The Dispatch Podcast - Foreign Policy Face Off

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David jump into the foreign policy clash at last night's Democratic debate, America's role in the protests in Iran, and preview the impeachment trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the next episode of the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, and I'm joined, as always, with Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and David French. First off, thank you all so much for your comments. We know there were some audio issues last week. We think we've got them resolved this week. But, of course, let us know if we're wrong. Twitter, email? Anyway, today, we're jumping into the Democratic debate last night, but really focusing on the foreign policy conversation that opened them.

debate those first 30 minutes and what it says about where foreign policy is within the two parties then what is happening with iran's protests moving forward what did the president's tweet mean and where do we think america's role in those protests is impeachment starts next week tuesday is the big day what's a win look like and lastly i'll do a quick fact check on last week so with that let's dive right in Jonah, last night with the Democratic debates, it's their last chance headed into Iowa. We're less than three weeks out. Most people have said that the debates were at this point just a missed opportunity,

kind of across the board. But with electability as in every single poll, the most important thing that Democratic voters are looking at. Is anyone making that case better than others? How are they all looking, heading in to February 3rd? I think Biden kind of won that by default. He was boring, but boring within normal parameters. And everyone was, I mean, it was kind of impressive how,

boring everybody was and intentionally so it seemed yeah it was a strategic choice and it's weird the the smaller field really made it feel like I mean I think I tweeted that um this felt like a political reenactment of the movie cocoon with Buttigieg and the steve Gutenberg role because they really did feel old and when you just pass the cocoon line I passed the Wilford Brimley line which is that I am now older than Wilford Brimley was when he was in cocoon so is So is David.

Yes. Because he's a little older than me, which means everyone who's older than me is really old. And everyone who's younger than me is really young. But yeah. So anyway, they felt old. Elizabeth Warren looked older than I felt in the past. And there was a certain amount of just sort of cranky, ornery at the Midwestern old age home feel to the whole thing. And so I don't think anybody came out a clear winner.

I think Buttigieg probably helped himself the most simply because he didn't seem like he was. sending back the jello. But, you know. What's interesting is we're not really in a help themselves place anymore. We're less than three weeks out. So, I mean, Steve, for instance, the first 30 minutes are on foreign policy. We needed, if you were not in the top one, two, and three slots right now, you needed to make real progress. Not they might have helped themselves.

Buttigieg progress, according to Jonah. They had 30 minutes on foreign policy to contrast themselves with Trump and show why they could take him on in the general or at least why they can take on one another. Did anyone do that? They really didn't. I thought there were two people who may have benefited slightly from that part of the debate, and it was Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar. I mean, I think Bernie Sanders for very different reasons. For very different, for opposite reasons, in fact. I mean, Bernie Sanders wins sort of by default because he has the maximalist position on all of these things. I want out of Iran. I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want this. And it allows him, it allows anybody

who's not really sure where they should be to say, well, at least I know where Bernie is. And it's pretty clear that he makes his arguments from conviction. So he wins probably on having ideas and believe in them. Amy Klobuchar, I thought, offered sort of an adult response to questions about keeping troops, you know, she wants to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, but she wants to keep a counterterrorism force. And it sounded to me like she knew what she was doing. And again, it sounded to me like she knew what she believed. But I think one reason Democrats are having so much trouble defining themselves on foreign

policy and national security is because they want to be the opposite of Trump. But nobody knows what Trump is. I mean, what is Trump's worldview? What is Trump's, what is, how does he conducting foreign policy? There's really not a through line. Are we watching in somewhat slow motion, although pretty. quick in the eyes of history, the redefinition of foreign policy under the two parties since Bush, the Iraq War, are we in a new era of where the conservative and the liberal side fall

on foreign policy? Yes, absolutely. I don't think you can give, I mean, I think if you ask, if you, if you were to take a private poll of the Republican senators, you know, or you were to ask them, give me in a sentence, what your views on American power are American foreign policy, most of them would articulate something kind of like a Ronald Reagan-esque foreign policy. And because they're senators, they would be filled with cliches and not very penetrating. But I think if you look at where the populace is, where the voting bases of the two parties are, that right now is a jumble. And you're just as likely if you go to a Republican Party function, say not a Trump function, but a Lincoln dinner in Omaha. law, you're just as likely to find somebody say, I'm really sick of our involvement in these

places. We really need to tend the store back here. And I think if you're Democrats, there's that sort of inclination and has been. But now, because that's become sort of the default Trump position, they might make a little, we can't, we can't withdraw from the world. So, David, does that mean neo-conism is dead because no one is taking up that mantle? And why is the Isn't it always such a lagging indicator of where voters are? You know, it's way too early to say neo-conism. However, we're going to even define that anymore is dead. I think what is very much alive is negative polarization.

And because Trump is all over the place and the Democrats are defining themselves against Trump, you have this kind of dynamic where Trump will suddenly yank troops out of northern Syria. And Democrats are saying, how dare you yank troops out of northern Syria? and then Trump will rattle the saber in North Korea. How dare you rattle the saber? Then he'll meet with him. How dare you meet with him? And you just go back and forth.

And there is, as Steve was saying, there's no real through line except that there's always something about the way Trump does whatever he does, that you can latch on to that and be opposed to it. So that even if you're against American involvement in Syria, you can say, well, there should be a process for this to happen. He did this in the wrong way, and that's why I'm against it. Or even if you're relatively hawkish about Iran, well, he's not telling being forthcoming to the American public about his justification for it. There's always something to latch on to, but what we're left totally without is any sort of coherent vision and just a collection of

impulses. And the impulses of the American people, I think, are ultimately irreconcilable. And the impulses are, I think, basically threefold. One, we need to be safe from terror. We don't want Iran to get a nuclear bomb. And we want to be totally out of the Middle East. And that's where leadership comes in. That's where coming in and making a case and explaining what is in the best interest of the American nation and the American people. That's where leadership is imperative, and that's just what we don't have right now. So, Jonah, foreign policy is a jump ball five, 10 years. Any predictions for where the ball lands? How the two sides can split foreign policy if they get to redefine the lines? Yeah, I guess I disagree a little bit with Steve about this.

First of all, because... Violent disagreement. I like it. Yes. Take it on. Well, I mean, We all know that Steve is a horrible person. But, no, when I listen to them talk about foreign policy, and we have to stipulate or we have to note that this was one of the first times we've heard any of these people talk about foreign policy, it sounded almost exactly, taking out the Trump bashing, exactly the kind of stuff, the treacle you could have heard in 2008 and 2004, for 20 years now, the Democratic position on foreign policy, at least when they're, at least when the president isn't a Democrat, is. that in effect, it's better to be wrong in a big group than to be right alone. And that unilateralism is always bad, however defined, and that we have to work with our allies. And we heard a lot of that at the debate. And that seems to be the sort of default democratic position still to this day. I don't think it's changed very much. I agree that the opposition to Trump is really the sort of the defining thing.

But because Trump, you know, there's no throughline to Trump's foreign policy, really. I mean, there's a thrill line to his rhetoric. But, you know, as I've been, he does foreign policy in a lot of ways, like he tweets, like an escape monkey from a cocaine study. And trying to put up a narrative arc to it all makes no sense. He pulled out of Syria.

after one phone call, you know, it was just on the whim. It's all glandular. And so that makes it very difficult for the Democrats to come up, I agree with you on that, very difficult to find a coherent critique of Trump because there is no coherent critique of Trump because Trump is not coherent on these kinds of things. I do think that we are going to recalibrate to more isolationist is the wrong word, but more sort of non-interventionist, more like, and this is not a neocon thing. I really, I could take up the rest of the podcast talking about how Neocon is misused.

But I think the argument on the right is going to be more of a Jacksonian rubble doesn't make trouble. And we can beat the crap out of people, but we're not going to put boots on the ground and do nation building and all that kind of stuff, which was sort of the Republican position prior to the Iraq war. And I think there's going to be a sort of a general consensus about that between the both parties. Can I just jump in real quick and make a plug for one of our coming products? Actually, Tom Jocelyn at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, who's written for Weekly Standard Wall Street Journal, a lot of places. I think he's the smartest, one of the smartest security analysts in the country is launching a new podcast, I mean a new newsletter with us called Vital Interests. And the point of the newsletter is to have this discussion and to sort of try to forge a new sort of center-right, conservative, foreign policy thinking. And I've read the first draft of the newsletter coming out. He frames it

very well. I think it's very interesting. People should go to the dispatch.com and sign up. Can I want to, I think Jonah raised a really good point about the rebel doesn't make trouble point. And I want to say this about it. The American people might be moving to that conclusion right at the moment when that is becoming less and less operable as a military reality. when you have an unquestioned generational dominance in the sea, in the air, and on land, a rebel doesn't make trouble. This idea that you can come into almost anywhere and make a decisive and immediate military impact is different from what we're moving towards pretty rapidly right now.

I just read a RAND study on Russian military capability, particularly in its near abroad. And one of the conclusions, I talked to one of the authors at Link, And I just asked this question, I said, if Russia moved into Estonia, based on the military forces that are in Europe now, could NATO retake Estonia? And he basically said, I don't think so. And it was no, that America would have to mobilize from the continental United States. It would be one heck of a struggle. And it would, and this rubble doesn't make trouble.

there would be a lot of our rubble. And a lot of Estonian rubble. And a lot of Estonian rubble. And so in an interesting way, the American people are pulling back just as some of our competitors, what you would call near peer competitors militarily, are pressing forward. And I get the idea that I don't like, you know, this democratic notion that's better to be wrong together than right alone. an interesting way the need to be together is growing once again to have increased, yes,

Trump's been very good on this, increased spending in Europe, but maybe maintaining or ramping up our presence in Europe. Increased forward deployments are things that can deter these near-peer competitors. And so I fear that we're pulling back at exactly the wrong time historically. Does anyone want to defend Trump's foreign policy, what Jonah calls incoherence? But there's also some strategic benefit to incoherence. You know, when it comes to Iran and North Korea and some of these other quagmire-esque problems, over and over again, you'll see someone from the Obama administration say, this is wrong. And Twitter, at least, you know, to the extent that's something we want to listen to, say,

you had your chance and you didn't solve this problem and the smartest people in the room have never been able to solve this problem so maybe some incoherence is a benefit, Steve. Yeah, there's actually a really good reported piece by Eli Lake of Bloomberg this week laying out in detail a policy paper by David Wormser

who's been advising the Trump administration on these issues on Iran in particular. And Wormser, the memo that Wormser wrote basically suggests owning this unpredictability and using it to your advantage and said if you look at the history of U.S. Iran relations going back 40 years, Iran expects that they can push us right to the brink and then they can pull back a little bit and that we will always allow ourselves to be manipulated that way because we don't want to be the ones to escalate. And what Worms are suggests is, in fact, do something really crazy, do something really unpredictable.

What could go wrong? And it's obviously a high-risk strategy. But nothing else has been working. But nothing else has been working. And if you look at, you know, again, with the stipulation, the caveat that it's very, very early, the argument, this came at sort of the beginning of the decision-making process for targeting Soleimani seven months ago. And the argument is Soleimani taking out Soleimani was that thing, was that thing that Iran is now, The Iranian leadership that had become so accustomed to the United States warning and threatening and going to the Security Council and getting allies to make statements and are now looking at each other saying, whoa, okay, we miscalculated this. This is not what we thought was coming. And there is, look, I'm not sure how this is going to work out.

There are positive signs at the beginning of it. It's certainly a good thing that Sulawani's gone. But there is some strategic advantage to that kind of unpredictability if you're smart enough and thoughtful. enough to then build strategy around that. You see, that's the thing. I mean, just in my own defense, I brought up Trump's incoherence in foreign policy as a problem for Democrats trying to have clear, bright line messaging, right? Not as a fundamental critique of his foreign policy. I'm happy to provide one of those.

But I mean, Steve makes the right point, which is that there is nothing wrong with unpredictability in this context and, you know, there are a lot of Taiwan loved the Iraq war because it showed that this country was crazy enough to send a half a million people halfway around the world just to kick some guys ass because we felt like it. And Taiwan needs that America, that sort of cowboy America that still exist. And a lot of our allies, that was an unintended benefit of the Iraq war and both Iraq wars. But like I mentioned Trump pulling out of Syria. If this is one of great frustrations I have debating. sort of people, Trump defenders on foreign policy stuff. When Trump pulled out of Syria, a lot of our friends were on that side of the argument, said, we have to get out of these endless wars. We need to recalibrate. You know, we've been in Afghanistan for X number of years.

We've done all these things. It's not our fight. And they talk about realism. And, you know, this is the sort of the Tucker Carlson kind of stuff and all that. those are all fine 30,000 foot arguments, and I am willing to engage with those arguments on the merits, and there are good points and bad points made in that. But that's not what Trump was doing when he pulled out. That's right.

Trump off the cuff just decided to do something. He had not talked to our allies about it. He had not prepped the bureaucracy of the Pentagon or the State Department about it. If Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson were presidents of the United States and they wanted to pursue this of withdrawal from the Middle East stuff, they would let everybody know that's what they're doing and they would make plans for it. There is no strategy around the unpredict—there's a difference between planned unpredictability and just unpredictability.

And I would have a lot more respect for these like highfalutin arguments about realism and America First and all the rest if there was actually a policy program of diplomacy and the national security behind them, but there's not. It's all off the cuff stuff. Well, even worse from that standpoint is he yanks from Syria and people will pretend that there was a – this is just him fulfilling a campaign promise. This is ending endless wars with this sort of sneering condescension towards anyone who expresses concern that, for example, American troops are rushing out of bases because they're concerned their main supply route and into Syria is about to be cut and they would be subject to air evac. I mean, in a shooting war. You know, and, you know, this is just fulfilling a campaign promise.

And then when everyone reacts, like official Washington reacts, there's internal pressure within the Pentagon. This is really dangerous, Mr. President. Even some key, normal defenders out there react against the president, and he rolls it back a little bit. Oh, I'm not really pulling out. I'm partially pulling out. Or Congress threatened sanctions against Turkey, and Turkey takes its foot off the gas pedal

a little bit. Then the same people will say, once the situation has been stabilized, after an enormous amount of outrage, they'll go, see, it wasn't that bad. Right. And you're just, guys, do you not see that there was no plan? Do you see that a plan is necessary? But to go back to your original question, while the aftermath of the anti-ISIS caliphate operation is very fraught and problematic right now, I don't think we should neglect to remember that President Trump did continue the Obama offensive in northern Iraq and northern Syria. He intensified them. And, you know, there, it was not long ago that there was a caliphate, the size of a nation state, across northern Syria and northern Iraq. And it was a bipartisan operation, begun under Obama, finished under

Trump, that eliminated that caliphate. And that's, as he goes into 2020, that's to his credit. I think those are all smart takes. I do think that it is important to acknowledge that predictability can be as dangerous as unpredictability. The entire world knowing what America will do every step along the way in a world as complicated and as dangerous as the one we're in right now, that predictability itself is a huge liability, if you will. Okay, one more thing on the debate. And David, I'm coming to you on this, my feminist ally. Wait, that's sentence?

I don't know. It's ever been uttered before. We went into this. The media, you know, hoopla, heading into this debate, was that it was going to be the Warren versus Bernie moment on gender. Kind of woman to become president. Is Bernie a Bernie bro? Or is he able to capture more of,

the women's vote than a Hillary could if he were the nominee. They kept it pretty tame. There was the moment after the debate that I think is going to get far more coverage than the debate itself. So my question to you, where is gender in this race right now? Donald Trump has a double digit deficit with women. What do Democrats need to do? Where are we headed after this debate? I think that Republicans who assume the support of college educated evangelical women in 2020 are making a mistake he did win white women in 2016 right you know we're talking about a guy who is president because of about what 77,000 vote I think Steve you know down to the vote 77,744

I believe approximately that's his party trick folks yes in five counties yeah And so there is a vulnerability here, particularly with, and I'm not going to sit here, and I'm not going to be Vox style quoting charts and polls. I'm just talking about a community I've lived in my whole life. And one of the things that you will see is especially amongst college-educated evangelical women is there is just a real deep, deep, deep discomfort. and they're pro-life, they're pro-religious liberty, but this idea that this man is president in the United States and so many people around them have rallied to support him, even in spite of,

and look, even in spite of many of these women telling stories from their own lives of predation that they've endured and confronted and to see the, not just the support, but the enthusiasm has been deeply alienating for a lot of people. But do they really vote for Bernie or Elizabeth Warren? Or do they just stay home in this argument? Or in the end, do they suck it up

after we're going to spend a billion dollars on ads from both sides and say, devil I know? Well, you know, I think one thing that people are missing because you always end up with binary choice, binary choice. Are you going to, what are you going to do? Are you going to vote for Bernie? Well, you know, there was a race in 2017 in Alabama and what several hundred thousand Republicans did rather than say, what are you going to do? Vote for Doug Jones. They just stayed home. They just stayed home. It wasn't, it turned out it wasn't a binary choice. There was a third choice. It was called going on strike and saying that neither is acceptable. And I refuse under the power of my own vote to advance either. And I think that is a valid choice.

I know that's very controversial to people, especially in the evangelical community. We have been told it's a theological matter. It is absolutely vital that you get out and you vote. And my response to that is one of the best ways to ensure that you continue to have terrible candidates who have espoused terrible values is to vote for them. So just on the initial thing about Bernie versus. Elizabeth stuff, you know, rarely am I so torn on a matter I care so little about. But I'd actually like your take on this. You know, you were an immoderator on this.

Do you think that Elizabeth Warren came out a winner with this, you know, you said women can't be president stuff? What do you think of CNN completely, I don't want to, I don't want to like press this, you know, bias the question, but what do you think of the criticism of how CNN handled the actual asking of the question? I think that Elizabeth Warren won the exchange, although I think Bernie's answer was actually much better than I expected it to be. Both sides got to practice that answer endlessly. You want to know what's happening on a campaign in the run-up to these debates. This is all you're doing is getting that 100-word answer down to a 50-word answer and then running it and running it for time, getting it under 25 seconds, tweaking it. Well, what?

What if we add this? And that's what, you know, that whole day is spent in a trailer basically doing that. So that's what they both did. And then it's just, you know, who had the better play on the field. So Bernie's was better than I thought it would be given that. Elizabeth Warren still wins the exchange. But this is to my first point on the debate. Winning the exchange doesn't matter three weeks out from Iowa.

You needed a kill shot. It was not a kill shot. I do not think you had Bernie voters switch over and become Warren voters because she happened. than to win that exchange. I think that, in fact, there could even be the opposite of Bernie voters becoming very defensive and protective of him. You know, if you're a on the fence lean Bernie and then someone attacks your guy, it goes one of two ways, but oftentimes, and we saw this with Trump in 2016, it goes defend my guy.

I was leaning that way, but now that you're attacking him, I feel protective of him. So I think that's actually why she didn't go. for the kill shot as she didn't want to cause that avalanche but at the time you're going to leak the story which yes i do think that the elizabeth warren team writ large leaked the story you're in it now you're going to win it and you and you got to go for the kill shot so um i think it is a a good conversation for the democratic party to have i just think that within the progressive side it maybe that was the wrong lane for it to be had in uh i think this was a was sort of what the Biden-Harris exchange could have been back in the day,

and it would have been a better time to have it earlier on. Three weeks out from Iowa, you've got to win votes, which is why the debate was so boring. It is an amazing thing when you think about it. If you just go out to like 30,000 feet and you think about what it was like, if you try to describe this 30 years ago, you know, if you predicted, okay, in 2020, we're going to have this debate. And the argument that is going to consume the media is whether or not a woman, can be president and not

whether a gay dude can be president. You know, I mean, it's just kind of remarkable. I mean, I'm not saying that we should have that debate right. I mean, but it's just interesting, you know. Most women in this country, and I think I could find polling to back this up, although I don't have any with me,

absolutely believe that we can have a black president before a woman, a gay president before a woman. Really, any type of man with an adjective before his name will become president before a woman because... Jewish billionaire? Yeah, absolutely.

We'd have Mike Bloomberg or Joe Lieberman or any of those people before we'd have a female president because, frankly, the legal history of this country has been that property ownership, right to vote, and everything else. And that's where I think the... And it's been a point made in the Democratic debates a couple times, but almost as throwaway lines

that they haven't dived in on. The women of color, maternity, mortality rate, being three times higher than the white women mortality rate is this whole universe of argument about ignoring women in the medical system and then that women of color have it even worse than white women. But we're not even dealing with the white women problem. So I think that's why I think it should have been a bigger argument if they wanted to make it, an earlier argument, because there is a lot there, particularly on the left where women feel like, yeah, of course we're having the gay guy before the women. Yeah, that feels right. Okay. All right. I want to talk about the Iranian protests a

little with you, Steve. Where it goes from here, Trump sent out tweet in Persian that was well received. The most retweeted tweet ever written in Persian, I believe, is the first that we had last week. Where does it go from here? And also, to the extent you think it's related in a larger global sense, the Russian parliament is dissolved. Yeah, I mean, that was an interesting move today. The I mean, the Trump tweet, I think it was a good thing to do.

I think it was a smart thing to do for him to tweet. I mean, on the one hand, you'll talk to people who are experts in the region, they will say, as little U.S. fingerprints on all of the stuff that's happening there, the better. But I also think it's nice to have an American president make an unambiguous statement that he is standing

with these protesters. really happened in Hong Kong. It didn't happen in Hong Kong. I mean, there's plenty of Donald Trump, we can say, is not a sort of human rights protester, citing president as a general proposition. So there's all sorts of reconciling that I think, you know, this goes back to the incoherent foreign policy approach. It is all sort of ad hoc. And it is all what's in front of me at this particular moment. But I think given what was in front of him at that particular moment, he made a good decision. I think probably the reason it was the most retweeted tweet ever in Farsi was because his people retweeted it here without actually necessarily knowing exactly what it meant or reading the translation and just wanting to keep it going. You know, you're, you're, I'm reluctant to say that this is different because we've seen these kinds of protests before so many times. And I've talked to a couple of, but sometimes they hit.

Right. Sometimes it hit. You were reluctant to say the same thing about. the Arab Spring and then you saw governments toppling all over the region. I've talked to a couple of former intelligence folks who have worked in the region, and they say the same thing. The regime has, there's a stability about the regime that sort of a broad foundation that seems to be very difficult to uproot. And for that reason, we should not anticipate that we would see any kind of a real regime change. Having said that, there are things about this

that feel different. I mean, the outward and vocal opposition to the regime, there was this video that circulated on social media of someone who had scaled a wall and was kicking furiously this poster of Qasem Soleimani, the resignation of leading Iranian broadcast personalities is saying, in effect, I apologize for lying to you for the past 13 years. The chance of death to the Supreme Leader. The chance of death to the Supreme Leader. These little things... Which happened at the dispatch offices, too.

I leave that. And we just didn't know what was meant by Supreme Leader. That's right. These little things, obviously the big question is, do these little things add up to something that's much bigger? Is the sum greater than the parts? Or is it just a bunch of little things? And I don't think we know, but there's certainly reason to believe that. I mean, there's certainly reason to just observe that this feels a little different.

Will we see protest in Russia? I mean, they'd probably be very short-lived if we do. We've seen some, right? And Vladimir Putin has made very clear that he doesn't tolerate much of them. So I'd be surprised if they grow. Can I make a kind of meta-thumb-sucky point? here um that's your role right i mean that is who that's who you are it's it's it's it's all my business cards um you know one of i've talked about this a bunch on on the remnant um one of the

major talking points you get these days from a really broad coalition of both liberals and conservatives um is that the last 40 years of policy towards china hasn't worked right that economic liberalization hasn't led to political liberalization yada yada yada yada um you know Francis Fukuyama is wrong it's not we're not heading to Denmark that that democracy is not inevitable and there's all sorts of legitimate arguments about all of that and it certainly is true that like China hasn't become a democracy and that China has real problems and all the rest but it's like so many of these things it always seems impossible

right up until the moment where it actually happens you know the the stories of people of experts talking about how the Soviet Union was going to overtake us that it was doing great and then all of a sudden it turned out that while the Soviet Union was very very strong in a sort of a like it was like marble it was also very very brittle

And I think China recognizes this to a large extent, which is why they're doing all sorts of scary stuff with facial recognition and social media and all the rest. And their social credit score in part because, as a friend of mine once put it to me, the Communist Party is almost as afraid of the people as the people are of the Communist Party. And the same thing goes with Iran. People think that these things cannot happen. All of the realists say, oh, we have to give up on this idea of exporting democracy. and all that because, you know, this is just, it's a pipe dream. And then it turns out that, that, you know, there's a reason why we have the phrase the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's because normally straws don't break camel's backs. It's all the stuff that you put on before the straw that broke the camel's back. The tipping point was the straw. And you have that, so I don't know what's going to happen with Iran right now, but the idea, and I don't know what's going to happen in China in the next 10 years, but the people who do these straight line projections of things are bad right now and therefore, we should accommodate evil regimes, we should make peace with evil regimes, we shouldn't sort of stand up for our principles.

They always make these sort of, like, is the point that James Burnham made is that these straight line projections are a form of power worship, because you can't imagine that powerful places and people will ever be defeated, and so you want to accommodate them. And I think Iran is going to be a democratic country one day. I think China is going to be a democratic country one day. I just don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime. Can I say one thing about going circling back to, on the Iran point, circling back to earlier part of the conversation, I think there is at least one through line in Trump's foreign policy, and that is owning Barack Obama. Yeah.

And no place is that more apparent than his policy towards Iran. He thought the Iran deal was a terrible deal. He's going to tear it up. Barack Obama was extremely passive when Iranians rose up under Obama's administration. So Trump's going to press fall. I think Obama was so wrong on Iran that almost taking a what Obama didn't do approach has real benefits. Trump's policy is definitely better. It's definitely better. And I also like that his, I don't want to get in a new Middle Eastern war instinct has kicked in at key points as well. I don't think not American people are ready for war with Iran. It would be a lot worse and more deadly than a lot of people have been conditioned to believe our wars are like since 9-11.

And so I like that he's instinctively recoiling from actual war. I like that he's putting maximum pressure on Iran. I like that he's supporting the protesters. And I look at it this way. I agree with you 100% Jonah. To say we should always assume the mullahs are in charge is wrong. Completely wrong. It's also wrong to say, I have a solution to the mullahs.

So one of the things in this long struggle, I think a president can ask himself, is when I left office, did I leave? our enemies weaker or stronger? And if the consistent pattern is towards weaker, then you reach the point of the straw. If the pattern is stronger, the straw, you're not going to hit that point. And I think one of the fundamental flaws the Obama administration is he left Iran stronger

without altering in any way, shape, or form its fundamental nature. Okay, and with that, we have impeachment hearings, starting on Tuesday. I just want to do the quick read on and Steve will start with you for no particular reason what does a win look like for each side in this yeah I mean it's it's hard to say I don't mean that as a dodge you go into this with the working assumption

and I think it's probably the right one that both sides are going to just dig in their heels they're going to make this is a base strategy they're going to make arguments that will please their their base will there may be some excitement in some of the votes I mean there may be some evidence presented that causes, you know, the four to six Republican senators open, who seem open to hearing evidence, rethink things or say things after the trial. I mean, one of the most interesting and I think entertaining aspects of this is that

senators are not going to be in a position where they can go out and give lots of speeches and senators don't sit quietly very well. There is actually, I was listening to what was a very good, podcast with Senator James Lankford interviewing a former Senate parliamentarian, just sort of, how does this work and walking through the mechanics of this? And the parliamentarian says that when this starts, they will read a, you know, a hear ye, hear ye statement to begin it. And there will be no debate or colloquy on, you must remain silent on pain of imprisonment. And it's hard to imagine And Senator's actually doing that.

And Langford said that he thinks Lindsey Graham will be the first one potentially going to prison because he's spoken out. Because as he said, there's no way Lindsay Graham can be silent for that long. Jonah, what about Mitt Romney in this? What does a win look like for him? Well, I mean, you're more of a Mitt Romney expert than I am, but it seems to me that... No, I'm more of a Mitt Romney losing his runs for president. expert. Well, so the answer, part of

Steve's question first. I actually think the Democrats are in a better position here than a lot of other people do because a win for the Republicans is different than a win for Trump. And Trump wants immediate dismissal, right?

Like, walk in, tear up this thing. I'm not sure that's true. This is a sham. His tweets in the last couple, like 48 hours seem to be going that way. I agree there does seem to be a change, but the Trump that we know loves a circus and he loves media focus. And he was

pushing for Republicans to make this strong defense. Now he's backpedaling. Yeah. So no one wants to go no one wants to spalunk too deeply into

the cranium of Donald Trump. So, but my point is is that an immediate dismissal would be bad for the GOP. It would be bad. It would make them look all like Craven cover up all that kind of stuff that would lend credence to those Democratic talking points. An actual trial might also be bad for the GOP because those votes you're talking about

show up in every 2020 ad in every swing state. If there's a, yeah, and if there is a single, you know, if there's an actual fact witness who provides them, if John Bolton goes, that's a loss for the Republicans because it makes it look like there's a there there, and I honestly think there is a there there. So I think the whole setup is such that it is very easy for the Democrats to score a bunch of small wins. It's impossible to imagine right now them scoring the big win, which is actually removing the guy from office.

So that's it. I think for Mitt Romney, I mean, one of the things about Mitt Romney is that he actually has enough support in Utah. It's enough of a brand and also has enough sort of of a conscience and he's out of an age where he can actually just play it straight.

And I think that's sort of what he's going to be inclined to do. He might come up with some weird compromise. Like, I won't I definitely want to hear from Bolton but I don't need to hear from Lev Parnas or whatever. I don't know. But I could see him, but I think they're going to, I think they might actually

get some witnesses. Jeff Sessions said something to me. while he was Attorney General that it just rings in my head at moments like this. He said, I'm free as a bird and that makes me dangerous. Well, I think people, it's important to note that, you know,

even as you have the majority of Republican senators sounding like they don't want to hear witnesses, I mean, they basically are making arguments that suggest they don't want to get to the truth. The truth will be inconvenient for Republicans, I think, because I agree with Jonah that there is a there there. And so they're making arguments, I think,

silly arguments against hearing witnesses. You know, they don't want more information at this point. They control the process. I mean, with the Chief Justice and the Senate parliamentarian, they should be comfortable having more information come in. And the challenge, one of the challenges is you're seeing more information, you're seeing more evidence come out that may be related to this, may be central to this in newspapers every day with this new information from Lev Parnas and what they were doing with Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador in country. So I think that's a problem for Republicans. If they look like they're just being sort of reflexively defensive, that's a bad look. And on the Mitt Romney point, I mean, people should be under no illusions that,

well, I think there are some Republicans who genuinely are just untroubled by all of this. When Mitt Romney speaks on these things, you can be sure that he's speaking for most of his Republican colleagues. He's saying things that most of them believe if they were free and dangerous. David, I think that there is some element subconsciously maybe of a Kavanaugh hearing PTSD for Republicans

that even if you win in the end, it's a mess in the meantime. You know, that's an interesting point. I do think there is an extent to which if you're not following this closely, there are people in the country you will say they are always coming after us with something. They're always coming after us with something. Look at Kavanaugh. They'll put Covington Catholic in there, the us being construed broadly

here, from, you know, judicial nominees to presidents to high school kids and the National Mall. But there's the sense of they're always coming after us with something. And I think that's really strong in a lot of people. The victimhood within the Republican Party has been a winning strategy. Very much so. But I think the problem the problem Republicans are going to have going into 2020 is that they have developed a great method of keeping Trump's support from dropping below 40. I mean, there's this whole industry of Trump defense where, you know, the entire or most of the right wing pundit class is essentially operating as Trump defense attorneys, Fox prime time, Trump defense. attorneys talk radio, Trump defense attorneys. And so, you know, you talk to people on the left and they cannot believe Trump won't go below 40. They just can't believe it. I'm thinking if you do you not understand this app, this incredible engine of advocacy that has been created for this guy.

But you know, it's hard to win when you can't go above 42. It's hard to win. And I think one of the things that Trump is going to be able to do is, as he's moving into campaign mode, he's going to say, look at the economy, look at unemployment, the ISIS caliphate is gone. And then what impeachment does is it just reminds people, look at the corruption, look at the incompetence, look at the double standards, look at the hypocrisy, look at the division, look at the polarization. And as this progresses and as more information will come out, as in our podcast that we just recorded You called it the napkin that Lev Parnas or the note that Lev Parnas scrawled out was essentially do crimes. Do crimes now.

And the cast of characters around him. I think all of these things remind people outside of that 41, 42 percent that this presidency is toxic and that's just not good for Republicans. And just real quickly, one micro point here to go back to your question. The big difference is, Kavanaugh, the allegations were made. the allegations, not backed by a ton of hard evidence. Oh, I'm not arguing it's not different in the detail. Right, right. I'm just saying, but to me, that would be, I mean, Republicans and Republican senators may feel

like it's the same. They may feel this sort of same siege mentality, but I think they're wrong to feel that if that is, in fact, what they feel because the Kavanaugh allegation, many of them, some of them were totally made up out of whole cloth. Some of them were, you know, very thin evidence. here it's the opposite. I would argue here there's just this mountain of evidence and they don't want to grapple with that evidence.

We are not going to get into the substance of the evidence. We can do that next week. David, you mentioned 42% that 42, the meaning of life and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a good place to end. Before we close out, though, a quick fact check on last week. Steve talked about a cookbook called The Joy of Cooking and try to tie it to my point about Rombauer Chardonnay

in our perhaps ill-fated segment on Spanish wine tariffs, Jonah and I scoffed, would you say we scoffed? We scoffed. We scoffed. So, let me read this email from a listener. Marion Rombauer Becker worked with her mother, Irma Rombauer, original co-author of The Joy of Cooking, to write updates to the cookbook as it went through various editions.

These ladies are, in fact, of the Rombauer family that owns run, Ron Bauer Vineyards. Actually, a new edition of the cookbook has recently been released, edited by grand and great-grandchildren. As Steve correctly indicated, they do sell the cookbook at the winery. It is with great disappointment that my fact-check is to vindicate one Stephen Hayes on his tie-in of Rombauer Chardonnay and the cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. Congratulations, Steve. The joy of fact-checking. The joy of fact-checking.

along my reprobate friends we have this policy that when we get busted on one of these kinds of fights that we have to say in response something along lines of Steve you were right you are always right I was wrong you are very good looking I am can we cut that I'm going to make that my ringtone thank you so much for listening we'll see you again next week Oh, oh.