The Dispatch Podcast - French Fry Wars

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

Peter Navarro, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy for the Trump administration, published a scathing hit piece against top epidemiologist Anthony Fauci in USA Today this morning. “Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,” Navarro writes. For months now, Fauci has bickered with White House officials and pleaded with reporters to not turn his interview sound bites into a personality contest between him and Donald Trump. Sarah, Steve, and David are joined by Andrew to discuss Navarro’s op-ed and why our public health crisis has become subsumed into the culture war. On the topic of cancel culture, opinion columnist Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times yesterday, citing the paper’s toxic culture and her editors’ acquiescence to persistent bullying from her colleagues. Many journalists in the Twitterverse came to her defense, but others pushed back, arguing that she was not really canceled, but simply unwilling to take criticism from her colleagues. After all, isn’t disagreement with one’s colleagues a perfect exercise of free speech? But as David points out, “If you are using your words not to debate a human being but to try to inflict pain on them in the hopes that they shut up, that’s different.” Sarah and the guys take on these questions and address the Trump administration’s aggressive stance on school reopenings, the Goya boycott, presidential election polls, and a very serious debate over French fries. Show Notes; Peter Navarro USA Today op-ed about Anthony Fauci, Chuck Woolery tweet. Kaiser Family Foundation study. David’s French Press on Bari Weiss’ resignation from the New York Times, her resignation letter, Nicholas Christakis’ definition of cancel culture on Twitter, Harper’s Magazine letter, Ivanka Trump Goya tweet. Jonathan Martin New York Times article on Biden’s swing state strategy, FHQ electoral map. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes, David French, and for the first time, our very own staff writer, Andrew Eger, while Jonah Goldberg's in Alaska. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast. You never miss an episode. And a little later, we'll hear from our sponsors, ExpressVPN, and CarShield. Today, with the guys, I'll talk about the intra-white House feud over coronavirus, the debate over reopening schools. David will give us his definition of cancel culture as we discuss the latest battle over the soul of the New York Times. And we'll end with a little election talk as Joe Biden goes up with

ads in the newest swing state, Texas. Oh, plus, what is the best fast food fry, a heated discussion as we debate McDonald's versus five guys and some surprise answers as well. Let's dive right in. I guess we're going to start with what is maybe the strangest news of today. Peter Navarro, assistant to the president, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, published an op-ed in USA Today. Here was the title and included in the op-ed. Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.

And it ends with, so when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci's advice, my answer is only with skepticism and caution. Alyssa Farah from the White House Communications Department, then tweeted, the Peter Navarro op-ed didn't go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone. Donald Trump values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his administration.

Steve, this is incredibly strange. This is indeed incredibly strange. If something like this had happened in a previous administration, it's almost certain that the offending White House official would have been fired on the spot, taking shots at another colleague. Well, what's also strange is it's, to me, as someone who, you know, used to be in this world, it would be strange for USA today not to be in community. with the White House communication shop about an op-ed as well that was being published by an administration official. Yeah, although I mean, that's a good question to ask you. If Navarro reached out to USA Today directly, would there be any reason for USA Today to reach out to the White House, or do they just assume that Navarro has a green light to take this clear shot, write a hit piece about

his college? You'd think it would sort of accidentally come up, I guess, in my experience. Like, you know, your USA Today reporter would be like, hey, so is there any backstory on this Navarro op-ed? And you'd be like, say what now? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's odd. It's odd for a bunch of reasons. It's odd because they're having this major public dispute where you've got a White House trade advisor effectively writing a hit piece on the administration.

The person, the administration and the president chose to make the face of the coronavirus response, giving him prime television time at the briefings, putting him on virtually every media outlet and in every media venue possible to help explain what the administration was doing. Somebody who's, you know, obviously there's been tremendous tension between Anthony Fauci and Donald Trump from sort of the earliest days of the pandemic. But Fauci, I think has. Messaging tension, but not necessarily personal grievance. tension. I mean, I think there was personal grievance tension from Trump to Fauci. I don't, and Fauci has,

it's been painful to watch him plead with reporters again and again and again not to make this a personality contest between Anthony Fauci and Donald Trump. I mean, he's literally said this at the beginning of interviews. I'm going to give you a straight answer here, but please don't highlight the fact that it's contradicting what the president has said. That'll just cause. problems. But, you know, the strangest thing is Peter Navarro is a, you know, five-time failed candidate for elective office who sort of stumbled into the White House on, on the heels of his, you know, protectionist trade policies that happened to overlap with Donald Trump's. He's not terribly liked within the White House. He's not very well respected by economists outside the

White House. And the idea that this trade advisor would write a stinging hit piece on the top epidemiologist in the Trump administration, the middle of a global pandemic, it's the kind of thing that if I were to have said this to you, you know, two years ago or five years ago that this was happening, you would have called me crazy, wouldn't have been believable. And then if I would have added that this person doesn't appear to be in danger of getting fire or really suffer any consequence, that would have been even more unbelievable. So you just wonder if what's next is, you know, Elaine Chow writing an op-ed in the Washington Post, taking on Paul Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency for, you know, one policy or another.

Or Robert O'Brien, the National Security Council, writing a hit piece on Ben Carson because he doesn't like the housing policies. I mean, that's sort of where we are at this moment. Well, David, to stay on a theme here, we also have this Chuck Woolenie. tweet that the president retweeted, Chuck Woolery, the original host of Wheel of Fortune and perhaps most famous for hosting Love Connection,

Woolery tweeted, the most outrageous lies are the ones about COVID-19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, media, Democrats, are doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust.

I think it's all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I'm sick of it. The president retweeted that to his over 80 million followers. And a lot of this, to me, turns around, like when you're talking about what hits home, the mass conversation.

You have Republicans still far less likely to wear one than Democrats, 36% to 94% respectively, according to the Gallup poll that was released Monday. Why is the president undermining his own administration's messaging, and we'll get to schools in a minute, but just from a messaging standpoint, what is this accomplishing? venting. I think this is venting. You know, undermining his own administration's messaging, I think that you, the key word in that sentence was his administration, which is not always the same thing as him. And now, of course, those are often, they come into alignment and then they'll come out of alignment and into alignment and out of alignment. But I think what's happening there

is that was a venting retweet. The president is very angry. about the state of the debate on coronavirus. He's very angry about his declining polling numbers, which he's now, I don't know if you've noticed, Sarah, I guess in the White House, the style guide says, Sleepy Joe and suppression polls that all of the polls out there that show him trailing are really efforts at conservative voter suppression.

So this just felt like pure venting from the president. To me, you know, an impulse retweet of the kind that he does constantly in his administration. But, you know, here's the thing about the Chuck Woollary tweet on the substance of it, which reflects to what you were talking about with the difference between Republicans and Democrats on an issue like masking. Honestly, the masking culture war. I've said it before. I've said it again. It's perhaps the dumbest and one of the most destructive things I've seen in my entire life. And it's, I've spoken to a lot of, I've spoken to a lot of conservatives who live in blue states. And they, when they, when you hear them express frustration, about masking. It's frustration. Like, you know, when I was talking to our friend David Bonson on Jonah's remnant pod yesterday, you know, you're jogging alone outside in a park in D.C.

And somebody yells at you for not having a mask on, like this sort of masking, public shaming that occurs in a lot of these big blue cities if you don't wear a mask sometimes in places where there's no need to wear a mask. And I said, you need to come where I live. And there is lot of performative anti-masking. There is a lot of performative hugging, performative refusal to engage in social distancing. It's there. It is pervasive within the culture. I mean, I just watched, I just moved from a town of Columbia, Tennessee, up to Franklin. So Columbia is where I'd lived for 12 years until 2018. And the mayor of the county is saying, No, we're not going to require masks because it's a liberty issue.

And you're thinking which liberty interest is served here. And I wonder now can I walk naked down the street of Columbia, Tennessee, which is an active expression, I guess, if not wearing a mask is an active expression. And let's just see if public decency statutes are constituted. David, on behalf of the dispatch subscribers, please do not express yourself in that way. I'm feeling censored right now. We don't want that expression. And frankly, I don't have the money for your bail right now.

Well, okay. With great reluctance, I shall comply. But again, we've reached a point where we have to find something to fight about. And look, I get it that some of the masking messaging was conflicting early on. I get it that the surgeon general, no less authority than the surgeon general of the United States said, don't worry about masking. I get it that some of this stuff, which was really, hey, save the masks for the people who are on the front lines combating this because we don't have enough turned into. You don't need them. I get that that was all wrong. I also get that this is a novel coronavirus. Knowledge evolves. We're learning a lot. And it's pretty darn plain that those communities that social distance and wear masks pretty universally tend to do better. I mean, there's a reason why Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong have come through this, despite their proximity to China, so much better than us, so much better than us. And yet we have a culture

war over this. And it's, you know, people made fun of a lot of these Black Lives Matters protestors and rightfully critiqued all these epidemiologists who said, okay, well, I'm against public gatherings except this public gathering. And we all said, the virus doesn't care. Well, you know what? The virus doesn't care if you're not wearing a mask because of freedom. The virus doesn't care. And what it was particularly pernicious about it because wearing a mask is about protecting other people, not yourself. The virus doesn't care that you think you're being brave. It doesn't care about that. It's going to go ahead and infect the other people around you. And that's what's particularly selfish. It was a great economist headline. You may be done with coronavirus,

but coronavirus isn't done with you. I thought that was charming. Andrew, I want to talk to you about schools, but let me read you some fast facts about America's elementary, you know, K through 12 schools. We have nearly 51 American kids in public elementary, middle, and high schools, plus 6 million in private schools. About 27 million Americans, roughly 16% of the workforce, are dependent on child care, including schools, in order to work. And 1.5 million U.S. teachers, about one and four, are at a heightened risk of serious illness if infected with coronavirus, either due to existing health conditions or age, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. What has your reporting told us about reopening schools and where the debate lies on each side? I think that you really lined out exactly what the, what the, what the, what the, problem is here, which is that it's really an unstoppable force meets an immovable object type

situation with going back to school being sort of an unavoidable first step. If we're going to have any kind of continued economic reopening, it's absolutely intolerable not to have school for all sorts of reasons. But then by the same token, very, very difficult and potentially dangerous to have all of this, you know, resumption of mixing and intermingling among kids. Obviously, schools are doing everything that they can to put plans in place now in order to, you know, have some semblance of distancing happen among kids when they go back. Obviously, we have heard some potentially encouraging things about spread among children. about it's obviously not at the the virus itself is obviously not as dangerous to children um and and

there have been some encouraging signs even about their their ability to transmit it um you know between themselves and between themselves and and the adults in their households um but but the real problem right now is that um you know fall is is coming it's a lot closer now than it was when we were having these conversations in in in april and may um but we still don't have enough of a sense of exactly what the pandemic is going to look like, you know, two months from now, a month and a half from now, in order to really be able to know what best practices are going to be. But that doesn't mean we have the luxury to wait, you know, because schools are having to put in place policies now that are going to guide their behavior over the fall semester.

They can't wait until August 15th in order to decide what all these things. are going to look like. And policymakers can't really wait either. So you have this this real churn going on right now where things are getting pretty bad in terms of cases and things. But primarily, I think, because the death rate has not ticked up, you still have this window of kind of plausible deniability where some policymakers can just sort of say, well, we're still staying the course, there's still really nothing to see here, we're still going along with the plans that we began to put in stone when we were still sort of assuming cases were going to be down over the summer, when we were thinking there was going to be a big dip, and then the

primary issue was going to be, you know, if they spiked back up over the fall, you know, October, November, as opposed to the situation where in now, where it's worse now than it was in terms of cases nationwide, it's worse now than it was in May and certainly worse than it was in June. So it's this awkward, really awkward situation. My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and I'll just say, you know, from her point of view, there's also a potential problem here with comparing what this semester is going to be like distanced versus what last semester was like distanced, just in term, and especially for younger children, in terms of just having established some sort of classroom rhythm, you know, personal relationship with a teacher over

months and things like that, that you were able to sort of live on borrowed time when it came to, you know, suddenly pulling everybody out, doing distance learning, having teachers basically just sending home work or teaching over Zoom or Skype or whatever, you were sort of sort of able to to draw on the resources of the built up momentum of the school year up till that point. And there's, you know, so it's an open question whether starting from scratch with new teachers and new rhythms and new routines and everything like that will even be as fruitful as, you know, last year's very awkward learning setup. So it was, so it really is a it's a lose-lose situation at this point in a lot of ways.

And which makes it hard to argue about as a matter of policy because it's just sort of a question of what policymaker's priorities are and a lot of information that we just don't know yet about what it's going to look like a month from now. Steve, Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary and President Trump have both discussed cutting federal funding if these schools don't reopen. and there's been some back and forth about how serious that suggestion is

about 8% of U.S. K through 12 public school funding comes from the federal government. 8% would be an enormous cut for a lot of these schools. Most of that goes to salaries and resources in the per student spending. How politically feasible would it be for the federal government to pull back funding in order to push these schools to reopen?

I don't think it's politically feasible. I don't think it's legally feasible. I mean, this is congressionally authorized funding. And when Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday last week put that question directly to Betsy DeVos, she couldn't answer it. And there's a reason she couldn't answer it. He said, by what authority would you do this? And she couldn't answer it. Look, I think this is a lot of political bluster.

Polls show that while a majority of Americans still do not want children to go back to schools full time, that number has been increasing among Republicans. The number of people who want schools open full-time has been increasing among Republicans as Donald Trump has made this, you know, a sort of part of his pitch to reopen the country, kind of despite the spike that we're seeing in cases. And I think this, you know, I don't know whether it was, you know, sort of part of a broader strategy or whether this was something that the president just kind of barked out. And now the White House is scrambling to come up with ways to do it. But I don't think it's a feasible thing. I don't think we'll see it. And I think you'd see, I think you'd actually see some pretty strong pushback from congressional Republicans on that,

particularly those who are not in the sort of crimson red districts up this fall would say, yeah, you know what? We don't really think it's a great idea to insist that everybody go back to school or to threaten withholding funding to make it. Just to follow up on that, I mean, there was a time, I remember when Republicans were actually in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education saying that the federal government shouldn't be the ones funding state and local schools. That should come from state and local governments. And yet we haven't heard anything really from congressional Republicans on this threat to pull funding. Some conservatives still are in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education. And I would count myself as one of them.

No, I mean, I think that's right. And that's where I think congressional Republicans will not volunteer to jump out and contradict the president for fear of, you know, Twitter reaction against them, singling them out. And that is a powerful fear. You hear about it every time you talk to congressional Republicans. They don't want to be singled out by the president. They don't want to be on the receiving end of his tweets. So I don't think you're going to find many people who are at this point, at least, eager to pick that fight with the president. But I don't think we're very far away from that. I mean, I think if the president were to continue to push this and, you know, you're in a 50-50 district or you're a Republican in a district that's gone Democrat for eight of the ten last elections, but you won in 2016, I think there will come a point and we're reaching it where you'll see that more Republicans up for reelection, both in the House and the Senate, will find it useful to distance. themselves from the president. And this could be one place they do it. David, I want to transition over to your newsletter topic from yesterday and cancel culture as a whole. You and I were discussing, you've come up with sort of a definition of cancel culture

to answer both, you know, on the one hand, we've seen people call out any criticism that they don't like as cancel culture. And on the other hand, we've seen people get fired from their jobs for things that they did years ago or things that weren't even particularly against social norms. So what has become your definition? And then we'll dive into a little bit about the Hill of Beans this week. Yeah, I think there was after the Harper's letter that was signed by, I believe, more than 100 writers and thinkers, a majority of them. More than 150, writers and fingers, a majority of them on the left side of the aisle, supporting free speech, decrying cancel culture, although the term was not used in that

letter, but that was the obvious intent of it. There was this huge argument that popped up online saying, is there even really such a thing as cancel culture? And it was a, there was a little bit of a back and forth between two of my friends, Ken White, my law school classmate, great guy, great friend, who was sort of on the side that says, I don't think cancel culture is that much of a thing. And he tweets under Popat, correct? Correct. He's under Popat, which is an interesting story

as to how he had Popat is his Twitter name. But then Nick Christakis, who came to prominence a couple years, several years ago when students tried to cancel him at Yale. And he responded, and I liked this definition. He said, here's my proposed definition of cancel culture. One, forming a mob. Two, to seek to get someone fired

or disproportionately punished for three statements within the Overton window. In other words, these are this within the Overton window means within the realms of acceptable mainstream discourse in the United States. And then extra points if the, quote, mob willfully misinterprets the original statement or narrows the window beyond all recognition. And I just added an addendum in my newsletter that points one through three in true counsel culture are typically accompanied by overt cruelty and malice, including a desire to inflict pain on their targets. And I think that's a very good definition. Are you seeking to get somebody

fired or disproportionately punished for engaging in mainstream American political discourse? That, to me, is the definition of cancel culture. And, you know, so what's happening, I believe, is that in many places, and it's often now more sort of what you would call blue-on-blue fratricide in elite progressive institutions, which may be one reason why so many center-left voices, and some of them pretty darn hard left, like Nome Chomsky or Gloria Steinem, raise their voices in favor of free speech, because this is a, this is a malady that is beginning to really permeate through a lot of progressive institutions. where there is a cohort,

there's a cohort of people who are saying, no, we've decided what is right and true. We have decided that. And the purpose of this institution is to promulgate and perpetuate our views. And dissent, not only is it welcome, dissent is actually harmful. It's harmful in the sense

that it dilutes our ability to say what is we know to be true. And it's also harmful in that it inflicts psychological harm on people who hear it. But to push back for a second on that, what they would say, and what I've seen in the responses to the Harper's letter is, no, what's happening is that this is the first time these people have been subject to any criticism of their ideas outside of their own group of, you know, cocktail swirling parties that are all very polite and hush, hush. And so, yes, we're sending harsh criticism. And sometimes their bosses hold them accountable for that harsh criticism. And all this is is the reflection of the conversation. broadening to more people, more diverse voices who have been shut out of these conversations in the past and that these people with enormous platforms and the ability to sign a letter

in Harper's, it takes a lot of gall to then say that they're being silenced. So how does that fit into your definition? So first, the idea that any of these people have not faced harsh criticism outside of their cocktail swilling comrades is just completely ludicrous. These are people who've been in the rough and tumble of political debate for years and years and are saying something substantially is changing beyond me being criticized. All of these people have been criticized. All of these people have faced, have been in some quite intense political and cultural and religious debates over the years. There is a difference between criticism and an attempt to terminate or intimidate. That's the line that I say. Because look, I mean, as I wrote in my

news later, critics will say, of the letter will say, after all, aren't boycotts, calls for terminations, firings and insults? Aren't they the exercise of free speech? No one has a right to a position at the times. And this isn't the government censoring people. It's just, as you said, cancel culture is just the name that powerful people give to vigorous criticism by the previously powerless. But the question I have is, what is attempting to happen here? Is it to rebut or is it to exclude? Is it to debate or is it to intimidate? If you're using your free speech, not an attempt to rebut a bad idea, but to exclude someone from a forum, if you're using your words and not to debate a human being, but to try to inflict pain on them in the hopes that they

shut up, that's different. And I feel like a lot of these folks are just flat out gaslighting when they say, no, here's what we're really doing is you're really facing serious critical. for the first time. Now, these guys can defend their ideas. They absolutely can defend their ideas. What they're terrified of and like what a Yale professor told me, a tenured Yale professor told me when he talked about how he's scared of his own students, is he's terrified of them saying horrible and false things about him that will destroy his reputation in an attempt to maintain his silence. That is not just vigorous criticism. And I think that this is classic Martin Bailey. These guys... Yeah, go ahead. David, can I push back on that with a specific

example from the past few years on the right? You remember Milo Yanopolis was invited to speak at CPAC in 2017. The original argument for inviting him was a free speech argument. We should hear his arguments. You know, he's an important voice in the conservative movement. We might not agree with him, but everybody should hear him. That was the match-lap argument. A lot of people didn't think so. I don't think so.

Am I? I was perfectly happy to see him excluded from CPAC. I don't think he should have that forum. Didn't bother me at all when Breitbart cut ties with him. I think he's an odious person who makes horrible arguments. I don't necessarily want to even engage some of his ridiculous arguments, quasi defenses of pedophilia, the kind of race baiting stuff that we saw from him.

Why isn't it good that he's not part of these debates? And isn't it a waste of time to engage somebody like that by engaging somebody like that? Aren't we just elevating him and giving him a bigger voice than you ought to have? Well, Steve, let me refer back to the original definition of cancel culture. point three. So you have point one forming a mob to get someone fired or disproportionately punished for three statements within the Overton window. But who defines that? Well, I know what we, defensive pedophilia is not there. So as we, as we have said, you know, we talked about this last

time. Yeah, there are difficulties in line drawing. There are not difficulties in saying that Barry Weiss is within the Overton window or not within the Overton window. There's not difficulty in saying that pedophilia, defenses of pedophilia, are outside of it. And so what we can have the conversation about line drawing when we have a fact pattern that is tough. But what we keep having is attempts to cancel or attempts to disproportionately and to intimidate people where the call isn't hard.

And then when you say, hey, this is wrong, how you're treating this person, here, this person right here who is within the mainstream, then the answer to that is not, well, then what's the line? Well, we'll talk about the line when it's close. This guy is not there or this woman is not there. And Milo Unopoulos was not in anywhere close to what any decent set of, you know, conservatives, which should consider to be within the Overton window. And so I do agree, I do hear you, Sarah, that there is a line. There is a line. and it's not always going to be easy to find,

but it is easy to say Barry Weiss is in it and Milo Yonopoulos is out of it. Andrew, I want to talk about Barry Weiss here. So she published a 1,500 word letter to publisher, New York Times publisher, Soltzberger. She said she was the victim of persistent bullying within the organization and warned that Twitter has become its ultimate editor,

referring to the Times. McCarthyism that has taken root at the paper of record, a new consensus has emerged in the press but perhaps especially at this paper that truth isn't a process of collective discovery but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. This comes after

the New York Times fired her former boss Times opinion editor James Bennett last month in the wake of the Senator Tom Cotton op-ed about using the military to put down riots in the country. Andrew Sullivan also announced his departure from New York Magazine.

Andrew, to some extent, this is a, what I call a, quote, very online conversation that I think the vast majority of Americans do not know who Barry Weiss is, and they will not know who she is at the end of the week either. This will continue to be sort of among the Twitterati as we all, you know, ring our hands and have something fun to talk about as we all sit at home. Also, I had someone mentioned to me, and I want to get your take on this, that to some extent when someone like Barry Weiss, particularly again online in these very online conversations,

tries to trigger the libs, she shouldn't be surprised when she then triggers the libs. And you compare Barry Weiss's treatment at the New York Times, and to some extent Brett Stevens' treatment at the New York Times, to people who are sort of well-known

not to be liked by their colleagues, to Ross Douthit, who is potentially far more conservative than either of those two just from a political, you know, spectrum standpoint, what explains the difference and

does that mean that it's not politics that it's something else well so this question is sort of bait to me because roust out that is maybe my favorite columnist in the world

and I'll never say anything but super nice things about him and I will say that I don't know Barry Weiss or Brett Stevens like I know you do David and you do Steve but so a couple thoughts on that

first I do think it's it's important to to note the fact that there's a couple different things happening here at once, right? I mean, it's, it, it, it, this, this, uh,

Barry Weiss was not fired. She, she resigned, and she resigned because of what she says is a, um, you know, a, uh, oppressive, um, culture of, of, of, of, of, of thought at the New York Times. Um, and so what, that, that clearly touches on all of these broader cancel culture questions that we're talking about, but it also, is, you know, maybe first and foremost a workplace dispute. I mean, it's, it's an issue of a specific culture that we don't necessarily have, have perfect insight into because, you know,

we have her side of the story. We've had other people's sides of the story. And clearly there's a lot of malaise, like interpersonal malaise happening there, that that may or may not make it harder to draw, draw these broader, you know, cancel culture style lessons from. But I do think, I do think, you know, you say this is a very online disagreement, like you say. It is true that if you hadn't heard about Barry Weiss before, maybe a few more people have now, but it is largely taking place this whole discussion within a context of people who already, you know, had knew the ends and outs of the New York Times editorial board like the back of their hand, you know, this very small subset of a subset of a subset of the American population.

But I do think it's interesting that these conversations do tend to have downstream effects for conversations that we will, you know, have more and more of. I mean, it does matter what op-eds are published in the New York Times, what positions are considered acceptable to publish in a paper of record like the New York Times. And I do think that that's where a person, like Barry Weiss, has a substantial point because, you know, I'm not waiting with bated breath to read every, read every Barry Weiss column or, you know, it's not a great source of pain in my life that she will no longer be writing there. But I think that, you know, the question of, you know, what a lot of her detractors or somebody like Brett Stevens detractors, the arguments that they make, is that they just don't find her writing very interesting, or they don't think she's bringing anything particularly scintillating to the table.

And I mean, whether or not that's the case doesn't disqualify her from making those sorts of arguments about what's happening at the times. And it is a disservice if, like you say, David, with the Overton window, So if that is shrunk so drastically at the times that, you know, arguments that were seen to be completely, you know, at least within the realm of grappling with just a couple of years ago, are now seen as just sort of like violently unacceptable and entirely off the table. The last thing I wanted to say, and this has been sort of disjointed, so I apologize for that. But the question was a little vague, so I'm allowing myself. The fact that these conversations are happening largely out of the view of much, much, much of the American public doesn't necessarily mean that they won't have ramifications for a lot more people than are necessarily paying attention to this open letter or that open letter right now, just because they do reshape, you know, in unseen and unseen ways, the media landscape that the people who are who do push forward the conversation that, for one of a better word,

trickles down to people who pay less attention to media. You know, it's, this, today's open letters become tomorrow's op-eds, become the next day's soundbites, become the next day's memes. So, you know, the fact that there's this reorganization happening, perhaps a little further down the road, causes, you know, one group of people on the left to sort of continue to ossify in a, a very narrow and strict set of, you know, political opinions, but it also potentially creates space for some people on the left to be a little bit more, you know, flexible and

open about, again, these relatively narrow questions of acceptable discourse of the Overton window. If you see some, I mean, new organizations like Persuasion that was just started up recently. Apparently, Andrew Sullivan and Barry Weiss are, you know, have something else up their sleeve when it comes to some new outlet. And, you know, obviously we know a lot about starting up new outlets to try to shape the conversation in subtle ways around here. But these things will have downstream effects. It's just a little hard to see what those, what exactly those are right now. Steve, last Thursday, the president had a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his White House Hispanic

Prosperity Initiative. The CEO of Goya was there and said, quote, we are all truly blessed to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder. This is what my grandfather did. He came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper. We have an incredible builder, and we pray. We pray for our leadership, our president. This started the hashtag goya way, which, I mean, you got to give it some credit.

That was pretty good. The CEO says that he refuses to apologize and claims that there's a double standard because he also was at the White House in 2012 with Michelle Obama. Sorry, not the White House. at an event in Tampa, but with Michelle Obama to promote the former First Lady's healthy eating initiative. But to your point, maybe this isn't something outside the Overton

window, but plenty of times conservatives have said, well, you know, so-and-so is, does us support things that I support, so I'm not going to buy their product anymore? Why is that not considered an acceptable form of expression? Yeah, I think a lot of times it is. You know, I think, David, correct me if I'm wrong, I think this was in your newsletter yesterday. I mean, you can have speech and counter speech. I mean, you can make those kind of points in a way that doesn't rise to the level of what I think we probably would all agree is cancel culture. And I would say that, look, the Goya boycott is one of them. I mean, there are other boycotts that are taking place all over the place.

The left does it. The right does it. I will just state for the record that Goya products are fantastic. I buy as many of them as I can, not because the head of Goya supports one political party or another, but because the stuff is just really good if you're into that kind of food. But, you know, it is kind of a counter speech. I think that the more troubling thing about the Goya boycott is it is another example of how everything in our entire country is politicized. I mean, now you've got, you know, Ivanka Trump holding up a goya can, suggesting that people buy goya products because this guy said nice things about the president and you've got, you know, left-wingers who don't want to buy it.

This is nothing new. I mean, this happened with Chick-fil-A. It's not new, but, I mean, it happened with the Dixie Chicks before Chick-Flet. That's right. It happened with Disney in Christian circles before the Dixie Chicks. Yeah, it's not new. I do think it's much more pronounced than it used to be. I mean, everybody's, you know, wearing a red jersey or a blue jersey, or seemingly everybody's wearing a red jersey or a blue jersey, and they're making decisions about

every aspect of their lives based on that. Now, I'm exaggerating. It really isn't everybody. I think there's a perception that it's everybody because this is what gets covered in the media. This is who you see on social media. This is what you see on Twitter, which, again, is just a small slice of the American population, but these are the kind of fights that you see on Facebook in the comments

there. It's not as prevalent as I think it sometimes appears, but I think it's a growing phenomenon. And I think more and more people are deriving their personal identity from their political affiliation and then making decisions accordingly. And it's maybe also fair to say that whereas previously it was it was a little bit more of like a pundit sphere, type thing. You didn't necessarily have as much direct participation in this sort of silliness from actual, you know, political leaders. I mean, you certainly wouldn't have like the president of the United States and his immediate family hopping in to talk about, you know, to hold up a can of beans, you know, for the latest, the latest fight over these things. You wouldn't necessarily

have people as prominent as Ted Cruz hopping on every one of these little, little flare-ups in the culture war. So at least, you know, higher visibility when it comes to things like that. Can I ask you guys a question that totally puts you on the spot? Do you, are there any products you don't use or things you don't participate in because of how the company acts or the stands the company takes or something to that effect? I can't think of a single one. TikTok comes to mind for me. I have refrained from installing TikTok because of all the... It's a big sacrifice, because otherwise you'd be doing these little dance videos.

It would be great. I wouldn't be recording. I'd be a TikTok lurker. I was a talk lurker, and I deleted it last week when my husband read me one of the stories on how China's using it. I don't know that I count that, though. That's not for their speech or political beliefs or anything else. That's because they're spying on me.

I am very anti-boycott. I mean, I grew up in this culture where, you know, you'd get mailers from Christian. activist organizations. We're boycotting Disney now. We're boycotting this or boycotting that. And like this was, this was a part of religious right activism for a long time and to an extent still is. Do you do reverse boycotts? Like, were you more likely to go to Chick-fil-A while the left was making that a boycott on their side? Like then the right sort of anti-boycotted and had more Chick-fil-A? I'm more, I'm more amenable to a bycott than a boycott. In other words, like, okay, I'm going to try to prevent somebody from being canceled politically.

I'm more amenable to that. But, you know, I got in trouble. I gave a speech at a pro-life convention several years ago, and I made the mistake a walking up there holding a Starbucks cup of coffee. And after I got down from the speech, the first thing that happened is several people swarmed to me. Why on earth were you walking up there

with a cup of Starbucks coffee? And apparently Starbucks corporate had done something to support the pro-choice cause I didn't know and they said there's a coffee shop down the street and I said okay

do you have the dossier of the political beliefs of the owner of that coffee shop can you please provide me

with that because I need to know if he's worse and you know at this point it's just you know I watch basketball

to see basketball I watch a movie to see the movie I don't watch a movie to sort of to endorse the actors I don't watch basketball to approve of all of LeBron James's political positions. People are complicated.

You know, they do good things, they do bad things, and, you know, let's just take LeBron. I don't like LeBron's statements on China. But if you're going to say, net, net, is LeBron James a force for good in this country? Man, the dude is a pretty incredible citizen of this country. I mean, you know, taking his cultural influence and the way he's poured it into education of kids who don't have much of a who's provided college educations. He's an outstanding example of a husband and father and family man who became ridiculously famous at 19 years old and has lived this incredibly exemplary public life through adverse circumstances. Yet I'm supposed to not watch basketball because he has bad opinions on China. I'm just over it. I'm over this boycott.

He's probably a top 25 basketball player too. To the listeners who can't see our chat right over my right shoulder is a poster of LeBron in full flight, the goat, the goat. Let's take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors today, ExpressVPN. Ever searched for something online you wouldn't want others knowing about? I know you're thinking, why don't you just use incognito mode? Let me tell you something. Incognito mode does not hide your activity. It doesn't matter what mode you use or how many times you clear your browsing history.

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where he says, stay safe, wear a mask. This virus is tough, but Texas is tougher. Joe Biden continues to lead in a bunch of the swing states, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Only a couple of those he needs to pick off to win the election. Steve David and I talked about this on advisory opinions earlier this week. there seems to be a debate within the Biden campaign of whether they should try to expand the map past what they need to win the presidential election, both to build a mandate, also to win the Senate, and also just to do it because it's fun. Or is that hubris in the face of 2016 and they should simply focus their concentration on Pennsylvania, maybe North Carolina, maybe Michigan, and just win this thing and move on. later. Yeah, you're right. There is a debate taking place inside the Biden campaign. It's also,

according to a very good article by Jonathan Martin in the New York Times, just a couple days ago, taking place in the Democratic Party more broadly, where you have Senate campaigns in, you know, maybe what would be considered reach states pushing the Biden campaign to extend its efforts to those states so that they might sweep in on Biden's coattails if he has any, if these these numbers continue. Look, I think everything you need to know about this current state of the race is that Joe Biden is running ads in Texas that are basically glorified public service announcements to do smart things about the pandemic. I mean, they're not even really making a big case on behalf of Joe Biden. They're just saying, basically, don't be an idiot with your masks.

That's pretty significant. And you have Donald Trump both running ads and now going to Georgia to campaign. I mean, those two facts alone tell you where we are three and a half, slightly more than three and a half months out from the election. There's another, I think, very significant data point. And Sarah, you brought it up on the emergency podcast last week that you all did on, I think it was Wednesday with the Supreme Court decisions that came down. You started with a little political discussion.

looked carefully at the difference between voters who strongly disliked Trump and strongly disliked Biden and concluded that Biden had, uh, has an advantage there in this point to suggest that there's another poll. Um, this may be the one that you were, um, making reference to, but it's a democracy fund poll, uh, co-sponsored by UCLA. And it was, look, it looks at the voters who dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden, the share of voters rating Trump or Biden, very unfavorable. And the share of Biden voters who find Trump very unfavorable is 80% of them. So huge, you know, four and five. The share of Trump voters who find Joe Biden very unfavorable is just 53%. So slightly over half. That gap, I think, is likely to be a significant factor if we

see Joe Biden win and win handily in November. And the final point I'll make is a very different by the way, than 2016? Totally. Yes, the opposite. I mean, Trump, I think it was 55 to 20 something. Trump won people who didn't like both candidates. There's a very different, a very different dynamic here. You just don't have, I think it was Dave Weigel, who's a reporter with the Washington Post,

went and looked at the book catalog of Regnery Publishing, which is a conservative publishing outfit that, you know, commissions and publishes books, you know, often critical of Democrats and their candidates. And I don't remember the exact breakdown, but there were dozens of anti-Obama books, many, many anti-Hillary Clinton books in their catalog. And here, just a few months out from the 2020 presidential election, there is one anti-Joe Biden book. So the anger and the frustration that so many on the center right felt towards Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just doesn't really exist. Now, the Trump campaign is going to do everything you can to make that happen, to foment that anger, but they're not having much luck right now. Final point real quickly,

if you look at the electoral map and there's a website called FHQ that does a very good job of analyzing the electoral college. And assigns basically like every state to one candidate or the other. And 112 days until Election Day, which was yesterday, they show that Biden would win if the vote were today, 352 electoral votes to 186 electoral votes. So this, again, we've talked about it before, and it's a snapshot in all of the caveats that apply. But this is an ugly, ugly map for Republicans, for Trump supporters, for anybody who works in supports White House, and for Republicans in Senate and in competitive

house races. This is sort of five alarms here. Andrew, I talked to a Republican political consultant who has a Senate race or two on the map this time. He said the chances of Republicans keeping the Senate in 2020 less than than 15% in his mind. What is your handicap at this point? Oh, man. Well, I'm bad with math, so I'm not going to venture a number. But I do think it's interesting to me how I think a lot of Republicans internalized the lessons of the 2018 election as, oh, this, you know, we can do fine here.

We can, we can be, you know, Trump's very unpopular in a lot of places in the country. But we can make it through a Trump election and, you know, do fine in the Senate. And it was just sort of like one more seeming data point in, you know, the long list of data points that the normal rules of politics don't apply to Donald Trump. But the Senate map was incredibly favorable to Republicans in 2018, and it is not that way this time around. It's a much worse uphill battle in terms of who's just which third of the Senate is defending their seats.

I would not be, I find, I take no issue with the math of the consultant you're referring to. It's going to be, it's going to be tricky. I mean, obviously the fact that Trump is explicitly on the ballot this time doesn't exactly help in a lot of these places. David, Jeff Sessions, lost his primary last night and Trump had endorsed Tuberville in Alabama. He endorsed Ronnie Jackson. Trump endorsements are actually doing very well in Republican primary. still. Yeah, I mean, Trump is still very popular amongst Republicans.

I mean, he, and it makes sense that he would be because he essentially orientes presidency towards his base. I mean, this is sort of the most base fan service presidency I've ever seen in my life. And so, yeah, now the problem is you cannot become president of the United States entirely on the strength of the base, especially when your opponent isn't Hillary Clinton. So, yeah, that doesn't really surprise me at all. I mean, look, Trump made Jeff Sessions a hate object after he recused himself from the Russia investigation. I mean, he was relentless, just absolutely relentless.

And he was running against, in Sessions was running against an opponent who, quite frankly, I mean, Alabamaans had no reason to dislike Tommy Tuberville. I mean, I guess Alabama fans had some reason to dislike Tommy Tuberville. And that might make some sense in the abstract, but correct me if I'm wrong, isn't Sessions also an Auburn grad? Not an Auburn grad, but he is an Auburn fan. So, you know, that canceled that out right there. But yeah, I mean, when Trump made him a hate object and Trump, and this is a red, red, red, red state, and Trump has been engaging in an awful lot of fan service to his base for years and years, it makes, it should surprise absolutely no one that, Trump is still popular with Republicans, especially in an atmosphere of negative polarization, especially, you know, in the face of the hostility from the left towards Trump, all of that makes a ton of sense. It doesn't make a ton of sense as a strategy to be reelected as president

of the United States. And I do think there is one important thing about this sort of fan service for the base that is worth explaining its significance. There's, for years, activists on issues are used to being frustrated with their president in power because they will have an agenda of A, B, C, D, E, and F that they want, and they've worked, and they've worked for their president to make that, to get a president in power and to enact their agenda. And then the president gets in power

after they worked their fingers to the bone, and he says, I'm not going to A through F, I'm going A through B. Why? Because a president has one eye, not just on the base, but also another eye on bringing in, making the tent wide enough for the party to keep and maintain power. For a lot of these issues, Trump has come in and says, I'm going to do it all. I'll do it. I'll lose promise. I'll do it all for you. And for activists, this is like Christmas, except A, he doesn't really, truly have the power to do that. And B, that complete investment in the base is off putting to an awful lot of Americans. And so it creates this dynamic that is fan service, but it's alienating.

And it's in addition to the tweets is one of the reasons I think why not just the tweets, but his demeanor and his character and his public presentation, et cetera, that he's departed from this past practice of keeping one eye on assembling a coalition. and he's just narrowing down on his core. And absent the Black Swan event that we've talked about, that's just not going to be enough. We should point out, and this is sort of a nuance point,

that while it's true that he's had some success or pretty good success in his primary endorsements and that by playing to the base, as David suggests, He may be maintaining or increasing the intensity of support among his core. He is losing supporters sort of on the margins among Republicans, and it's one of the reasons that his public polling nationally and in these battleground states is slipping. He used to have pretty consistently numbers, support among Republicans in the low 90s.

We've seen polls with his support pretty regularly here for the last six, eight weeks, with numbers of his support among Republicans in the 80s, I think I saw one at 76%, 74%. There was a PRRI poll, I think, in early June that showed that reflected this slippage. So part of the reason that he's doing poorly is, you know, he's losing independence in much the way that we saw him and the Republicans do in 2018. but he's also losing, you know, what might have been marginal Republicans or reluctant Trump supporters from 2016. And he can't afford to lose him.

I mean, his base is not enough, as David says. And a quick break to hear from our sponsor, CarShield. Computer systems and cars are the new normal, from electronically controlled transmissions to touchscreen displays to dozens of sensors. But you can't fix any of these new features yourself. So when something breaks, it could cost a fortune. And now is not the time for expensive repairs.

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most today are French fries. So I want to get your take on the best fast food French fries in the country today. Andrew, we're going to start with you. Go to French fry. What do you go for? In a vacuum, the best fast food French fry is the five guys French fry, just purely based on the fry itself. False. Do you do the regular fry? Do you do the extra crispy? I do the regular fries there. Some of my friends like the Cajun. Cajun's fine. I like the regular. When it comes to best fry as paired with the meal, best

fry that's suited for the full experience, it's in and out. Wow. Andrew did not have that question in advance, but I felt like really stated with authority exactly what his feelings were. He stated some fake news with authority. Sorry, no, exactly what the truth is. None of us had the question in advance, which is too bad because you might have done some studying

and come up with the right answers if he had. Actually, I changed my mind. The best fry, sorry to do that. Sorry to catch you off. The best fry suited for the meal is Chick-fil-A's. Wait a second. There's a total change between in-and-out and Chick-fil-A. take back everything I said about Andrew's decisiveness. David, we're now to you. Andrew loses.

You know, I thought, I thought this was supposed to be the home of fact-based reporting and analysis. The obvious correct answer to this is the hot McDonald's fry. Correct. The hot McDonald's fry. Once it's not hot anymore, it's second tier at best, but the hot, the piping hot McDonald's fry is still the best. It's the peak of the model. Steve. So it's in the discussion. So there are three. The answer is there are three. The McDonald's hot fry, I think the distinction that David is making is important. It is, it's not good if it's 15 minutes old or if they serve it to you and it's not sort of piping hot. It's also not good if it's not overly salted. Correct. If it's unsalted or lightly salted, throw it away. But that's

true of all fries. So the top three are Chick-fil-A, again, must be salty. Cannot be undercooked either, which they do sometimes, have to be crispy, the McDonald's fries if they're heavily salted and hot, and the Arby's Curly Fry, which is a, it's an outsider, but it should be in the discussion. In particular, because of the two sauces you can use both the horsy sauce and the Arby's sauce, especially if you combine them for the dipping with that flavor that you get on the Arby's, on the Arby's Curly Fry. I mean, it is, it's, it's in the discussion, probably not the top, but it's definitely in the top three.

The Arby fry. No, no, no. The moderator gets to speak. So first of all, the Chick-fil-A fries are not good because there is too high a percentage where they are either undercooked or undersulted, which makes it not worth even the risk for me.

The McDonald's fry is a good, I mean, yes, if I'm on a road trip, I'm stopping for the McDonald's fries and just hoping that they're hot, But the real treat that y'all missed are the Wendy's fries with the frosty dipped into the chocolate frosty. Pretty good. What? Yeah.

Pretty good. What? Mixing your frosty with you? No, that's an abomination. Wait, Steve, you don't do that. What's wrong with you? You're wrong. No, it's wrong.

You don't want your sweet mixed up with that. But I think you guys are all juggling. You're juggling like several different things because you're making all these points about how different fries are better or worse. certain conditions. And while I agree the McDonald's fry is immaculate at that exact vanishingly small moment right after you get them out of the bag, that's completely divorced from the human experience of eating them where you get maybe two or three good ones in there, which is why, again, I come back to the five guys fry, which is the, as far as human experience of a meal is concerned, you're never going to get a bad french fry out of five guys and you can eat them

until they are cold and soggy and they're still very delicious. That is some, no, number one, I just want to go on record as saying, that the Arby's curly fry is the abomination that causes desolation as foretold in the book of Daniel and that the five guys is way, the proportion of, and I love me as a five guys burger,

but the proportion of the fries are just downright soggy is unacceptable. So, David, I have a tip for you. This is what I, when I was pregnant, I made Scott get us five guys pretty frequently. And he was sent with very, specific instructions to tell them to overcook the french fries and you just say like extra

crispy and they'll cook them a little longer and it makes a world of difference because i think that the regular five guys french fries are mediocre at best but when scott brings back the extra crispy french fries first of all also you like just you know you order a small but they fill your whole bag with french fries so also your your value per fry is fantastic um but let try that david go and order the extra crispy that's very good it's the only way to get your wings, too. Whenever you order wings, I mean, we're pretty much now at the point where you have to say, I don't do the single extra crispy. I do the extra, extra crispy because otherwise there's a reasonably high chance that you're going to get some of those rubber wings that are

basically inedible or you've got to send them back. And I hate sending food back. It's just bad form. But the extra, extra crispy. That's a good tip. I did not know this about the fries. That's just at five guys or does that apply more universally? I don't know. I've only done it at five guys. I mean, maybe we should experiment. Maybe that's our next. Yeah, reporting. Yep. Do an explainer on fries.

You heard it here first. Our assignment editor just assigned us to go eat a lot of French fries, and I am down for that. Thank you so much for joining us today. We look forward to talking to you next week. Make sure to subscribe. Shoot us an email if you've got any complaints or leave us a review on wherever you're getting your podcast these days.

Thanks again. You know what I'm going to be. Thank you.