The Dispatch Podcast - Feel My Pain

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

An open letter published by Harper’s, signed by 153 prominent names, warning against illiberal behavior received swift pushback online. Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss which socio-political issues of our time are within the scope of reasonable disagreement while also addressing why illiberalism has become such a global phenomenon. Should schools reopen fully in the fall? Why has the fight over mask-wearing devolved into a culture war issue? Does Trump understand his own constituency? Sarah and the guys weigh in on these questions while also addressing Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech, and the future of the GOP in a post-Trump era. Show Notes: -Harper’s Magazine’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” Vox writer’s retaliatory Twitter response to the letter,  The Dispatch Podcast episode with Yascha Mounk. -Trump’s July Fourth speech at Mount Rushmore, Trump’s Twitter tirade against NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, Forbes interview with Kanye West on a presidential run. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts and subscribe so you never miss an episode. A little later, we'll hear from our sponsor, Keeps. But first, today we'll be talking about the open letter published in Harper's this week, signed by over 150 public intellectuals entitled A Letter on Justice and Open. debate and where the conversation on free speech goes next. Are we out of the woods on coronavirus or is the pandemic just picking up steam? And finally, will this election be a referendum on the president? Oh, and then I ask your dispatchers what they thought they wanted to be when they grew up. Let's dive right in. First, I want to start with a letter on justice and open debate published in Harper's this week. I'll just read one section from it. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

While we have come to expect us on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture, an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues and a blinding moral certainty. This letter was signed by a lot of well-known writers, authors, journalists, musicians, to name a few. Nome Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Matt Eglacius, Winton Marcellus, choreographer Bill Jones, Gloria Steinem, Malcolm Gladwell. I mean, the list can go on and on, and you can look it up, it's on Harper's. This statement, which, when I, read it seemed fairly non-controversial and, if anything, a little bit bland, got significant

pushback, not totally surprisingly. Including one of the signatories actually regretted signing it. She says, I did not know who else had signed the letter. I thought I was endorsing a well-meaning if vague message against internet shaming. The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry. at Vox. One of the reporters took issue with Matt Eglacey signing it.

Jonah, starting with you on this letter. What does this say about where we are right now that a letter that generally says

dissolving complex policy issues into blinding moral certainty is maybe not a great thing is controversial. It's one more data point

in the well-established finding that this is a really stupid time to be alive. And, like, I find, I find, you know, the only thing that kind of annoys me about the letter is that gratuitous knowing swipe at how we expect this from the right, but not from, you know, the enlightened forces that we represent. And I'm open to the idea that this stuff happens on the right. In fact, I do think this stuff happens on the right,

but the idea that censoriousness or comstockery or any of these kinds of things is primarily a function of the right these days, I think it's kind of weird, and the mere fact that they found the need to write this letter demonstrates that. And part of that is just simply because, look, there is definitely a right-wing form of political correctness,

but these people represent the institutions that hold the commanding heights of the culture, and so therefore, just by definition, uh, sort of group think censorship, all of these kinds of things matter more at those places than they do about whether or not you can speak freely, um, on, you know, O-A-N news. Um, and, um, on the, on the broader part of it, I think, look, I mean, David's written about this. I've written about this. We live, the way to understand the moment has more to do with understanding moral panics and religious awakenings

and there is this and also just simply populism you know there's this idea that not only are we sure that not only is my team sure that it is right it is outrageous for you to suggest

that I need to explain why and that's the spirit of the time right now and so when you look at these complaints from like the trans woman at Vox about Matt Iglesias A person who I have decades now of complicated relationship with, and I'm not burning and desire to rush to his defense, but I just can't see what he did wrong,

why it would be seen as wrong. I don't know the names of all. I don't know who all these people on this list are, but the Vox writers made it sound as if it was simply known that so many of them are, quote, unquote, anti-trans. I don't know what she means by that. And even if they, or the woman who regrets signing it, it boils down to the sort of classic argument of guilt by association. I don't like these other people or somebody told me I'm not supposed to like these other people who signed this thing.

And so therefore I recant agreeing with the ideas that are laid out in it. The actual message of it would be considered cliched boilerplate Drek 20 years ago, not just say it's not right, but now it's the kind of thing where you can get in huge amount of trouble for, you know, having the temerity to actually defend liberal values. It's a dumb time to be alive. David, on the one hand, can we take heart from the fact that 150 very public people, more than 150, sign this? You know, should that be a positive that we're seeing that these are, you know, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, et cetera, thought that. this was important enough to put their name on it.

Yeah, I think we can take heart from this. I think that there is actually beginning to be a counter, a defense of the virtues of small L liberalism that's arising from people are resisting both the authoritarian right and the authoritarian left. And it's creating this, you know, Jen was talking about like how there, he's had issues with Matt Iglesias. I mean, if you go down the list,

there's an awful lot of people on there that I've not agreed with, on very much at all. But when we're talking about defending liberalism itself, we're going to kind of lock arms on that. And a lot of people attacked these writers and thinkers because they have platforms. They, you know, J.K. Rowling, who's going to de-platform J.K. Rowling? Nobody can do that.

But what they neglect to realize or neglect to mention is that, by making the stand, what these people are doing is they're hopefully providing cover for the host of individuals who don't have their platform, who are terrified to speak up. And look, I encounter these folks all the time. I mean, I've been doing free speech work in universities or I had been doing free speech work in universities for a really long time. And I've written a lot about this. So none of this is new for those who've read this. But, you know, I've taught to professors in their offices where they whisper, lest anyone hear them describe themselves as conservative, unless that disrupt their tenure bid. I have had people who were high-ranking

members of Democratic administrations, but don't have a big public profile, literally say to me, I am terrified. I am terrified to say what I really think. In places like Yale, I mean, this is, there is a real sense of pervasive, a pervasive cultural attack on free speech. Now, notice I said cultural, because legally, your ability to defend yourself from government censorship is probably better than it's ever been. So the free speech jurisprudence under the First Amendment is very, very robust. But the First Amendment's free speech jurisprudence doesn't, doesn't involve, it doesn't impact Yale. it doesn't impact, say, the New York Times. It doesn't impact a lot of these very, very, very powerful cultural institutions who certainly have a right under the First Amendment to dictate the terms of

their own employment and to present their own message. But I think that we lose something very significant when these extremely powerful cultural institutions begin to narrow the terms of debate and constrict the terms of debate and create an atmosphere, sometimes of outright intimidation against dissenters. And look, I mean, what's particularly pernicious about this is a lot of these issues in which debate is being narrowed in which there is a particular amount of intolerance also happen to be some of the most complicated cultural and political issues in all of American life. Like, what are we going to do with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country?

How do we deal with our lingering and severe problem of racism in this country? is a conversation. That's a topic that requires a real conversation. And then to narrow and to constrict the range of debate into a particularly, often into a particularly radical corner of left-wing thought, does nobody any good at all. And so I think that this is a, I am not that bothered at all by the obligatory broadside at the radical right. I think, the word, that I'm much more like, hey, welcome aboard in the fight for liberalism. Sort of to use a church analogy, if someone is walking down the aisle to repent at the altar, I'm not going to smack them on the way in saying, you should have done it earlier.

Let me offer a different smack then just very quickly on this. Norm Chomsky desperately needs free speech in this country because he is a genocide-denying psychopath and it is amazing where he can deny the genocide in Cambodia and

flat and peddle all sorts of CIA conspiracy theory nonsense and no one has a problem

with him for that among these signatories but the fact that he signed this thing defending free speech

that somehow is something that is worth like canceling him for it's a dumb time to be alive I just I want to just

emphasize That is true, Jonah. That is true. Steve, but one person's free speech is another person's perhaps form of intimidation. I think that some of the detractors of the letter are making the point that these people have enormous platforms. They're not in fear of being silence. And in fact, as one person said it, they're unhappy. They're not leading the current conversation. And so they're trying to sort of take back the platform that they had before, you know, social media platforms maybe open

up the conversation to a lot of other voices. And then at the same time, I think the signatories to the letter would say, we're using our platforms to try to defend those without those platforms so that we can open up the conversation, but in a non-cancelie way. Where does this resolve itself? Does this letter make any difference? I'm not sure. I'd like to be as optimistic as David is.

You know, I think you can argue that part of what we've seen in the reaction, of this cancel letter where you have some of the signatories canceling themselves makes the point, obviously, right? I mean, that's Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air had a good short post Wednesday morning saying in effect whether the letter itself was worth reading. And I think it had some good statements of basic principle, if a little banal. reaction to the letter makes the point better than the letter itself did. And I think there's, I think there's some truth to that. I guess my sort of enduring concern is that people will then

take the wrong lessons from that and not say, well, gosh, it's totally ridiculous that this woman who just wanted to be in the company of Noam Jomsky didn't really pay much attention to the letter she was signing and is frustrated that there might have been some people she disagreed with on the letter and is now self-cancelling. I do think speaks to the sort of kind of the level of pressure that some people are on, particularly on the left these days. And if you look at some of the signatories and some of the arguments they've made in the past, again, some of them are, you know, people who have been subject to the kinds of attempts to cancel that they discuss in, in their letter. But the broader issue, I mean, I think if you look at where these people fall in general, they kind of defy categorization. I mean, there are folks on the left there.

There are also a number of folks that we would probably all consider on the right or on the center right. So it was a broader statement. The final quick point, you know, in terms of the question of whether these are just the privileged few and they're making this statement and they really don't have any risk of being deep platform. I do think that's true of somebody like J.K. Rowling. But we're also coming off an episode where the editorial page editor of the New York Times lost his job because he published an editorial by a sitting senator reflecting the views of a majority of the country.

So, yeah, the deep platforming is real. The cancel culture is real. And while we think some people might be safe because of their, the platform that they currently have, the cancel culture is real, and the mob comes for whomever the mob wants to cancel. So there's a line in here. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, referring, including the incident you just mentioned at the New York Times, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries

of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. But to some extent, David, that's in the eye of the beholder of what should be in bounds. for instance, if this letter were during a public debate over white supremacy or whether we should re-institute slavery, that line would be pretty odd because I think many, the vast majority of people would say, actually, I don't know that we need to have a debate over slavery or white supremacy. And if by you saying that, you're somehow giving voice to the side of people who want to bring back slavery or white supremacy, again, pick your topic that you believe is out of bounds.

And so if you're one of the people who feels strongly about whatever their position is, can you see why they would see that particular line as an attack on what they believe is the issue of their age that should be out of bounds?

Oh, I understand why people are angry because I very much, as I wrote in my Sunday newsletter, understand sort of the spirit of fundamentalism that existential certainty that is sort of the what is what spawns a lot of authoritarianism and illiberalism I think it's important to though

look I think that it is absolutely true that if you're looking at even a publications you would say should be part of American small l liberalism like the New York Times that there are pieces it should not run I think that that people virtually everyone can agree with that

The issue that we have, though, is that wherever the line is, and there would probably, if you went down and you looked at the 100 plus signatories, they would probably disagree. Lots of them would disagree about that line. Where wherever the line is, the spirit of intolerance is moved way beyond that, way beyond that. As Jonah was saying, here you had an editor of New York Times editorial page fired for printing an op-ed by a, a sitting U.S. Senator involving a live public debate, a very live, I thought it was a poorly written abed, poorly argued, but this was a matter of absolute live, urgent public debate in the United States of public policy that happened to be, depending on the polling question, supported by a majority of Americans. You have people who have been fired for tweeting out a study by an African American scholar indicating that nonviolent protest is more political. politically effective than violent protests, fired. I mean, Sarah and the Friday Dispatch Pod,

which you were gracious enough to let me sit in on with Yasha Monk, we went through some... Who is a signatory to this letter? Exactly. We went through a lot of these stories. And so what you're seeing here is, yes, there is a question, a debate to be had about where should the line be for any given institution, whether it's the New York Times editorial page,

whether it's Yale, the academic freedom of any given department at Yale or Harvard, there is certainly a discussion about where that line should be. I think the whole point here is that these incredibly ideologically diverse people have said, wait a minute, whatever that line is,

the level of intolerance has grown to the point we're so far away from it. We've moved so far away from it. that we are dangerously constricting debate in these institutions. And one last thing, I do find it interesting. The, or two quick things. One, it's interesting that people have spent a day saying, oh, these people have no ability to drive the debate.

And that's why they're writing this. And then number two, I do think it's very powerful to have the sheer number of people here sign this from their various platforms. Because what happens in sort of the cancel culture is a person gets isolated. and canceled. When you have this kind of intellectual

and journalistic firepower standing up as one, I think it makes it more difficult to isolate people. There's one other distinction which I don't think I heard David make, which I think is an important one. Look, I take your point, Sarah,

about like one man's robust debate is another person's tolerance for hate speech and all that kind of stuff. But one quick heuristic about how you can, make meaningful distinctions is if the people who are part of cancel culture are actually rejecting liberalism itself, right? When they don't, when you say, hey, you look, you know, you're being illiberal here, you're not tolerating different points of views, and they say, yeah, well, who cares

about liberal values? That's a really easy way to say that they're being illiberal because they're admitting it. And this is a problem that is on the right and on the left. And I just finish this debate with Patrick debate, the exchange of essays for Newsweek, with Patrick Deneen. And he's explicit about rejecting liberal values and rejecting liberalism. And so are, you know, a lot of these campus leftists who say, you know, what was it one of the kids said during the Halloween fracas at Yale? I don't want you to, I don't want to debate you. I want you to feel my pain. And that's in a liberal point of view.

And that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel people's pain. But if you reject the idea of free speech, as you find these campus groups and campus newspapers, they do these op-eds a couple times a year about how liberalism really is just a perpetuation of white supremacy or the pale penis people or whatever they want to call it. And it's, and so if you reject the fundamental idea that this country was founded on about liberalism in the classical sense, then you're not liberal.

And people get to call you that and make you own it. I'm definitely using, yeah, I'm definitely using that line. If we ever get to the point where we have like a major disagreement about how the dispatch should be run, I'm saying that to you. I don't want to debate you. I want you to feel my pain. Steve, any thoughts on why this moment does not appear to be limited to the United States? Why sort of as a world after decades of sort of the march towards liberalism and open society winning? There's like a retrenchment going on worldwide, it seems.

Yeah, I mean, I think that probably the simple answer, and it may be too facile any answer, is that the United States have been the beacon of this liberalism for the rest of the world for so long and to see it not only questioned, but I think genuinely under threat here in the United States and to see our leaders not be practitioners of this kind of liberalism has given rise and given, I think, strength to illiberal folks, again, both on the left and the right throughout the rest of the world. And, you know, the sequencing isn't always exactly right. I mean, it's not like there weren't authoritarians on the right or, you know, the sort of

fascist left, neo-fascist left before our current problems. But there's no question that as we continue to struggle with, I think, these very basic kind of foundational tenets of the American Republic. that people look at us and say, well, they can't even do it anymore and helps them make their arguments. All right, David, switching topics now to where we are in coronavirus. We haven't talked about it as much lately. Admiral Girard, who's sort of in the face of the coronavirus response for health and human

services, said this weekend, we can't test our way out of this. His point being that increased testing without other public health interventions, contact tracing, isolating the sick, social distancing, wearing masks, isn't going to do much. And Tennessee has become a focus point of this, where you happen to reside. 132 out of every thousand people have been tested in Tennessee, which is a good number. Rhode Island's the highest right now there in the low 200s. But Tennessee, we're going to give you credit for testing. Daily confirmed infections have quadrupled between June and July.

the positive rate shot up to 8% from 5%. And the mayor of Nashville is rolling back its reopening, meaning that testing has increased. The number of people who are sick, however, is also increasing more than the testing is increasing. And now a state that was really on the forefront of reopening because they were going to have so much testing is rolling that back.

Yeah. What's happening? Well, so today a mandatory masking order went into effect in my county, Williamson County, which is one county over from Davidson County, Nashville. And, you know, I feel like all of this, if you were on the ground here in Tennessee, you could see this coming from miles away because what was happening is that there was a reopening and there was a reopening and there was a reopening and there was, Often you would go into stores, you'd go to restaurants, and you would see no social distancing, no masking.

Many restaurants were observing, mainly observing, reopening guidelines in the breach. It was as if the thing had, in some parts of town, it was as if the coronavirus had never happened, as if the reopening was a declaration of victory, not, you know, a tentative step that depends. on public cooperation and compliance for it to be successful. And so now here we are with mandatory masking, which is going to be somewhat contentious because lots of folks here are in the middle of the masking culture wars. It's interesting, though, this mandatory masking order has a couple of exceptions,

which could end up being incredibly self-defeating. One is when you're engaged in worship services. I mean, the idea, that you're going to go mandatory masking. But when you're indoors together as a large group of people singing for a while, then you can take your mask off. That's self-defeating.

That's self-defeating. Or another exception is when you're working out, when you're working out indoors in a gym, when you're breathing heavily. So again, a lot of this just feels like what people viewed when, when Tennessee, which had done very well, we had done very well. We had had early, early outbreaks here. Mayors had jumped over it, jumped on it quickly. We'd had good leadership from the governor.

We'd done very well. But the bottom line is you can't handle a pandemic if people don't act like a pandemic exists. And that's just the bottom line here. And I think that one of the disservices of the culture war aspect of all of this is that there have been people who've essentially urged everyone to act as if a pandemic doesn't exist or act as if basic safety measures in the midst of a pandemic have no validity. And this is deeply, grotesquely, irresponsible. And it's, and I have to say, I feel like, because the number of people I know who are good folks, who are good people who defiantly don't wear a mask. They have, it has become such a part of sort of the cultural battle here. I don't think they even know the purpose of wearing a mask as protecting others

primarily and not yourself. They see it as an act of bravery. I'm not afraid of the virus rather than an act of discourtesy or disregard for your fellow man because it is protecting other people and not yourself. That's how kind of polluted and confused. a lot of the public messaging has become. And so here we are. If people act like a pandemic doesn't exist, you're going to get more pandemic. And it doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.

Steve, the president has been saying that 99% of coronavirus cases are totally harmless. There was a fact check that found that false. On the other hand, based on, sorry, found that false because according to Johns Hopkins, the leading mortality rate is around 4%. But as the dispatch has reported, the mortality rate is likely much lower

between 0.4 and 1.4%. The rate of new hospitalizations has declined from 8% in early June to 4% in July. And one other reports says the U.S. mortality rate has declined from around 7% in mid-April to around 2% in early July,

lower than many other wealthy countries. Now, of course, that doesn't include hospitalization, which is ticking up in a lot of the hotspot states. But nationally, does the president have a point that the numbers are trending in the right direction? He wants schools to reopen and, in fact, says that he is considering cutting off funding if they don't reopen. Betsy DeVos says she is very seriously considering cutting off federal funding to schools that don't reopen their doors in the fall. Which side should we be believing at this point? Yeah, he doesn't have a point. It sounds like,

the kind of thing that somebody would say if they sort of half listen to briefings that they mostly don't attend. Because you can see where he comes up with that if you just look at those mortality rates. But there are so many other problems and challenges and difficulties and risks associated with this virus and the disease that results that it's totally preposterous to suggest that 99% of cases are harmless. Listen to epidemiologists and virologists and public health specialists, talk about their journey of discovery, what they are learning still to this day six months after we first started dealing with this pandemic about its effects. I know somebody personally who had this three months ago and can't walk upstairs, can't walk up a flight of stairs. We've talked before on this podcast about doctors who have performed work.

performed vascular work and say that they've never seen anything like the effects that COVID has on clotting, on blood clotting, things that they've never seen before in decades of medical practice. No, I think, look, the president isn't saying what he's saying because he's paid careful attention to the public health experts who are giving him these briefings. He's saying what he's saying for exactly the reasons David suggests. This has moved. I mean, it's really, in a major, this will be something obviously that we study for.

forever, for decades and decades. This has moved in the minds of, I think, many of our political leaders and much of the population from a public health crisis and challenge to a cultural battle. That's what we're seeing here. There's no reason for people to avoid wearing masks other than for the statement that they think that it says. When the president tweets that the schools most open, it's not like he's carefully considered both sides of a really difficult, wrenching public debate about what's best for kids and their long-term health, both with respect to the virus and particularly for at-risk kids, a host of other challenges that they will face if they don't go to school. He's saying it because he's a tough guy.

He's tweeting it the same way that he tweets law and order. It's just a statement of where he is culturally on this thing. I think it's deeply responsible. I mean, one of the things that I think is so striking about this moment is the lack of leadership from the White House on this. And this is not an original observation. But you have, as you follow the news and you listen to these updates and you read the medical studies about this, I keep having these moments where I just think, you know, holy cow, this is stuff the president isn't even really considering. Yes, he's got Admiral Jawah. And yes, Debra Birx and Anthony Fauci is

occasionally popping up and making public statements and appearances. But there's no real policy driven from the White House on this anymore. They've minimized the importance of the coronavirus task for. The president doesn't really talk about it. And when he does talk about it, he minimizes much the same way that the quote that you just relayed does. There doesn't seem to be much of a concerted effort. They're holding rallies. They're picking up the social distancing stickers from the rallies that they do hold. I mean, this is a president who's based, and there's been reporting. Washington Post had a story the other day, suggesting that the White House has decided that its best strategy is in effect to say, yeah, we've just got to get used to this.

We've got to get used to this number of cases. We've got to get used to a certain number of deaths. And the president's going to kind of run his election right through this without actually trying to get on top of it. You know, if even part of that reporting is accurate, that's just so deeply irresponsible. It's hard to even contemplate. Jonah, let's focus on the schools for a second. the president says in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and many other countries, schools are open with no problems. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if schools open before the November election, but it is important for children and families.

This morning, Bill de Blasio announced that public schools in New York City would not fully reopen. Classroom attendance will be limited to one to three days a week in an effort to curb the outbreak. With schools not reopening, there is plenty of data suggesting that women will not be able to return to the workforce because they are primary caregivers of children. And so the economic effects of not reopening schools will be enormous and disproportionate as well on different socioeconomic groups, on women instead of men, et cetera. How do we evaluate that risk? And politically, if one side believes that the other side doesn't want to reopen schools because of an election, how do you get past that political framework to a public health framework?

Yeah, I seem to recall in an earlier segment that said something about a stupid time to be alive. Some very smart person on some podcast. Yeah, I mean, first of all, the idea that, I completely agree with Steve's last point, which is that while sometimes there may be correlation of truthfulness or accuracy with, the words that come out of the president's mouth, that is incidental rather than, you know, related. Because the president, when he said 99%, he also says that we have the lowest mortality rate in the world, which is not true.

He's making that up. He's saying that, and it's a very strange thing to say to brag about our legitimately lowering death rate, which it is lowering, which is great. It turns out just understanding that if you flip people over and put them on their bellies instead of their backs, you're going to save lives. We've learned a lot of things about treating people. But in a situation where the United States has literally like 20, 25 percent of the global reported deaths so far to be bragging about how low our mortality rate is, is just a little weird to me and kind of repugnant. But on the school stuff, it makes total sense that the White House would want to very loudly shout that it's all in favor of sending kids back to school because everybody agrees that all things being equal, if we could send kids back to school, it would be great. There are no parents at this point who are saying, man, I would just love another year of these Khmer Rouge,

monster is controlling my home. And so, and so they shout the intentionality. And then they just, I mean, I was on special report last night, and they had a long interview with Mike Pence, where he spent a great deal of time saying very little at all. And except he kept mouthing these platitudes about how we want the schools to be back open. They want the world to know that they're in favor of opening the schools. But how you do that or what role the federal government has to play in that, they don't have much to offer. And so it seems to me this, first of all, this idea that the Democrats are

keeping the schools open to punish Trump, I am sure there are anecdotal cases where you could make that claim, but as a general proposition, that's monstrously stupid. Most, you know, the old line about how all politics is local is not necessarily true anymore for national politicians, it's really true for local politicians still. And if you are a mayor or a city councilman and you are getting your ear chewed off by parents losing their minds about wanting to send their kids back to school, but they want to do it safely. Everybody wants to get the kids back to school for the reasons you suggest about the economy, for all sorts of reasons. The question is how you do it. And this idea that there's a blanket one size fits all

policy about getting the schools back open is insane. You know, I could see, first of all, there's a difference between preschools and high schools. There's a difference between schools in the southwest and in the northeast or in the Midwest. I could see, you know, some schools, if I were in Southern California and I were running a school that was of a manageable size, I would see how I, how I would look into getting as many classes outside for the entire fall semester as possible. do, you know, put up tent things that are covered, so you have some shade, and put the kids outside, social distance them, you know, we now know it's that's much safer. You can't do that in North Dakota, right?

And so it's going to be different horses for different courses. And so it's so strange, now that President Trump has backpedaled on masks and said, he's in favor of them or he now thinks it's a state-by-state issue for the governors to decide, how you can think masks are a local issue or a federalist issue or a state issue but opening schools

isn't is just weird he just wants to be on the right side of the messaging and he has very little grasp of what the public policy solution does to any of this stuff well the brisket is turning

one month old on Sunday so he's about ready for school I mean his reading isn't like he's not reading you know the rise and follow the Roman Republic just yet but like definitely

some shorter texts He's memorized. Very advanced. It's really impressive. Very advanced. One of the things you will learn as we go forward is that one of the great advantages of schools in this country is what some people call the prison effect of just locking them away so that you can get some things done in your life. Which is I have nothing but respect and kind of bizarre awe at homeschoolers. I tried to make roles last night with a.

baby and they were inedible so you tried to make rolls from your baby well he does have a lot of roles now as well he's eating everything let's pause for a word from our sponsor keeps as we all know someone many people who have struggled with baldness over their life two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 the best way to prevent hair loss is to do something about it while you still have hair left. You used to have to go to the doctor's office for your hair loss prescription. Now, thanks to Keeps, you can visit a doctor online and get hair loss medication delivered right to your home. Keeps makes it easy and they deliver your medication every three months so you can say goodbye to pharmacy checkout lines at awkward

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All right, David, moving on to the president. We have a new economist U-Gov poll out. And what was interesting about this, that most of the numbers stayed the same. Biden up nine over Trump nationally. Trump job approval, 4155, so 14 points underwater, coronavirus job approval, 39.57. So 16 points there. But here's what I found interesting. The vast majority of voters say they are voting for or against Trump rather than for or against Biden.

I don't think this surprises anyone, but this right now is a referendum on Donald Trump. Politico had an interesting piece by John Harris and Daniel Lipman, where they thought about the various hypotheticals that could happen between now and November, and just to run through some of them. One is that Trump declares he's not running anymore. He drops out of the race. He announces Mike Pence is not his running mate anymore. Mitch McConnell abandons him. There were several others as well. Do you see any surprises on the horizon? Or is this just going to continue as a referendum on Trump, even as events may change, of what inputs in that referendum may be.

It would be hard for me to imagine an event of the magnitude that would not, that would transform this fundamentally away from a referendum on Trump. It would be difficult to imagine that. I think even as we engaged in rank speculation in the advisory opinions podcast plug, that even a Supreme Court retirement, it will raise the temperature, for sure. it will cause an immense amount of contention and controversy, but will it change the fundamental dynamic? Not so long as it seems like Trump is very desperate

to constantly make himself the center of attention. Because no matter what other factor, what other thing is happening in the world, you have the fact of the matter of the most powerful man in the world cannot and has not been able to resist, pushing himself into the forefront and into the center of everything. So how does it, how does this not be a referendum on Trump?

Well, one of the only ways is the extraordinarily unlikely to the, so unlikely to the point that we're actually wasting oxygen and maybe in talking about it, eventuality that he steps aside. I can't see that happening. And unless he does that, he's going to make this a referendum.

And one last thing on it, you know, there's a lot of people who are yelling about Biden's bad campaign or that he's just hiding in his basement. If the campaign is a referendum on your opponent, and your opponent is continually digging himself a hole, it would be malpractice to get out of the basement. Just let it happen. It's a pretty good sign that the Trump campaign doesn't actually believe that because they are constantly trying to get him to come out of the basement. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Steve Axios reported on data from a company called NewsWIP that basically shows that Donald Trump is dominating online conversations. Not surprisingly, the same thing about it being a referendum and polling numbers. But this is about what people are tweeting about or Facebook, etc. But the three topics generating the most intense interest online right now are in order. the virus, racial injustice, and foreign policy, at least two of those areas where Trump's approval ratings are not good. Is there any topic that can get into those top three that would change the

referendum calculus for you? I mean, I don't think it would change the referendum calculus, but it might be the case that the president and his advisors think that it would be advantageous to have these debates on different grounds, different topics. I would actually say the third of those topics would be one of them. I mean, the president was very popular after the killing of Qasem Soleimani. People generally thought, even if it made folks nervous, that that was a good thing to have done. He had a polling jump after the killing of Baghdadi, when the U.S. had a successful extended campaign against ISIS. It's not at all, and this is speculation, but it's not at all crazy to believe that the president and his advisors will try to find ways to shift the debate

onto grounds where they think they're stronger. And I think that's cause for concern. We've seen them, excuse me, we've seen them do this in the past. I mean, the one thing we know about Donald Trump is the decisions that he'll make between now and election day are entirely about getting him reelected. almost without regard to whether they're good for the country or not good for the country. And we've seen... But Steve, can I interrupt just for a second on that point?

Is it strategy? Is it about his re-election? The tweets and some of the comments we've seen just in the last week, the white power video that he retweeted, calling Black Lives Matter, a symbol of hate, the sort of bizarre swipe at Bubba Wallace in NASCAR and saying that attacking NASCAR for removing the Confederate flag, is that actually strategy that you're, you know, looking at? Or is it simply reaction? No, I don't think it's strategy.

I think it's Donald Trump having, you know, fits on Twitter, which is a lot, I mean, explains a lot of what we've seen from him over the past three and a half years. But I do think that you have a team of advisors and plenty of other. other Republicans who don't want to see what looks to be, from their perspective, like a calamitous result in November. So you've had people like Carl Rove advising the White House on how to come up with a strategy and implement one. I don't suspect that Carl Rove is doing this because he has any particular love for Donald

Trump. I suspect he's doing this because he's worried about the prospect of Joe Biden as president with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. And, you know, with the fundraising numbers, we had an item in the morning dispatch this morning about the sort of amazing fundraising numbers that Democratic Senate candidates have put up. And in just talking and texting with Republican strategists, the response to that, and this is, you know, sort of insider political baseball, but their response to that is, you know, holy cow, this is totally different than what we've seen before.

And, you know, the argument I got from one of them was this could either indicate that the leftist activists with a ton of money on the coasts are stepping up and providing more money to these campaigns in high dollar donations, which boosts the overall total. Or you're seeing this is representative of a much broader surge of interest and enthusiasm, not necessarily for these candidates themselves, but against Donald Trump and his presidency. There is sort of a disconnect. I mean, you talk to some of these folks who are involved in running these campaigns, and you do get the sense that the public discussion we're having about the possibility of a big Biden victory

has not yet caught up with what these strategies see as the day-to-day reality that they're looking at right now. I mean, Donald Trump is running ads in Georgia, taking on Joe Biden four months out from the election. That in and of itself is pretty amazing that we're now seeing the president spend precious resources to defend turf in Georgia in a presidential campaign. Jonah, I want to spend a little bit of time on his 4th of July speech over the weekend at Mount Rushmore with a backdrop, not only, of four presidents, but also a backdrop of those tweets that we mentioned, and some of, you know, what we've at least heard from anonymous sources around his advisors don't want him doing, which are these sort of racially driven, you know, Confederate flag, the Confederacy in general, washing redskins renaming and the Cleveland Indians, and the white power video.

where do we put this Fourth of July speech in context? Is it in that context where he sees a racial message as a winning one to the fall? Or do we put it in the context of defending the founding fathers from being canceled in a sort of mob rule right now with some statues being torn down that shouldn't be? Where does this fall? Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's complicated. And this is a long-running argument I have had with many of my friends and even some of my former colleagues at National Review about the perils of embracing Donald Trump.

Because one of the, if you truly believe passionately in a cause or an idea that's relevant to politics, literally one of the worst things that could happen to you is for Donald Trump to take up your. cause. Because he is such a bad spokesman for it. He's a poisonous spokesman for it. Like when he rejected the label conservative and said, look, what I really am is a nationalist, I remember saying to my friend and former colleague of mine and David, Michael Brendan Doherty, hey, congratulations. You're stuck with this guy now because now whatever nationalism comes to mean is going to be associated with Trumpism. It's sort of like my longtime dream of peacefully annexed. in Greenland, it was ruined when Donald Trump picked it up. And that's what this is really about.

It's really. It's all about me. So, no, but so on the, the historical parts of the speech, I think much of it was very defensible stuff as a matter of text. The problem is the larger context. And the, the problem is all that other extraneous stuff that you were mentioning that Donald Trump has been doing about tweeting and talking about the Confederate flag and all of the rest, it makes it impossible for a lot of people to hear Donald Trump talking.

Donald Trump goes around saying that the Confederate flag is part of our heritage, and then it needs to be defended, and that our heritage is basically everything that has ever happened in the past. And then he goes up there and he talks about our heritage. People are going to think, well, he's including the Confederate flag and the Confederacy, and they would be reasonable in doing so. And I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that, you know, you know, that the Confederate flag, Donald Trump has a thumbless grasp of American history.

He doesn't understand which parts of our heritage are defensible on the merits and which parts are problematic on the merits. He also thinks, and this is a point of, you know, banging my spoon on my high chair about for years now, he thinks that, well, I think Donald Trump has some racist, racist attitudes. I don't think he's a hardcore racist. I don't think, you know, my standard line is, you know, the pillow cases at Mara Lago don't have eye holes in them. But he's kind of got an Archie Bunker, Outerboro, Racial, racist attitude. But he thinks that a large swath of the Republican Party is racist, which is why he was so reluctant to reject or renounce David Duke.

It wasn't that he necessarily agreed with David Duke. He thought big swaths of his base believe it. He thinks big swats of his base, even when Mississippi is taken down the Confederate flag and NASCAR is getting rid of the Confederate flag, he wants to defend it because he thinks that is a constituency of his. And it is mind-boggling to me why he would, just on the merits, you would make this calculation because even if it were true, he could throw the Confederate flag under the bus. He'd still win Mississippi, right?

He'd still win most of those red states. And he thinks the base is so important, so the base that really cares about this stuff the way he thinks it does gets him from a 10% margin of victory in those states to a 20% margin of victory. Meanwhile, he's underwater by like 20 points in suburbs by people who are horrified by this stuff. And so I just, I think, I think David's right,

unless there is some heretofore Black Swan thing that changes the fundamental dynamics of the race, Donald Trump's toast. And in part because he is doing nothing to change the perceptions of himself. And the basic underpinnings of the question you asked is that it kind of doesn't matter at this point whether or not he says something good

about the American founding. People will hear it in the broader context, of his tweets, of his assininity. And I don't know how you turn that around unless Joe Biden shows up on a debate stage with nothing but a diaper, right? It is just this is where the trend lines are going. David, quickly, but is the Republican Party tied to this Southern strategy, whether they want to be or not?

And will they distance themselves from it? they are tied to Donald Trump's strategy, whether they want to or not, and they cannot distance themselves from it. They had an opportunity to do so. In January, an impeachment vote came up where they would have voted to an impeach a Democrat under the same facts. They chose not to, in spite of the manifest unfitness of the president of the United States, they said, yeah, we're going to continue to roll the dice with the American people. That's what they did, with a person that is unfit to be president in the United States. Now, they did not know that a pandemic was coming at that point.

They did not know, or some suspected it might, but as a general matter, they did not realize a pandemic was coming. They did not see a racial unrest coming on the horizon. But you know what? If you're a responsible lawmaker, you should know that crises happen in presidencies. You should know that. And you shouldn't gamble with the economy.

and the lives of the people of the United States of America. And so, I mean, good luck running away from him because you just voted to keep it in January. And I think it's not hard to hang that around their necks. Steve, what does the Republican Party do post-Trump to convince voters that they are not the party of racial divisiveness, assuming that he loses, that Joan is correct, that he loses in November? Or is this done?

Is the Republican Party now this party of the tweets that we've seen in the last couple of days? I don't think it's this party, and I think, you know, there will be this big battle. A lot of it will depend on how badly Donald Trump loses. I mean, if he's a one-term president who loses to Joe Biden by 12 points in November and Republicans lose eight Senate seats or 10 Senate seats, including a couple that few people are focusing on right now, it will be seen as a broad repudiation of Donald Trump and Trumpism. And I think the party will adjust or try to adjust pretty quickly. I think it'll be difficult. I mean, I think it'll be difficult. You've seen a lot of these elected officials spend

years, you know, not answering for Donald Trump's tweets. Every time they're stopped in a Senate Allway, they don't want to answer a question about one of his provocative or racist tweets. And on the one hand, I'm not unsympathetic to that. I mean, if these senators stopped every single time they were asked questions about something that Donald Trump had done that was stupid, they would spend all their time doing that. So I buy the defense that they make of themselves to that extent. I think what's been missing and what makes, I think what complicates a potential post-Trump, you know, recovery is that even on some of the big ones, they haven't. And that's, that is a problem.

You know, you have senators who are picking fights with, you know, CJ 56, 8, 97 on Twitter. And then they're asked whether Donald Trump, you know, whether they can respond to Donald Trump's tweet is, I haven't seen that. I don't comment on the president. Meanwhile, they've like been in little Twitter battles with other people. So that I think becomes a much bigger challenge. But I think, you know, Jonah's right. If the elections today, I think Trump is toast, I don't think whatever happens in these intervening months, it will ultimately still be a referendum on Donald Trump. But having said that, I do think because there is a sense of alarm among Republicans right now, again, that I don't think has quite thrust itself into the public debate. Their private alarm is much, much greater than their public alarm, which has been true of the last three and a half years.

But it's very true right now because it affects their political standing. And I think we will start to see more of that in public. So I think you will see some Republicans talking openly about maybe replacing Mike Pence. The kinds of big things you do when you think your current campaign is doomed, you know, could Donald Trump step down? You know, seems crazy as we sit here on a Wednesday morning in July to even think that that would be a serious debate. Wouldn't surprise me at all if you start to see semi-serious Republicans or serious Republicans pushing that. The replacement of Mike Pence with Nikki Haley, I think, is something that we will undoubtedly, at the very least, read lots of chin stroking pieces about, why it would be wise, why it would work. And what we know of Donald Trump over, you know, the past five years, I would say in particular, if you've read the John Bolton book, you see this throughout, you know, it's all ad hoc.

Like a given decision, he can make a given decision that would totally upend his current campaign because he happened to pass somebody in the hall outside of the Oval who handed him an op-ed that he read and, you know, next thing, you know, he's fired his cabinet or we just don't know. So I think it's safe to bet on at least one, maybe a series of high impact externalities that may or may not change the outcome of the election, but will have everybody scrambling even more than we've been scrambling for the past five years. So, Sarah, you've worked with politicians, and we saw in the last three weeks, Donald Trump was asked the mother of all softball questions. I mean, short of what do you think of puppies, it was like, and I'm sure it was probably negotiated between the Hannity team and the White House, right, was what's your second term agenda? What is, what could people expect from you versus Joe Biden? he literally couldn't answer it. He was then, because, you know, and demonstrating that there is someone more sycophantic

than John to Donald Trump, they found someone to give him a do-over in the form of Eric Bowling, who asked them literally the same question after a week of grief over how he screwed up the answer. And he screwed it up again. Now, as a,

someone with much less hands-on experience in politics than you, that strikes me as evidence of an uncoachable candidate, right? I mean, that is where the talent will not listen to you. And no matter how much you do your Jerry McGuire begging, help me help you, he's not going to listen, right? Can you find an alternative interpretation of those things than that? Well, it is not unusual for candidates to believe that they are smarter and more in tune with their voters than their staff. In fact, I think Barack Obama said as much, and many others certainly think it.

And I think that what you see again and again is Donald Trump thinking that he knows his voters. Maybe to your point, he's wrong about his base voters. But I think in moments like that with the what's your second term agenda, he believes that he was elected in 2016, not because of an agenda. He didn't have 10-point policy plans. He was elected because he was the one who was going to. stand a thwart yelling stop. And his answers, therefore, when he gets asked that question now for a second term agenda, why would it be any different? He got elected the first time without an agenda, because the agenda is him. No, no, I agree that that in reality, he thinks the agenda is him.

I agree with you entirely about that. But, you know, this is a point Ramesh,preneur is made, is that in 2016, he actually talked about doing things, like building the wall and fixing immigration and, you know, crushing MS-13 and killing ISIS and you can come up with a whole bunch of things that he said he was going to do. I don't think he gave a rat's derrier about actually a lot of that stuff, but there was some agenda there. Now, I don't think he wants there to be agenda. I think he honestly wants the country to have a referendum on him, is my point. Well, let me just add this. I mean, in conversations with a couple of very senior Trump advisors over the years, there has been the argument, they've made the argument that Donald Trump

doesn't like being president. He doesn't want to be president. He loves the trappings of the office, right? He loves Air Force One. He loves to be able to tweet something and see the world, you know, go into convulsions. But actually doing the job, he hates. And again, something that comes through very strongly in John Bolton's book. So it's not, If you're looking at how he's approaching his day-to-day job, the least surprising thing to me is that he's not paying careful attention to the policy parts of being president. I mean, this is what he is. But it also, I mean, you know, my old friend Jonathan last had a piece yesterday over at the bulwark in which he theorized that all of this play to, the base of the base or the base of the base of the base in recent weeks has much more to do

with Donald Trump's post White House plans than it does with Donald Trump getting reelected that he's trying to, you know, he wants the 30 million people who are his hardcore base to come with him to OANN and slash Trump TV or, you know, build a podcast network or something. And that may be right. you know, there's a certain amount of logic there. I think even that's giving him too much credit. I just don't think there's that much forethought. I think it's basically like what will make me popular with my people right now.

And as Jonas says, it suggests that he has a pretty dim view of his base broadly, if he thinks that doing these things is the way to make them happy. Okay. quickly, you have two choices on the future of the Republican Party after Trump and they are Tucker Carlson and Kanye West, the two people who have been most discussed for presidential

runs in the last few days. Jonah, Tucker Kanye. I have to vote for one or the other? That's right. I reject binary choices. I mean, no, no, not going to do it. I mean, look. Which do you think more represents where the party

is headed? Well, look, I mean, I'm leave in, okay, that's fair, because I was going to say relations between Tucker and I, we're old friends, but are pretty strained these days. But I think I could end up getting like an ambassadorship to some small European country out of him if I just sort of, you know, made amends. So that would be my temptation. That said, I don't know what the hell of Kanye actually represents. And would he be running as a Republican? I mean, I don't know that. I think the future of the Republican Party is total frigging chaos for a while. I think that because at the end of the day, the Republican Party reflects sort of where the conservative movement is and where

conservatives on the ground are because it's an empty brand that is just constantly chasing the next customer base. And people just don't know. People have been so whipsawed into abandoning so of stuff that they used to believe, that it's going to be a time of great flux. And so maybe it'll be Kanye's party. That would be interesting. Let me recommend a Forbes piece with an interview with Kanye West. It is a tour. Something I never thought I would hear you say.

Yes. I mean, just the part about modeling the White House after Wakanda, I think, is worth a read. But he does say that he would. as a Republican, but for the president. Yeah. Interesting. The economics of Uconda are something that we should talk about a great length because they make no sense.

But that's not. All right. Anyone else want to weigh in on Kanye or Tucker before we move on? Well, all I know is if Kanye wins, I expect my son to be in his cabinet because I think he might be, he's punching way above his weight a number of Yeezy shoes owned and Kanye concerts attended. So I think he qualifies as a Kanyeologist. So I don't think it's either direction necessarily.

I mean, I think there would be a strong group of Republicans that will follow sort of what Tucker's latest set of views is. But remember, if Donald Trump loses and loses in a significant way, remember the reaction to that the Republican, Party had after Mitt Romney lost somewhat narrowly in 2012 was to do this lengthy study, write this autopsy report, and, you know, recommend in some cases just changing these views. I think if Donald Trump loses, we will see autopsy after autopsy after autopsy, and there will be a lot of people, including people who have been supportive of Trump publicly, to this point, arguing strongly that the Republican Party should take a different direction. Well, to borrow a phrase from a lawyer I worked with back in the day, when it comes to Trump

himself, the bloom will be off the rose. And the Bolton memoir will be just one of many that describe a level of chaos. There will be no more real fear of him, particularly amongst elective officials who've kind of held their tongue. And I think we always underestimate the psychological effects of both victory and defeat. I don't know that you're right about that. I'll be interested to see, but I think there will be plenty of people similar messaging to Tucker, which is Trump was a flawed messenger, but the message is sound. The message being a populism, anti-elitism on immigration, on

trade, that that will have strong support continuing forward. The margin of victory or defeat will matter a lot to that, I think. But they'll say it's Trump. They'll say it's the flawed messenger, not the message. Sure. Just to be clear, I think you're right. I'm not actually suggesting that the entire party goes. I think there's going to be this huge bloody fight.

And I would add sort of a third group. I think you're going to see the Trump cult of personality base reject arguments that it was Trump. And they'll say, no, no, no, Trump was what made this happen. It wasn't these ideas that were sort of vague and we did. And I think there's evidence for that as well. I think there is. Then you'll have another set of what we now consider to be the Trump base that says, you know, it was like the Jeff Sessions argument.

It's Trumpism. It's this set of ideas. And Trump was the flawed messenger. And then I think you'll likely have a lot of people who say, man, what did we just do? What was that? South-Omelanchism. I just think it's worth pointing out that no one, it didn't occur to anybody here, and it doesn't occur to anybody in Washington that I've encountered in three and a half years

to talk about how the future belongs to Mike Pence. It is just, it's a remarkable thing to watch this guy consistently do the Renfield to Trump's Dracula and on this implicit bet that he will inherit the mantle as vice presidents of the past have. and there's just, there's no groundswell for the guy whatsoever. And that should just sort of tell you something about what the future of the GOP is actually going to be like because he's making a bet on a GOP that I don't think exists anymore. Well, speaking of futures, I want to end with a question of how good y'all were at predicting the future back in high school. Jonah, what did you want to be when you grew up when you were, you know, roughly 16 years old?

note there's an assumption built into that question that Jonah wanted to grow up or wanted to be that he would that he would grow up so I think I was still largely in a I want to write I knew I wanted to be a writer of some kind I didn't want to be a journalist for the most part I wanted to write like comic books and sci-fi novels

and it wasn't until later that I was briefly diluted in the idea of maybe going to law school and thank God I came to my census. Thank God. I mean, that's a horrible face. I personally like being able to see my reflection in a mirror. Oh. You know you're not on advisory opinions. Cancel that.

I wanted to write novels. basically. So, okay, you're adjacent. I'd say you're not a little adjacent. And when I get enough FU money, I may actually still go back to that. David? Oh, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a fighter pilot after I watched the movie Top Gun. Yeah. Yep. Stevie said it at the same time I said it. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And if I was a good enough fighter pilot, I wanted in my career as a space shuttle astronaut. I'm still fascinated by all of that stuff. That's one reason why in my newsletter, I can't stop linking to SpaceX videos. But yeah, that is what I wanted to do. There is no question

about it. And then I don't, I'm not even sure. I mean, I had some issues with my eyesight wasn't great, as great as I wanted it to be. And then, yeah, It never happened, Sarah. I never, never piloted an F-15. It never happened. You kind of sounded there when you're talking about how your eyesight wasn't great. Like the Martin short character

from that Saturday Live skit about the synchronized swimming team where one of them explains, you know, I'm not a strong swimmer. All right, Steve, you're up. Yeah, I have. I had about maybe a week after Top Gunn when I wanted to beat a fighter pilot, but that was, that seemed unlikely. I was, I thought for a while that I, that there was a path to play professional beach volleyball as strange as that seems.

That's what you took away from Top Gun. Oh, look at those six-pack abs. No, I played competitive volleyball in high school and college and thought that that might be a fun way to – my idol was Karskorai and thought that it might be a fun way to make a living. I came to my senses reasonably quickly because I'm only six feet tall, and most people are a lot taller than that who are on the AVP, which is the Pro Beach Volleyball Tour. Are we throwing out lingo now? Yeah, I switched – yeah, I went to a bunch of those tournaments. We played in the qualifiers for a bunch of them, too. I switched pretty early after that.

I began getting, I think I may have mentioned this here before, it was a publication that was delivered, I think it was every Tuesday called The Conservative Chronicle, which just collected all of the syndicated columnists of all of my favorite writers. And so I dove pretty deeply into the world of conservative politics late in high school and continued through college and more or less wanted to do what I'm doing right now. By right now, I don't mean the business side of things. I wanted to do more writing

and reporting, but trusting that I'll get back to that, that was kind of what I wanted to do when I got out of high school and went into college. I too was tempted by law school. I took the else at, I applied to 13 schools. I was waitlisted at my top choice, which was UVA. I enrolled at Georgetown, paid my deposit, and then went to orientation and sat through orientation and had this moment where I said, this is not at all what I want to do. So I walked out of orientation, lost the deposit, and went to journalism school. I'm not sure. So at 16, I'm not sure. So at 16, I'm I, there's a lot of things I did not know that will seem really obvious that I'm not even

sure my parents realized I didn't know. Like I didn't know that your grades mattered. I thought it was just something teachers like gave you to make you feel good about yourself or bad about yourself, but that like it didn't occur to me that those would all be added up later for something called the GPA. Like nobody told me that. I think I was just supposed to know it. So along those same lines, um, I really liked chemistry. And so I was like, oh, I'll be a chemistry major in college. It never occurred to me, though, that then you would be a chemist and, like, what that job was and that I probably did not have a great personality fit for being a chemist. So, like, looking back, I'm not sure that I ever realized I would need to have a job.

It was just, like, a series of, like, things that I found interesting. So I'm not, yeah, I mean, I played viola for money in high school, so maybe. I had some thought that I could just continue making like, you know, a hundred bucks a gig or something. You should be recording our podcast intros. Yeah. No, I, for anyone out there who knows violas, we're background players.

We mostly like, you know, drink in that between breaks before you need us. Long pauses in our, in our sheet music. All right. Thank you guys for joining this week. Steve, all the way from Georgia. And again, subscribe to this podcast. Leave us a review. Let us know what you like, what you don't. And mostly what you like, though, right? And we will see you again next week. You know,