room temperature. It just does it faster in the fridge.

That freaks me out. I don't like that. That was the thing. Well, it just reminded me that it's actually like some cartilaganeous junk in that. I don't like it. I can speak in tongues how much I dislike it. Do you eat bone marrow at restaurants?

Love bone marrow. Yeah. But so this is a good, this is a good segue into a point I want to make. Probably my favorite line from the movie Wag the Dog, which is a fantastic movie. It is. Is when the guy from the CIA says, I know two things. There's no difference between good flan and bad flan. And there's no such thing as the B3 bomber.

Now, we don't need to explain the B3 bomber part. But my wife and I talk about this all the time. There are some things where the difference between the generic and the really good. the delta is just massive, right? And so like with donuts, really good, fresh made out of a friar, chefly donuts are glorious and wonderful things. Dunkin donuts, donuts,

occasionally I will do that, but like the easiest one to say no to is the first one, which is true of Pringles and a lot of things. So I think the difference between really good donut and a normal donut is huge. But for my own view, just so because I know I'm going along, I hate all snacks with the exception of Starburst, but I know this is more like a candy,

that look like plastic. Like a rule of thumb, gummy bears. Nothing looks more like plastic than a Starburst, but okay. Yeah, no, I said, well, that's my inconsistency. I like Starbursts of their grandfathered in. Jelly beans, gummy bears, all those things. If they look like they could be props on a bad community theater set, I just, I hate them, all of them.

Interesting. I share your affection for Starbursts, though. Yeah, Starbucks is good. I don't eat any sugar candy, I guess. I can't buy Starburst because I will just eat them constantly. See, and I eat the bittersweet Giradelli chocolate chips, like the baking chocolate chips, straight out the bag. But I don't have any sugar stuff.

you know what I mean by sugar candy versus chocolate candy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah. All right. Well, this has been like a personality test of sorts. Thank you for sharing that. Hmm.

Hmm. Well, everyone, go forth and really marinate on that last conversation. The rest of it, take it or leave it. You know that 90% of the comments are going to be about this last conversation. That's completely true. And the flound defenders are going to come out in force because they always do whenever I say there's no difference in good flound and bad flound. And I'm just thinking of all the people.

whose lives I changed by the honeycomb as popcorn counsel. That's, yeah. Popcorn's a good snack food. Popcorn's a great snack food. My wife likes to put, oh, not raisinettes, or sometimes raisinettes, but there's another chocolate candy in the popcorn, which I totally oppose. I'm not a sweet guy.

Totally different textures. I agree. I agree. I'm a savory and salty guy, not a sweet guy. In terms of taste buds, in terms of personality, I'm just a big old teddy bear. You're not umami. That's what we've learned about Jonah, personality-wise. Are you my umami?

All right, all right. We should stop recording now. We're done. Thank you for joining us. I'm not sure why you did. It says bad things about you probably, but we thank you. Nevertheless, leave a comment, maybe not on this podcast. wait for the next one and leave a comment or become a member of the dispatch to jump in our comments section and we'll talk to you next week.

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