The Dispatch Podcast - Florida Man Blocked From Colorado Ballots | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah react to Trump being removed from Colorado ballots. Plus: —The William Baude argument —The end of Nikki-mentum —Measuring the vibes on Biden’s youth support —Claudine Gay’s “duplicative language” —Steve’s tap dance rant —Small interactions, large impact. Show notes: —Advisory Opinions on the Colorado Supreme Court decision —Justin Amash’s tweet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch Christmas holiday extravaganza. It's Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and me, Sarah Isger, and this won't really be much of a Christmas extravaganza, but it is our last show before Christmas and New Year, and I am excited to see you guys. Hi. Morning. Hey-oh. So we did get a little bit of, I don't know, it depends on your perspective, either an early Christmas present or some coal from the Colorado Supreme Court.

We talked about this extensively on that flagship podcast, advisory opinions, diving in to all of the legal stuff of the 14th Amendment Section 3 and the arguments of the majority and dissenters in the Colorado Supreme Court. There were seven, it was a four-three decision, they're all Democratic appointees, But we didn't have time to talk about any of the politics of this or the vibes, if you will, the non-law vibes. So, Jonah, I have no idea what you think about this case. I am largely where I think you are. Where am I?

I tried to listen to the whole A-O pod before we recorded this. I listened to most of it. I was walking dogs. My family just got home, so I have things going on. But, so just sort of slightly on the legal side, I'm more persuaded probably than you are that of like the six or seven elements that have to be proved in all of this, that they clear the burden, they clear the bar on most of them or all of them, but often just barely, which is sort of your point, right? And so at some point, the multiplication of these things, if it's a lot of close calls, 51, 49% on this one, on this one, on this one, at some point, that's a failing grade when you put them in the aggregate, right?

And for something this big. And so I'm sort of there on the law. I can't stand listening to the people on cable news say this is an absolute slam dunk, 100% brilliant. There's no refuting this. or the people saying, on cable news, also people like Hugh Hewitt, this is the dumbest, most unsupportable

piece of garbage legal thing ever. Both of those arguments are stupid. It's a gray thing. It's like there's merit on both sides. There are good arguments on both sides. There are objections on both sides. And it's the grayness that makes it difficult to support it because of the politics.

If it had been a slam dunk, if Trump had been convicted of treason, All those sorts of things, it'd be really, really easy. It would be even easier if 10 U.S. senators had the courage of their actual convictions and just friggin voted to remove the guy after January 6th. I'm generally a supporter of Mitch McConnell around here, but my God, his lasting legacy could be really political cowardice in taking a very Clintonian side. Remember, the famous summation of Clinton's worldview was,

I would have voted with the majority, but I agreed with the minority, or I smoked marijuana, but I didn't inhale. You always wanted things both ways. McConnell took the side of Mitt Romney in the argument about Trump's impeachment and conduct, but voted with the Josh Holley's and Ted Cruz's. And I just think there have been so much of the mess of our politics since then is because of that and because of the people who went along with Mitch McConnell. Can I actually, wait, can I ask a question about that? I think this is worth a few minutes because here we are, right? And it's not that I want to spend a ton of time on hindsight, but good to learn from the past. I assume that in the moment, you know, the weeks after January 6th, that McConnell and others really didn't believe that Donald Trump would run again or be successful if he did.

So they also didn't think it was necessary. And I wonder if that was, I mean, obviously that was a failure of imagination. But I wonder what Mitch McConnell, like, if the ghost of Christmas future or whatever had visited him, if things would have been different. Yeah, I'm sure he regrets it. I mean, I'm sure he regrets it. And maybe cowardice is the wrong word. But, like, you know, one of the things you know from monster movies is you got to make sure the monster's gone, right? I mean, you have to put the stake in Dracula's heart.

You got to scatter Godzilla's bones, whatever. So, yeah, I just think that's one of the main reasons why we're in this. mess. I think this will help Trump. I think that the whole persecution vibe is we've seen now since the first indictments is really what has skyrocketed him in the polls. I find as a matter of actual political philosophy, all that talks about, oh, it's outrageous that they would do something undemocratic. That's what judges are for us to do undemocratic stuff, right? That's what the Constitution is, is sort of anti-democratic, because there's something. that need to be protected from tyrannical majorities.

So I don't buy any of the sort of hysteria about it. But as a political matter, I don't think it's much like the dictator talk. You know, I think the dictator talk helps Trump. It doesn't actually accomplish the things that the writers of the Atlantic or Robert Kagan want to accomplish by bringing this stuff up. And so if you're going to judge this a little bit on pragmatic grounds, it's counterproductive. That said, I'm also a big fan of, you know, Let justice rain, even if the heavens should fall.

And so I can't really denounce people who firmly believe that on the merits he should be barred from the ballot. Steve, what are your feelings? This is a rare moment where I agree. I think with virtually everything that Jonah said, including all the nuance. I end up pretty much in exactly the same spot. I do think... I'm surprised about that, Steve. Like, all jokes aside, like, I'm surprised that you aren't more strongly on the...

if it's 51%, it doesn't matter that it's 51% on every element, like, take him off the ballot because, you know, clearly it's not worth electing him. It's not worth taking the risk the American people elect him if we have this opportunity to prevent the destruction of America type thing. Yeah. So if there's a place that I probably come down a little bit stronger, that's it. Like, you've identified it. I hate that I'm predictable. When did this happen? Yeah, I went back and listened to the hour and a half discussion that you and David had with Will Bow, the University of Chicago professor who wrote the law review article that, as I think you all put it, didn't entirely kick it off, but really gave this argument some legal momentum.

It was a great, I hate to say this, and I'm surprised you didn't catch this earlier, Sarah. I said I went back and listened to it again, which means I had already listened to that episode of of A.O., which I don't like admitting in public. And I also don't like saying that it was really, really good. That's because Boat talked most of the time. But you walked him down for, we'll put it in the show notes, but we have the transcript and we have the actual audio. You walked him down and made him explain every objection. You were the skeptic, and I think you came by that naturally. I think you were actually skeptical of it. But I thought he had an answer for pretty much everything that you argued. The particulars, the details. And he brought up.

I mean, in a sort of a show of intellectual honesty, brought up a couple objections that you didn't raise and said, well, Sarah, I think your stronger argument would be here. Great discussion. I thought he was very convincing on the merits of the case. I guess I don't, I certainly don't fault the four justices who did what they did. I think their arguments are strong. I think there wasn't much of an argument from the dissenters, as people have pointed out. And I think that, too, in and of itself, is telling. I do think you have to be concerned about what the political and societal consequences are in this case. I wouldn't have had them, you know, I think if these justices believed that this was a strong case on the law, they should have done what they did. But we're not them. And I think you do have to be concerned about this other stuff. I will say just to echo Jonah's point about sort of the reaction to it, we're not two days on. It is pretty striking that the number of people who were once Trump skeptical, never Trump, anti-Trump, however you want to frame it, and have gone so over the top with their critique of this decision, as if it were crazy that anyone who's thinking about this would come to the conclusion that the four justice.

did that Will Bowde did is really unbecoming. Justin Amash, who I think took notable and noble positions arguing in favor of the Constitution and against Trump, had this long tweet that honestly suggested to me he didn't even read the, he wasn't even familiar with the details of of the case. The Hugh Hewitt tweet that Jonah mentioned was sort of silly in a way that we've come to expect, I think, from Hugh Hewitt. But others as well, sort of this is, this is like an anti-anti-Trump moment. So people are pretending that this is worse than it is. And I think there will be consequences to that. I think they're getting, you know, people riled up. This has been sort of the main story on Fox for two days, anti-democratic judges. This is not a close call. They're trying,

you know, they're trying to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. That's the only way they can keep them down. And that's the narrative that's being sold to Republicans. I think Jonah's right. I think it will redound to Trump's benefit. Speaking of Trump's benefit, descented. keeps sort of shrinking in the polls. As was expected, DeSantis voters don't go to Nikki Haley. They look like they go the majority of them to Donald Trump.

But Nikki Haley is rising in the polls in New Hampshire. She now looks, to say within striking distances, a lot, but, you know, 15 points, which is more than the 40 points that it was. Does this stop you know, Nicky Mentum?

I would say probably. Not because it should, right? Obviously. But if I had to, if you had to go when you look at

what happened in the polls after the first rag indictment, after the Mar-a-Lago raid where, I mean, I'll still never forget or forgive Mike Huckabee,

you know, who you would think at this point was incapable of disappointing me further when he said we should now just simply cancel the primary.

and nominate Trump by acclamation as a show of support, right? Have you taken your Huckabee poster down off the wall? Because I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it until you do. In my Huckabee race car bed. But anyway, so like I just, that's the way I would, if I was trying to be a sort of no tears, no sentimentality kind of analyst on this,

I would just say I would assume so, right? Because that's been the dynamic all along is that when Trump is in the crosshairs of the perfidious deep state or the globalists, it deprives everybody else of oxygen. I also think this is probably a really good opportunity for Chris Christie, which is a bad thing for Nikki Haley because it allows Christy to, you know, Christie is the only one who's like really going hammer and tongs at Trump

for talking about vermin and quoting mind comps and yada, yada, yada, or invoking mind comp, I should say. and for the people who are hyper disgusted with Trump or who support the Colorado thing, and I think there are probably a lot of independents in New Hampshire who do, it makes Christy more attractive and makes Christy less likely to drop out,

which is what Nikki really, really need. On the other side of things, Joe Biden's not looking stronger against Donald Trump at this point. There's lots of people who are arguing, like, yeah, but the economy's strong, or yeah, but this is going well, and all that may be true. But I actually was absolutely stunned, which doesn't happen a ton in politics because normally like trends sort of move, even fast trends move relatively slowly. Donald Trump is now leading Joe Biden among young voters by six points.

Because we should talk about that, right? I've never seen anything like it. We should talk about that, right? Because there was this new polling that came out where they do the tighter screen for screening for people who voted in 2020 or who are high propensity voters versus low propensity voters. And that lead goes away, right? I mean, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think that that's important when you're trying to figure out the horse race of who's

winning and losing. I think it's less important when you're trying to understand a generational vibe situation. I don't care that much about the horse race because I actually don't think any of this polling is particularly interesting from a horse race perspective. a lot of Democrats are disillusioned with Biden come September when it really is Biden versus Trump, they'll become very illusioned with Biden and those polls are all going to

tighten. As a vibe measure, you're right. It's a big deal. Yeah, like the horse race stuff, give no weight to horse race polling right now. I mean, basically no weight. Aside from like the general, yeah, Trump will be competitive in 2024. That's what I take away from any of those polls. But on

young people, again, like, it doesn't need to be six points. The point is we ask this question all the time. And Democrats, always win young people my whole life and before my life. And now, I mean, it's not just Republican versus Democrat. This was Trump. They were asking about Trump. I don't care if these people are low propensity voters who didn't vote in 2020. And as much as I wish that the explanation were things that I care about, like, well, they're really against the expansion of government. it is hard to see this as anything other than a response to Joe Biden's response to October 7th.

I think that's right. I mean, I think there are other things probably lurking in the background, just Biden being so old and seeming so out of touch, probably. But they love Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is old as hell. Yeah, that's true. I would argue that Bernie Sanders doesn't seem nearly as old as Joe Biden. If you watch the two of them, given our speech, I would say Bernie Sanders looks much younger and vigorous than Joe Biden does. But I think it's, I think it's almost all Israel. I mean, you can just sort of overlay the polling on Israel and see where young Democrats, young progressives are going. I mean, I don't think it takes much speculation to get there. Yeah. So, I mean, just on the, on the old age point for just two seconds,

it's worth pointing out that it's always been a myth. that young people want to follow young leaders. In my experience, a lot of people kind of resent people their own age in politics because they're like, why is that guy so famous? And the amount of resentment there was against Bill Clinton from fellow baby boomers was actually kind of remarkable. But Ron Paul was basically only really popular with young people. Bernie Sanders' demographics are mostly young people.

They don't mind the age. The thing is, as Steve points out, Biden just presents as frail. Forget old, sort of frail and not with it. I think we're going to hear it a lot. I was saying this on CNN last week, that this really, I know this was before Sarah was born, but in 1992, the economy really wasn't doing that badly anymore. But people were just exhausted with George H.W. Bush. and it was really unfair in my mind.

Though I was exhausted, that was the first time I voted for a libertarian. I voted for Andre Meru in 1992. I've never heard that name in my life. And you'll never hear it again, nor should you. Andre Meru. You just did. I mean, seriously,

someone who has studied modern American politics as closely as I have, that's sort of stunning. And this is in the Ross Perot election. I voted for the libertarian in 96. Jonah, you can't answer. Sarah, who was that? No, nothing.

Harry Brown I debated online a couple times and I think that like you know the reasons why Papa Bush was getting a bum rap have a lot to do with the fact

that it was basically he was elected for a third Reagan term but there's none of the fun of the Reagan term right and he was just a gitchy goo eat your spinach good government guy the kind of guy I really pine for today

I know I was like what a terrible terrible position for America to be in just a guy who wants good not corrupt government. Just a grown-up. Like, that Mitch Daniels was too flashy for him. And that's not Biden's profile, right? Biden's profile is he wanted a new, new deal,

and now he's got nothing to show for it, and he's pissed off everybody, and he presents old. But, like, this, this, I'm just bored with this guy vibe is so deep and widespread that I think there's a real danger that that's just the that that attitude bakes in for a lot of people and given that he doesn't have the verve and panache to sort of you know i'm sure he can get a bunch of vitamin b shots and like have a good afternoon but he's not going to be able to change that brand um i think he's got really really just serious headwinds against him um that make it impossible to run against

trump as the guy who can't win right that's that's i think the biggest reason why trump is doing so well right now, other than the persecution stuff, is that DeSantis went into this saying, you know, I'm the guy who can win. Trump can't win. Trump's a loser. Look at the midterms. Look at all this stuff. No one who wants to vote for Trump has to search far for evidence to say that's wrong because there's evidence, you know. I mean, to be to be fair or to be accurate, they were saying that even when the evidence suggested Trump wasn't going to win. No, for sure. Right. But now, my gripe with DeSantis was that he wasn't making the electability. argument strongly enough. He sort of avoided it. I guess he looks better in retrospect than I do as

Trump has gained steam. Look, I mean, I do think that all of this points to further major disruptions coming. This is just not going to be a straightforward Democrat versus Republican, glide to the nomination, glide to the general election outcome. I think you're likely to see more third party, independent party entrance, and I think we're likely to see the vote split in a number of different ways. I think Biden has a really hard case to make beyond just the fact that he's only doesn't present well. It is the case, even if you have economic indicators pointing in a better direction for Biden and a number of them. It is still the case that when people go and buy ground beef, they're paying significantly more for their ground beef than they

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and just sort of the 2024 election as a whole? I feel like I'm being asked to pick between institutions. And it seems very obvious that if, for instance, Trump is kept off the ballot in blue state. So like, let's play this out a little. Colorado Supreme Court decision stands. It's not that he's off the ballot in Colorado.

It's that all of a sudden a whole bunch of other states. states with a predominantly blue states that we're already going to go for Biden, take Trump off the ballot. And then it turns into a real fight in those middle states where it's, you know, mixed government, maybe, you know, either the justices or the secretary of state or whatever it might be, there's like scuffles in those places. And then obviously Trump's on the ballot in the red states and it's a huge mess and a real, I think, republic challenging mess at that point for something like that to happen. Do Republicans run another candidate

in the states that Trump's been kept off the ballot? Do they just deny the legitimacy of the results then if Trump isn't on the ballot in a state that would have made a different, you know, stuff like this. On the other hand, this also, and this has been my thesis now for some time, right? The Supreme Court gets dragged into these highly, highly partisan political fights,

and when they resolve it, it undermines that institution. I think this will be worse than Bush v. Gore in a lot of ways. Now, I think Bush v. Gore was bad for the court. It was 5'4. It decided the outcome of an election that was pretty important. But the country was in a much different place. We just feel like things are a little bit more fried right now.

And so what am I having to choose between basically the presidency and the Supreme Court, Article 2, or Article 3, I don't love this. I don't think this turns out well either way. And I wonder, you know, the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court, I take them at their word, they took this decision quite seriously, they wrote a very serious opinion, it's 213 pages all in with the dissents. At the same time, it always has to be a little easier when you know that the Supreme Court is going to review your decision. You don't really need to wade into the implications of what you're doing, and I don't love that either. But let me just ask you as somebody who went to law school and thinks about this stuff a lot. What were they to have done then?

Let's say that they weighed the arguments and they come down where they come down. Were they to pretend that they didn't in order to preserve the prestige or the reputation of the institution? So you mentioned that you didn't think the dissents had particularly strong arguments on sort of the merits of the 14th Amendment, some of which they didn't even make arguments on, for instance, the officer of the United States or on insurrection or incitement. None of the dissents mentioned that. But all three of the dissenters, I think, make an pretty airtight case that this wasn't actually before the Colorado Supreme Court to begin with. State law didn't actually allow this challenge to be brought the way that it was brought, certainly not in the time. and certainly not skipping a bunch of processes that they basically use this like skip, you know, go and just still collect your $200 boomerang thing. And like, there's not a great argument, I think, for why they took this, except that they wanted to.

Now, I see your point, Steve. Like, okay, but what if they just really, really thought that the state law allowed them to not go through the normal process, to skip all of the process for a normal lawsuit and a normal challenge to election law, and just go right ahead and do it this way. Yeah, then I guess they didn't have a choice. It's just that the arguments for that seem pretty weak

compared to the arguments that there wasn't even a vehicle to fast track this, and they did. Okay, next topic, very Christmassy again, anti-Semitism. Jonah's face. I got some wide eyes there on my Christmas to anti-Semitism segue. way. So I really want to talk about this in the context of, I mean, we talked about already young people moving away from Joe Biden. There was an article in the free press about public school incidents, and it just goes point by point by point of all of these things happening across

the country in public schools that are pretty terrifying, Jewish teachers being targeted by students, by administration, by other faculty, Jewish students, obviously. It feels like attention has waned from the presidents, the university presidents and what's happening at these universities, still waiting on any punishment for students who have violated school policies, not in terms of what they're saying, but in terms of what they're doing, you know, assaulting students, taking over buildings, disrupting study time, et cetera. But as a result of the attention on these university presidents, people started digging

in to Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, and her academic record. And those people who disagree with her stances on anti-Semitism on campus didn't like her testimony, found all these instances of her using other people's work without attribution, which in normal world would be called plagiarism. Harvard's initial response was these right-wing attacks, yada, yada, we're going to, but not a problem, but also we're going to fix two areas where she didn't attribute things, which, again, I don't, why do you need to fix it if it wasn't, like, not attributing things and then adding attribution would seem to me to be acknowledging plagiarism, something Harvard didn't do.

They then had an outside board, which was going to review everything. Turns out the board didn't actually review her dissertation. Turns out there's plagiarism in the dissertation. Harvard still seems to be standing by her. And to me, this feels a little like the Hillary Clinton right-wing conspiracy thing. Yes, people are happy to go along with you if they don't like who the attacks are coming from when the attacks are qualitative or mushy.

But here, when the attacks turn out to be true, I don't know that people are going to care a whole lot about who found the plagiarism when everyone kind of agrees on the plagiarism. Literally, nobody has said that this isn't plagiarism by any definition of the term. Is Harvard just not getting it? They didn't seem to get it

on why the congressional testimony was bad, but then they issued several apologies later. Are we going to be seeing the same thing? Because it's one thing, by the way, to say, well, look, the school's super, you know, super politically left wing, but it's such a good education that I'm still going to send my kid there.

But now it turns out the education isn't even very good because they don't care about plagiarism unless you're a student, then you get kicked out. But their faculty, not so much. We're now just doing a faculty vibes test. Like, at what point does Harvard actually lose altitude here? Soon, I think. And to go to your last point, I think that's among the things that's been most embarrassing for Harvard.

There's a built-in double standard in how they treat students and faculty on the question of plagiarism. The student handbook says plagiarism is taken very seriously at Harvard. Plagiarism is, this is quote, plagiarism is defined as the act of intentionally or unintentionally. submitting work that was written by somebody else and goes on to say that on author documents, every source must be cited properly. But in the faculty guidelines basically say there have to be, it has to be sort of fraudulent research to rise to the level of plagiarism. And it feels like Harvard is trying to live in the space between those two definitions. The problem is think about precedent for students. I mean, you don't have to use your imagination to look at what she's done

and conclude that it's plagiarism. Anybody who had done what she has done in these instances wouldn't be working at the dispatch. He plagiarized the acknowledgement. Yes, in a couple different places. She plagiarized her acknowledgment. Was that wrong or just frowned upon? I mean, actually, I don't know if that's wrong. I don't know if it's okay to plagiarize your acknowledgments. You're not, I mean, it's a really, that actually is a weird gray area to me. If she had only plagiarized the acknowledgement, for sure. I must have. I must have. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not care because it's so weird a thing to do. But a lot of the academic work has been found to have, again, a quote that was in someone else's book that came out first without a citation.

Your point, Steve, in that student handbook, you don't need to prove intent or anything else. All you need to show is that those same words were in a different thing that came out beforehand. So, first of all, the term Harvard is using is duplicative language, right? It's not plagiarism. It's just duplicative language, which I love. I'm waiting for them to switch to it wasn't plagiarism. It was an homage, which is what you call plagiarism from directors who like take stuff from other movies. And, you know, so I'm a big believer in this. I don't know who first coined it, but this phrase, you know, behind every double standard is a single unconfessed standard.

Yes. We saw this with the free speech stuff, right? So, like, it's, we'll use your values and your principles to defend our conduct when it is convenient. And when it is not, we will use these other sets of values and principles, right? And so all the DEI intersectionality, hyper-safetyism stuff, who cares if that's violating free speech principles because we're in charge here and we're trying to create a better utopian society. But when some of the intersectionality, you know, some of the members, of the coalition of the oppressed starts yelling, you know, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free or gas the Jews or whatever it is. Then we fall back on these free speech

principles. The point isn't necessarily the hypocrisy of changing the principles. The point is just basically seeing every set of arguments and rules as instruments to preserve their own power and status and authority. And the same thing applies with this this plagiarism stuff. It's plagiarism when bad people do it. Right? And then there's this other aspect of it.

I think it's Charles Freed. He's the Harvard... Yeah, former Solicitor General under Reagan and Harvard Federalist Society faculty advisor. There's a quote from him in the New York Times where he's saying like he would be much more sympathetic

to the arguments about the plagiarism, but when you see it's coming from these right-wing fanatics, it's just not credible or whatever. And it's like, no, no. I mean, this is like, Like, shooting the messenger is not supposed to be a thing that law professors believe in, right? But there is this, I mean, I certainly understand the human emotion of I'm not going to give those SOBs the satisfaction of saying they're right, which is why so much of the, so much of

the press coverage, I mean, conservatives pounce has become such a cliche, but literally, like, dozens of headlines are conservatives seize the opportunity to cite plagiarism, right? It's just like, you know, or, you know, conservative sees, see moment to seize on left-wing anti-Semitism. It's never like the left-wing anti-Semitism that's the problem. It's never the plagiarism that's the problem, right? The story is what the conservatives are doing. And I think that's part of this media as the sort of journalistic auxiliary, the journalistic

wing of the campus industrial complex, which is why, like, Saturday Night, I have no idea where the writers from Saturday Alive went to college, my guess is it's about probably 70%

Ivy League. Just total guess. And of course, so they thought the hearings with the three presidents, the Trace Presidents, was all,

the scandal the thing to mock there was at least Stefanic, right? Not these three presidents. That's sort of, That whole swath of culture from S&L to Stephen Colbert to, you know, Jamie Oliver, to the New York Times, all the comedians, is this, we always have to be right.

And we will find the rules that support our conviction that we're right. And if that makes us inconsistent in the eyes of, you know, pedants like Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, well, that's a price we're willing to pay. It's also the case that, I mean, if you read the New York Times write up of this and we can post that in the show notes today too, it's like they give grudging credit. Credit is not the right word. They offer a grudging acknowledgement that Christopher Rufo, of whom I've been critical, others here have been critical, wrote a substack first raising these allegations. The New York Post went to Harvard and asked questions about this beginning November 24th, which was before the hearings. in question. The Washington Free Beacon, another conservative outlet, has done very good reporting on this. And the stuff is backed up. I mean, as you say, Jonah, it's there on the page in black and white. It also shouldn't have to come from right-wing outlets. Other places should have been curious about the academic work of the president of the most famous university in the world. Right. But it's literally the case that in this New York Times,

I think they may have linked to one of Chris Rufo's substack articles laying this stuff out, but they didn't link to the Washington Free Beacon reporting on this, which has been groundbreaking. Like, they've advanced the story in several different ways, let people see it for themselves. The Times didn't link to that. And then they literally end this piece by citing Charles Freed saying, in effect, yeah, if this came from somewhere else, I might believe it. But because it came from these scoundrels, I'm not going to believe it. But you can't make that argument.

It's in black and white. Like, it is down on the page. It's not, I would, I guess I would distinguish it from the early days of the Hunter Biden scandal, where I think you genuinely didn't know what was true and what was not in those very first few days of reporting on the hard drive and the questions that the New York Post was raising. And there were reasons to be skeptical of the provenance of the hard drive and the stories didn't match up.

I think in that case, you can say, I'm not going to jump in because there are too many outstanding questions. There aren't outstanding questions here. We have the documents. So it is a pretty massive double standard, both in terms of the coverage, but also in terms of the consequences. And I think students will pay attention. I mean, I think this is likely to have a lasting impact. If she remains in her job after having been exposed as a plagiarist, what student is, how are you to go after a student for copying a sentence, making a, you know, lifting a paragraph and putting it in a term paper. I should also just, this is a sensitive subject, so I'll just be very brief and gentle on it. There are those who say Claudine Gay got her job in small part as an act

of affirmative action, right? And special preference, which would make... She is the first black president of Harvard University. First black female president, first black president, you know, and which would make total sense and be totally justifiable in the DEI intersectional world that, that, you know, the seas that these people swim in, right? And I don't know, you know, I mean, like, I tend to think that, like, most college presidents, they tend not to actually be great scholars. They tend to do just enough scholarship to burnish their resumes to be good administrators, right? Because that's the, it's just a different career path. So I honestly, I have no idea.

I didn't follow this. I didn't care very much about, like, what her qualifications were. I also think that in a lot of cases, people are sufficiently qualified, that you can bend one way or another on these other considerations and it not be the greatest, you know, injustice in the world. We can have those arguments another time. What drives me crazy is the people who are most passionate about not getting rid of affirmative action,

about how it would be racist and enforce white, supremacy and you're a bigot. If you have any problems with racial preferences or other kinds of preferences and hiring and promotion, it is a totally illegitimate position to have because this is a great and just and good thing. And then the second anyone suggests that any individual actually benefited, with the exception of Clarence Thomas, from affirmative action or preferential treatment, how dare you, sir? How dare you suggest that Claudine Gay was, wasn't hired on the merits and nothing else. Well, again, it's one of these behind every double standard

is a single unconfessed standard. Like, you shouldn't be outraged by the suggestion that affirmative action had something to do with a hire. If you think affirmative action is great and glorious, and when you're in the abstract condemning meritocracy and merit and saying, oh, that's a white privilege, pale penis people way of thinking about things and we have to move on from it. And then you get, but then in the actual moment, you invoke meritocracy as the justification to defend against this outrageous charge that affirmative action had something to do with it.

It just shows how often the left has to pay the right, the sort of tribute of using the rights arguments to defend the power and prestige of left wing ideas and figures when challenged. And it's a very frustrating thing, and I feel like I have to write a G-file about it. So there you go. All right. So at least we know what the next G-file is. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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Visit BMO.com slash V-I. Porter to learn more. Let's leave some time for Christmas, the holiday season here. Steve, rather than the season bringing you joy, it has brought you a rant. Would you please share your rant with us? Yeah, I'd like, I'd like this to be more lightheaded. Let's just say it's, I find, I found this whole episode curious. A couple weeks ago, I took my wife and my three younger kids up to Philadelphia.

My son was playing in a hockey game up there and went to Philadelphia a couple days before my wife's birthday. So I decided that we would go see a show in Philly. So we went and saw this show. tap dance show produced by the Doran's dance company. Michelle Dorrance is a MacArthur Genius Award winner, one of the best known and best respected tap choreographers and dancers in the world. My girls all do dance. And so we bought tickets to go see this show,

which was her sort of interpretation of Duke Ellington's reimagining of Chikovsky's Nutcracker. And it was a tap show with Duke Ellington's sort of old school jazz score to it. We went to the show. It was delightful. First 20 minutes were I think it was a three piece band playing songs with one guy singing traditional Christmas carols for 20 minutes. Remarkably, in my mind, as somebody who used to at least try to play a musical instrument. Michelle Dorrance, this leading tap choreographer, was one of the three women singing backup vocals,

incredible sort of three-part harmony backing this guy up. The bassist was a tap dancer good enough to be part of the tap show, along with one of the other singers and the guy who was singing. It was amazing. So that's the first 20 minutes, and then they launch into this sort of reimagination of the Nutcracker. It was, I thought it was delightful. I thought it was a great show.

my wife and I both weird at moments right it was sort of super artsy they had men and women dressed up in these really big flamboyant flower costumes tapping around the stage um but fun but really fun it's christmas and it's tap dance you know like yeah my i mean and it's not like the original knuck cracker was straightforward and without its own weirdness um my wife and i left and both said the same thing to one another, that this was one of the best live performances we've seen sort of in years, loved it, thought it was great. So come back to D.C., and a couple days later, I see that Jill Biden has tweeted, so what looks to be a three-minute version of this Dorrance Dance Company thing performed at the White House. And I watched the three-minute version, sent it to my wife and

kids, and said, oh, isn't this really interesting? Here's Jill Biden tweeting out this show that we just saw a couple days ago. And then for two days, there was this onslaught from, I mean, I don't even know what to call them, the reactionary right, the alt-right. Fox News had two, Fox News was waiting for a war on Christmas programming. This was the go sign, I think, for them. All these right-wing Twitter people saying this is outrageous this is these this is pro trans pro floral

or pro I don't know what I just fucking pro floral you know I hate those pro flower people I'm reading all this and I'm thinking this in no way resembles the 70 minute performance that I saw there just wasn't any of it

I think they thought it was pro trans and and you know elevating DEI stuff And it just didn't, there was nothing in the performance itself that was sort of pushed her in your face. As I say, they started it with 20 minutes of traditional Christmas carols. But it became a thing. And it rocketed around sort of right-wing internet world and the right-wing networks and became this big moment. And apparently later they went on the Dorrance Dance Company website and found some, you know, political statements about supporting

Ibrahim X. Kennedy and anti-racism and stuff that I wouldn't agree with. But it wasn't in the show, and I was happy. I took my kids to it. It was a nice sort of cultural moment. But what a weird, to me, it was just like, there aren't that many moments where you're sort of in the middle of something, and you watch it and you know what the reality is behind something. And then you see this non-traversy grow out of nowhere. It was an interesting moment for me and unfortunate that they had to try to wreck it. Well, first of all, congratulations to the Doris Dance Company

that otherwise this video would have gone pretty unnoticed. And instead, they're getting a ton of attention and I'm sure a lot of people will go to it as a result. This only inures to their benefit. That's great. They were the four seasons landscaping of dance troops. That's right. I do think it's worth, like, I'll just describe, because I also watched the White House video.

I've never seen these people otherwise. There is a woman dressed as a nutcracker. I would just like to point out that nutcrackers are not people. They are really, therefore, neither male nor female, and I think it's weird to care. I was going to say, though, frankly, that so they were all dressed like Sarah Isger, but that was a different context. There is also a man who. is dressed, as Steve said, as a flower. I understand, and please do not send me the biology behind how flowers work, but he's basically wearing a blue, like, full-zip, loose-fitting

like janitor's uniform with a giant purple flower hat. Again, yeah. But more importantly, than any of that, because I just do not care what people wear at all, actually, but certainly not in costumes and certainly not fun Christmas ones. This was jazz and it was tap dance. And if others have pointed out, these are two American things. And so screw you for not liking American Christmas because that's what this is at the heart of it. And it's so cool that someone is bringing it back

and making it cool, the kids want to go and appreciate pure American art forms. Because you know what? We actually don't have a lot. There's a lot of discussion over whether pizza's ours or the Italians. tap and jazz we got those so i don't have a lot to add to this but i do think so as you know i'm becoming more and more incessantly some would say asininely of both sides are like to me the right has now adopted a mode of argumentation that i've been pushing back against the left

for for most of my adult life right so like when the first lord of the rings movie comes out a bunch of people are like wildly offended by the depiction of all orcs. I remember at the time saying, hey, look, if you see a feral tooth, drooling reptilian creature, which, you know, has six breasts and is like, uh, and, and is utterly and completely monstrous, and you, your first reaction is black people, you're the racist, right? But, um, it's this desire to sort of have these literary interpretations that reveal the thinking of the people you don't like in ways that you can then beat them up for. And this is the same approach that you're seeing from the right to this dance

troupe thing. It's just like you don't have to have a Stalinist interpretation of every piece of entertainment or art, right? Sometimes it's just entertainment or art. And if you see politics in it, it's because you smuggled it into the theater. Right? You carried the politics under your jacket and you're nipping at it like it's a bottle of night. train and you're getting all worked up and nobody else is. And this is the thing that drove me crazy about so much left-wing cultural criticism is they're constantly looking for some sort of, you know, Trotskyite interpretation or racist interpretation that they could then foist on people for liking, you know, this movie. And now you just get the same thing all the time

from the right where it's purely a sort of Stalinist form of art criticism. Different things to get angry about but that's okay that's that's part of my both sides of them i would say just just to pick up on that i mean i think this is one of the reasons that um real culture and arts criticism from the right doesn't get taken as seriously as it sometimes should when your cultural critiques basically amount to finger wagging about bias every single time like if you go into every movie and you're like oh they hate republicans people aren't going to pay attention to that. It's not interesting and it's probably not accurate. If you're finding it everywhere you look, as you say, it's because you're looking there. We try not to do that. I mean, sometimes it's,

I think it's important to do that. If it, if it is the case that you have something, you know, a classic that's reimagined as some woke tale, yeah, call it out. But it's not every time. And it certainly wasn't in the performance, in the 70 minutes of this performance, there's nowhere to be seen. All right. Last thing for Christmas. I think we're all very grateful people, but we spend a lot of time on the gratitude for people who are closest to us, right? Like you explain to your parents or, et cetera, you know, your gratitude. But what about those people who are never going to find out that you were grateful for them, that they made some difference in your life? So I was curious if you all have people who really aren't listening to this podcast and are never going to find out that you, they did something for you sometime along the way something small and it can't be a coach or a parent or a sibling or a kid like nope

has to be something small at least in time even if their effect was big so that means it can't be teachers either right yeah I don't think it can be teachers okay so I've been sitting here thinking about this I mean the time constraint thing is a little difficult

right but since you you have no authority to sort of rule out my my answer remember when Jonah objected when I pointed out that he sometimes just doesn't answer the question um so I grew up you know my mom was a pretty successful literary agent when for a big chunk of my childhood and she worked out of the house she had a string of assistance over the years and one of them that was her name was back then it was

liby mark then Libby Newman she kind of became over time my big sister in a lot of ways for a brief period of time of my life and she was sufficiently older than me that she seemed like a real grown up but sufficiently young enough to understand what the hell I was talking about and all that kind of thing I learned an enormous amount from her about all sorts of things but maybe most of all about how to talk to women like they were fully fledged real people. I knew that they were, but I didn't know how to talk to them that way. And I learned from Libby how to talk about stuff that really wasn't about boy girl stuff in ways that was just incredibly valuable to me. And I mean, I can point to other things, she also was fantastic

at making various paper fold, sort of origami cat disguises, which I think Sarah would appreciate. But that's a topic for another day. Steve? Well, Jonah actually answered the question. And I'm not going to answer the question. I tell you, double standard is unconfessed single standard. No, I will say, as is probably obvious, we didn't get, we don't get much heads up on these things, which is one of the things I think. True.

We like about them when Sarah brings these topics at the end. So the no teacher provision was a late ad. So I'm going to just set it aside. And I have three teachers I'd like to mention. But I think it's, I'll mention him for an important reason. You know, in the context of what we're seeing in education and in higher education, it becomes all the more important to recognize the teachers who are truly exceptional. And I was blessed with three teachers who were truly exceptional.

who I had for a class and then took for several more because you identify the teacher, the subject almost becomes irrelevant, or at least secondary. So I had a teacher in high school called Craig's Mr. Streff. We called him Mr. Stress, Craig Streff, who taught me in speech. And I then took him for a call, I had him for intro speech. Then I took a class with him called Advanced Advanced, Advanced Arts, argumentation and something. And then a third class that was Challenge Seminar, which was sort of a gifted and talented

class. And he was extraordinary. He basically bullied me into joining the forensics team, which I did not want to do. I mean, I was already, I was, I thought I was pretty cool. I played sports. I was an athlete. But I rode my 10 speed to school every day carrying my violin, which risked sort of nerd vibes at the time.

and joining the forensics team would kind of cement those nerd vibes, I thought. But he was so persuasive in his argument, not surprisingly, that I ended up doing it. And it ended up being a huge part of my high school career, and I competed and enjoyed it. In college, I had Robert Calvert, who was a professor from Harvard. He called himself a communitarian, which in the 1990s felt like sort of a rehabilitated socialist. I think the movement has kind of broadened these days and includes some on the right. But Calvert was great. I took him for three classes because he was as good as he was.

And then in journalism school, I had a professor named Michael Shapiro for my intro to reporting and writing class. And, you know, this was at Columbia, there were not many, there certainly weren't many conservatives. And Shapiro was not one. He was definitely on the left. But he openly and aggressively encouraged me to challenge my classmates and importantly to challenge my teachers. And I did some reporting while I was at Columbia on the administration. This is sort of like, you know, the old school politically correct days where the administration had basically disinvited a controversial black conservative speaker for whom I had worked at one point. and I had information on it.

So I did additional reporting on it. And Shapiro, I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but Shapiro encouraged me to do the reporting and to find the facts. And I did. And it was a huge lesson, and I'm incredibly grateful for all three of those teachers. Fine. I will pick not a teacher,

but it's going to be close enough that I probably can't chastise you guys too much. So I graduated college early so that I could go take a job as a press secretary on the hill, and I was very excited, and I was fired after six weeks for being obnoxious, in short. There's maybe some other reasons. I know, it's so hard to imagine. Come on. I know.

Outrageous. Outrageous. So I go look in the Washington Post classified ads, and I find this job opening at the Federal Aviation Administration. And some of you have heard this story before that in the job interview, she asked what I did this past weekend, and I say I went to go see Team America.

And then I sing the song for some reason, and I get the job. And she had a bigger impact on my life in so, so many ways for the short amount of time that I work there. Her name is Kim Pyle, is Kim Pyle. She was a single mom. I feel like I don't know how she did this. I don't know how any single moms do it. But I especially don't know how a single mom with a newborn invest. so much in this person who, like, literally was the lowest man on the totem pole in the FAA.

And instead, she told me I was, actually, she didn't tell me to apply to Harvard Law School. She just told everyone, including the administrator of the FAA, that I'd already gotten into Harvard Law School, which was going to make it really awkward if I didn't apply and hopefully go. I never had anyone in my life who actually thought I was special and smart and worth. putting extra time into. And that, I mean, sadly, includes, you know, school and college and all of that stuff. It transformed a lot of my insecurities, which don't worry, I still have. But it turned them into something more like humility and wanting to just work extra hard and prove her right and that that would have reward. It was a transforming experience. And Kim Pyle is never going to get the credit for that. It was like, you know, nine months of her life and it changed mine. So, yay to those people

and they should be celebrated at Christmas and all year round. So I do encourage everyone to think about not just the people you get to tell you're grateful to. I mean, I can tell Kim, but, and I do tell Kim for what it's worth. But the people you don't see every day and who aren't still like living next door to you or your parents, et cetera, because, you know, teachers or otherwise, everyone likes to hear that they made a positive impact on the world. And Christmas is a good time to do it. So as awkward as it is to send an email or to find someone's email and stalk them and be like, hey, you may not remember me. And they may not. It actually won't matter if they remember you. Because all the better if you tell them that they made some huge impact on your life and they don't

even remember you, it will be a pay it forward system, I promise you. And tell your kids about those people so that they can turn into those people. And with that, we hope that. We hope that we you have an incredible holiday season filled with way too much food, way too much laughter, the kind that like actually makes your sides hurt or like, you know, just like pee a little bit. We want peeing a little bit levels of joy in your house. Lots of laundry. And a happy new year. And we'll see you in 2024. Jonah doesn't like the pee thing, but it's real. That means you really laugh. I think it's highly gendered. I had checked out. Wait, what, I'm sorry, I was reading something. else what are we what are i want to say what are we peeing about what what are people

peeing about um men don't have that i i think it's much more of a female thing than a male that they pee a little bit when they laugh really hard i think that's much i could be wrong but i like they're commercials for women's undergarments that talk about peeing if you sneeze or if you laugh and i'm like what are these people talking about that's different that's like And I mean, normal. So now we're getting Christmassy. The second you bust out pelvic floor, we're talking Christmas time. And with that, we brought it back to be real dispatchy here at the end.

Yeah, you'll tide, man. Bye. You know,