The Dispatch Podcast - Faking Empathy

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

The OG roundtable returns with some rank punditry on the 2024 GOP field. But first, David returns from his Ukraine trip with insight on the war effort. Also: -DeSantis officially in the race -Tim Scott as the candidate we don’t deserve? -Politics of 14th amendment and debt ceiling -Jonah’s strong (and correct) opinion on restaurant dress codes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. www.ca slash yamex Did you lock the front door? Check.

Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web. Uh, I'm looking into it.

Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com. Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. That's Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Steve Hayes.

The gang is back together again. And we are going to talk about the latest updates from Ukraine, David French, just having returned from a week in Kiev. And then, of course, we will discuss Ron DeSantis' announcement for president and maybe a little Tim Scott as well, the state of the race for the Republican nomination. And finally, the politics of the 14th Amendment and the debt ceiling. David, you just spent a week in Ukraine. And I think for those of us living in the United States,

we have a very specific perspective on the war in Ukraine, a lot of which has become politicized. or at least seen through the lens of, frankly, being an American, and the ass of what we're asked to contribute to that war, financially, et cetera. I'm curious what the perspective is of someone living in Ukraine is on the war. Yeah, that's a really good question. I think a good way to understand it is to think of the difference, the different way I experienced Ukrainians in talking about the war versus the way you sort of see a lot of the pro-Ukraine commentary,

here in the U.S. And the way I would describe it is Ukrainians are more determined than even we quite grasp but at the same time they're more sobered than many Ukrainian

supporters are supporters of Ukraine are in the United States and this is what I mean. If you look at Americans who are supporting Ukraine there's a lot of optimism. There was a counter-offensive

that worked really well and Harkiv, there was the total defeat of the Russian forces seeking to take Keev. There is a lot of, you know, if you go on YouTube or Twitter or whatever, you see all of these precise high Mars strikes. And there's this sort of sense that Ukrainians have really figured out how to fight the Russians. And when you're in Ukraine, by contrast, there's a lot of confidence in their ability to beat the Russians. But there's also a lot of, there's a sober recognition of the immensity of the task. And here's the thing that I think that they put an emphasis on more than we do.

And once you see it, you can totally understand it. And they put an emphasis on sheer raw numbers. So in the West, we look at these Russian mobilizations where they're grabbing people off the streets. And you see videos of drunken Russians getting ready to go for very short training before they're hurled into the front line. And a lot of Americans have kind of laughed at that and said, look, this war effort is falling apart.

Ukrainians don't laugh at that. The defense minister said something interesting. He said, we've even wondered what it would be like if they just gave a million men Kalishnikovs. And that's it. That would be a huge problem. Just a million men with Kalishnikovs would be a big problem because the raw numbers and the way in which the Russians treat human life.

And it's turned into a series of tactics where they essentially just use human body. bodies as a form of reconnaissance and force to flush out Ukrainian forces and then do things like deluge them with artillery. And so the numbers present a real problem. The sheer weight of Russian resources presents a real problem. And then the other thing is you learn how the Russians are learning in a way that I hadn't learned before, but I'm just now starting to see come out and some press reports in the last

week or so. And that is, it's not just the Ukrainians who are learning how to fight. It's also the Russians. And specifically, they have learned how to largely counter the Himars weapon that was so effective. They're very good at integrating their artillery and their drone operations. The Bakhmut battle, as bloody as it was for the Russians, it was extremely bloody for the Ukrainians. And so the way I would put it is, I would say that they seem grimly confident. but there's a grimness to it that you often don't see here in the Ukraine boosterism here in the U.S. Steve, what does that, like assume there's a lagging indicator, right, that everything David's

talking about kind of reaches here later, a little garbled maybe. What does that mean for a Ukrainian counteroffensive and resources from Congress, things like that? Well, I mean, it's interesting. what David describes on the one hand is very commonsensical, right? I mean, you would think that the Ukrainians who are seeing the results of this war on a day-to-day basis and most of the no people who have been killed as a result of the fighting are going to feel this in a way that we just can't when we're when we're here. And it's part of what makes a trip like the one that David took so valuable.

I'm curious picking up on Sarah's question, David, you know, the news such as it is out of Ukraine, or one aspect of the news out of Ukraine over the past week is that the United States is rated greenlight training of pilots on F-16s. Right. And there's an assumption, of course, that somebody will provide these F-16s because otherwise the training is sort of pointless. And while it's not clear yet, who will be providing these jets, there's an assumption that they'll be coming.

I wonder what the reaction is that you heard, either specifically to this news or to moments like this before it, where it seems like the United States thinks about what we can do. We listen to appeals for greater weaponry, deeper involvement in many respects. we wait we sometimes set it aside and eventually we get to it yeah and we're doing these things i mean you know it's going to take some time to do this training it would take some there's there are practical logistical issues as it relates to the provision of these fighter jets that suggests an understanding that we're going to Ukrainians are going to be fighting this war for a while and it just makes me wonder for what's the Ukrainian response, both sort of on the street level and the government level,

to finally doing these things that they've been asking for for so long? Well, it's a combination of overwhelming gratitude and frustration. So there is absolutely no question that the Ukrainians know that without American support, without British support, this is a very different war. The amount of affection for Americans in Kiev is really remarkable, yet understandable at the same time. I mean, when you see those Patriot missiles go up

and you realize that that's the prime umbrella protecting all of these civilian lives, I mean, there's a tangible reason right there for profound gratitude. But also at the same time, I'll put it like this as what one Ukrainian cabinet minister said, look, we went for javelins and they said, it's impossible, we can't do javelins,

and then we got javelins. And we went and we said, we need stingers. Well, no, we can't have stingers. And then we got stingers. and then we asked for artillery and we were sold no artillery and then we get a whole zoo of artillery from all the Western powers and then

every step it's been can we have X and there's been an initial reluctance or initial rejection followed by acquiescence and there's some frustration there which I understand but it's all against the backdrop

of at the same time we just can't wage this war the way we want to without the United States as a partner and as an ally, an American help has been absolutely indispensable. And I would add British help as well, too, just absolutely indispensable. And, you know, look, I think I can see some of the Biden administration's reluctance early on,

especially if the thought was, hey, this country is going to collapse in a matter of days. Throwing a bunch of equipment into a failing effort might not be a good idea. But then once the resistance obviously stiffened and immediately stiffened, then you began to have sort of this classic example of the Russians would do something new, which then would need more different kind of an American equipment. We would provide the different kinds of American equipment than the Russians do something new. And it's a tit-for-tat, adapt, evolve.

But I think the big difference that's emerging now is that the combination of the F-16s and the main battle tanks, take this to a different place. Because the way I would put it is, all of the previous aid was aid designed to keep Ukraine from falling. This is the kind of aid you provide between the tanks and the planes. When A, you want to help Ukraine push the Russians out, and B, maintain a powerful deterrent after the fighting stops. Just take the F-16s, for example. If you had had 120 F-16s in the Ukrainian Air Force before 2022. Does Putin even invade? I don't

know. It's a much, much, much stronger military at that point. So I think what you're seeing is a key strategic turn here. But at the same time, the Ukrainians were very firm. Don't expect too much too soon. They are really

tamping down expectations on this counteroffensive. They do not want the war effort weighed by this counteroffensive. And we asked a two star general, I said, if this is a soccer match, where are we? Are we in the first period? Are we in the second period? Where are we? And he said, we're nearing the end of the first period. And then he kind of looked at us and he said, but the score is not close, meaning that the Ukrainians are doing very well, but it's still at the end of the first period. So just one clarification thing,

this point, which we've been talking about now for a bit, of how we say no, they say please, we say no, they say pretty please and then we give it. The way that's cast in domestic political terms is the extent there's much of a debate about it at all is Biden being full of bluster and then

changing his mind and or having his mind changed by advisors who talk to him this idea that Biden is pragmatically responding to change facts on the ground is just nowhere in the White House's messaging as far as I can tell, right? It makes it all seem very ad hoc.

So I guess the question is, do you think it's actually ad hoc? Or do you think that this is a sort of an appropriate change in policy based on facts on the ground? And Biden is just screwing up the messaging. So I think what you're dealing with is sort of a two-stage process. Stage one is what I would call entirely reactive. And this is before I headed to Keeve at the times we met with some senior Pentagon officials in charge of this effort.

That's the niche newspaper thing you work for. Which times? There are a lot of times. Times of London. Times Picayune. Yeah, it's the New York neighborhood paper. In these times? Epic Times. That's it. Not the Epic Times. Not the Epic Times. The Epic Times is a national publication.

So they were, what really impressed upon me is everything for the first many months was just reactive. The Ukrainians need this to stay afloat. Here comes this. The Ukrainians need that to stay afloat. Here comes that. And then you begin to see a transition from reactive to proactive, in other words, reactive to the kinds of weapons that allow Ukraine to formulate a positive offensive strategy. And I agree with you. I think the messaging has been bad, in part because, quite frankly, in many ways, the administration itself is flying by the seat of its pants. Its own assessment of, for example, escalation risks is changing. Its own, everyone's assessment of escalation risks is changing,

for example. Like there is a much less of a sense right now that there's a real nuclear threat than there was, say, even a year ago. Why is that? Why is that? Well, because so many, so Putin rattled the nuclear saber early on. And at no point, has he, at every point of every new piece of equipment being provided, there is no sign that, in fact, it is leading to a greater Russian response. And then on the other side of it, short of nuclear, what are the Russians doing to restrain themselves anyway? Like, this was a really powerful point that the Ukrainians made. They said this escalation point, everyone keeps talking about, what are the Russians going to do? Flat in our cities? Well, guess what? That's what they're

trying to do every day, and they have flattened some of our cities. Maripal was devastated. Bakhmut doesn't even exist as a actual viable dwelling place for humans anymore. I mean, you can go through, and their point is the Russians are doing their worst, short of nuclear commitment, and there's just no logic for a nuclear commitment given what would happen to Russia if they do it. And so no one was willing to say that escalation is completely. completely totally off the table. But I guess the best way to describe it would be wildly implausible. It was viewed as wildly implausible unless you had some sort of strong armored attack into Russia itself.

But the other interesting thing is there seems to be a conviction amongst some Ukrainian officials that they can actually retake Crimea, not so much by invading Crimea, as by isolating it, which is an interesting perspective. But, you know, as of right now, we're so far from any sort of situation which would actually make Russia feel as if it's in a collapsing precarious position that sort of to the Ukrainians, this idea that we're not going to provide 50 more battle tanks, which might allow us to make some incremental gains is going to be something that's going to trigger, you know, that these 50 tanks would trigger escalation just seems wildly implausible. to people. So, um, and that was just a, a universal assessment that Russia is already doing everything it can do conventionally. There isn't a logic for nuclear escalation. And besides the battlefield conditions for nuclear escalation are way, way, way far away. There, we don't have those kinds of battlefield conditions at all. Isn't there a danger in using logic to,

to make assumptions about Vladimir Putin's, um, tactics? I say that quite seriously. I mean, the consensus of the world, including, you know, most people in the U.S. intelligence community in the months leading up to the war, was that he was never going to invade because it didn't make any sense. Why would he do this? This doesn't make sense. This is not something somebody logical and rational would do. And then he did it. And I guess I worry about that. And then if you look at the, I think there's a case to be made that in other respects, you're seeing things that could contribute, the kinds of things that kept Joe Biden from being more aggressive in his provision of material before this, we're now actually seeing, right? We're seeing Ukrainians

or Ukrainian supporting Russians make incursions into Russian territory. You're seeing now the U.S. government apparently believes that the sort of bizarre non-attack attack, drone attack on the Kremlin might have actually been Ukrainians. You've seen assassinations by Ukrainians or Ukrainian-related groups on Russian soil. You're seeing accusations. Actually, now we're seeing footage, I guess, the New York Times reported overnight that American weapons and equipment were being used in Russia. These are all of the things that Joe Biden and the administration had said for months and months. can't do this because he'll escalate? Is it just now, hey, we're doing all this, the Ukrainians

are doing all this, and Putin hasn't escalated, therefore we're good to go on F-16s? I guess I missed that there's a logical leap there that doesn't quite compute for me. Yeah. Well, so let's put it this way. On the one hand, there's his argument, well, of course, if Putin was entirely rational, he wouldn't have invaded. Well, the Ukrainians dispute that. They would say that what Putin is is consistently opportunistic and that he could sense a window closing with Ukraine. In other words, if he was going to exert his will on Ukraine, as the Ukrainian military was modernizing, as the economy was moving and the culture that's moving towards the West, there was a closing door. And the way one of the ministers described it, which I think was really interesting,

here's what Putin does. He seizes what he sees as an opportunity and then hangs in for the next election in the West to see how can he consolidate his gains or with those next election allow him to consolidate his gains. And that this initial invasion of Ukraine was entirely consistent with that kind of pattern. Going to grab and gobble everything that he could. Hopefully he was going to grab and gobble up Kiev. And then wait it out and sort of wait for the West to falter in its response. And their position is essentially, that's what he did. It all makes sense within this Putin tradition.

But at the same time, he's an opportunist. He's not a maniac. And one of the interesting points that they raised is also short of, there seems to be no plausible argument that Putin would launch some sort of generalized nuclear exchange. And to hear the Ukrainians talk about how little they fear a tactical nuclear strike in their own country is really interesting

because their position is they're already genocidal in their intent. They're already flattening cities. And the way, you know, so they are in this position where they view themselves already isn't an existential struggle. And that,

There are potential, potential downsides to provisions of F-16s and tanks that are believed to be sort of attenuated and remote, whereas there are actual, measurable, massive downsides to withholding aid that involves continued loss of lives at a massive scale. So that's the way, if you're looking at a cost-benefit analysis, it's not like you can say, well, we're not going to give Ukraine X or Y or Z because of the, the, what we believe to be a remote fear of escalation, and that's not a cost-free exercise. We know exactly the costs of withholding this kind of aid, and it's catastrophic. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance

can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage, with a 4.8 out of five-star rate. on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch.

That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right, let's move to some domestic politics. We had a few announcements this week. Most notably, Ron DeSantis finally jumped in the race, the Florida governor who would is expected to be the greatest threat against Donald Trump clinching the nomination. Steve and I, of course, have our high stakes bet. Steve betting that someone other than Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. Should we just do a quick check-in, Steve, here? Nope.

We should just move right on. Ron DeSantis actually made his announcement on Twitter last night. There were technical glitches. A lot of people dunking on the technical glitches, including the Trump campaign, for instance. But, Steve, in all seriousness, I'm hard-pressed to think of a presidential announcement speech that mattered. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, there's a reason that campaigns spend as much time and effort as they do to make the announcements a big deal. You want to have a good announcement.

So when you're hearing this sort of day after spin from DeSantis partisans that this is all fine, it doesn't matter, nobody cares. You know, that's nonsense. It's always better to have a good announcement. And I think it's particularly, this could stick around longer. I mean, I think two things are true. The sort of mainstream media types and DeSantis detractors who are making it seem like the campaign is now over because there were these glitches with Elon Musk and Twitter are crazy. That's not, that is living inside the media bubble, the so-called establishment bubble, however you want to phrase it, that puts way too much emphasis on. these kinds of made for media moments. Having said that, if you recognize that one of DeSantis's

core arguments about Donald Trump is that he was ineffective and incompetent. And we know that's coming, right? He teed that up in his interview with Pierce Morgan. He's talked about how he produced results in Florida and contrasted that with Donald Trump's record. As president, we know that that's at the heart of the case that he's going to make, you know, maybe directly at some point, maybe just glancingly against Donald Trump, if you are going to pitch yourself as the competence candidate, you should be competent. And your campaign shouldn't look like it looked yesterday. Set aside even the technical aspect of it, Jonah, I thought that the substance didn't do Ron DeSantis a lot of favors. And let me back up for a second, because I think the last, the last

real presidential candidate announcement that I remember being traditional was actually Barack Obama's in 2007, where he announced in Illinois. It was a Lincoln backdrop, you know, cheering crowds, all of that. In 2016, look, there was the escalator. Okay. Carly Fiorina, for what that's worth, she announced on Good Morning America on May the 4th, and I remember the date because there were stormtroopers all around us on set. As there should be. Star Wars ones, not. Not so surprising that Jonah and David didn't just endorse on the spot.

You know, for the most part, these things sort of get overhyped, they underdeliver. You kind of just want to get past them. Like Steve said, you want them to not suck, but they don't do a whole lot for you. But, you know, Ronda Santa spent an hour on this Twitter live taking questions. It's an audio-only format. He sort of delivered a written speech at the top. And then the questions were kind of niche, you know, cryptocurrency type stuff, which don't get me wrong,

there absolutely is a segment of the Republican primary voters who care a lot about regulation on cryptocurrency. But isn't the whole point a Republican Party that's focused on the economy, focused on working class voters. You know, he's said that he's all in on Iowa and New Hampshire. This is a weird, again, just substantively. This is a weird way to substantively start a campaign where you say that your primary focus is Iowa and New Hampshire,

Twitter and crypto. No, I agree. I mean, it's, I'm really coming around to Marshall McLuhan about the medium being the message. and there's a certain sense in which this definitely feeds into the accusation that the DeSantis people are way too online

right and like oh my gosh we got Elon to host a Twitter spaces thing now first of all that sentence alone loses I don't know 30 40% of the American people maybe maybe 80 Twitter spaces loses 90% of the American people yeah I had a lot of friends who are my age mind you who couldn't

figure out how to do it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, like, it was weird. And if it went perfectly,

it was still a weird choice. That's my point. I mean, I agree with Steve that there were a lot of people Ron DeSantis had every right to yell at last night and say, you had one job. Right. And at the same time,

I agree with you, sir. It's not going to be well remembered. And in fairness to the Trump down the escalator thing, that was not seen as a brilliant announcement thing. It was like, my God, what am I watching? This is so tacky and weird, right? A lot of the audience was paid.

That became a big deal. Yeah. So like, like these things in the grand scheme of things don't matter, except in so far as in political journalism and a lot of other journalism, three examples equals a trend. So they've just made a down payment of 30% on a trend piece about a mismanaged campaign. And that's not great. That said, moving on, like, like, uh, you know, Dana Lash and Chris Rufo asking questions. I mean, these, this is like, I have very politically engaged

friends who, you know, will ask me questions like, so who is this Chris Rufo guy after people like me have been reading or hearing about him for 18 months. And, um, and so there does feel like there's a very heavy bubble thing. The defenders will say they're tapping into something real, that this is sort of like, you know, the Ted Cruz strategy, which was taken over by Trump of getting the low propensity voters, the sort of 10 million voters who don't actually vote out there, that there is this, there's the method to this madness that there's a strategic vision at work here. If it succeeds, it'll be really interesting. Right now, I don't see it. I think having a big ballroom full of people cheering, particularly when like the rap against Ron DeSantis is that he doesn't communicate, that he doesn't communicate warmth or empathy, but you can fake warmth and empathy when you have a really sympathetic audience that's laughing at your plan jokes, that's falling for your schmaltzy, you know, prepared, I love my wife stuff. and it can actually seem like you are a remarkable simulacrum of humanity in those kinds of

situations. Al Gore did that kind of thing all the time because Al Gore on his best days was merely surprisingly lifelike. David, I have some substantive questions to talk about with you. Oh, okay. Let's do it. And sure, these could be on the flagship podcast instead, but you're here. Let's just break down, right? So one of the things that Ron DeSantis was asked is how do we know he's going to carry through on his promises? And his answer was that he studied Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution before becoming governor of Florida. That was weird. Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution doesn't have much to do with becoming governor of Florida.

He kind of backtracked and was like, and the Florida Constitution. but Article 2 has a lot of power. One of Ron DeSantis' greatest strengths is going to be substance and policy and having a real ability to quickly have a lot of depth on any of these issues that the other candidates simply lack. That was a weird answer

because the problem of the presidency is not a lack of understanding about the powers of the presidency, at least not a lack of underestimating the powers of the presidency. The problem we've had is people overestimating the problems of the presidency. But okay, here's the one that really got to me. Dana Lash asked about financial institutions cutting off conservatives

from being able to use their companies' wares because of their beliefs. And basically the question was, shouldn't we be able to force these companies to serve conservatives? is, like, force companies to serve customers that they don't like and agree with because their principles. I see where this is going. Yeah, it was kind of weird, David, that, like, there was this raw, raw about forcing companies to do stuff and to serve customers. And obviously, I get this was an announcement and they couldn't do the follow-up.

But, like, no mention of Masterpiece Cake Shop, 303 creative, all of these cases that conservatives Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby, all these cases, conservatives, deeply. care about, about not forcing companies to serve customers that would violate their core beliefs. So my question to you, David, is, where is the Republican Party right now on that? Is it just schizophrenic? Is there actually a through line here that I'm missing? How is Ron DeSantis going to thread the needle to please the Hobby Lobby masterpiece cake shop side of conservative businesses not having to serve customers that violate their beliefs? But also

being able to force companies. And remember he has the Florida social media case. Yep. Asteris, my husband is involved in similar, but different litigation. Stop woke act. Disney. Stop woke act, Disney. Like, forcing companies to do things also. I'm confused.

Yeah. So, Rhonda Santis is kind of got a Jekyll and Hyde persona. So on the one hand, he does do a lot of things that are just completely what conservative governors do, school choice, for example. his pandemic response, which got a ton of national media attention, was no different. And in some ways, somewhat more restrictive than the pandemic response of multiple other southern governors. So he does things that are very normal Republican, like school choice. His pandemic response was completely within the norms of red state responses.

It wasn't spectacular. But then he goes into this new aspect of, this sort of new right aspect, this nationalist conservative aspect, which is really, that's what's made him notorious. It is not his school choice bill. It is the Disney fight. It is the stop woke act. It is all the stuff about the woke mind virus and all of this.

That is what has made him an online star because he's tapped into, to circle back to what Joan was talking about, this very online, very active nationalist conservative movement that has a completely different view of state power. And so one of the things I look at it with DeSantis is I do you see DeSantis is potentially sort of the final nail in the coffin of fusionism, of Reagan conservatism.

Because one of the questions is, was Trump an interruption of sort of the general, the more recent trend of Republican Party ideology? Or was he sort of the termination? and if DeSantis follows Trump and DeSantis is doubling down on this use of state power and to really understand, I mean, this is dramatically different from the way Republicans have approached especially free speech in the last decade. I mean, prior to DeSantis and prior to this move, the way that Republican state legislators fought

against quote unquote wokeness in higher education was through free speech laws. It wasn't by trying to ban speech. It was through free speech laws. And here comes to Santa's trying to ban speech on race that he doesn't like. And so I think that he really is potentially sort of a figure that puts the final nail in the coffin of Reagan conservatism, at least for the time being fusionist conservatism. And you see this nowhere more than his view of free speech. And that's what's so different in his view of. of corporate, of economic freedom, of individual liberty.

That is what is so different from other Republicans who've gone before and so different, quite frankly, from other Republicans in the race. You know, you've seen Nikki Haley, you've seen Pence, who's probably going to enter, have qualms about the way Disney trudge, DeSantis has treated Disney. But I see him as a figure that on this battle between fusionism and national conservatism is really going all in on this national conservatism view. Steve, can we talk a little bit about the never-trump crowd?

And by which I mean, I don't like that term because like, what does that even mean? It's like pro-life and pro-choice now. But by never-trump, I mean people who said Donald Trump is a unique threat to the American way of government, to our experiment in self-government, et cetera. And therefore, whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump is what we will do, if that means supporting Democrats, so be it. they seem to be attacking Ron DeSantis a lot more. I'm confused about that. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm, I would consider myself never Trump. I was never Trump in

2015, 2016, have been forever. I'd never vote for the guy, would never support him. I think he's dangerous. And certainly after what we saw January 6th in the aftermath and the look at the language that he's using right now, I think he's a threat to the existence of the republic. I don't think that's overstating things. If you see him that way, as so, many Never Trumpers have claimed for years, how is it that you can either argue, and I'm talking about Never Trumpers on left and right, that DeSantis is a greater threat or that, or use all of your resources or many of your resources to go after DeSantis and these other Republicans. I mean, some of the Never Trumpers are attacking Tim Scott in the same way, attacking Nikki Haley

in the same way. I read something from Gail Collins the other day, David's colleague in these times. And she was arguing that DeSantis is worse than Trump. And I think you just have to stop and pause to think about the implications of that argument. She made it explicitly. You've had others who've made it explicitly. I think mostly on the left, they warn about DeSantis because he's, They argue he could be a smarter, more effective authoritarian than Trump.

And even if you share the reservations or some of the reservations that David articulated, and I do, he's not Donald Trump. He's not close to Donald Trump. It's crazy to make the argument that he's close to Donald Trump. I think there are a couple things going on here. There's some people who have argued. You've seen this from people who I think are principled conservatives like Heath Mayo and others. I would put Sarah Longwell in this category who look at Ron DeSantis, look at the Republican field, and they say, look, these are candidates who are adopting Trump's rhetoric. They're adopting his policies. They're campaigning as many Trumps, as Trump lights. And therefore, nobody should be surprised if those of us who oppose Donald Trump also oppose these people who are trying to be like Donald Trump. But I think there's some logic there. That makes sense.

But you can't make the argument that Ron DeSantis is Donald Trump or is worse than Donald Trump in any kind of a logically consistent or coherent way. And you have other people who I think are just grifters who have built a reputation or some cases of movement, some cases organizations around Donald Trump as this threat that have given them political relevance, that have given them a platform, and in some case, have given them lots and lots of money, who are making these arguments because they need to keep. Donald Trump at the center of the argument. And I would put the Lincoln Project, folks. There are some people at the Lincoln Project who I like and respect, even if I have disagreed with them over the years like Joe Trippy. But they put out an open letter to Rondasantis that is just like gratuitous shots at Ron DeSantis.

And they are talking, they take this sort of posture of building up Donald Trump. Let's cut to the chase. You're going to get absolutely destroyed on and on and on. Trump will wreck you. What's the point of doing this other than to be able to go to their left-wing donors and say, see, we're also attacking Ron DeSantis to give us more money? I can't come up with an actual serious reason for them to be doing what they're doing, but they're doing it, and I think it's gross.

Yeah, I mean, to me it reminds me. the ever-escalating George W. Bush is a racist, but Romney's even more of a racist. And then when Trump came around, they'd run out of runway. The amp was already at 10. And now what was Trump? If you just say that Donald Trump is a unique threat, and then every single other person is even more of a unique threat, that's, first of all, it doesn't work with the word unique. But, yeah, you've run out of runway. 15 years ago, Ramesh Pannuhr and I co-wrote a piece for NR.

I think the headline was liberals think the only good conservative is a dead conservative. And it just in a charted the history of people that were utterly demonized. Once they are out of power, liberals saying, even Barry Goldwater wasn't like this. Barry Goldwater was an honorable and decent man. Ronald Reagan was never like this. Ronald Reagan was an honorable and decent men. And just the half life, the time cycle of this process is now shrunk down to like 18. months. The second, like Mitt Romney is no longer running for president. He's no longer, you know,

a deranged racist. He's the, he's the conscience of the Republican Party. And it's just also cynical. You know, I think of the DeSantis dilemma like this. I don't think there's, I'm with Steve, I don't think there is a credible argument that he is worse than Trump, comparable to Trump, within 50 miles of Trump. But at the same time, he personifies a kind of right-wing political philosophy and that I don't like. And so do you hold your tongue on saying what you don't like about the DeSantis political philosophy because you're the overarching goal of defeating Trump? Or do you say flat out, I don't think that DeSantis is comparable to Trump?

I think Trump has an existential, there's an existential aspect of the threat of Trump that's totally absent with DeSantis. But I also don't like the way DeSantis views government power, which I think is just what you have to do and not game theory this thing out. Just say what you believe, right? Just say what you believe. Can you, I mean, just think about how revolutionary that is, what you're saying right now. Just say what you believe. I mean, that's what's so funny is these, some of these people who have been water carriers for Trump for the past seven years are now DeSantis partisans and are writing and tweeting with utter shock that Donald Trump would lie about their candidate. It's like,

do you believe this? Donald Trump is lying. It's like, where have you been? And the sort of head snapping quality to some of these arguments and some of the position that you're seeing is, I don't know, there are reasons people are cynical about politics and we're seeing a lot of them. My favorite is coming from former Trump women who worked with Trump and around Trump going, look at how Trump's MAGA supporters are treating women. Like, oh, oh, is that new? I'm sorry.

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics

and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience

without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Jonah, I want to make sure we talk about Tim Scott a little bit here. What, no one paid attention to poor Tim Scott announcing this week.

I don't know. I thought he had a good news cycle, a half cycle. I mean, what are we, what do we measure news cycles in now, 15 minute increments? But anytime you ask Tim Scott, you know, why? he's running against Donald Trump? What are his policy differences? What's the distinction? He demurs and just says, like, I'm a good guy. Aren't I a good guy? Which leads everyone to say, like, oh, you're running for vice president. Got it. Ditto Nikki Haley. Got it. So we can pay attention to this later and talk about whether you'd make a good VP choice for Donald Trump or whether Donald

Trump's likely to pick someone like you. But are these presidential announcements? I mean, I missed Larry Elders presidential announcement, but apparently he is running as well. And so, my, that's the dude who ran for governor in California in the Newsom recall. There's a, there's a, I was writing a column and, and he, he has a website, Larry Elder 2024. And my only reason I bring him up is there, there are some people. people who aren't running to be vice president. They're running just so you know their name. So they get better speakers speaking fees that they get better hits on TV. Is that true for Tim Scott though? I mean, Tim Scott actually is the most popular guy in the Republican Party. That's different

than the most popular potential nominee. I agree. I'm just saying that there are many rooms in the mansion of motivation. And I am not sure that I'm not sure that if you if you were talking to Nikki Haley and to Tim Scott that they would say that they are running for vice president. I'm saying that I think that they consider that a sufficiently good hedge, like a plan B, that they're not going to do anything to foreclose that possibility too soon. I don't like this strategy. I've gotten to many arguments with a very important woman in my life who is right upstairs for me about some of this stuff.

but I think that they are more in a sort of kill Rubio mode right from 2016 that they think if they can just get the other they could be the one in second place it changes the thing it changes the theory and they're not going to they're not going to abandon the possibility of being a vice presidential pick in pursuit of that because they don't think they can get to be the number two person by pursuing that strategy in the first place I personally think they all I'm very much with David Drucker our colleague who has been saying this for a very long time, that if you're going to run for president, you have to work on the assumption, deepen your core and in all of your rhetoric, that you're the best person in the field suited for the job, and you need to say so, which means that you actually need to say,

I am a better candidate for president than Donald Trump. And then when someone asks you, why come up with something better than stuff picked off of a census form or an actuarial table, right? I mean, it can't be, I'm a woman, I'm black, or any of these kinds of things. It can't be because he's old. It has to be, you know, it doesn't have to be, well, he fomented a riot to steal an election, but it could be like, he'd be a lame duck or he's not, you know, or he's not very disciplined

or he's ill-suited to the challenges that we have. Or, you know, he's the product of someone making a wish with a monkey paw. I don't care what the argument is, but you have to draw a distinction. And if you don't draw a distinction that says you're actually running, you think you're the best person for the job, don't run for the freaking job. Don't waste everybody's time. But can we just, can we just acknowledge just, again, sometimes it's just worth a pause for a reality break? Can we just acknowledge how odd it is that you have this growing number of Republicans who want to replace Donald Trump as the Republican nominee and beat Joe Biden to become president who believe the consensus view that Donald Trump did in fact foment? a riot that led to violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol and, you know, violence against Capitol police, the potential assassination of his running mate. And they don't want to use it.

They don't want to use it against the guy. Sir, can I ask you a question? Because I've been waiting to ask you this for a while. And now I thought was the opportunity to just bring it on you. So there is a, there is a, I mean, this is a challenge, right? I think it's, as I sit here, I think it's crazy that you have people like Nikki Haley who, I mean, she's shown herself sort of, she doesn't really have, it doesn't seem to me that she has core convictions and principles. At least if she does, they change from day to day, which almost suggests that she doesn't have them. Tim Scott, I think, really believes stuff. And he has gone out of his way in interviews this week to avoid talking about Donald Trump.

What do you do if you're brought in and you have an audience with Ron DeSantis for a half? half hour and they say, look, we have this dilemma. We can't go hard at Donald Trump for fear of pissing off the 30% of the Republican base that is all in on Donald Trump. But at the same time, we recognize that there's 50% of the Republican Party that would like a candidate other than Donald Trump, and we need to draw this contrast. How do you do it? Can I tell you something just about my career and if folks are listening and this might have a gendered aspect to it, I don't know, or it might just be what it's like to be in your 20s at any point. I don't know.

But for about 10 years in campaigns, every time someone made a decision that didn't make a lot of sense to me, I would just assume they knew a lot more than I did about it. And then when you get in your 30s, you start going, wait a second, I'm not sure that was true. So, look, there's a lot of operatives who are going to tell you about the five-dimensional chest that they're playing, and that they're so good at five-dimensional chess, and they'll explain the five-dimensional chess and how it's all the pieces are going to fall into line, and if you knock out this, which is a bank shot on this, then you end up here. That's how you end up with a whole lot of candidates attacking the number two person in the race, even though if you were to ask a five-year-old

who's in any sort of competition, this person's winning. Who do you need to beat in order to win? the guy who's winning? Yes, that's the answer. This just, I don't believe in five dimensional chess and politics. Now, look, I'll be honest, my win record isn't that great. So maybe I should go back to the thoughts that I had in my 20s of other people know better than I do. But this is where my sweeping analogy comes in. There's, you know, a big rock on the ice. It's very heavy and it's heading in a certain direction. There's only so much you're actually going to do. But if you want a chance of winning. Bank shots aren't the way to do it. So yeah, if you are just as happy being secretary of commerce or vice president or have a Fox News gig or be president, then by all

means you do want to hedge risk here. But then you're not running for president because it's simply the case, and I absolutely agree, if you want to be president of United States, if you look at the long line of people that have actually made it there, they made it there by doing an all-out sprint to the effing White House, they weren't hedging their risk along the way. Barack Obama ran headlong into Hillary Clinton. If he had lost that primary, his political career would have been quite painful, I think, moving forward. So, yeah, I think they're all just making a huge, huge mistake. And a mistake that many candidates made in 2016, they kept taking down Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz.

because their theory was, I just need to get into the head-to-head with Donald Trump. None of them got into a head-to-head with Donald Trump. The whole theory was Fubar. And in the meantime, they're all just shooting at each other and Donald Trump's walking into the nomination. And that's what I see happening here,

with the exception of Ron DeSantis. It's why I'm still very interested in his campaign and campaign strategy because he's the one guy not doing that, and that's the dynamic that's so different than 2016, as there was no clear second in the pack runner. Can I ask you a quick follow up on that? If you had been advising him before this announcement, let's just say set aside the mechanics of the announcement,

okay, he was going to have some message, whether it was on Twitter spaces, whether it was in a traditional speech, whatever. You criticized earlier the substance of some of the things that he said. What would your rollout have been? You get to say to him, here are the things, governor, that I would have you emphasize as you start to build this case that you should be the Republican nominee. And not incidentally, Donald Trump should not.

It actually would have looked a whole lot like the Barack Obama announcement speech. I would have done it at the Florida governor's mansion with a hometown crowd. And it would have been on his record as governor during COVID, on jobs, on the things that make Florida, the number one this and the number one that, very, very traditional in that sense, when you're running as the challenger, the same way that Barack Obama was running against Hillary Clinton.

I just, I feel like the roadmap is actually laid out pretty nicely right there. And I don't know, I understand. I understand times are different, kind of, but anyway, that's, it would have been a pure economic message, just. And like, nothing about Disney. Oh, my God, do you know how long they spent on talking about Disney last night between crypto, Disney, and boycotting financial service industry stuff? It was weird. All right, Jonah, last word to you on this topic. Are all these people just too good for a Republican primary electorate at this point? you for setting up my column. Yeah. So look, I just want to make a very quick point is that people like me and not just me, a lot of people on this podcast have been saying for a very long time that if you don't draw lines and distinctions, you blur lines and distinctions and eventually you acculturate people to different attitudes, right? And so like if you say that infidelity doesn't matter,

If you say that adultery doesn't matter, if you say that rudeness, crassness, sexual abuse, go down a long list, doesn't matter out of political expediency. At some point, you're going to teach a lot of people that these things don't matter. If you teach you, if you don't object when the leader of your party runs down America and says we're stupid, talks about how caring about democracy and such things is sort of childish, blah, blah, blah, people are going to start to ape those talking points. And I think that one of the problems that we have now is that, look, I like Tim Scott a lot. Tim Scott, I like Nikki Haley a lot personally. Tim Scott is upbeat. He's patriotic. He's a preacher without being preachy.

He's a decent dude. He's an African-American, which I say as a political asset because I think a lot of people don't understand how desperately this party, the right would love to have a black standard bear. And yet, I think, if he's not. he doesn't catch on at all in the primaries, at least part of the reason is because he's too good for the voters in the Republican Party. The voters in the Republican Party have come to want from a politician the stuff that Donald Trump delivers. And the same goes for Ron DeSantis in a different way. Ron DeSantis is not sunny and upbeat, but Ron DeSantis actually delivers

policy wins that the base of the priority says it wants. And it turns out they don't want the wins, the policy victory is nearly as much as they want the performative stuff. They think the performative stuff is what you want from a politician now and what you want from a president and shame on them for it. That doesn't make

them deplorable people, but it does make what they want from politics quite deplorable. And I think this is the real problem that the Republican Party has only itself to blame by basically letting its own voters you know, there's such a thing as voter

education, which used to be what parties did a lot of, we're now learning that there's such a thing as voter maleducation, that you can teach your voters to be really crappy voters. And that's what the Republican Party has done over the last seven years. And candidates who want to be sunny and upbeat and patriotic are going to pay a price for it because they're now terrified of correcting their own voters on telling them, you know, hey, look, sometimes some of the people are wrong. But not all Republican voters, right? Like what percentage? What percentage are you talking about if you had to I'm saying the irreducible core of Trump voters, right, which is, pollsters put it at like 28 to 32 percent or something like that, a big chunk of them, you know, and then a larger chunk

who say, oh, they don't like the drama of Trump, but when push comes to stuff, let me put it this way. There are a lot of really decent people, a lot of decent people. I know them. I'm friends with them. I'm, they're parents of friends of mine. They're decent people. But if your immediate response to Donald Trump having his house searched by the

FBI or your immediate response to Donald Trump losing in a civil suit that it found him guilty of sexual abuse to say, well, our hands are tied now. We have to elect this guy president. You're doing politics wrong, flat out. That is a dumb, dumb response. You know, Richard Jewell was railroaded by the federal government with the Atlantic bombing stuff, right? Just absolutely rigged, railroaded, treated horribly by the deep state. That doesn't mean that after he got his name back, he should have been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. These things can be held independently. You can believe that Trump is being mistreated or treated unfairly, or you can take my view, which is different than that.

But none of that is a qualification for being freaking president of the United States, particularly after seeing him be president for four years. All right, David, we're moving on to the debt ceiling. And I just, let's just take a little moment here. One of the things that I feel so deeply in my core, that I try to proselytize is this idea that Congress is broken, yes, but it's broken because of the presidency, i.e., Congress is sort of trying to do its job, and Congress has a hard job.

Legislating is messy. It's about compromise. It's about not getting everything that you want. That is the core job of being a member of Congress. And yeah, for anyone who's done a group project in middle school, you'll be able to attest that it's not the most awesome way to spend your time. So when they're in the middle of that process and someone from their own party is sitting in the White House

and says, I have a magic wand and can make sure you never have to take a hard vote, never have to compromise, I can just do this myself. Why would anyone continue with the group project? The teacher just said you can get an A by not doing the group project anymore. And so indeed, time after time, Congress is working on something.

They say it's a crisis. There's political pressure. And then the president steps in to fix the crisis. We've seen it with DACA, with President Obama, who said that he didn't have the power to do it. Then suddenly he did. We saw it with bump stocks in the Trump administration. And boy, if the 14th Amendment doesn't feel that way to me now, David, Congress is actually working on a debt ceiling deal. They're getting there.

It's hard. Neither side's going to get everything that they want. And now you have 60 Democratic members of the House. And I'm not great at counting, but it was like roughly seven or eight or nine Democratic members of the Senate. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, John Fetterman, Tina Smith, to name a few, saying, please, please usurp the powers of Congress, Mr. President. We don't want to do our jobs. This is hard and we could be primaried. And President Biden, his magic wand this time is called the 14th Amendment. It's a nonsense argument. David, that's not a question. I'm just handing the

rant over to you. Yeah. I mean, we went through this. on A.O. And look, just to make it clear for folks who have questions about the 14th Amendment. Can you explain what A. A.O. is? I'm trying to use acronyms. Oh, oh. The SS advisory opinions. The 14th Amendment argument in the nutshell is this, is that we can't default. It's unconstitutional to default, that the 14th Amendment says that the debt of the United States shall not be questioned. Okay. Let's just assume for the sake of argument, that's correct. It is unconstitutional to default. But as we went through an AO, every way to remedy the default that is proposed by the advocates of the 14th Amendment argument also violates the

Constitution. So if you're going to appropriate more money, well, you can't do that. Like you've got to have the House to appropriate more money. You just go down through the list and every concrete mechanism for avoiding default that doesn't include Congress also violates the Constitution. This is, so in other words, this is, for all the academic arguments about constitutionally can you default, as a practical matter, as a practical matter, that is not a path forward period into discussion. And fortunately, I've seen signals from the Biden administration that they don't, they're not in love with that argument. Although I do wonder if the date gets closer, if they'll trot it back out again. But you're exactly right, Sarah. this is a situation where many, dozens of members of Congress are desperate not to do their job,

just desperate not to do it and pushing everything up to the presidency. And in this case, Biden at least seems somewhat reluctant. He's not all in on it. But we've been there before. I mean, Obama said, I can't do it on DACA. I can't do it. I can't do it. And then he does it.

And so, no, I can't improve on your rant. I can't improve on it. this debt ceiling issue might feel stupid. Why do we have another separate vote on raising a debt ceiling for money that was already appropriated and committed by Congress in a previous vote? Shouldn't it all be together? Got it. Well, then make it together, Congress.

Put it together. But in the meantime, there's an obligation to negotiate and an obligation to compromise here. and this idea that you can kick it up to the president of the United States to just wave a magic wand and fix it all is pure fiction and I'd like to see him try it in front of the current Supreme Court. Steve, Democrats find themselves in an unusual position here politically. They're losing an argument with House Republicans. We haven't seen them lose an argument with House Republicans in a really, really long time.

And I'm thinking back to the Obamacare shutdown with Ted Cruz, frankly, the other debt ceiling fights that have been had through the years, no matter which side Republicans are on, by the way. Joe Biden had, you know, Democratic House and Senate back in December, didn't do this when he had both of those houses, and then stood in the negotiating position of saying, we do not negotiate over the debt ceiling for 97 days. It seems to me, though, that the real political difference maker,

and this again, name-checking David Drucker, our colleague, as he put it, was that actually the Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill. They actually were unified in saying, okay, pen to paper, we will pass a debt ceiling for these changes. They are specific.

This isn't a press release or a talking point. And that cut the legs out from under Joe Biden and the Democrats. But we're running out of time. And Joe Biden's getting so much pressure from his left to just use the 14th Amendment or whatever it may take to not have to compromise at all on these issues with Republicans. I don't know. Where are we going to end up on June 1? Well, before I answer your question, I need to do a correction. Obviously, we hear at the dispatch

believe in facts, and we want to make sure that everything that we say is factually accurate. And between your rant and David's on the 14th Amendment, I just need to add some facts that Senator John Federman provided us in making his case that Joe Biden needs to use the 14th Amendment. He said President Biden needs to consider using the 14th Amendment if necessary and then a couple tweets later he wrote, this is the whole reason why the 14th Amendment exists and we need to be prepared to use it. So you guys must not know your constitutional history because that was the whole point of the 14th Amendment if you go back and listen to those debates. So I think think we need to post a correction.

That is going to be a real shock to everyone who has paid any attention to the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause or the 14th Amendment being used to incorporate various rights and the Bill of Rights against state governments, not just the federal government, versus this section of the 14th Amendment that the debts of the United States shall not be questioned, which nobody has noticed until the last 10 years. Cool. Cool. Cool. Right. What is it also interesting? I mean, is it interesting that Federman can make that kind of a ridiculous claim and it doesn't get really much attention in the media. You can imagine if somebody like Josh Hawley or J.D. Vance made a similarly constitutionally illiterate point. It would be front page. No, although in fairness, Steve, Tommy Tuberville has said some insane things about the U.S. Constitution. And they get a lot of attention and a lot of mockery, honestly. Anyway, so getting to your, getting to your... Your question, I mean, I think David's point was right. David Drucker's point was right. The fact that Republicans actually passed this and did so in a preemptive fashion, even if I think there are elements of what they pass that are kind of silly. And if the argument, I mean, I take a back seat to no one in terms of my desire to reduce the size and scope of government. And in particular, to alter the trajectory of our $32 trillion national debt, what Republicans passed doesn't do that. This is temporary and it's

relatively small, even if it looks draconian when you look at the chunks it takes out of discretionary spending. I think it's politically dangerous for them, politically risky at the very least, and it doesn't solve our big picture problems. But they passed it. And I actually think the important part came before they passed it. And it was in the signal sending that we saw from Senate Republicans and moderates in the House Republican conference that they were going to stick together. You had people like John Thune, you had others saying early in the process, Republicans are going to pass something, they're going to stick together, and we think that there should be negotiations over spending on this deal. You had people, I think I mentioned last

week, like Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska saying the same thing. So you had these people in the Problem Solver Caucus, Republicans, which is this bipartisan caucus, includes a lot of moderates, saying, we're sticking with McCarthy, we're going to pass something. They did pass something. I think it gave them leverage. It looked like they wanted to do something. I think the Biden administration has, I mean, I wouldn't say that this is their sort of domestic Afghanistan. But I think that they have handled this about as poorly as you could possibly handle it. And we've talked about it here before.

But Joe Biden is tweeting out these absurd binaries to frame the debate as you have to do what Republicans have passed or we're going to default. It was never that. They claimed that they were never going to negotiate on any of this stuff. Then, of course, behind the scenes they were negotiating. And even as they were negotiating behind the scenes, you had the White House spokeswoman in front of microphones saying, we're not going to negotiate. It's totally absurd all around. And I think they've put themselves in a real box.

I think in sort of a dangerous way, this is a this is a. a very precarious moment because the conventional wisdom is kind of jelling around the idea that Republicans have played this well politically. And if you care most about sort of who wins and who loses politically, I think it emboldens Republicans to take steps and to do things potentially that would be calamitous if they in fact happen. And that would be pushing on a default. At a certain point, you're playing a game of chicken and we won't care that much. Political people, political classes will care about who gets blame and who doesn't get blame. I think the 30, 350 million Americans will care a lot if we pass these deadlines and if we start to see the

kinds of consequences that I think many smart people think we'll, we'll see. And I think the more that Republicans are emboldened on this to sort of say no compromise. I mean, Donald Trump is out there saying we should default, the more dangerous it becomes for the economy. So, Joan, I do think that's an important other part of this, which is Democrats may be pushing this 14th Amendment nonsense because they don't want to do hard stuff and would prefer the president do it because he's of their party. But on the other hand, you have Donald Trump saying, Republicans, it's in your political interest to actually default, not just get everything you want from Joe Biden and get a great deal.

But like, no, no matter what Joe Biden offers you, you're better off of the economy defaults because then everything will go poorly and I'll look great and then I'll get in the White House and that's more important big picture. Where does that leave Kevin McCarthy? Yeah, so I think this is an interesting way to get at this. Let me just start with Kevin McCarthy. I think it is fair to say I have been less than celebratory about Kevin McCarthy low these past few years. He's done a surprisingly good job. And I think one of the reasons why he's done

a good job is because is because his ungrown animal. One of the reasons is that he's a weak speaker. And being a weak speaker, he realized that he had to put people in positions of power and authority and let them have power and authority. And so putting some of the House Freedom Caucus guys on the Rules Committee actually meant that anything that came out of the Rules Committee wasn't going to get maum out by the House Freedom Caucus. And so there's a, I think there's a metaphor in there about how if you actually give people in positions of responsibility, the responsibility to do their jobs, they might actually rise to the occasion a little bit.

Then there's Donald Trump who in that town hall where he had said this stuff, he admitted that when he said that he thought it would be outrageous to use the debt ceiling limit for leverage in budget negotiations or in spending negotiations that it would be unthinkable he was asked why did you say that then he don't say it now he says because I was president then right he is not in a position of responsibility now and he has no concern about how people behave other than how reflects on his own self-interest who among the people who are in power it is in his interest and in his interest alone to see the world burn, right? If that's why he says super reasonably, the Republicans should demand $5 trillion in spending cuts.

And if they don't get that, they have no choice but to default, right? That is just basically saying, flame on to the entire, you know, world economy because he thinks it'll make him his glide path better. The interesting thing is that contrasts with Joe Biden. whose incentive structure is different than the congressional Democrats and Trump says different than their congressional Republicans

congressional Republicans will get a lot of blame if the world goes on fire because of the default. So will congressional Democrats and so will Joe Biden. Joe Biden wants to be able to say that he actually was this bipartisan dealmaker and as he goes into the 2024 election, throwing congressional Democrats under the bus is a good way to do that.

And, you know, maybe if they'd let him sister soldier, something insignificant over the last two and a half years, he wouldn't be forced into this corner where he's actually going to have to do it on something actually really significant and important. But, you know, such as life. So, like, I would love to see him throw the Democratic caucus under the bus. Give Kevin McCarthy a big win. Let both of them say, hey, look, we're actually governing. This is what people sent us here to do is to work this stuff out. will, and I think that'll probably happen because the actually defaulting

would be so calamitous. You know, when Fitch lowers our credit rating and Wall Street actually says, oh my God, they're actually going to screw this up. You're going to see a lot of Congress people cave. All right. Finishing up with a not worth your time, our little bit on QR codes for menus

is now just the rage. It's everywhere. We were really cultural leaders, I think, in that regard. And so I have another restaurant question. Worth your time, question mark. Steve Hayes, dress codes at restaurants. Well, I'm a bad person to ask about this because I,

these days, my sort of my fanciest is blue jeans and a blazer. That counts for dressing up. Now, I can't remember if I've told this, said this before, but I was walking out one day of my house wearing jeans and a flannel, you know, which used to be really sort of dressing down back in the days where I had to wear suits to the Fox and to work. And one of my kids seeing me in jeans and a flannel said, oh, daddy, you have to go to work today?

I was like, that was the indication that I was dressing up. Um, look, I, I, I, business owners, restaurant owners should do what they want to do if they want to have, um, people who look nice because they're serving nice foods or they have Michelin stars or they expect a certain, you know, they expect people to tip at a certain level or whatever. That's fine. I probably won't be going to a lot of those restaurants. David, dress codes. Uh, time out real quick. You're muted. David, dress codes at restaurants. And no, I'm not talking about. government regulation here like Steve seems to be implying. I just mean prudentially. Dress codes at restaurants. Time out. David, you're still muted. Third time. We're just going to have you talk muted. That's weird. Okay. All right. Ready? Yeah, I'm not asking it again. Okay. So I'm opposed for a very specific reason. It reminds me of the debacle of my first date in college, which was I finally, after months and months of being a college student, got up the

courage to ask somebody out, asked a friend of mine who was originally from Nashville, where should we go? He told me a restaurant called Mario's. Okay, great. So I asked her to go to Mario's and she seemed unusually excited to go to Mario's, which I didn't know anything about it. And then, in the days leading up to the date, my friend says, how much money do you have in your checking account. And I said, I think I've only got like 60 bucks left. This was the end of the semester. He goes, you're going to need all of it. And then I was like, what? And then the day before, have you got a nice sport coat? I mean, yeah, because you're going to need it. Because it was a dress code. So I go and I spend every last dime I have in my first, in my second semester, my freshman year,

on a dress code restaurant in service of a relationship that was never going anywhere ever. And so I'm a no. I am disgusted by the moral relativism and luscious decadence of my colleagues. I think it is a tragedy that America has lost. Literally, I ask people this all, I'm obsessed with this topic. I ask people this all the time in California and New York. There are basically, there may be one Le Bernardin, if it's still around, one restaurant that requires people to wear a tie in New York.

There's basically no restaurant in all of California that requires people to wear a tie and jacket. There are still some country clubs that do, which is good. But I think that in a society, you want a lot of diversity of institutions horizontally and vertically and having some places where you could take your wife out for your, I don't know,

25th wedding anniversary and not sit next to some goober in gym shorts with his baseball hat backwards. But because he made a bundle on Bitcoin, he can afford the meal. I don't think that's progress. I think there are places in times, and I've come way down on this stuff.

I usually be much more serious about this. but there are places in time sounds sounds like it sounds like it you could have restaurants that just have dress codes for certain evenings right like saturday nights it's dress code night at this place that kind of thing my parents used to make me put on my little blue blazer and tie clip on tie to fly you now see people you know on airplanes that look like they just finished eating their lunch in a dumpster walking around filthy in shorts, whatever. A few places in institutions. I think it's grotesque that John Fetterman walks around in his gym shorts and hoodie in the halls of the Senate. Oh, this is great progress.

Look, I have a lot of sympathy for his problems. But wearing a tie and jacket in the Senate seems to me like a minimal standard of decorum in society. Having a few restaurants, there'll be plenty of places that will serve people who dress like Steve. They're not going to go away. But having one or two restaurants that actually can signify to the people you love or the people you respect that this is a special occasion and that you're raising your own standards beyond personal convenience in order to codify and mark the occasion seems like a very small but important step towards greater civilization rather than the luch debauchery that my colleagues here celebrate so much. I'm so glad that I came to Jonah last on this question. All of this was teed up, by the way, because we went on date lunch yesterday, me and husband of the pod, and I was asked to remove my hat at the restaurant. And I realized just how sexist most dress codes are.

It's like, men, you must wear a suit jacket. There's no hats. There's no flip-flops. There's, you know, must have slacks, no shorts, no tank tops, women. Just wear whatever you want. Because you cannot define women's dreams. dress at all very easily. Flip-flops can be $1,000 if they have heels on them. I mean, who knows. And so being asked to remove my hat was like a little embarrassing. And I thought,

what kind of restaurant was it? It was like a nice seafood place. I mean, we were just like, you know, what kind of hat? Like a, it was my U.S. curling team Olympic hat. Like a baseball hat? Yeah, it was a baseball hat. Did you then have had had? I redid my hair very quickly at the hostess stand. And with that, thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. We got no opinion from Sarah about this. Oh, because I don't think I should get to have an opinion. The dress code so affects you guys more than me. I can wear whatever I want.

But would you like to go to these kinds of restaurants that Jonah likes to go to with the fancified suits and fru-fruit ties like the Georgetown cocktail parties Jonah goes to all the time? I mean, is this? You guys all know I'm right. I just like Jonah's rant so much. I kind of hate to disagree with it because he, I don't know, I might be persuaded. Are we thinking about, are we thinking about instituting a dress code at the office?

Oh, God, please don't do that. Is that next for you, Jonah? I mean, we could. No, no. I'm fine with the way, you know, I, I have made so many frigging concessions to the laptop class and all this kind of stuff in terms of my own lifestyle. That's fine. But Steve, you have a child graduating from high school shortly.

Like, if you went to a restaurant. to celebrate the occasion, and she's all dressed up for graduation, and you're all dressed, I mean, I'm assuming you dress up for a graduation. Maybe you wouldn't because you're, you know, whatever. But let's say you did or your college graduation, wouldn't it be nice to pick a place to go eat? It's fair. So, okay, since this is not worth some time, we should go a little longer on it. So this, this problem actually arose last week because it was my daughter's senior, you know, dance show. She's a dancer. I school had a dance show and they celebrate the seniors at this dance show. And one of the things they do is they ask the parents with a family

to come up on stage with the dancer. They say some nice things about the dancer and everyone applauds. And I went initially and put on jeans and a blazer and a dress shirt. And I thought that was probably good enough. But then as I wore it around the house before we left, I thought that's going to be overdressed. Nobody else there will be wearing a blazer of any kind. So I went and put on, you know, the equivalent of a flannel and went to the thing. And I was right. It would have been, I would have been very overdressed for the occasion in jeans and a blazer. It happens when everybody's standards fall to the lowest common denominator. I expect. Jonah to wear a tie everywhere he goes now.

What's funny is I think David is the most addressed up of any of us on this podcast, and he's wearing a short-sleeved polo. Classing up the joint. Classing up the joint. All right. If you have thoughts on this, become a member of the dispatch and hop in the comments section. Steve is going to be in there

just vociferously batting down opinions on his 1992 Eddie Vedder flannel. Otherwise, give us a rating wherever you're hearing this podcast, and we'll talk See you next time. Thank you.