The Dispatch Podcast - FBI Searches Mar-a-Lago, Trump Takes the Fifth

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

It was a busy week for the former president, the FBI searched his home at Mar-a-Lago, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a New York deposition, and Attorney General Merrick Garland moved to make public the legal authorization for the FBI’s search. Sarah, Jonah, and David are here to discuss the fallout. Plus: Our hosts have new inflation numbers, and primary results to chew on.   Show Notes: -TMD: The FBI Raids Trump’s Home -French Press: Thinking Through the Trump Search -G-File: Yearning for a Banana Republic -Stirewaltisms: Of Presidents and Precedents -The Dispatch: A Tale of Two GOP Responses to the Trump Search -TMD: A Hint of Inflation Relief -The Dispatch: Trump-Endorsed Tim Michels Prevails in Wisconsin Gubernatorial Primary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Jonah Goldberg and David French. We are going to talk about, of course, the search warrant executed at Mara Lago. We're also going to talk inflation and what we learn from the primaries. But first, I want to mention we recorded this episode before Attorney General Merritt Garland gave comments from the Department of Justice. In those comments, he said that the Department of Justice is moving to unseal the warrant and the property receipt. absent objection from the former president. He also said that he personally approved the search and that he was not going to provide additional details as to the basis of the search at this time. So you're not going to hear any conversation of that with me and the guys, but I wanted to add my own two cents here at the top of the show, which is this seemed like the attorney general being able to really thread that needle, acknowledging what the public already knows about the search, and moving to unseal the warrant, something of

course that President Trump could have released at this point himself. I'm sure the Department of Justice thought that they would. But seeking to find out whether the former president has an objection to that and then releasing that to the public, I don't expect necessarily the underlying affidavit, which will have all those nitty gritty details, how they found out who their witnesses are, how recently those were. That's not what they're saying they're going to unseal. Just that copy of the cover page and maybe two of the questions underneath that, again, that President Trump has and could have released himself. But the AG also, of course, not disturbing longstanding protocol of talking about the non-public aspects of an ongoing investigation. So threading

that needle, batting down some of the rumors that have been out there, newsweek at one point publishing yesterday that the AG had not signed off on the warrant, didn't know about it, that somehow only Chris Ray had signed off, which if you listen to our emergency podcast, I said, wasn't even a possibility because that's not how the chain of command for search warrants works. That's done by the prosecutors. Lawyers have to present search warrants to the federal magistrate judge. So I was happy that the attorney general was able to discuss some of those things, really happy they didn't break that protocol that, again, when DOJ breaks a protocol of talking about ongoing investigations. It has universally turned out badly for the department,

for the public, and for all the reasons that I've laid out before, I think DOJ threaded that needle today and we'll see what happens in the future. But now, a great conversation with the guys pre that press conference. Let's dive right in. Jonah, they've already heard from David and I on the technicalities of the search warrant Mar-a-Lago. So I think we want to hear about the political ramifications in your mind of within the Republican party as Donald Trump, you know, has Mar-a-Lago searched.

Sure. I think, so I got two different hats to answer this question. One is, it's sort of the is-aught distinction here, right? As a political matter, I think this has been very good for Donald Trump. I think it creates this bizarre, I don't want to get too judgmental yet, but this fascinating, this intriguing argument for him being the nominee of the Republican Party, for him declaring early in part to fend up, make it more difficult to investigate him. It elevates him as the martyr victim guy on the right that everyone is talking about.

I think it has been wholly to Donald Trump's benefit and to the Trumpers benefits. And I think it's creating all sorts of problems and calculations for people like Ron DeSantis and others about, you know, how to message on this stuff. and whether this makes their potential bids for the president more difficult. Okay, that is the descriptive part. Here's the ought part. People are losing their freaking minds. And the search of Mar-a-Lago, which may have been, just as you guys talk about on your excellent niche podcast, it may have been the dumbest screw-up poor judgment in the history of the FBI, which would be saying

something. I don't know. We don't know. Right now, I think things point to the idea that this was a mistake, but I don't know, right? It does not mean that we are a banana republic. It does not mean that this country is irredeemably corrupt. It does not mean, as Mike Huckabee has been arguing, that because of this, we should nominate, Republicans should nominate Donald Trump by acclamation and just skip the primaries.

It is, when you look at the way people are talking about this, even if you, again, I have no problem with being critical of it. But when you look at what, like, say, Newt Gingrich is talking about how we need to view the FBI as a pack of wolves that are determined to eat us, because they've declared war on the United States of America

and the American people, you know, Ganesh, ranting about how they're now an organized crime organization. This is Looney Tunes stuff. And it gives people, and whenever the Wright succumbs to Looney Tune's stuff, it tends to be good for Donald Trump because he is, you know, the Bugs Bunny of Looney Tunes in this really strained analogy. David, the screenwriters for this show, you know, I do feel like they jumped the shark when they brought back Ronnie Jackson.

several years later, but here we are in season. He was the one of the pine barrier, right? And they really do like their parallelism. And I want to talk a little bit about the parallelism and what the Republicans and the right think should have happened if Hillary Clinton had been given a subpoena. Sorry, Hillary Clinton was given a subpoena. If Hillary Clinton was subpoenaed by the FBI

and refused to comply and hand over her server. Right. What do they think should have happened to Hillary Clinton at that point? I mean, we know what they think should have happened when she cooperated, which was to lock her up, right, based on the underlying merits of the criminal allegations against her. And by the way, I was somebody, and I wrote this, I think Hillary Clinton should have been indicted. And I absolutely stand by that because I look, remember in our podcast era, I compared the act. What would happen to Captain French or Major French in the similar circumstances? And I know exactly what would happen, just as I know exactly what would have happened in similar circumstances with Trump.

And now, I know those are not parallel. But right now, the parallel, like, to me, it's so striking. Hillary Clinton, they think, mishandled classified information, they issue a subpoena for the server. She turns over the subpoena or the server. She is not charged with any crime. Right now, Donald Trump was issued a subpoena, we now know, on June 3rd. We don't know the extent of his compliance, but I think it's fair to assume. The FBI at least didn't feel that he complied.

So they executed a search warrant, which at that point just takes them up to par with the Hillary Clinton investigation. And he has not been charged with any crime. So right now, they're running one to one with each other through history. And I guess I know this sounds like a stupid question in many respects, but I really, really mean it. Why is the right not seeing any hypocrisy here or even trying to explain what the difference is? I don't understand. Well, Sarah, it's been this way since 2015.

Okay. It's been this way since 2015. And this makes it particularly acute because one of the arguments surrounding the reason to vote for Trump over Hillary was related to Hillary's mishandling classified information, which was seen to be so egregious that it just qualified her from the presidency. Okay. So, and then, Donald Trump goes ahead and signs into law, a law strengthening, strengthening and making it a felony to mishandle classified information. So this was a very, very big talking point in 2015, 2016, 2017. You do not mishandle classified information. Nobody who mishandles classified information is above the law.

There was not just intense disagreement with the FBI's decision not to charge Hillary. There was condemnation of the lightness of the plea bargain, the lightness of the punishment for Sandy Berger. There was criticism of the lightness of... Side note that Sandy Berger was the Clinton National Security Advisor, took things out of the National Archives. He pled to a misdemeanor and separately lost his law license. That was sort of the extent of it.

I mean, just to give you a sense of it. the brazeness of what he did. It wasn't like he slipped stuff into a folder. He shoved documents in his pants and socks. There's an entire movie about it, Jonah. It's called, what is, uh, what's the one with Nicholas Cage? Oh, um, National Treasure? National Treasure, yes. That's a story of Santee Berger. There was, there was outrage at the lightness of the punishment for David Petraeus, but they were absolutely punished. They were absolutely punished. And there was, this was the consensus, okay? But here's the thing, Sarah.

This is no different than spending decades saying the Democrats are awful people for coddling Bill Clinton in the face of sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations and then turning around and not just coddling Donald Trump in the face of sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations, but reacting with fury at anybody who points out the consistency. This is just transferring it into a yet another realm. The precedent was set. The precedent has been consistently set that there are no standards that were previously, Republicans previously held politicians to that applied to Donald Trump. And I think we've yet to see, we've yet to see that there is any action that he will take that will remove him, make him

beyond the pale. We just haven't seen it. I don't know that we'll ever see it. Not only that as Jonah has said, I totally agree with Jonah's descriptive account here. It has given him a more solid hold on the Republican Party because there's a defensive aspect to this, a rallying aspect to it. I've had friends reach out and say, well, now I have no choice. I have to vote for Trump in 2024. What? Why? I just don't get that. I can't get my head around that. I just don't get it. I just don't get it. I really, I just don't. I don't get it. Okay. So fast forward, not 24 hours, it felt like, and Donald Trump was supposed to sit for a deposition with the New York Attorney General in a civil lawsuit. And I will say, I was looking forward to seeing how that

went. And for three hours or more, I mean, depending if you count the lunch break, Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. And I thought that the statement he released was actually very well done. You know, you can't invoke your Fifth Amendment rights because you don't want to answer questions. You have to say that you are in reasonable fear that a statement that you make could be used against you in a criminal proceeding or used to collect evidence in a criminal proceeding. And the way that statement was phrased was that, you know, he had previously said that people only invoke the Fifth Amendment when they're guilty. He now understands why someone would do it when they're innocent because these people are basically on a witch hunt to get him

and they'll use anything they can. And so he can't say anything to them or they'll come after him criminally. It meets all the elements of invoking the Fifth Amendment, but in a pretty careful, clever way, as long as he sticks to that line, which fits with his overall narrative. So I think that he will, he's in pretty good shape. Now, as David knows, invoking your Fifth Amendment a right in a civil proceeding is actually quite different than in a criminal proceeding. Nevertheless, I don't think he had a choice. I'm just surprised he took the advice of counsel. David, any additional legal thoughts before we move to the political or lack of political ramifications.

Absolutely no political ramifications. What's I think important for people to understand is what is the consequence of invoking the fifth in a civil case compared to a criminal case. So in a criminal case, you don't have to testify at all. You don't have to say one darn word in your criminal trial. You can invoke the fifth. You can, and there is no inference the jury is permitted to draw against you. They are not allowed to presume that what you say,

what you would have said would have been incriminating. They're not allowed. This is a no-no. In civil cases, it's different. A jury is allowed to presume negativity. A jury is allowed to presume that what you would have said would have been bad. And in many ways, if you invoke the fifth in a civil case, it's kind of the kiss of death as a practical matter. Because the plaintiff's side or the other side in the case, if it's plaintiff or defense, is allowed to kind of run wild with it.

Why wouldn't they answer, jury? What are they hiding, jury? If they had nothing to hide, they'd have answered. they're afraid of criminal prosecution jury you know so you can really take the ball and run with it so it's a very consequential decision that you tend to undertake when when you are willing to sort of sacrifice the smaller concern the monetary damages at issue in the civil case for the sake of protection in the larger concern which is potential criminal punishment in a criminal case now that does not mean that the person is guilty. It's just here's what they feel like is reasonably at risk. And so I think that's a very important distinction to make here and to understand that he took the fifth when it could really come back and bite him in this case. He still takes the fifth anyway. And once again, Sarah, this was another standard that is no longer existent, which is, you know, as Trump had himself

acknowledged. You know, he formerly said, if you take the fifth, there's something wrong with you, but that's not a standard that exists anymore. So we're just knocking them down one after another. So this one, Jonah, I do understand why it has no political ramifications because of his explanation that if these people have a vendetta against him, which in fairness, Democrats do really, really, really hate Donald Trump and have made very clear that if they could put him in jail, they would. So in some sense, this one not having any broader implications in the political climate makes perfect sense, as compared to, I think, the lock her up chance, which I'm still totally baffled by why nobody feels the need to be consistent on that one. But assume that this New York civil case moves forward, the Georgia criminal case moves forward. the Georgia criminal case moves forward.

Basically, is there anything, Jonah, on the legal side that could change the political dynamics? Well, so first of all, I'm not sure I agree with you guys entirely that there are no political ramifications for this. I mean, I think there's political, put it in this way, there's significant political data points in this. And so far as, in part, because, we'll put this way, The raid at, you know, I really reluctant to use the word because I don't want to buy into the argument on either side of like, was it a raid or not a raid?

The search at Marilago, you know, the jackbooted Gestapo assault on a private citizen's home in Mara Lago allows Trump to link all of these cases together in a way. that is more, he would do anyway, but is much more compelling now as a talking point on the right, that he can say the reason why he's pleading the fifth is, as he does in that statement, which I think is another politically salient point. That statement was really well done. It was probably one of the best statements that Trump ever did, which is obviously proof that he didn't write it. And so I think that the elevation of his market.

status is gives him political cover to do whatever the hell he wants in these legal cases in ways that might have been a little more difficult to do a little while ago. Would have been possible to imagine a Ron DeSantis or Tom Cotton criticizing some things that he did in his legal defenses that now everyone has, you know, everyone on the right has to sort of give deference to. So I think there's some political significance there. The Georgia thing, I mean, look, I mean, you guys know this better than I do, but the Georgia thing is a criminal probe.

Like, it is politically significant if Donald Trump is a wanted man in Georgia, you know? Yeah. If a jury wants to send Donald Trump to jail, or, you know, that's serious. And that has real political, you know, issues. I just don't know how likely that is, you know, and I would defer to you guys on that. But, you know, that obviously has serious political possibilities to it. Except if he's already announced for president, which is why I think he will do that sooner rather than later.

Why a state criminal thing is different than the federal criminal thing, right? I don't want to get too technical with the federal and the state thing. But, you know, sure, but a guy's running for president and then a jury convicts him. Honestly, I think he'd get elected from jail. Well, that would be it. And you don't think that would be politically interesting? Now, this is interesting. I do not believe that the Georgia governor has the pardon power that most governors have.

So the, the, he must be so happy about that right now. So this is what's interesting about state charges, and that is that a president cannot pardon a defendant who has been convicted of state crimes. the president's pardon power is vast but it's over federal crimes it is not over state crimes well who can pardon state crimes generally governors can grant pardons in clemency and i'm not 100 percent certain about this but i think uh georgia has some limits on its governor's pardon power uh so that is because one of the first thoughts that i had was the pressure on brian kemp once trump announces would be overwhelming to try to protect Donald Trump from a state criminal charge pending in Kemp's state.

And Kemp is a stalwart Republican. And now who defied Trump on the vote, but would he defy those who are saying, you need to pardon Trump from this potentially, you know, this potentially, you know, politically inspired, bogus election fraud charge? So that's it. That's an interesting question we need to put a pen in here. So I just looked it up. This is from Wikipedia, but I generally think Wikipedia is pretty okay on this kind of stuff, but, you know, people can weigh it any way they want.

It says Georgia is one of the three states whose governor does not have the authority to grant clemency, although the governor retains indirect influence by the virtue of the fact that he gets to appoint the members of the parole board, which is actually the thing that that's the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is a five member. panel. And that would be interesting. I mean, I think Jonah has changed the metric here. I said politically, like, relevant to the outcome. Jonah has changed it to politically interesting. All of this is politically interesting, Jonah. The end of the Roman Republic is politically fascinating. You don't think a Georgia prosecution, an indictment prosecution and or conviction of Donald Trump is politically relevant or important? To the outcome? I actually don't.

So what outcome? The election? Him becoming president. Okay. That's fine. I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, it's hard to stump from the prison cafeteria, but, you know, you know, we'll see. We'll see.

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dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Let's move on to our next topic. Inflation. So let's break this down a little. The Biden White House comes out and the president says that we've had zero inflation in the month of July. And on the one hand, you have people saying that that is absolutely accurate because from June to July, there was zero percent increase in preempt. prices. And then you have on the other hand a whole bunch of people saying, yeah, but when I look at my grocery bill and it's 25% higher than it was last year, are you out of your mind? And it is true that July 2022 compared to July 2021, in fact, inflation has been about 8.5% overall. That's not

including food, which was actually higher, but they don't include food in what we call the inflation numbers. Okay, so you have actual economic definitions and timeframes versus what Americans are experiencing. David, did the Biden White House make a mistake saying that there was zero inflation? Not from an accuracy standpoint, because again, it is accurate if you're doing month to month. It's not accurate if you're doing year to year, but he didn't say he was doing year to year. So what he said was true. No pants on fire. But was it a communications mistake? I think it's a communications mistake.

I think you can say things like leveling off. Inflation is easing. It is leveling off, but still prices are too high. You can say there are signs of hope here. You can say that we're making progress here. When you say 0%, what that is telling somebody is that the inflation, what that tells a normal person. Because you want to think about how are normal people receiving this,

it's telling them, no, inflation's gone. Inflation is at 0%. It is gone and it doesn't square with reality. Now, I will say that you do notice the gas price change. Like the gas price change is really, really obvious. But you don't have to message that with a 0%. You can say gas prices are getting lower. You can get more, just use normal person language.

And I think that's what he absolutely could have done. Instead, he went with something that is technically true, but experientially false. And that's a problem. Joan, I think the argument would be something like, look, yes, if you want to talk about how people are experiencing prices, you use year to year. But if you want to make predictive assessments over what's going to happen next, and the month to month is actually way more helpful. Like, if you just say last year to this year, it's 8.5%, then projecting, you

would then say, oh, well, then I guess next year it'll rise another 8.5%. That's why you look at the month-to-month numbers, because it shows inflation leveling off largely because of gas prices. And so what they were trying to convey was something like what David was saying. Inflation is still, you know, we had inflation. It's here. It's not, we're not going to go down in prices. But it does appear to be leveling off so that prices will not continue to increase. Why is that not a good political message? Yeah. So, and I want to say, you know, like Jason Furman, who's now a Harvard economist, but he's sort of like the honest liberal economist these days. He's been saying for a long time

that we should look more at the month-a-month than the year-to-year. And I have no problem as a matter of economic analysis looking at the month-the-month. I think the way to think about this to understand why people get pissed off is imagine it's a heat wave and every day is hotter than the next. And then one day, it's 98 degrees out, and then the next day, it's 98 degrees out. Good analogy. And you say, it's not a heat wave anymore. And people are like, screw you, I'm schvitzing here, right? And that's the thing. It's the, um... What is schvitzing? It's... Seriously, David? For sweating. Oh, okay. Yeah, seriously. Like, like, schvitzing. It's like when, um, old fat, Jewish

men go to the steam or the sauna, say, let's go for a schvitz. And where was I? Oh, yeah, so like, I think the problem here is that Biden has a really long history of doing this, and he's been really bad at it as president, and it sort of, it permeates so much of their messaging of thinking that they can fix a political problem by using clever wordplay. and by just sort of like being technically accurate or like what Biden like loves to do is just sort of like bluster and bully people sort of like when he debated Paul Ryan just yell malarkey and like and that will just establish it as being true he has a long history of just

sort of asserting stuff as fat you know and I mean that literally and all that kind of thing And for the average American, there wages haven't gone up 25% over the last year. So when you say inflation is over, which the average American views as really high prices that I'm struggling to keep up with. And then you say inflation is over because they plateaued at a really high point that you're still struggling to keep up with. people are like, you're just trying to hoodwink me and they get pissed off. And so I just, I think there are all sorts of ways he could have talked about this. We're turning the corner, right? This is really great news.

You know, our policies are working, stay the course, all that kind of thing. But they want quick fixes because they, and I say this, I feel like I say this on every podcast now. They were obsessed with the 24-hour news cycle. And all of their messaging is like, if we can just get. Nicole Wallace to say, at the end of the day, when we turn on our TVs, the thing that we want her to say, then we'll have convinced America. And like, Nicole Wallace doesn't speak for America. She speaks for a tiny little MSNBC audience. And she's going to say what you wanted to say anyway. It's just no great victory. And I think their obsession with messaging really

hurts them. What about the Inflation Reduction Act? I mean, it's literally called the Inflation Reduction Act, is this poised to be a big win for the Biden White House on this overall economic messaging? It has not passed the House yet, but presumably it will. And then it'll go to Biden's desk for signature here shortly, I imagine. And they have so far, I think, not capitalized very well on their legislative victories. And in part, I mean, I have to say this is, know, they pass this through the Senate, through Mansion, through cinema, and it gets totally drowned out once again by Donald Trump. And I can't help but feeling very 2015 vibes when it comes to how the news cycle covers this stuff. You have an actual piece of legislation with bigillions of

dollars of taxpayer money about to be spent. And then you have a search warrant being served on Donald Trump's house. How is the Biden White House going to overcome it? How is the Biden White House going to overcome this. It also contaminates, the Trump thing also contaminates this in the, the massive new doubling of IRS agents. Yeah. Yeah. You know, DeSantis was very smart about, Florida governor Ron DeSantis was very smart about saying, you know, that these things are similar because they're, and I hate, hate his use of the word regime, but like the regime is hiring more people to go after you, just like they're going after Trump. And again, I think factually it's kind of a dumb talking point, even though I'm like, I think there's a lot of dumb talking points on the

left about all of those IRS stuff. But I think it's politically effective, particularly in sort of primary, you know, Republican Party base world. David, inflation reduction act. Will it actually help the Biden administration convince people that they're reducing inflation? No. I think that, you know, I do think that there's some extremely mild cleverness around naming at the inflation Reduction Act, but the weird thing about the act is that if you actually watch how people who, who, if you actually watch sort of the progressive commentariat talking about this, it's mainly this. The Inflation Reduction Act is going to help the climate. Like that is seen by almost everyone who's really looking at the effects of this bill as

the more concrete and most tangible aspect of the bill is that it's going to have impact on the climate. but you know here's what's interesting and i'd love to see what you'll think of this because this may be just something that's completely in my own mind in my own head we have passed such expensive legislation for the past ever since the pandemic hit with numbers well into the trillions you know from your first covid relief package to your next covid relief package to your next covid relief package to your infrastructure package. And we're used to this $1.9 trillion, $1 trillion. And I wonder if this just seems like small ball by comparison to some of the other stuff.

But ironically enough, I think it's the fact that it was smaller, of course, that got it through. And so I just wonder in the context of the other, the rest of the big spending that we've seen, And if this just isn't making much of an impact, because top line to people, it looks like a small or a small ball compromise, not something that's really going to move the needle one way or the other. Can we talk about the IRS agents for a second? Is this a good thing that we're going to better enforce our tax laws? Or is the right right to freak out that more IRS agents is just harassment?

I think the argument, so I know we're not supposed to talk about. our Twitter activity here, but a couple days ago, I did a, I thought, and I still will defend to my last breath, an utterly defensible little thread about how I've been audited twice and how I really get annoyed by all these people saying how if you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't care about getting audited. And if you've been audited, David, I think you were audited. Yes. Oh, yeah. Remember you talking about being audited, you know, to To paraphrase Bart Simpson talking about Old Faithful, both sucks and blows. It is an awful, awful experience.

And it's full of stress and dread and you're trying to find pieces of paper and you're worried that you're going to owe a lot more money and you're worried about all these kinds of things. And even if you did nothing wrong, it's terrible. And when people, and so I have no problem with the federal government being having the power to audit people. I think it should have the power to audit people. But it's a serious power. a vastly more invasive thing than being frisked, I would argue, in the sense that, yeah, okay, no one likes being frisk. And I understand you don't like to have, you know, the heavy hand of the state literally on your body and all that kind of stuff. But like being able to go over

everything that you ever purchased on a credit card, being able to go over everywhere you've traveled to, you know, all your health expenses. I mean, this is like a very intrusive thing. And so I don't mind people being upset about the idea. that they're going to be more audits. I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing in a democracy in a liberal republic to talk about. At the same time, I don't think, as some people are saying, it's an expansion of the police state or any of that kind of thing. David, shouldn't we want the tax code enforced? Like more? I mean, we're assuming that all of these individual people are just doing audits, but there's a whole lot of other stuff the IRS does short of auditing people.

Look, I mean, as with so many things, there's a balance, right? If you, are, if you pass laws with no enforcement mechanism, over time, they're ultimately not really laws at all. So enforcement does matter. Efficient enforcement does matter. But at the same time, Dragnet enforcement really stinks. And this is what happened to me. So we adopted in 2010. This was a year when the adoption tax credit was made fully refundable. It was the only way that lots of families could afford to adopt, quite frankly. Well, the IRS decided, to do a drag-net audit enforcement of adoptive families in 2010 and 2011, so that 68% of families who claim the tax credit in 2010 and 69% of families,

think about those numbers again, 68% and 69% of families who claimed adoption tax credits were audited. Okay. Now, what makes this particularly difficult is if you were like us and you adopted internationally, a lot of the demand for receipts, I mean, what does it help an IRS agent when you hand someone in a handwritten receipt that's an Amaric with Ethiopian currency, right? I mean, it was unbelievable, and what did they find? No criminal fraud at all in 2010 and 2011

out of those nefarious adoptive families. So I think a lot of it is, okay, sure, absolutely. if somebody is a tax cheat, you're going to find very few people who think that we should not have the mechanism to catch them. The other thing is a lot of people have actual experience with the IRS and know that they're not always going after tax cheats. Sometimes they'll have a program while they'll say ex-population of people, say earned income tax credit recipients or whatever. We're going to start auditing them at a higher rate. Okay. Well, that's not an individualized determination, that is much more of a dragnet.

And so this kind of thing, I think we don't, there, as with so many things, the argument gets so simplistic. It's, well, if you have dotted your eyes and crossed all your T's, you don't have anything to fear. Well, we dotted ours and crossed our T's when we adopted, but my gosh, that audit was stressful and intrusive. Yeah, as you can say, you know, there's also all this data that people are pointing out, And I don't think they've thought through the conclusions one can draw from this fact.

But it turns out that like poor people or low income people get audited a lot, a lot more than rich people. And they say, oh, I think so this is just fairness that we're going to audit rich people more or something. And I, okay, but at the same time, if you're rich, the stress of an audit is much less than if you're poor because you have the ability to defend yourself. there's no other realm of life where it's sort of like, you know, there are some things where just the process is the punishment, you know, just being like, like if you've been deposed as, you know, in even a civil case, having to get a lawyer, having to do all that, it's sort of a punishing thing that you come out the other side with, you know, poor and pissed off. We can talk more about that another time. But like to be audited,

and you have very few resources is a brutal thing. And the IRS is the only law enforcement agency I can think of. Maybe you guys know different that works in a very serious way, from the presumption that people are guilty of something. Yeah, you have to prove your innocence. And you have the burden of proof, burden of proof is on you, and the burden of proof is on you because you are randomly selected often. You know, it's like there's an algorithm that says,

we're going to look at these tax returns and then we're going to assume if there's anything fishy, it was, you know, you have to prove that it wasn't criminal. If you did that with any other sort of thing, people would instantly recognize that this is a really problematic thing to do. And I understand that we do need to enforce our tax laws. We do need to raise revenue and all that, you know,

because sacrificing goats to ball has not paid off the way we would like. But just the cavalier way the left talks, about this is really bothersome. And I don't think that they appreciate how, again, that's really bad messaging for them. And getting back to the Inflation Adjustment Act, I think because it's such a grab bag, everything that the left likes to celebrate about it provides an opportunity for the right to beat up on it. I think it's going to be much more of a wash in the long run than people claim it. I don't think it's going to do nearly the things for the environment that they're all claiming either.

Interestingly, the Joint Tax Committee, a nonpartisan group, estimates that the tax gap is about $381 billion a year, most of it, from underreported income. You know, you do that with, we're about to have this huge bulge in federal employee retirements, eligible for retirements. And so a lot of these groups, I think, are just trying to keep up with the big hump of retirements. coming, but I take all of your points, and I think it's really interesting. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex presale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.com. Let's talk primaries. We had another round of

primaries this time, Wisconsin sort of leading the headlines. Also, despite what it kind of looked like on election night, another of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, Jamie Herrera Butler, and Washington State actually lost her primary. It was a nail-biter, but a week later she conceded. So of the three who had primaries last week, two lost, including one in a nonpartisan primary in just a top two finishing primary. And we've had another week as the Kansas stuff sort of reverberates.

David, oh, and it's worth mentioning, next week, we have the Wyoming primary with Liz Cheney, the ad that Dick Cheney cut for his daughter now showing up on Fox News. Primary season in August, David. Top line thoughts. Sarah, I want to retreat to my happy place. And my happy place is the day after the Georgia primaries. when Brad Raffensberger won and Brian Kemp won, and there was some signs that some things were changing,

wow, the last few weeks have really been a wake-up call for the argument that the Republican Party is moving on from Trumpism. The picture with regards to the House members who voted to impeach, as you said, has suddenly turned to much more grim. Wisconsin, it was the Trump endorsie that won, there's just not a lot of, we're still dealing with the, you know,

I believe since we last did a dispatch podcast, Kerry Lake was officially declared the winner in Arizona. So this is, the last month or so has really dispelled any hopes that the Republican Party is wanting to move on from Trump or Trumpism. And I think that that much of it has just, that's at this point almost in,

to the extent that something's really incontrovertible in politics. And one of the questions that I have is what does this message send to the folks who are thinking about challenging Trump? Are they looking at this and saying, there's no room there? He's still retaining a lot of power

even when he's not on the ballot. I'm very interested in what y'all think about that. Let me add two more factors to that. it certainly will have an effect on people thinking about running for office in the future. You know, you were like looking at your congressional seat for 2024, maybe 2026 even, and deciding whether to run, this will have a self-selection effect, certainly, of the type of person who runs for office on the Republican side for potentially a long time moving forward. Because you also are going to have people who sort of foreclose even the possibility of running for office in the future

and aren't going to think of it again for a long time. A. B, you know, I do think that we are missing some of the larger story here by focusing on the primaries. A Trump candidate getting through the primaries doesn't matter if they don't win in the general. So what we're actually going to want to look at is come November, how many Trump endorsed candidates actually get into office. And that Delta might actually be really interesting. If a ton of Trump endorsed candidates, then lose the general election so that there actually aren't many Trump endorsed candidates holding political office, that in and of itself could also have a big effect, not on who's going to run for office because you still can't get through the primary, it looks like, but on how Republican leadership

thinks about these things, if they don't take back the Senate. So that's where I am on the August primaries that at this point, it's all now, you have to do both. You have to win the primary and the general. It is very clear who's winning the primaries in the Republican Party, but it's very unclear who will go on to win the general. Jonah? Yeah, I think you're right. You know, it's funny. I wrote my LA Times column on how there was like this vibe shift and things we're looking up for the Democrats. And, you know, so my LA Times column gets repurposed as my syndicated column and appears on the dispatch, you know, the next day. And I had to rewrite the whole thing because the Mar-a-Lago thing

completely instituted another vibe, right? And so, and part of the point of the original column was how, you know, I think the lead was something like, you know, why people say X is a lifetime in politics. It's because politics can change really fast. And, like, I got burned by that because it changed on me on a, so that a column of about how things change in politics fast became irrelevant within 24 hours. I like that.

I like that a lot. And so, but I went through, you know, like the Trump and Dorsey's for Senate, again, it's summer, it's August, who knows what the Mar-a-Lago thing does. But it's not looking good for Trump's endorses, right? I mean, in Pennsylvania, Oz is behind, I don't know, like, points, something like that. J.D. Vance is at the very least struggling against Tim Ryan in Ohio. Blake Masters, I think, will lose in part because even if he can avoid seeming too crazy, the top of the ticket is Carrie Lake, who's, you know, bat guano nuts in a state that's

increasingly becoming purple. And so, you know, you can just imagine what Mitch McConnell says in the quiet and seclusion of his study when he looks at how he could very well lose the Senate in a getable year, all because he didn't do what he did in previous cycles, which was picked the most electable people in the primaries and boost them and help them. Instead, he's let Trump play that game uncontested. And I think the Republicans are not going to win the Senate. I mean, I think it's just, I could be wrong, but I think it certainly trends look like they're going that way. And so I keep thinking back, remember in 2018 when the Republicans just got destroyed

in the midterms? And Trump gave this press conference and everyone expected him to do the, I got shellacked thing the way Obama did when he got shellac. And instead, his explanation for why all these Republicans lost was that they didn't embrace him more fully. And he went person by person through. these Republicans who lost because of Trump saying that if the only, you know, if only they had embraced him, you know, did not embrace, did not embrace, that they would have done

better. And I think that this is the key to understanding that Trump would rather a Republican party that loses that he controls than a Republican Party that succeeds that he doesn't control. And that's, it looks like that's what he's getting. And I think a Republican Party could becoming a rump party. But I also think the Democratic Party could be coming a rump party. But I also think the Democratic Party could be coming a wrong party because everything sucks for them, too. David, do you think Republicans would win the Senate if the election were held today? No. No, I don't think so. I think that they're going to, I think they would lose in Pennsylvania. I think Ohio is too close to call. I think they lose in Georgia so they don't get that pickup.

up. I think they lose in Arizona. I said that no quickly that betrays more uncertainty than I have more uncertainty than my quick no betrays. But I don't think so. I think that the candidate quality, where candidate quality really, really, really matters is in these Senate races. There are House candidates that have won primaries who are, oh, something else. There's a guy in the neighboring district to me named Andy Ogles. Oh, my gosh, that guy. And he won a Republican primary. But he could just go ahead and tattoo Q on his forehead and probably still win the general in this gerrymander district.

So in the House races, the candidate quality doesn't matter quite so much. In these Senate races, the candidate quality really matters. And this is something that's been going on for a while. I mean, remember Senator Sharon Engel, Senator Christine O'Donnell? No, they never made it, right? And so this is something that I think that could really, really bite the Republicans. But not so much in the House. I think the Republicans are still strong favorites to take the House.

And if you think the Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, Matt Gates, Caucus was a factor is a factor now, just wait until it tripled. in size in 2020 in 2023 so I think there's a tension there Senate this really matters house these races these primary races are the general election race most of the time and that's where you're going to really see some change Sarah do you disagree with that I'm going to pick apart my disagreements with David's map there I think he's right they would lose Pennsylvania today I think you're weirdly I think you are probably right if the election were held today in Ohio, but, of course, the election won't be held today in Ohio, and the Democrats have been up on TV. The Republicans will be up on TV, and I think that'll actually

have the, you know, that's just a timing of when you send in your reinforcement. So I think Republicans will keep Ohio. Because of Pennsylvania, though, then they need a pickup, an additional pickup, so two pickups. I think that Republicans, I would still favor in Arizona. The problem is that I think Blake Masters is one of the most talented Senate candidates this cycle, but he's going to get dragged down by Lake at the top of the ticket for governor and how that'll play out, whether he helps her or she hurts him and to what degree makes that just a really hard race to gauge because the polling isn't going to be that helpful.

Because even if you like Masters, that top of the ticket poll could have a real effect both on turnout and how people end up voting in the end if they're going to really split their vote on governor and Senate. And so then you come down to Georgia because if you lose Pennsylvania, you've got to win Arizona and Georgia. Yeah, I think Georgia's a coin flip at best. So I'm like 49-51 on Republicans taking the Senate.

But I'm closer than David, I guess. Can you imagine like having all your, dreams of being majority, the longest serving majority leader. Like, it's the reason you're, you get out of bed every morning. And on an election night, it all comes down to Herschel Walker, who is like, at any given moment, likely to say something that, you know, I mean, I always used to joke about how at any given moment, there's a non-trivial chance that Joe Biden would say, get these squirrels off of me.

but like ursula walker you know could say all sorts of stuff that makes joe biden's crazy stuff seem you know sane and so i don't know i i'm i'm i'm dubious and i my point is is that you could easily have seen the situation where if Mitch mcconnell did what he in 2012 or whatever and it actually went into primaries and picked you know the the the sharp general election, Canada's most able to win in the general election, you could see the Republicans, you know, what, picking up, what, four seats, five seats, you know, and that's just not going to happen. And remember, McConnell endorsed Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker was the pick of everyone, so they don't really have people to blame on that one,

but I just find it fascinating that Republicans should have had a Senate majority already. They should have won the Senate in 2020. Right. And then they should have massively built on that here in 2022, just based on the map alone. I mean, wow. Yeah. And the Herschel Walker situation, frankly, is sad. It's really sad.

He's obviously, and it's probably, you know, who knows, you don't want to diagnose from a distance, but, I mean, the guy took a lot of hits in football, took a lot of hits. And he's just not right. He's just not right. And then the ads, you know, where his ex-wife talks about the first time he held a gun to her, you know, that's awful, brutal, horrible stuff. Now, there's a Tennessee representative. Let's just stick with my state, Desjardet, who, you know, his ex-wife accused him of all manner of awful things. And there's a lot of evidence that he did all manner of awful things. and he keeps coming on back to Congress, but that's in a heavily gerrymandered super red district.

This is a state that just sent two Democrats to the Senate and voted for Joe Biden. So there's not as much margin of error there. So that's why. And then there might be one debate. That could be interesting. Also, Raphael Warnock, the Democrat senator from Georgia, is a very talented candidate.

Yeah. But also, Brian Kemp is running away with it, it seems, against Stacey Abrams at the top of the ticket. So you have a Republican candidate for Senate who is underwater and underperforming the, let's be clear about it, not exactly beloved by Trump crowd, Republican candidate for governor. It just, my point is, this was a, when I agree with you that Mitch McConnell agreed to the Herschel thing, but you could tell he was like, okay, this is the one we're going to give Trump, and then in the rest of these primaries, we're going to pick good candidates. And you could see how reluctant he was to do it. I think it was a mistake that he did it. You know,

so many of the mistakes that you see these days in the Republican Party, for the last five years, have all been like, we don't need to have a confrontation right now with him. We can do that later. And that never works out for anybody. I don't know, but like, my friend Kevin, David's friend, too, Kevin Williamson, he had this piece where he points out, you know, that this sort of this, this obsession with BS, to use the more delicate phrasing of it, that is so permeated the Republican Party, hasn't actually been good politically for the Republican Party. It lost the presidency. It lost the House. It lost the Senate. You have, it's, it's lost, you know, all sorts of them.

Small dollar donors are down. Way down. Yeah. And like, but there's this assumption because it worked for Trump. It should work for everybody in that it's smart politics. And I just, I have a sense of it. It's just like there's going to be a realization at some point being, you know, that excessive jackassery that is induced by getting high on Fox green room farts is not exactly

the way to run one of the two major political parties. But it's going to take a little while for that realization to set in. I just like that we're going to have the mirror image in Arizona and Georgia to really be able to study that ticket splitting between a governor's race and a Senate race with the stronger person in Georgia on the governor's side and the stronger person in Arizona on the Senate side. And it could be really lopsided. It might not be an even effect. You know, governor may have more of an up. Senate may have more of a drag. Who knows? all right let's do a little not worth your time and really listeners this is just not worth your time but it's going to be very much worth my time because i have a question for the guys assume for a second accept my hypothetical that you are a lazy parent who wants to minimize uh sort of travel time

in the car unpleasantness in your general minute to minute life and that you don't care about your child's overall happiness really. Take those two pieces and tell me what sport one should encourage their child to get into if those are your two guideposts. You don't care about your kids actual happiness. So we don't care what sport the kid wants to play. And two, you want to sort of maximize your own happiness, which would be not traveling really far in the car and, you know, not being bored, having temperature control, things like that. Are we assuming as part of this that they will have some talent or proficiency at it, or that doesn't matter?

Yeah, let's assume that they can play any sport. They're Michael Jordan, and they'll be pretty good at whatever, because genetically, you know, their dad is 6-3 and a bean pole, so probably that fits for most sports. I got my answer just right off the top of my head. Basketball, basketball. So here's why. Really? Yes. So it's a fun sport. It's exciting to watch. Parents, it's fun for parents to watch. Number two, because it's everywhere. So basketball is everywhere. So even if your kid plays travel ball, it's just traveling often from one part of the town you're in to another part of the town you're in five miles away. Like even things like travel volleyball, even though volleyball is played everywhere or travel soccer, you're just spreading out more. You're just, you're spreading out a whole.

lot more. There's gyms everywhere in America, and they're mainly purposed for basketball. So the volleyball's second in line. There's not soccer fields everywhere, so you're traveling more. And so it's just a lot of fun. When my son play, and I know of what I speak, because my son played travel basketball, my daughter played travel volleyball. My son played travel basketball for a short bit till he transitioned more fully to football. But when my son was completely into basketball, we barely moved. We did not go too many places. When my daughter was in travel volleyball, and I know she listens to this podcast, hi, Camille, we loved it, Camille. It was a blast. It was fantastic. It's one of our favorite things. But we were down in Birmingham, and we were, you know,

were kind of around more. And so basketball is really fixes you in a geographic location up until you get into like an apex predator basketball athlete and then all bets are off. But by that point, you're raking in the name image. But that's true for any sport. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Jonah, I like that answer in some respects. But being inside a gym that's going to be really squeaky and loud all the time. I don't know. I might prefer, I like nature. I like to stare at the tree. So I'm not going to be that into whatever's happening on whatever court, and I might want to just, like, watch some birds. Do you have an outdoor option for me? Yeah. So, like, I mean, I think David, an answer is perfectly defensible, but I agree with you,

but you're going to be, you're also, you also have to take into account the nature of the kinds of parents that become super invested in this, and do you want to hang out with those people? No. And so I would argue my daughter did cross-country towards late in her high school career. And she was on the basketball team. She was a co-captain basketball team. She'd done soccer when she was a little girl, in part because I sometimes feel a little awkward going to basketball games with my wife who gets really into basketball because she was a big basketball player in high school. and she's much more vocal than I am at the games

and let's just leave it at that and I'm hoping she doesn't listen to this. That's how I'm going to be at his orchestra concerts. Yeah, theola section, crushing it, triple time. But cross country, in my experience, the crowds were great. The kinds of parents who show up were a lot of fun, but because it's also spread out over a big place,

If you just want to walk away and be in your own spot for a little while, you know, it's okay. No one will see you because it's not like, and you can time when you've got to be at the finish line, which is actually a great vibe with lots of parents encouraging everybody. I never saw jerky parents at a cross-country thing in the way that I saw it virtually every other sport. Plus, I know you said you don't actually care about the quality of life.

happiness of your kid, but if they actually get into cross-country, it's something they can do on their own, you know, without you having to be part of it. You don't have to provide a lot of equipment. It's just a bunch of sneakers. And it'll keep them, you know, it's a great way to stay in shape. And I have to assume it's good for getting into college. I mean, the problem with basketball is they have to be really, really, really good at basketball for it to be an issue about college because it's such, there's so many people who play basketball. But like some of these other sports, you can still get in. I mean, like, you wouldn't, you don't want to have them do water polo, right?

That's, that we know. But, um, anyway, I think cross country. And that's not because Jack Butler made me say it or anything. I have another suggestion. Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. This is way, this is, this is definitely off the beaten path.

But awesome parents, super fun. Not a huge amount of travel. and my son did it for a while until he got into basketball and football, trap and skeet shooting. Oh, that actually would be fun. It's a blast. There's one downside to it.

It costs one million dollars. I didn't include price in my hypotheticals. I sort of assumed a certain baseline, but you're right. I guess there are some sports, horse polo, for instance, that could be fun, but maybe cost prohibitive.

Well, right now, the two-year-old can actually throw a basketball into his little tiny tykes hoop, which is mind-blowing to me. I didn't think a two-year-old human could do anything, I have to tell you, like, two years ago, I didn't know a two-year-old could like walk or talk, probably, and he's shooting basketball. So that does lean towards David's suggestion. On the other hand, we had a full meltdown. He walked in yesterday, two days ago, screaming at me that he wanted to go throw rock, in big water and I was like okay why don't we just go down to your little kitty pool in the yard

and we'll throw we'll find some rocks no big water so then I packed him up in the car and I was like you know what my only rule is he has to calm down take a deep breath and be able to say it without crying but he did that throw rocks in big water fine we packed up in the car drove to a nearby creek it was like a river runs through it he's like in the middle of the creek just throwing rocks like he's fly fishing. For an hour he did this without stopping, no snack, no water, just an hour of throwing rocks in the water.

So I don't know what sport that means if I did care about his happiness. Freeze the water and it's curling. You do not want your kid. First of all, like in the D.C. area, the opportunities for curling are few and far between. And I am sure you have to take whatever slots, the figure skaters and the hockey players

have left behind which are not... All right, well, as I said, this wasn't worth any of y'all's time, but it was very much worth mine, and I enjoyed it. So thank you. If you've made it this far,

I hope it was edifying in any number of respects. And we will talk to you again next week. This is the 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,

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