The Dispatch Podcast - Floating Middle Finger

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Nikki Haley is officially in the race... but is she ready to take on Trump? Steve, Sarah, and Jonah are joined by David Drucker, who was on the ground for her South Carolina launch. Plus, who’s leaking all the anti-Kamala content, and why isn’t the Biden administration answering questions about spy balloons? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Jonah Goldberg, and David. Well, David Drucker, our new David. It's very exciting. It's like having the old gang back together. And we got some fun stuff to talk about. Nikki Haley jumps in the presidential race for 2024 with fellow South Carolinian Senator Tim Scott making moves as well. We'll talk about the 2024 report.

Republican primary. And Biden silences, all the things he's not talking about and their political implications. And of course, we're going to talk about the balloon, such as it is, balloons, and a little not worth your time at the end. let's dive right in david drucker coming to you first nicky haley announces for president i mean maybe this whole episode is a not worth your time you know a 64 000 question there i'm spending a couple of days in charleston for the dispatch um i covered nicky haley yesterday i'll i'll be checking out tim scott and it's going to be thursday evening so whenever you're listening to this it's probably already done and gone, but I'm here to bring it to you.

What I found interesting about the Haley launch is that it was very well crafted and very well executed, and I think the question is, can she run a well-executed campaign? And that really comes down to her. You know, can she be the best version of herself? And can she be authentic? and can she offer Republicans a real alternative rather than just trying to craft together all of the right political cliches

and all of the right spin and dodges. And I just don't think we know what we're going to get yet. 2,000 people showed up in downtown Charleston yesterday for her. It's not a bad, you know, nobody can be Donald Trump. He's not the right comparison. Some people get bigger crowds. Some people get smaller crowds. But that was not a bad crowd for a weekday morning slash afternoon.

They had it decorated right. They had the music playlist. They had people perfectly positioned. The room was full. People were wearing swag. So they put a lot of thought into this. They got people out. Some people came from out of state.

A lot of people came from in-state. I talked to one Republican voter who drove down from Fairfax, Virginia, not far from us, up in the Washington area. She was super excited. She'd been waiting for this for basically 11 years or so. Then I asked everybody, and this gets to maybe this should be a worth your time item, well, can she win? They want to believe she can win.

And I was talking to voters, not operatives, not activists, as much of a voter as you can be if you show up to a political event in the middle of a workday, right? And they weren't quite sure. They said they believe she has what it takes, but could she execute? And that's really the thing, right? And so finally what I'll say about her launch yesterday is, I thought the speech was actually pretty well done. Not everybody liked how it was written. I thought it was fine. And she made very clear implications that not just Joe Biden, but Donald Trump is just too old to be president or, you know,

walk to the grocery store without assistance. Then when she was on Hannity on Fox News yesterday evening, he just asked her, well, how are you different than Trump? What is your case? You know, after all, it is a Republican primary. You're asking Republican voters to choose between Republicans. she didn't just want to go head on and say, yeah, the man's too old. She kind of backed into her creative talking points about why she thinks there needs to be generational change. But I think if she's going to win this thing or have a chance to win, she just has to say it. And that's what Republican primary voters respond to. It may not work with Trump. She may not be the right alternative to Trump or Ron DeSantis or, you know, fill in, you know, choose your own

venture there. But that's what it's going to take. I'm not sure she's doing it yet. I had this epiphany during the 2016 cycle. I really prided myself on seeing everything before it went out the door, making sure that we didn't have any typos, that, you know, all those like little embarrassing things that can happen to campaigns. And I remember catching some typo before it went out and being like, aha, like value.

I added value today. And it would have been some embarrassing typo, you know? And then realizing after the Trump, team put out, you know, typo-ridden stuff and it got all this attention and all of this, like everyone talking about it. And I was like, oh my God, I have actually hurt our campaign by executing things without errors. And when I see the Nikki Haley campaign, it reminds me a little of that if you're so careful in what you're saying and what you're doing and how you're saying it and where you're doing it, that in fact, you're almost missing part of the current political

media voter, what people are looking for, I think even in 2024. And so I'll be curious to see whether, you know, she's getting a lot of attention right now because she's the second candidate to get in the race. Will she be able to actually be part of the conversation moving forward? And Jonah, Donald Trump's campaign put out a, you know, the real Nikki Haley, sort of their list of oppo. It included things like she has said she's interested in entitlement reform. she believes that the U.S. should be arming Ukraine, as someone that we know said, so they're attacking her for being a Republican? Are there, you know, to David's point, are there going to be policy differences in this primary?

Well, eventually, I assume so, right? Maybe not when it's just a two-person raised. I didn't see the Hannity interview. I find that kind of disappointing on Nicky's part because if you're going to make generational change the issue for why you should vote for you, and then you're asked the night you announced, what's the difference between you and the 70, 6-year-old guy

who's the only other person you're running against right now, not embracing that point in a more direct fashion seems like something they should have prepared for better if, you know, I have no reason that David's got it right. I also just think that the generational change thing is a perfectly fine talking point for a couple days. But eventually, like, first of all,

almost all the other people who are thinking about running are her age too. So, you know, you're kind of implicitly making a case for the field other than Donald Trump if you're going to focus too much on the generational stuff. I should do the full disclosure thing. My wife worked for Nikki for years. no longer does.

I was really disappointed both with, you know, Brett Bearer's special report, which I'm a fan of, and I mean Steve Ron for a long time, and Brett's a friend. But they and Axios and a couple other outlets, this was sort of a general problem. They reported, in reporting about Nikki's announcement, they said, and President Trump welcomed her with open arms and just read some, that original statement by Trump is saying, welcome to the race, you know, go for it, without noting that he had dumped this huge package of of oppo honor. And as you know, the thing about the opo was it was from the left, right? It was like, Nikki wants to do Republican things with entitlements.

Nikki wants to do Republican things with foreign policy. And so to sort of answer your question, I do think that those policy differences, unless everyone's just going to be craven and say me too a lot to whatever Trump says, which is the guaranteed way, you know, as a point that David made in his book about losing to Trump, if all they're going to do is say, me too, to Trump, or I'm like Trump, but I don't have the baggage, they'll lose the Trump.

You know, someone's got to take the fight to Trump and show that they're man or woman enough to, because if you can't take the fight to Trump, how are you tough enough to be the President of the United States? How are you going to take on all those balloons if you can't take on Trump? Yeah, just to buttress that point. I think that the Nikki Haley exchange with Sean Hannity might even be worse than we're suggesting it was. Because as David notes, Hannity asked a pretty straightforward question.

This was not complicated. It's the night she's announcing for her race. And he asks her for specific policy areas where she differs from Donald Trump. So he's not asking her to take a shot. He's not asking her to go after her on political grounds. He said, if you had to delineate where, say, you and Donald, President Trump, differ on issues, where would you start? And then she goes on and talks about a new generational leadership. She mentions issues, but doesn't mention where she differs.

He asks again, let me go back to my original question. Where do you see, if you see policy differences beyond what you mentioned, where, what are they? And she said, what I'm saying is I don't kick sideways. I'm kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president. He's the one I'm running against. It just doesn't work. Like, if you can't offer basic policy differences with the frontrunner in the Republican Party

when you're running for the Republican nomination, what are you doing? And I think, unfortunately, for Haley, this is likely to fuel speculation already existing that she's running to be vice president. She's running to be the running mate. She doesn't want to get sideways, further sideways with Donald Trump, that she doesn't want to take him on in any kind of a frontal way. And she shouldn't have announced first. It's hugely wild.

for, yes. Why announce first, why it'll be the first to join the fray if you're actually not going to get into a fray? I don't get the strategy then. Right. I think it's a challenge. I mean, I think Nikki Haley has any number of challenges in this race because, again, either if you're playing to win, then you've got to do stuff to be in the conversation. So when people give you an opportunity to show differences, you need to do that. Steve, to your point, maybe she's not playing to win. Maybe she's playing to be VP. What I find odd about that is She has a much better chance, in my view, of being DeSantis's vice presidential pick than Trump's.

I think Trump is incredibly unlikely to pick Nikki Haley for like all the reasons. And I mean, we've seen it from the Trump team even, them sort of saying like Nikki Haley's a joke. He doesn't trust her. You know, I wrote this up for the Atlantic, but Trump has a weird relationship with women. They're sort of on the both sides of the- It's the nicest way you can put it. It's on both sides of the bell curve. Like on the one hand, he is more likely to attack women

than their male counterparts or colleagues. But on the other hand, he's also more likely to elevate women who he sees as loyal up, you know, more than their male counterparts. But Nikki Haley is sort of trying to have it both ways. And, you know, if her plan is, I'll help take down to Santas. And that's why she's getting in this early because now she'll have three months to help

be the attack dog on DeSantis, that's not going to impress Trump very much. I think he's going to be happy to have someone attack DeSantis, but it doesn't put you back in the Trump fold either. Whereas I think DeSantis would be more likely to look for ticket balancing political advantage of someone that like a Nikki Haley could bring, whereas Nikki Haley's probably, you know, then the third option, right?

So one, she's playing to win. Two, she's playing for VP. three, she's running to stay relevant because she's actually running in 2028, in which case she is better with Donald Trump being the nominee, because no matter what, if he wins the nomination and loses, 2028's an open field.

If he wins the nomination and wins the general election, guess what? 2028's an open field because he can only serve one term. And so I see why she would potentially want Donald Trump over DeSantis if she wants to be president in 2028. But I don't know. I don't see the political calculation working right now for her. I think the generational change argument can be a good opening case.

I think you're going to get a lot of people around the country who knob their heads in agreement and say, yeah, you know what, I do worry about the fact that we could have to, you know, 80 plus year olds, you know, people who would be 80 older than 80, the end of their term as the next president of the United States. I think you'll get some agreement there. But what that should do is open up an opportunity to then make your case on a policy level. And she just didn't do it. And even if you wanted to be, let's see you wanted to be sort of gentle with Donald Trump,

or you didn't want to take him on so frontly that, you know, he would come after you and only you. Again, I can make a case that that's the smart thing to do because he would be elevating her. It's absolutely the smart thing to do, but whatever. But let's say that she doesn't want to do that for. whatever reasons, and she doesn't want to stray too far away from Trump policies because she believes that are popular with Republican primary voters. Then you can make an argument that Trump's policies weren't so bad that he just was ineffective in implementing them. And point to things like the wall, which isn't done. Point to things like repealing Obamacare, which he didn't

do. Point to things like the trade deficit, which he made a big deal of and is no, we're not a better position. Point to things like China, which is more belligered. Point to his embrace of, I mean, you can, you can imagine all of these areas where you could adopt the same or similar policy positions to Donald Trump, but criticize him for being ineffective. And she didn't even do that. I guess it'll be interesting to see she's doing a town hall in New Hampshire, where she certainly will be confronted with some of these questions. She's then headed to Iowa. You know, how does she answer these questions, I think it's unsustainable to just take a pass and not do this, which makes her decision last night to not answer Anthony's question, all the more curious.

I also just think the more she continues to do that, the fewer outlets will cover her campaign, which is how you sort of drown in silence in these sort of things. As the field gets larger, you're not saying interesting stuff. They move on to a Tim Scott, a Mike Pence, you know, Chris Sununu, whatever it is. And Nikki Haley's so busy, not to offend anyone, she's not exciting anyone either. There's a practical side to this as well. Nikki Haley entered the race early to try and stake her claim to some real estate and also allowed herself enough time to raise money so that she's in a competitive position

later in the year and, you know, obviously presuming she actually wants to win heading into the early primaries next year. But that also means that she has to use this period to actually raise money. So she's already in. She had an existing political operation. So it's not that she's starting from zero and zero, you know, from ground zero and zero dollars. But the only way this campaign is going to sustain itself is if she raises money. And there's only so much major donor money to go around with Ronda Santis waiting in the wings and a couple of other Republicans to choose from.

So she'll have her share, but she's going to need small donor money and enthusiasm. And so she's got to set herself apart or give a compelling rationale for supporting her. Frankly, a lot of candidates in both parties fall into this trap, but we've seen it a lot with Republicans, is they all try to run a George W. Bush-style front-running campaign, as though they're the main major candidate. And so they can start positioning for the general election. And maybe they just have to, you know, Bush had to swat at John McCain. I think, you know, he had to submit to one debate, maybe two, if memory serves, this was a long time ago. You can't do that when you've got competition.

And particularly, she is running against the recent former president who still retains a broad wealth of support in the party. Ron DeSantis is waiting in the wings, who has a broad wealth of interest, if not support in the party. So she's got some tools. She is the first Republican woman of her political stature to ever run for president. There could be, there can be a lot of interest there, but you've got to do the blocking and tackling. And as a candidate, that means in this era, say what you think plainly. You don't have to overdo it all the time. But if you're asked, just say it and move on.

And Jonah, where are you putting a Tim Scott, Kristen Nunu, Mike Pence, all who haven't announced, but who have started their, you know, their 501C4s, their, you know, puppies for America, packs and things like that, lots of travel, lots of conversations about them. Where are their strengths and weaknesses compared to where Haley is right now? Yeah, I mean, a good number of them have already sacrificed at least 50 oxen to ball and more on the way, which is like one of the most undercover rituals of American politics

is the animal sacrifice that's required. I'm, you know, my view right now is I'm still betting on the field. And that doesn't mean I'm betting on Nikki Haley. Does the field include DeSantis? Let me put it this way. If the field doesn't include DeSantis, if it's Trump and DeSantis,

I'm betting on the field against both DeSantis and Trump still. Wow. just because, you know, I know the stock market people say Bass performance is not an indicator of future, whatever, blah. But when was the last time, I guess the last time was Georgia W. Bush. And I've always had a long theory about why Georgia W. Bush was so far ahead in the polls so early. It's because he benefited from name ID. And the enormous number of people thought he was his father when they said,

do you favor him for president? And there were pollsters who said so at the time. And he raised a huge amount of money. He used his dad's network. So it's a different thing. But since then, every four years, we have a cycle where, or every time there's an open primary, we have a cycle where everyone says,

oh, this guy is the clear frontrunner. He's got it sewed up. And then they flame out, whether it's Scott Walker or Fred Thompson or, you know, whoever. And I just don't, So I just think that the historical trend is that we won't know who the actual nominee is going to be for a while and having any confidence otherwise, I just think it's a fool's bargain. It'll be interesting to see what happens to Nikki's poll numbers in South Carolina if Tim Scott goes. And, you know, if one of Nicky's structural advantages is that there's a South Carolina primary fairly early on, I assume.

I don't know this, that Tim Scott would outperform Nikki in the state. But maybe not. And what's funny is either one who wins will be heavily discounted, like Chris Sununu winning New Hampshire. We basically toss out the primary if you, the hometown boy, win it. That's sort of like remember Bill Clinton was the comeback kid for coming in second in New Hampshire. That's right.

So I don't know. I think the field is not going to be as huge as we often worry about on here, but it'll still be significant. and I do think that Chris Noonu has a better shot than a lot of people. I know we don't talk about lanes because then Sarah gets out her taser. But I'm a Sarah on this one.

Lanes are for losers. Okay, no lanes. But there's only one candidate in the wings right now who actually has, I mean, Tim Scott maybe is half a one, but a legitimately cheery disposition that doesn't seem like he is like the best person to manage the country's decline into the apocalypse. And that's Chris Sununu,

and I think that's going to create, there's going to be a constituency for a little bit of a Reaganite happy warrior kind of thing. But it will be enough for him to go all the way. I have no idea. Probably not. The abortion stuff is going to be a real problem for him. All right.

Last word on this to you, Steve. On the Tim Scott, Nikki Haley question, David had sort of an interesting tidbit from his reporting at the Haley event yesterday. where he interviewed a number of people who were there, presumably because they are enthusiastic about a Nikki Haley bid for president. And one of them, when David asked him a question, who will you support Nikki Haley or Tim Scott?

At least one of them said, well, if Tim gets in, I probably switched to Tim Scott. And this is someone at a Nikki Haley rally. Not a great sign probably for Nikki. You don't want to over read a single anecdote or an interview with a single voter. but I think that that's like they're likely to be more than just one person who feel that way. And we should also just say this is the first day

and Nikki's a much better politician than a lot of people think and she could, you know, three days from now, this could all seem like ancient news because she's like figured out a different talking point or whatever. It's just very early. So we'll see. All right, let's move on to Joe Biden. You know, Jonah and I were talking yesterday

and Jonah raised an interesting point. Thinking back to the state of the union, but also Joe Biden's presidency of the last few months, there have been areas that the American people are quite focused on that Joe Biden hasn't really been talking about. Immigration comes to mind. There's a new Gallup poll out that shows the American people sort of record dissatisfaction with immigration and immigration policy in the country, crime numbers. voters not happy with it. Crime sort of continues where it was in some respects. And, you know, the state of the union barely mentioned immigration, didn't really mention

crime, talked about police. And then, of course, we have the classified documents in terms of things Joe Biden's not talking about that everyone else is. And, Joan, I'm going to start with you on this. politically, has it hurt Joe Biden? Will it hurt Joe Biden? Or is he's sort of, you know, showing a new road, which is don't talk about the things

that you don't have anything good to say about for your own side? Yeah, it's a little Monty Python-esque. Don't mention the war. Or is that faulty towers? I always get them confused. Anyway, yeah, we kind of got onto this in part because I was

ranting about Biden's messaging on the, balloon stuff has been so bad and he just doesn't seem to want to talk about it and I guess we're going to save that that aspect of it for a little bit but um yeah I think it's hurting body I mean this is one of the weirdest things is the mainstream media keeps talking about um and the wide and white house just keeps acting as if these guys are just cooking with gas and everything's going great and and yet you know we have the highest proportion of Americans who say they're personally worse off economically since Biden was elected than it ever than like NBC asked this question for 37 years and four out of 10 people, which is the highest they've

ever gotten, say that they are personally worse off because the current president is since the current president was elected. We have huge wrong track numbers. And I last time I'm not sure the exact number, but last time I checked Democrats under the age of 30 to a tune of all of them don't want them to run again and something like a majority of Democrats don't want them to run again. Everyone thinks he's too old. There are all these leaks coming out.

There's another story today about how Democrats are really worried about Biden. I do think it's hurting him politically. I think what confuses everybody is he's not acting like it. He's acting like, you know, it's lime jello day at the home and everything's just great.

And I think that it's a weird sort of disconnect in the political conversation because a lot of people at the top level are buying it. But the mood of the country, at least according to the polls, doesn't reflect it. And I suspect that part of it has to do with the fact that they are counting on running against Donald Trump in 2024. And they think that will solve all of their problems. Yeah, I mean, David, when you talk to folks on the Hill, is Biden actually doing agenda setting here?

You know, if you don't talk about immigration, it's not on the agenda to talk about immigration, or is it plenty being talked about, which is why we see it being reflected in this Gallup poll? Well, I mean, I think it depends on whose vantage point you look at it from. I think I stole this from Jonah at some point. Now I just claim it as my own, but Joe Biden always finds the center of the Democratic Party,

not the center of American politics, but the center of his party. and I think his agenda reflects where the center of his party is, and that kind of includes on Capitol Hill, right, to the extent that take immigration, which is a problem, has been a problem for many years, but, you know, particularly under his leadership, we can point to all sorts of flaws in how his administration is policing the border,

processing asylum claims, handling illegal border crossings. It's a problem for a lot of independent voters and Republican voters, but you don't have Democratic voters screaming that why isn't the president getting tougher on illegal immigration? You don't have Democrats on Capitol Hill screaming for that. And so Joe Biden's kind of in this, he straddles this area where he's trying to make, keep his party happy because that's his instinct while doing the least amount of damage with everybody else. How does he seem to get away with this, given his approval ratings, given the current state of the economy, which in some ways could look good, but in other ways has Americans, so full of anxiety about the state of their finances or their prospects. And that's because the leading voice in the Republican Party and a lot of his acolytes, including on Capitol Hill,

are simply unacceptable to so many voters who want change. You know, one of the reasons why I think Democrats did so well in the midterm elections, where they should have been shall act, and this is my analysis in hindsight, I wasn't some genius about it, is they look at looked at the loudest voices in the Republican Party leading up to the midterms, looked at a looming Donald Trump comeback because he had started to talk about announcing his campaign. And they said, number one, you people aren't serious. Like, we have problems. I don't like the president, but you're not serious. You're not focused on my problems. And also, oh, my God, now I have to deal with this guy again.

And so in some ways, the same way Barack Obama for eight years kept all of the populist energy in divisiveness in the Democratic Party at a manageable level, Donald Trump and his lieutenants in the party are doing that for Biden. We know Democrats want change. We know they think he's too old. But we also know that they wonder, number one, do we have anybody who we know can be Trump? We don't know that we have that. Number two, you have voters who also are looking around going, oh, my God, like make it stop. But, oh, wait a minute. You mean, if I make that stop, I get this? And so I just feel like it strangled a normal shift in politics based on political and economic conditions because of where one party is and the alternative that the other party doesn't feel it has.

And Steve, you were looking at some new updated reporting, let's say, from Jonathan Martin. To a certain extent, I don't think we need to make this too terribly complicated. And I think Joe Biden isn't talking about a lot of these issues because his, His advisors and other Democrats are afraid what he'll say when he talks about them. And people could make a claim that that's ageist. It's a concern among Democrats. This is not some Sean Hannity talking point. This is what Democrats have been saying privately.

I've been saying privately for a long time. I've had conversations with current and former elected Democrats who have raised the age issue unbidden without being asked about it and are concerned about it. If you look at Jonathan Martin has a new column today at Politico, citing Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who was one of the Democrats who spoke out. Before the 2022 midterms suggesting that Democrats would be better off with somebody else at the head of the party, there were a couple of others who joined him in those public comments. We've heard very few of those since the midterms, which Biden and his team have chosen to recast as sort of an affirmation of his presidency.

was a referendum on Joe Biden and the people want Joe Biden. This is not true. Polling doesn't bear that out. As Jonah pointed out, if you look at polling among Democrats, stunningly few Democrats want Joe Biden to be the head of the party. Stunningly few Democrats want him to run for re-election. And when you've got a third of Democrats saying that they are excited about Joe Biden or want him to run for reelection and he's the incumbent president of the United States,

it's a problem. There's a Democrat enthusiasm problem. I also don't think we need to speculate about why Biden feels like he can run despite being so weak. Ron Claim gave an interview to the New Yorker in which he said, Joe Biden is the guy who beat Donald Trump once. That makes him strong. And if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and Claim argues that he's far most likely to be to have that position, then it makes sense to have Joe Biden run against Donald Trump again. we shouldn't underestimate the extent to which people have these concerns about Joe Biden. There was an NBC News question in a poll in late January that queried voters on whether they

believe that Joe Biden has, quote, the necessary mental and physical health to be president of the United States. Only 28% said that they thought that he did. 54% said that they thought that he didn't. And of that 28%, only 13% had very positive views about Joe Biden's physical and mental health to be president of the United States. That's a pretty significant drop since NBC asked that question at the same time last year, down from 33 to 50. It's a problem for Joe Biden, and unfortunately for Biden,

it's not a problem that is likely to be resolved by putting him out more. Yeah, so just one quick point on that. that's the risk right i mean i've been talking about how like you could just one tumble on the air force one ladder and we can have a horrible i'm not trying to make light of it it just true but like we used to think or a lot of us used to talk about in the early days that trump would be ruined by a bad open mic moment where he said something deplorable right and then it turned out that over time people came to expect deplorable stuff from them and that possibility evaporated i do think a truly bad senior moment all you need is one really really bad one high profile one

and you could have a major cratering of support for Biden among the voters he would need to win right i'm not necessarily like talking about rank and file base activist voters but moderate middle of the road guys if if he just has a bad day or whatever it is and and is sleep deprived which you have to be on the campaign trail, right? It could be like the end of, you know, dangerous liaisons where all of a sudden just like the big reveal comes and everyone sees them differently

and I don't think that's repairable. I'm picturing the Reese Witherspoon version of dangerous liaisons and Jonah watching it and watching it and watching it. That adds a whole new layer to that. By the way, I think there is one way you get Joe Biden to go off into the sunset after one term.

but it's just not a realistic thing. If in some universe, Donald Trump decided to call it a day and just be a kingmaker in Mar-a-Lago and not run and did it in the next couple of months at a time when Democrats can still make a different choice, I think that's when you would see the party apparatus and even all the people that love him for beating Trump say, you've done it, please go.

Here's your gold watch. In fact, you need to go. See, I think y'all underestimate Joe Biden's political ambition. This has been his life's ambition. He's running. He's running no matter what. He's running no matter what anyone tells him. Aside from maybe Jill, if his wife told him, you can't do this, I don't doubt he would

listen to her, you know, something the equivalent. But party poobaz who've been against him for 30 years and didn't think he could ever get here and mocked him. No way. What does he care? He's here now. I also think, you know, somewhat counter to Steve's point, they did the State of the Union.

I agree that all it takes is one bad moment and everything else gets washed away. But the State of the Union was a very good moment for Joe Biden in this narrative in particular, I thought. Incredibly there, incredibly with it, more so than a lot of other politicians would have been able to handle the heckling. I think Democrats hoped that it would throw him off his game

and it had the exact opposite effect. And so I don't know. If I'm in the Biden White House and I'm thinking about re-election, things are looking better than they were in December and certainly better than they were in October. So I'm going to hijack this a little bit. I've asked this question of a lot of people,

Democrats I've met in green rooms and various others. I don't think I've asked any of you guys this. Steve heard me talk about this already, though. as pure criminology, you do not get so many vicious, nasty Kamala Harris must go pieces, unless they're actively being pushed by at least one constituency inside either, you know, I mean, not to quote the horror movie, but like, these leaks are coming from inside the White House. You know, like, who is pushing this? Is this the vicious Buttigieg job?

operation? Is this Biden people themselves trying to get her to eat her spinach and get off the ticket? Is it, well, who do you guys? Where do you think is driving these pieces? Because it has been kind of remarkable how many and how many people on the record are going after Harris in a way that if she were untouchable, according to Biden, she would be untouchable. any theories so i i don't think that um that somebody is sitting on a pile of of opo and distributing it to all these outlets in a way that's making them write these pieces to me these pieces were sort of waiting to be written and the sort of precipitating event is exactly what we're talking about the possibility that joe biden would not be the democratic nominee

in 2024 who would be next camilla harris i mean she would be the obvious person to step in Now, that's not to say that... That's the argument for why Biden would be... Biden people would be pushed on. Precisely. But that doesn't mean that it had to originate with them. I have no doubt that when, you know, people are... When reporters are talking to Biden administration officials,

and particularly Biden campaign officials, um, and sniffing around for stories, you know, with the premise that Kamalaris could be valuable, could take his place, that Biden... advisors would be happy to share her lack of accomplishment with those reporters. I just don't think it has to be the case that this was some operation from the outset. Well, I'll be curious what David thinks about this because he's, David and I are sort of two sides of the same coin. I've been like on the inside trying to find the leaks and

David's been on the outside getting the leaks. I'll tell you, Jonah, when I, see stories like that. And then I see the stories about very high staff turnover in the vice president's office. I think the call might be coming from very, very inside the house, i.e. inside the Harris operation itself of people doing sort of a version of complaining about your boss plus CYA. You know, when your boss isn't doing well, there's two people who are going to get blamed. Your boss and you. And so you want to be clear that it's not you. that she is a fundamentally flawed politician, and here's all the reasons she's failing

that have nothing to do with you. And some of those stories where it's about Harris herself, I do wonder whether the staff might be leaning in a little on that. David, but again, like I'm on the inside, you're on the outside. Yeah, by the way, this is where politics is the opposite of sports. In sports, you can't fire the team, so you always fire the coach, whether he or she deserves it or not. But in politics, you can't fire the coach, so you fire the team.

somehow that's going to fix a bad coach it just it doesn't work that way um listen when i get leaks from people or suggestions for stories from political operatives that are critical of people in their own party or critical of committees or politicians that in theory they want to succeed because they affiliate with those committees and politicians sometimes it's crass politics you know they're trying to knife somebody to get ahead. But I'll tell you there is another reason. And I never discount that. And it's one of the things I always have to weigh in my head. Why are they telling me this? So is it true? Are they leaving out a context because it's better for their purposes? But there's another reason why over the years I have gotten this kind of inside information. And that is

because they're really concerned with something and they want it public because they're trying to get it fixed. And when you have a bunch of stories, no matter what the politician or the committee or the collection of leaders say about the story, oh, it's the mainstream media, right of center outlet or left of center outlet. They don't like us. You get enough stories. And the hope is that people will go, I don't know, maybe there's a problem. We need to fix this at the very least so we can stop the stories. Is the problem they're trying to fix these enlightened do-goaters who are just trying to make government work? Is the problem that they're trying to fix the vice president of the United States? It could be. Maybe more of just a warning.

she really cannot be the nominee in 2024. I think, again, I think there's so many good reasons, including the merits to criticize Vice President Harris. But I got to tell you guys, I don't know if this is your experience, Sarah, on this week, but having been in a lot of green rooms to talk about Kamala Harris at CNN of late, it really is remarkable how the second you get into this

other sociological click of sort of mainstream media Democrat adjacent former Democratic aides, whatever, it is really difficult to say obvious things about Kamala Harris

without people looking at you like you just said, you know, puppy really does taste just like chicken. You should try it. You know, I mean, like, they look at you like, wait, you don't think Kamala Harris

is fantastic? And, and the, And they have such, so many of these people I've had these arguments with. It's like they've let all of their other analytical tools atrophy. And so they can only talk about it in terms of sexism or racism. And it's just really, it is really weird to me how there is a still, despite these. And like the shock that these stories produce among people who did not know that anyone had a negative,

A contrary word to say about Kamala Harris is really just kind of shocking. All right. We're going to combine our last topic with not worth your time, question mark. And I'm coming to you first, Steve. We've now shot an increasing number of balloons over the United States territory. And I think this has got to be really good news for F-22 pilots who are finally getting to shoot real things, you know? It's sort of like the end of top gun when they actually get to go up against the first top gun

when they actually get to go up against migs and like fire I mean to get to shoot a missile and like hit something as an F-22 pilot is awesome, not in training. Wow! In relatively low risk with a balloon. You're going to win the fight. So really good news for that

very small group of people. The White House has oddly not as strongly as you might think assured us that it's not aliens so we can maybe rule that one out or at least make it less likely there's a decent theory that makes sense to me that norad has learned that their tracking parameters were a little off and as they changed them all of a sudden there's a lot more things to track Steve is the balloon thing worth our time moving forward? I think it very much is. And in part because of what we were talking about just a moment ago with Joe Biden's reluctance

to speak about various topics. He has not addressed the balloon thing other than brief mentioned in the State of the Union in any kind of a coherent way. And if the argument at the beginning was don't put the president out to speak about something while we're still gathering facts and details. Let's wait until he can speak about it from a point of deep knowledge and understanding. I'd be for it. I think we're better off when politicians and journalists and media outlets wait to establish the facts before they starts pouting off about them. I think the difficulty, though, when you assess the Biden administrations, both,

I would say, handling of this and rhetoric about it is that it's been all over the place, deeply contradictory from moment to moment. If you look at the original briefings from Pentagon officials about what was happening with respect to the first of these, which was this balloon from China, there were contradictions inside the briefing. But the basic takeaway was, look, we don't know much about this, probably very limited ability to gather intelligence, not really much to be worried about. This could have just been, you know, a one-off balloon that kind of floated in the wrong

direction swept away by the winds, which was consistent with the way that China was spinning it at the time. Now, a couple weeks later, you have real reporting based in part on additional background briefings given by top Pentagon officials that this was like, part of a massive hemisphere-wide intelligence gathering operation and that while it still remains possible that the balloon wandered off course or followed a path that wasn't the path the Chinese had wanted it to follow, that it was capable of collecting intelligence, that we were right to be worried about it. And oh, by the way, that the United States had been tracking it from its departure. Well, these are two totally different things.

either we found out about it when it sort of happened to wander across the Aleutian Islands and down Canada into Montana, or it was the case that we were tracking it. One of those things is true. One of those things is not true. And it is a little crazy that we were potentially briefing based on not bad information, not in complete information, but false information from the beginning of this. I think it's a problem for the Biden administration. I think it's a, you know, we don't know exactly what the capabilities of this balloon were, what exactly it was collecting, what possible damage may have been done to our secrets if it was indeed targeting U.S. military bases.

There's a lot that we need to learn publicly still. But I think the initial inclination to kind of downplay this and shrug it off was a mistake, just as it was a mistake by some Republicans to be hysterical about it without knowing. more information right away. But the Biden, after canceling Anthony Blinkin's trip to Beijing, the Biden administration has had a rather passive approach to all of this in its public posturing with respect to China. And while you can make an argument that we don't need to be belligerent or hysterical about it, we also shouldn't pretend that it's a big nothing burger. And Kamala Harris gave an interview to Politico's Eugene Daniels yesterday in which he said, you know,

will this, how will this affect diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China? And she said she didn't think it would. I think it ought to. It's at least a big deal. It's at least a pretty aggressive affront if it's part of this broad intelligence collection operation. And it should matter to our president.

David, what say you? The balloons. How closely are you actually going to be watching this moving forward? Including Joe Biden is set to give a larger address about this after we finish taping this podcast. So, you know, by the time this comes out, maybe he will have cleared up all of Steve's questions. Look, even if the administration doesn't want to reveal a lot of information for intelligence collection purposes, I think we need to know that they are focused on this and doing something about this. I mean, this is my own hobby horse here, but I think one of the problems with the issue is that we keep referring to this balloon as a balloon. But balloon is like when you're a little kid and you discover that some curse words are just inherently funny and make you laugh. Balloon sounds non-threatening and not serious.

If this was a drone or some other kind of propelled aerial vehicle invading American airspace to collect intelligence, sent by a foreign adversary, I think the discussion around this would be so different. So, yeah, it's a balloon. It's an invasion of American airspace. Maybe we don't want to shoot them all down because it's a part of our counterintelligence operations. We clearly are collecting tons of intelligence on our adversaries using all sorts of methods, including aerial vehicles. But I think that the American people need to understand that the president, whoever the president is, is aware of this sort of thing, has a handle on it, has a strategy, even

if he doesn't want to lay out all of the specifics as to how this is being dealt with. Jonah? Well, first of all, I want to say, I for one welcome our new balloon overlords and could be of much service to them in their helium factories. No,

I, first of all, I think you misstated it slightly at the beginning. We know we shot down one balloon. We shot the, the three other things we shot down were objects of indeterminate nature. And the fact that if

and the fact that no one is claiming, you know, if someone had some one of these things up in there for benign purposes, they would say, my bad, sorry about that, that was my super kite or that was my, you know, practice drone or whatever. No one's saying, no one's taking responsibility for any of them, which I think is interesting. Look, I, I just thought of this, but I,

Do you remember the media strategy the Obama administration sometimes had where they would let the crazy fester for a while? You know, like to take his birth certificate, right? He finally released his birth certificate after it became this whole thing. They had this theory that it would be sort of like demonizing, delegitimizing of his opponents to sort of let them get way out over their skis on something and then they would sort of do the big reveal kind of thing. I kind of suspect someone has that idea at the White House

that it is in their interest to let everyone talk about UFOs and that kind of stuff and not really put out that kind of thing and give these coy like Corrine Jean-Pierre, you know, have this sort of like, you know, we've seen nothing so far to indicate that these are aliens or whatever, wink, wink, not, not, ha, ha, ha. You know, Alex Jones, you agree with that, you know, that kind of thing. And I generally find that the way the Biden administration, has handled this, it's either such a serious thing going on that they're staying silent because they don't know how to talk about it, or it's such an unserious thing that they're

not talking about it and they think it's in their interests to have people turn it into a serious thing. Either way, I think they've handled this really, really badly. And particularly against the backdrop of the recent, you know, we had these major congressional hearings where we released all, unclassified all this really interesting stuff about UFO. I mean, like with video, with Air Force pilots and commercial pilots recording what they're seeing and we actually see some of these things. And they're weird. And the idea that the administration would just let this stuff fester, you know, amidst their strategic silence, at least presumably strategic silence, I think is really irresponsible. Or they're really worried that Biden's going to say, to get back to Steve's earlier point, that Biden's going to say something.

about all of this, that's going to cause more problems than it's going to solve. And anyway, I just think, like, if this was the nothing burger, they claimed it was originally two weeks ago, they should have sent Millie or somebody out and just say, hey, look, this is what it is. We've been jamming it. Don't worry.

It's not a big deal. If it wasn't that, they should explain what it was. And they've just not been leveling with the American people about this stuff. You know, the, what's his face? Kirby, he didn't announce that we had shot down those new objects. He waited for a reporter to ask about rumors that we shot them down. And then he goes, oh, yeah. Yeah, actually, we did do that.

And that's just, it's a really weird communication strategy that I don't understand. And maybe when they reveal everything, it was like, oh, that's why you did that. And, you know, okay, but I don't see it yet. But last question on this. And I'll start with you, Jonah. But how should this affect our relationship with China? I don't think it needed to be a sputnik moment. I mean, this has sort of been my take from the beginning, but it's turning into one.

I think that the reality is, is that, and I'm saying this for a long time, that one of the theories are real bipartisan consensus in this country and foreign policy is that we're entering a new era of hawkishness towards China. And really the only debate is between smart hawkishness and dumb hawkishness. and um and this is going to fuel that and i think that like the the it's entirely possible that it was an accident that allowed us to see this thing over montana in the first place but it doesn't matter because we saw it and it's sort of like when you find a spy we both know we all know that we have spies in china and china has spies here same thing during the cold war the soviets had survives here we had spies there but when you catch them you have to make a big deal about it. And we caught China with this giant-ass, you know, balloon, surveillance, drone.

You know, it's a drone. It's just as a different means of propulsion. And they lied about it. And we caught them red-handed. And you have to make a big deal about it. And there's something about it that's sort of like this giant floating middle finger over America that really pissed off a lot of Americans. So it makes it more politically salable than, you know, the fact that, you know, we, you know, if you listen to Klon Kitchen, we have surveillance, you know, drones in our pockets on our phones every day in the form of TikTok or we have satellites looking at us all the time. This is something tangible and real and embarrassing. And so I think it's going to affect it whether it should or not. David, should this affect our relationship with China? Will it affect our relationship with

China? It's a good question. It shouldn't have to in that we should already be treating China as an adversary of sorts, and we should already be crafting our national security and global military strategy and our diplomatic strategy toward China and the Asia Pacific. And frankly, as it relates to Africa in the Middle East, understanding that China is trying to supplant the U.S. as the preeminent global superpower. If we are not already doing that, this should be a reminder that that's how our relationship with China should be structured, particularly because a regime, like China's will not quite the same as the Soviet unions understands strength and will probe us, particularly because they get to play a much longer game than us because they don't have elections.

So it doesn't have to change our relationship if our relationship is properly oriented already. If it is not, this should be a reminder that it doesn't mean we have to go to war and it doesn't mean we have to pull our ambassadors, but it means we have to let them know that we're a of what they're doing and that there are going to be consequences, the fact that there's still an economic engine that needs American investment and global investment, and maybe they shouldn't take it for granted. Steve, short-term, how does this change our diplomatic relations with China?

Well, it ought to. I mean, I think if you look at what Kamala Harris said, it's an unacceptable response. You can't say this doesn't change anything. It most certainly does change anything. She followed that up by saying, we prefer, you know, a position of competition, not confrontational conflict. Well, too late and too bad. We don't make that decision.

This is part of what they're doing. This has to be seen in its much broader context. You know, if you go back, you look at the Chinese hacked into the Office of Personnel Management and stole the data on nearly four million government employees. They've hacked state government offices. They live in the networks of our top. financial institutions. They steal our intellectual property on a daily basis at scale. So if you want to look at this and say, well, this is a balloon floating over Montana, we shouldn't

overreact, I take the point. But it's got to be seen as part of that longer pattern. And I just think it's naive to say, yeah, we don't really want confrontation. The confrontation is here. We ought to act like it. And with that, I think we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us this week. If you've got a comment, become a member of the dispatch. Hop on in. And otherwise, we're just going to talk to you next week. How about that?

This dude on David French cursing. Breaking news, David said asshole in casual conversation. I mean, he normally always reminds me of, you know, in the Brady Bunch, there would always be this scene in the later seasons where one of the kids would say, Mom, Dad, I know you don't like us using this language, but Bobby's being a real stinker. I always think about that when I hear David, like, working himself up to use like a mean word. Thank you.