The Dispatch Podcast - General Milley and Trump's Final Days

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa have a new book coming out that is full of more scandals from the Trump era, most notably one involving Gen. Mark Milley possibly going around the chain of command in the final days of the Trump administration. Before that discussion, the gang discusses the legality and politics of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate. Plus, a potpourri of topics pertaining to the GOP and what to make of the California recall election. Show Notes: -Excerpts from Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa -Reporting from Jennifer Griffin -More excerpts from Peril -Scott Lincicome’s latest Capitolism newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, with Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes and David French. Lots to cover today. We will start with the vaccine mandate. Bob Woodward's new book and what Steve's calling GOP Popery and finally the California recall election. Let's dive right in, Jonah, the president's vaccine mandate. Yes, so on the eve of the 9-11 anniversary, the President of the United States came out with his six-point plan, had a lot of different things in it, some of which are fairly uncontroversial. One thing is very, very uncontroversial, is very controversial, which is his mandate on, uh, Private businesses employing over 100 people to get vaccinated. And you can get out of it if you, some people are saying you should really think of it as a testing mandate rather than a vaccine mandate. And that the way to get out of the testing mandate is to get vaccinated.

We can talk about that. And if you want to go even deeper into the weeds, I highly recommend our niche legal podcast, advisory opinions. And also I had my friend Shannon Coffin, former DOJ official and White House lawyer person on, and we talk about it a good deal as well. But let's stick with the politics here. Sarah, some hard-hearted cynics, including yours truly, would argue that a major point of this whole initiative

was to simply change the subject from the Afghanistan narrative, particularly going into 9-11 weekend. Do you think that's fair? And regardless of whether you think it's fair, Do you think it had that effect anyway? No, and not really. So, first of all... Okay, so you're wrong, David?

In terms of turning the narrative, the White House was sending muffin baskets to the Texas State Legislature. They were the ones that really shifted the conversation from Afghanistan to the Texas bounty hunting abortion law. And, you know, in terms of the White House wanting to shift some of it itself,

look, COVID is a major news. event that has been a major news event through Afghanistan as well. And it's not like it's the thing that the president gets his highest marks on by any means. His approval rating on COVID has been flagging at times as well. So it would be weird if that was their overall strategy. Second, in terms of the politics of it, the effect of that, I think that the Republicans want this to be their next Obamacare fight, the one back from 2010, that Obamacare fight. that really put wind in the sales of the Tea Party, that brought Republicans from all parts of the spectrum together

to fight this thing called Obamacare. And I think that the White House could think to themselves that that maybe wasn't the worst thing in the world for them as well because they're looking at numbers that say that that spectrum that Republicans can reach with that message is just much smaller than the group that the White House can reach. You know, 75% of American adults are vaccinated. They're pointing to polling. Ron Clayne, the chief of staff, has been very keen on this polling that shows 60% of those polled said that they were in favor of a private vaccine mandates.

Look, I don't think this is Obamacare for a lot of reasons. But I do think it's important to remember the Obamacare fight wasn't we don't want people to get health care. it was this government overreach, this idea that there was no limit to the presidency if they could make you buy health insurance. In that way, I see some similarities, but I think the biggest difference that will not make this Obamacare at all is that you had everyone,

even those with health care who were concerned about losing their health care. This idea that there are plenty of Republicans who got the vaccine and who aren't in favor of vaccine mandates, fair enough. How strongly they're going to feel about that, though, I think very not that strongly. Okay, just quick pushback on that. Why I think you're partly wrong about that is that I think it's more like the Biden White House wants this to be like Obamacare, except for the reasons that you state, Obamacare wasn't a 70-30 issue in Obama's favor.

This is. And so his whole bringing on governors, I'm going to steamroll the governors. his we're losing patience with you seems to me it's a way for him to get to intensify his side of the culture war fight of the pandemic which is of the majority majority position in the pandemic uh you know right now um but we can we can we can debate this more off air wait i think that's what i said no but you said it wasn't intended to distract at all or change the narrative and i think it in large part it was that i think you can't you make this You make an announcement on September 10 going into the weekend where we're going to commemorate

the 20th anniversary of 9-11 as we've just handed the country to the people who basically sponsored 9-11 and also announce that you're not going to give any meaningful remarks because you don't want to talk about any of that stuff. You want to have all this other stuff going. And you phrase your pitch about the vaccine mandate in the most, in the, maybe not in the most, the most trollish way possible, but in a way that seems designed to troll and elicit the response that they got. And it seems to me it's very reminiscent to the way Bill Clinton turned the Oklahoma city bombing into a 70-30 thing. It was great for the Rush Limbaugh crowd, and it was great for Bill Clinton, not great for the country. But anyway, Steve, where do you come down on all this?

Yeah, I'm more with Sarah than with you. I mean, I think it's entirely possible that for tactical reasons they decided that they wanted to make this announcement on September 10th that they thought that it might distract from the anniversary. But I think we're seeing something else from Biden here. And I think it may tell us something about the way that he governs. And it is related to Afghanistan. If you look at what he did in Afghanistan, his position in effect was from the beginning, and we're getting all of this new reporting about the discussions that were taking place behind the scenes with respect to Afghanistan. You had repeatedly people coming to Biden saying don't, don't withdraw for this reason, don't withdraw for this reason, this is going to be messy,

don't do this, you know, you can't do what you want to do. And Biden effectively said throughout all of those debates, we are going to get out and I don't care what the short-term consequences are because I believe it's the right thing to do and the American people are with me. I think that's what we're looking at with the vaccine mandates. You've got Biden, in effect, saying, I don't care what the messy short term is. I don't care if this causes Republicans to be angry with me. I don't care if it even makes some Democrats uneasy. I need to end the problems associated with this pandemic. The economy depends on it. My reelection probably depends on it. The midterms might depend on it. And I think this is what I need to do to have that effect, to bring this to an end.

So I'm going to do it and suffer all the consequences that I might. But in his mind, and I think in the mind of the people advising him, certainly as political advisors, they look at those same numbers and they say, this is more popular than people might have expected it to be so we can both do in their minds the right thing and reap some political benefit for it, however messy the interim fighting might be. All right. So, I mean, it's fascinating, the unanimity of wrongness here. But David, a lot of our friends on, I mean, we're not going to get deep in the legal weeds,

but a lot of our friends on the right, including some of our former colleagues, seem very, very confident that this is just simply unconstitutional, going to have a lot of trouble in the courts, and that, and there seems to be this sort of unanimity of wrongness,

I would argue, among conservatives generally, that this is like a slam duck obvious not going to survive in the courts. And I know that you guys don't see it that way. I don't see it that way. But what, what,

what are we missing that so many conservatives have, are they in a bubble or are we just not seeing things clearly? I mean, what, where is this disconnect coming from? Well, I mean, I think the answer, I think the answer is they're in a very online bubble and they're in a very online bubble both legally and politically. And so, you know, first on the legal side of this, there was an immediate, this is completely tyrannically unconstitutional reaction from a ton of people who we all knew they didn't know anything about the Administrative Procedures Act, they didn't know anything about OSHA at all. They may have barely even heard of these things. And yet it was immediately declared to be tyrannical and unconstitutional right off the bat instantaneously.

I mean, some people even, you know, using the language of insurrection to, to, and calling this, you know, that they're, you know, essentially saying that if they're making war on us, we got to make war back. I mean, this crazy stuff. And then you dove into the law and, oh, yeah, there's this thing called OSHA and it's really broad and it's already promulgated emergency temporary standards dealing with COVID-19. And, Um, yeah, okay. So it looks like if you're going to say it's unconstitutional, essentially what you're going to be arguing is not from existing precedent so much as saying, well, the court that exists right now, the nine justices that exist right now, have philosophies incompatible, a majority have philosophies incompatible with the existing precedent. And there are various trends moving that would call this into question, which is a completely legitimate argument, and that actually might be right. It actually might be the case that when this comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, there'll be five, maybe six justices who will say

this is too much of a delegation or under the reading of the ETS standards, this is just too far. That's entirely possible. But the reality is that under existing precedent, this is not a legal slam dunk at all in any way. And in fact, I would say probably given John, Roberts's pandemic era um jurisprudence that you've probably probably got four if you're Biden you probably feel pretty confident about four votes you feel pretty confident um and with another two I would say easily up for grabs now so that I don't think it's a legal slam dunk at all those of us who have decried the expansion

the administration state administrative state for decades are sort of saying yeah this this is a huge delegation. This is what we've been talking about for years and years and years. Politically, I also think that this is showing how the GOP is, the political wing of the GOP is just way too online. This idea that this was immediately going to be some sort of political loser for Biden, and it locked in instantly. And you saw that sort of sense of it lock in instantly. Oh, now you've given us this rallying cry. When I'm sitting here in If you look at the New York Times map, Tennessee right now is the darkest colored state in America for Delta variant. In other words, more cases per million right here than anywhere in the whole freaking country.

And I can tell you, my Republican neighborhood is very split about vaccines and mandates. People are sick of it. The people who have been, a lot of the people who have been vaccinated are sick of the anti-vaccine movement. They are sick of vaccine reluctance. It is tearing apart their families. They are burying people. I had a very good friend of mine that I've known for 30 years, though no longer, 35 years, not political guy, but very, very much Republican.

He's just pleading with people. He never is on Facebook politically pleading with people because he went to two funerals on Saturday of unvaccinated people. And this is what's happening in the real world. think that a lot of these super online, young, Republican, you know, conservative, right-winging activists are so online, they're not getting that. I do think last quick point here, I'm not going to, I'll never know the law as well as David and Sarah, but I do think that there, it's, it's important to make that distinction

between the online sort of political types and then the serious constitutional types who have offered, I think what, to me at least, are compelling arguments. against this, Ilya Shapiro, Walter Olson, Jonathan Adler, our Scott Lincolm in his capitalism newsletter that we're going to publish later today reviews some of their arguments and then gets into the political arguments as well. It's a very good newsletter. We should link it. On that front, I just think there is a thing going on on the right that's confusing is an ought.

Like, it ought to be, the argument that it ought to be unconstitutional, I can get behind to a certainly coming from an executive branch agency, not even an executive order and certainly not passed by Congress, but is, in terms of how will the courts actually interpret it or where is the president's like, it's just much grayer. And we can lament that, but that doesn't mean it isn't what it is, you know. Yeah, I think that's a great distinction, Jonah. I agree on the ought question. I agree, you know, if you're looking at the Ilya, Ilya's argument, he makes a very good argument. There's been some really good arguments made in the conservative legal space on the

ought, that this is just too far for an OSHA ETS. In fact, you know, Sarah made that argument in AO. It's too far for an OSHA ETS. Is it too far for a rule and comment rulemaking? But I'm with them on the ought. It's just the question is the is. And the confidence on the is, I think, is. a little misplaced.

I mean, they may, they may be right, they may be right, but this confidence that it's a layup, that it's a slam dunk on constitutionality, I think that that's that confidence, so it's misplaced. Well, two things. One, I think that like the eviction moratorium, the Biden administration sees this as a win-win, regardless of whether it gets struck down.

They don't lose because they tried it, and if the courts don't do it, then it's the conservative courts problem. and that's what the eviction moratorium was. So I think they probably didn't spend a whole lot of time even thinking that much about it. Similar, by the way, to the Texas folks on that abortion bounty hunting law.

Kind of a win-win if it gets struck down for them, in some respects at least. But, you know, it also is important to remember that in terms of OSHA's emergency powers, they have only used them nine times in history, six times it was litigated, and five out of those, six times, it was struck down. So they are the New York Jets of litigants here. So just like in terms of

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because this was broken in the Washington Post with Woodward and Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, just read the first paragraph or so. Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country's top military officer was so, fearful that the president's actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict. And a pair of secret phone calls, Mark Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff assured his Chinese counterpart, Lee Zhao Xing, of the People's Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike. One call took place on October 30th, four days before the

election, the other one on January 8th, two days after the capital siege. The first call was prompted. Now, this is a really key sentence. The first call was prompted by Millie's review of intelligence suggesting the Chinese believe the United States was preparing to attack. Now, there's also some evidence that Millie had spoken to commanders to reaffirm that he needed to have some say if there was a nuclear launch order given. This is, needless to say, caused a lot of people to call, Mark Millie a traitor, what was your reaction, Steve?

You know, you're right. The initial reaction to the article was that Mark Millie's a traitor. He was sharing secrets with the Chinese. He was working against his boss, jumping the chain of command, and committed, you know, this horrible offense. And I will say, I think traitor or treason in that language is a bit strong, and I know, David, you can walk through the particulars, why that's not exactly accurate. But I will say I share the concerns voiced by some of those people. It is potentially very problematic if you have senior uniform military leaders making decisions at odds with the public servants elected.

and who serve as their commanders. This is obviously a unique set of circumstances. It wasn't just Mark Millie who saw Donald Trump as a potential threat. There's a new Axios piece out today that Defense Secretary Mark Esper shared these concerns. We know from talking to other senior Trump administration officials, these are not never Trumpers, these are not Democrats, these are people that Donald Trump himself handpicked. to work with him on these issues, shared these concerns. Whether you're talking about John Bolton, as he laid out in his 6,700-page book, whether you're talking about James Mattis,

people were concerned, and people who worked closely with Trump in that election and post-election timeframe said he was even more unhinged than he had been before. So there was reason to be concerned. There has been some additional reporting about the meetings and the calls. however, which I think are relevant here and worth noting and might cast the discussions in somewhat of a different light. Jennifer Griffin from Fox News, who is really one of the best national security reporters in the country, one of the best best reporters in the country, reached out and she had some reporting that pushed back on the Trump world claims that

Millie has to resign. You had Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida and a ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee saying Millie should resign. You had this kind of official outrage from a lot of Republicans. And Jennifer did some additional reporting and said that these calls were not quite the secretive calls that the Woodward book made it sound as if they were. She wrote, I am told this is not true that this one-on-one call and that, this Millie was actually escalating the risks of Chinese miscalculation. Jennifer continues, there were 15 people on the video teleconference calls, including a representative of the State Department and the readout and notes from Millie's two calls with this Chinese counterpart were shared with the intelligence community and the interagency process. That is very, very, very different than a one-on-one call from these two military leaders.

of no way man that sounds like true of adversaries um if that if jennifer's reporting is accurate and i trust her reporting uh on on everything um i think that really changes how we ought to understand this and you know it raises questions about whether bob woodward and bob coston knew that this was you know in effect what they call a civitz a video teleconference call where there are a bunch of people doing it. It doesn't make as good a story, a splash, if it's a big conference call. And Millie has sort of formal language trying to reassure our adversaries. But it's more accurate if Jennifer is right. And I think that's the proper way to understand what's unfolded. I think that additional reporting, it actually jumps almost straight to some thoughts that I was

going to have about it. But one of the things I'm really curious about is, is, you know, one of the things I try to do, Sarah, is follow about equal number of people on the right and on the left. And the reaction on most on the right was almost unanimous. This was Millie way overstepping. It was not unanimous on the left side. I thought it was going to be much more. This was further evidence that Donald Trump was completely and totally and utterly deranged, and we should never do that again. But there was actually some alarm raised, at least based on the initial Woodward account from some thoughtful folks on the other side of the aisle, that this was too much. What was your

reaction to it? So let me give my reaction to what I think is the not full story, which is the Woodward version, and then to the fuller, more realistic, almost certainly more accurate story. So on the not real story, I think it's, I think I disagree with everything Steve said. I think really, I don't care if he's concerned. I don't care if he thinks World War III is about to start. Honestly, I don't care that Mark Esper shared his concern. There is a procedure in the Constitution for this. It is the 25th Amendment.

You don't go one off. Because just because you think it's a unique situation, I assure you that almost everyone at some time or another disagrees with the president. thinks it's really, really important what their opinion is and thinks it's a totally unique situation that has never happened before in American history. And I think that some of the worst decisions made in American history happened very much

because the person who makes them thinks that it is a wholly unique situation in history. Either go convince cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment, which it sounds like maybe they had a good reason to do or follow the damn chain of command or don't follow the chain of command and resign. but this was not one of the options. And if that version is for some reason true, which again,

I don't actually think it is. I actually do think Biden should fire him. Okay, now let's get to what actually happened. That was a good, a good rant on a probably fictional series of events. Okay. Yes. So it makes way more sense when we're getting more reporting on this, that yes, the Chinese, they had intelligence that the Chinese were very much misreading a situation and that Millie, in consultation with a whole lot of other people, did the thing that it's his job to do, which is be like, hey, guys, I think you don't have this quite right. We have no plans to attack you. That's not going to happen. And then sent that out widely, as is the general policy to do. It is not that I think that every single thing that General Millie says somehow needs

to be run by the president and approved by him. That's not what a civilian chain of command means. It's that he can't do it for the purpose of undermining the President United States because he thinks the president is about to attack China or something and he thinks this is like a way to get his own foreign policy. If the president wants to attack China and you think that's a really bad idea. Again, you have two options, resign or invoke the 25th Amendment. You don't get to have your own foreign policy, even if you're right that it's a really bad idea because we didn't elect you. But I don't think that's what happened at all. And if that version is correct, this reminds me so much of some of the reporting during the Trump years.

And look, I think Bob Costa, for instance, is a very careful reporter. I'm very surprised. that if he knew the full story, he would have put this in a book. But what I saw during the Trump years as someone who knew what the actual version of events was, was that they were willing to believe things that were more sensational because it was Trump and therefore it felt right and it felt true.

And that, you know, sort of what was Michael Wolf said? Like, it's not that it's true, it's that it feels true or something like that. like e giving nuance took away from the feeling of accuracy of how unhinged things were when in fact like things were totally unhinged in a very controlled bureaucratic way where the institutions were still functioning so I find it frustrating that we have this initial narrative to begin with I find it totally reasonable the second narrative that's seems more accurate. And I really, really hoped that we had learned something from four years

of reporting during the Trump years to lower the temperature, take extra time. If something sounds crazy, maybe it's not quite right. One last note on this. There has also been some conversation that Millie has been the source for a lot of this stuff, that he was leaking a lot, that he's the source for a lot of these books, even on stories about himself. I do find that to be troubling. if there's any evidence for that. And, of course, the problem is it's always pretty hard to find who the leaks are as someone who, again, has been tasked with that job.

Yeah, I am. So, Jonah, when I first read this, I had some of the same reaction when I saw people immediately racing to the word traitor, which, of course, even if the Woodward version is the version, that's not treason under the law. I was kind of mentally counting down how long it would take Josh Mandel to Twitter,

out traitor. And it was, I think, about 3.1 seconds. I can't, I don't know the exact, the exact number. But I had some thoughts immediately that I don't think this is the whole story because what's, what's our context here? Because I think a lot of people don't realize that we have bilateral communications with military rivals. And that's been kind of a part of American, the way we keep the peace in.

volatile situations. And one area where I'm thinking about this is we had extensive military to military communications with the Russians in Syria, for example. And so I had a couple of thoughts. Wait a minute. Was this, was this extraordinary, truly extraordinary, quote, secret bilateral communication? Or is this part of the routine that we have established with the Chinese to try to prevent accidental conflict? I mean, this is something that when you're dealing with nuclear armed powers. We have processes in place that are designed to diffuse crises before they can start, especially in times of heightened tensions. And so I had this thought, wait a minute, are we just utterly incapable anymore of taking a beat to see what the story is? Because now

hasn't it just totally been locked in? Hasn't it just been locked in that Millie went rogue? Yeah, so, I mean, first of all, you know, if hypocrisy were helium, we'd all have funny voices and some people would just float away because it is, there's so much annoying about all of this. Many of the, many of the loudest voices screaming treason are the same people who routinely would say, well, that's, you know, these are anonymous stories. Why should we believe them? It's fake news. But the second there's a narrative that they like, they're like, oh, it's gospel, right? Also, part of the problem is Washington's longstanding Bob Woodward addiction,

where we, you know, the Washington Post, like he is a guy who cornered, who created the industry of reporters getting important news and hoarding it like Dragons Gold for months or years so they could come out with a book about it rather than actually what's it called

report it in newspapers and and so we're going to talk a little bit more about the politics stuff in here I'll make the larger point about how much I don't trust him as a narrator but it seems to me

I disagree a little bit with Sarah in that this whole thing is so ambiguous and so unreliable that it almost lends itself to, well, if he did the terrible things behind door A,

then of course he should be fired or resign. But it's like Roshaman, right? Or what he did made total sense. If you take it on faith that Millie actually thought Trump was truly coming unglued. The idea of like reaching out to the Chinese and saying, whoa, whoa,

we're going to see some crazy stuff in the next couple of days. don't worry, doesn't bother me enormously. But it turns out that he didn't even quite do that. And like the one thing he did kind of the quote that I think draws that triggered a lot of people was that he said, if we do attack, I'll give you a heads up, which would be treason. But saying you'll do that is not treason. Saying you'll do that is just reassurance, which is a different thing.

And, but I think one of the things that this really, really, really, hammers home is how the instant responses on Twitter and social media and cable news are really bad and not bad just for the country, but bad for people like us. Because I deliberately held off saying anything about this

for about 24 hours because I just didn't know what to make of it. We had a little editorial conversation about it and I was like, on the one hand this, on the other hand, that. And I don't know. And I could easily have seen myself coming out and saying, oh my gosh, this is absolutely outrageous, Millie must go, or saying, oh, my gosh, this is absolutely outrageous. He's not guilty of treason.

He did a great thing, depending on the news trickle we had at any given moment. And I'm really glad I didn't do either, because it turns out both positions are probably wrong. But when you get yourself locked into a position, it's all the more difficult to sort of then break with the, you know, it's like being next to a bunch of dudes in a mob carrying torches about to storm the castle and say, hey, wait a second, maybe, you know, maybe you guys

slow down, slow down. You know, it's like, it's much more difficult then than to not join the mob in the first place at all. You always join the mob later, but it's very difficult if you join the mob to then exit the mob without them turning the torches on you. And I think that dynamic is very, tells us a lot about a lot of how these issues play out. You know, a couple things here, I think, about history that really should matter. One of the things that intrigued me was what, what Intel was Millie C?

like what what intel was he seeing this was happening at the same time of a military exercise and my mind immediately went to able archer 83 which was one of the closest points that we ever came to war with the soviet union we just didn't know it that the we were engaging in a unusually large exercise in 1983 at the height of cold war tensions and the soviets were one of the highest states of alert they ever went into in the entire cold war i mean we were on a hair we were on the hair trigger and didn't even realize it. And so understanding these kinds of things in hindsight has led to better procedures. So what was he seeing that made him that alarmed?

What was he seeing that made him? And if he was overly alarmed, that goes to his judgment. It could have been he was properly alarmed by what he was seeing in the intel. And so that's something we really, really don't know. The other thing is, just real quick. And I put this in my newsletter. American history is wild, and one of the wildest parts of American history is in October 1973 at the height of the Yom Kippur War when Israel, there was a brief ceasefire. Israel had

encircled an Egyptian army. Israel broke the ceasefire, attacking that Egyptian army. The Soviets were going to intervene into the war. There were signs they were bringing nuclear weapons into the theater of operations. Nixon, at this critical moment in world history, was drunk. completely incapacitated by his obsession with Watergate. So Henry Kissinger and like four other dudes took over American foreign and military policy, raised our nuclear alert level, surged ships in the Mediterranean, all on their own authority to try to intervene to deter the Soviets from intervening in the Amkapur War, and everyone backed off and we lived and it was okay.

But that's wild. That's take this milly situation time. a thousand. We had a drunk president unable to respond to a potentially catastrophic nuclear confrontation during an active war in the Middle East. And that's something that actually happened. That's wild to think about. Imagine that in age of Twitter. Leonard Garment used to tell this story about how Leonard Garman, who was the White House counsel for Reagan, for Nixon, how Nixon would go into these flights of rage and yell at Henry Kissinger, you know, Henry, Henry, I want you to carpet bomb North Vietnam tomorrow.

Carpet bomb. I don't, I want to, you know, and Kissinger would say, yes, Mr. President. Of course, Mr. President. And he said, Henry, I'm not joking this time. I'm serious. I want to wake up and I want to see the front page of Washington Post. And I want to say, I want to hear it say North, North Vietnam turn into a parking lot. Completely bombed.

And Kissinger would say, yes, Mr. President. Of course, Mr. President. And then nothing would happen. And I think part of the problem with Nixon, or part of the benefit of Nixon, is that after 30 years in public life, the people around him knew when he was just blowing off BS and when he was serious, which is why, you know, like, never actually bombed the Brooking institution, which is an AI guy, I'm kind of torn about. But Trump reassured nobody about. that kind of stuff because he often the people who would talk him out of those kinds of things or slow walk him on those kinds of things or be circuit breakers against those kinds of things he would replace with yes men and so i mean i don't know what the real story is i'm skeptical of

everybody it does seem to me that milly probably is not the best guy for this job um but um i could also see him being completely rattled by what he was seeing because trump Trump never gave any indication to people that he had those kinds of, you know, that he was just blowing off steam, that he was kind of like, he didn't reassure people he wasn't crazy in the way that Nixon could. All right. Let's move on to other parts of the Woodward book and other things, as Steve has called it, GOP, Popery.

Yeah, I thought it was worth just taking a beat and talking, you know, one of the things that That is, I think, the most interesting and urgent pressing question in American politics today is the enduring impact of Donald Trump on the Republican Party and how it operates and how people relate to him, what his political future is, what the future of the party is with or without him. And there were, I thought, a number of different stories this past week, a couple of them that come out of this Woodward book that might shed some light on that or at least can give us something to talk about. that could help us understand this. So first, I'm going right back to Sarah. There's reporting in this book that Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy have a frostier relationship behind the scenes than they appear to have in public. McCarthy has repeatedly prostrated himself before Trump.

and has been sort of the picture of servility at virtually every moment of the past several years. And the moments in which he hasn't assumed that posture have been notable precisely because they're so at odds with the way that he's conducted himself. One of those moments came after the January 6th riots at the Capitol when McCarthy perhaps tricked by whatever is left of his conscience, denounced Trump, criticized Trump for his role in those

attacks only to quickly walk away from those things and visit Mara Lago in search of Trump's favor once again. Well, Trump doesn't like this, apparently. And he is quoted in this Woodward book saying the following about McCarthy. This guy called me every single day, tended to be my best friend, and then he effed me. He's not a good guy. I wonder, Sarah, if what your reaction is to that, and let me add a second question. It seems to me there are two conversations taking place in Washington about Kevin McCarthy in his future. The conventional wisdom has it that he is a shoe in to be speaker, that he remains the popular leader of the House Republicans, and should Republicans prevail, as most people expect them to do in November of

2022, McCarthy will be the Speaker of the House. There is another, I think, growing sense that that's not going to happen, that McCarthy has many, many, right now quiet detractors in the House of Representatives, and one very, very big detractor who's sorts of coming out in this Woodward book in Donald Trump and that Donald Trump is likely to lean on House Republicans to block Kevin McCarthy from ever being speaker, which has been the goal of his career. So what do you think about this Trump McCarthy dynamic now and this passage that I just read from the Woodward book? And what are the implications for Kevin McCarthy's future? First of all, I don't know who else was surprised to see the actual F bomb in the morning dispatch today, but I was like, did it carry

An E rating? Yeah. What, Steve? Yeah, so you're calling me out. I did not get up for the 5 a.m. edit this morning. That's unusual. It probably would have been blocked out if I had. Interesting.

Interesting. Well, okay, back to the substance here. It's like Steve threw Declan and those guys under the bus, but he like held on to them and went. under the bus with them. It was it to move. No, you know what? Actually, no, I appreciate that.

Let me clarify lest I be misunderstood or misrepresented by somebody trying to cause trouble. What? I think what would probably happen is people wrote it up, assuming that the editors would take it out and that I would be the one because I'm the most uptight about these things. And I wasn't uptight enough. I didn't see it. So actually, maybe this is a good metaphor. Because I think that something that Donald Trump is very effective at,

I don't, Jonah no doubt knows the German word for this. But the term that we use in discourse is an Overton window where if you say something really crazy on your side of the argument way over there, you can move the acceptable standards of belief and opinion to something closer to your side, not to the crazy, but, you know, a couple notches over. there is something about how Donald Trump has interpersonal relationships that's sort of similar to that. So you know Kevin McCarthy maybe isn't being as friendly as you want him to be. So you say he's a complete out-and-out traitor, that mother-effer, blah, blah, blah. You move that

relationship window way over. And the result for a lot of people in Donald Trump's life, and certainly in Washington has been that they move a little bit closer to doing what he wants because of that. And then they think they can tell themselves that, like, well, they're not doing the crazy stuff that he's wanted. They're just, you know, they're having to placate him a little, not all the way. So that's all to say that I think in the end that Donald Trump's feelings towards Kevin McCarthy, maybe aren't as far off as the book would portray them, and that you could see almost a Ben Sass-esque recovery period from both McCarthy and Trump when it comes to the speakership race. I don't know how likely that is. I just have continued to see this happen

where Trump will say someone is, you know, awful and the worst. And then when push comes to shove, both of them meet somewhere in the middle of that and their besties again for the time that it's relevant. The other thing I would add is for all the reasons that we just said that the Millie stuff wasn't quite right and there was actually a lot more to it, I don't know why we would believe other things that are anonymously sourced in that book. No doubt Donald Trump will come out and just tweet something soon enough, but still. Not tweet, not tweet. Sorry, you're right. You're right. Sorry, a statement that is then put on Twitter. A statement from the former president. Yeah, I think that's a fair point about taking all of us

with a grain of salt. I mean, Woodward has a certain way of doing his books. He gives people the option to talk on deep background or forces them in many cases to talk on deep backgrounds so that they talk to him. I'd say, you know, his books over the years have certainly proven more accurate than not, but the points where his narratives have been questioned, they've been questioned sometimes pretty effectively. And he's sort of notorious for punishing people who don't cooperate with him on his books. Trump did not talk to him for this book, I believe. So I'm sure that that may have been a factor. Speaking of people who did not cooperate with, would on the book, Mike Pence.

David, there's an unflattering depiction of Mike Pence as it relates to January 6th in the events that took place both before and on that day. I'd say the common understanding of what Pence did was that he withstood pressure from Donald Trump and sort of courageously stared down Trump when Trump told him to block the election and to refuse to certify it. And Pence was the good guy, said he couldn't do it. And the country's much, much better for it, an actual moment of a real political courage. I don't think this story necessarily makes that common understanding untrue. It complicates it, though. The reporting in the Woodward-Costa book is that Pence, before he did, everything I'd just described.

sought counsel from a number of people, including former Vice President Dan Quayle, also like Pence from Indiana, by saying, in effect, hey, I want another way out. What kind of maneuver room do I have looking to appease Donald Trump rather than do what Pence actually did? Do you, does that ring true to you, David? And if so, what does that tell us about Pence and the possibility that he'll be a strong presidential candidate in 2024 as a bridge between MAGA World and traditional movement conservatism? Well, I mean, I have always been a little bit skeptical of the for such a time as this narrative around Mike Pence on January 6th that he was just sort of lying in wait to save the Republic at the last possible moment. But I'm also a little

skeptical of this quail thing because I could easily imagine there there's imagine we have a call a call and you know you're going to be under intense pressure from the president brutal pressure from the president will be thrown under the bus spend the rest of your life maybe having to have additional security around your family because well you're going to have it anyway because of the secret service but you're going to be looking over your shoulder maybe more than the normal former vice president if you defy this president and you're trying to just batten down the hatches and make sure that there is when you're going to confront the president and his followers that there's no wiggle room here that you're doing what you absolutely have to do and there's a there's

a narrative that says hey i'm i'm calling to confirm no wiggle room here uh which could be reported as you know he was he was dotting the eyes and crossing the t's or it could be reported as he was trying to figure out if he had wiggle room here to to wiggle um so i don't know i mean i think there's you know one of the things that i i regret that we're not going to have an independent january six commission because there's just so much surrounding the event events leading up to january sixth immediately after january six that i think the american people need to know about i mean this is connected to the milly stuff how crazy were things in the white house how unhinged was the president? Why would, is the current sitting chairman of the joint chiefs too skittish?

Or was he properly skittish? How resolute was Mike Pence really? How close did we come to him trying something else? All of these things are questions that I think the American people need answers to. And unfortunately, it's just coming out and drips and drabs and based on who's talked to Bob Woodward and how Bob Woodward interprets what he's been told. It's just a, it's a terrible way to figure out history in real time. Well, then we'll move away from the Bob Woodward book, having now discussed it for a little while. Let's Jonah jump onto something that we can look at for certain and perhaps enhance our understanding of the current Republican Party. George W. Bush gave a speech on September 11th in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at the Memorial Service,

20th anniversary of Memorial Service there. And I thought the speech was very good. I thought it was very well delivered. Vast majority of it was simply a remembrance of that day and an appreciation of the folks who died on September 11th and the folks on Flight 93 who help bring the plane down before the terrorists could do more damage. But there was one passage that has caused quite a stir. And it's this one. There's little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, and their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.

That passage generated interesting response, both from people I would consider to be Bush Republicans, Trump Republicans, and the left. What did you make of it? First of all, I thought the speech itself was probably the best bit of presidential rhetoric we've had in the last five years or so. I think that the passage that we're talking about, I started looking at it this morning to maybe write the G-File about it, and it's 74 words. And, you know, one word for every million voters Donald Trump got.

And I think it is really fascinating to me, that if you, if George W. Bush had given that speech at the 19th anniversary of 9-11. It would have been fairly obvious that he was talking about Antifa and the, and maybe some of the more ridiculous extremists out of the Black Lives Matter, rioters,

you know, were tearing down not just statues of Confederate figures, but also of abolitionists, you know, and those words would apply perfectly in that context. Um, some people might as they're also referring to the folks that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the neo-Nazi jack wads at, at Charlesville. Okay. That's fine too. Um, but because he said it on the 20th anniversary after January 6th, the immediate and universal assumption, which may be correct in his intent, but the immediate and universal assumption from both the sort of MSNBC left and the newsmax right. is that George W. Bush was talking about January 6th and even more broadly, just Trump supporters. And I find this to be one of the most ridiculous, you know, self-owns of the right in a really long time.

Because maybe it's because my training comes from 20 years at National Review. when racist jackwads say stuff our response was to say they don't speak for us and we fired people who went over the racial line

and we were attacked by races and anti-Semites my entire career as I was and all of a sudden it's like a memo went out saying that if you it's like

basically what is it love me love my right wing nut jobs that you cannot criticize that that almost immediately after the election that the the the 74 million people who voted for trump many of whom voted against joe biden are in are a hermetically sealed homogenous block of people and if anybody does evil things in there and you criticize it you're criticizing all of them it's popular front mentality and i think it is insane as a just as a political strategy no on never mind as moral logic to think in those

ways the i know lots of trump voters we all know lots of trump voters very few of them in my experience actually support what happened on january 6th they may not want to hear more about it that may be embarrassed about it but they're not like you know yeah i was all in on that but the political narrative that we're getting from a lot of people on the right is that if you hate those guys or if you criticize those guys it means you're criticizing rank and file Republican voters and what an insane

branding strategy that is if you're trying to win over voters in the middle or persuade people that you warrant the caricature or that you've moved on from Trump and I get why Trump is invested in this

I don't get why so much else of the Republican Party just doesn't seem to care how stupid this is. With MX Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability

and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com slash Yannex. All right. The recall election in California, we have 68% reporting. Gavin Newsom will remain governor of California. That's for sure. He currently has 64% of the vote. We are still expecting quite a bit more votes to be counted later today tomorrow. Who knows how long in this day and age? Turnout is looking very close to 2018, actually, and therefore won't be that far behind even really a presidential year. So, Steve, I'm going to start with you. Do we, like, does this matter? Did this tell us anything about midterms where the two parties are? Are Democrats way stronger? Is there more enthusiasm? Or is this,

California, it's special, and Larry Elder was the worst possible. Like, Larry Elder handed Republicans a 30-point loss. I think it's closer to the latter than the former. Although, I don't think Larry Elder was the reason Republicans lost. I think the fact that the Democrats outnumber Republicans in California, two to one, is the reason Republicans lost. I mean, this was a long shot to begin. with, it required Democrats sort of sleeping through this recall process.

Now, there were, I think, Democrats and independents who had become frustrated with Newsom, and there were lots of, I think, Newsom missteps, even people who would count themselves as progressive, I think grew frustrated by his hypocrisy on pandemic rules. By his, you know, by his sort of neglecting science, even as he claimed to embrace science, as he took some rather extreme steps in pandemic protection. So I think there was frustration there, and that was one of the reasons why the early polling suggested that this could be closer than it was. But ultimately, you know, I think this is not that complicated. Democrats outnumber Republicans. The Republican Party isn't really much of a thing.

You heard from people who were involved in the recounts involved in the campaigns, Republican consultants, activists, rank and file voters in California, who are frustrated with the Republican Party because it is such a blank show. Whatever else comes out of this, and I don't think much, it certainly doesn't change anyone's view that the Republican Party of California is badly, badly broken. Jonah, Gavin Newsom wakes up this morning with $24 million left in the bank to run for re-election should he choose to.

California, interestingly, similar to Texas and Virginia, a no-limits, full disclosure state on campaign finance, very unlike, by the way, the federal system, which is a whole whole conversation you and I should just kick everyone else off the pot and have some day. Compared to what elder and the pro recall people spent, he blew them out of the water and he had Joe Biden fly in, and he had the vice president, and he had Bernie Sanders cutting ads for him. Is Steve right that this was just sort of overwhelming force versus a recall effort that got four extra months to even get the signatures that they needed? I don't look I think it's perfectly fine to say that he lost that elder lost because

Republicans outnumbered Democrats two to one except for the problem that it was really close there for a while and it really looked like Newsom could lose there for a while which surprised me and I think at the very minimum the margin of Newsom's victory is attributable to the fact that Larry Elder wasn't a ridiculous candidate to field. I mean, I get why he was the frontrunner and all that kind of stuff. He had all the sorts of name ID. It's a very expensive state to campaign around,

but not just because I'm going to be a broken record, doesn't mean I'm not going to be a broken record. A strong, serious Republican Party would have done everything it could to clear the field to have a single opponent, make him a boring guy like this Kevin Falconer guy, who was the mayor of San Diego, and make it so like what what newsome did was he made the issue it's very much sort of like

how ted cruz beat back that challenge in texas the last time against what's his face the woke shiny pony guy um betto by saying this yeah saying this isn't about me this is about keeping texas red this is about texas values this is trying to this is keep you know blah blah blah because ted cruz was not popular in texas gabvin newsom was not popular in california and so he made about Donald Trump and Larry Elders talk radio stuff and all these kinds of things. And if the GOP had put up a boring milk toast kind of normal Republican, it would have made it much easier to keep the issue on why people don't like Gavin Newsom rather than turn it into this thing about running against Donald Trump and the GOP and January 6 and all that

kind of thing. And I think there is a lesson there for the Republican Party nationwide is that as long as you cater all your messaging to click-dady right-wing. talk radio, cable news, Twitter kind of stuff, the more you're going to make money, but be in the minority. And the way you expand your coalition is by not turning off people, but by attracting them, even with boredom. So, David, there's an argument that this actually will make the Democrats stronger in 2022.

They got to sort of run their field program test game with infinite money, though. And that, in fact, this will end up having not only not replaced the governor of California with a Republican, but make Democrats stronger heading into the midterms where the margins are going to be really close. We look at special elections so far. Only two have flipped.

In New Hampshire, one went Republican to Democrat. In Connecticut, one went Democrat to Republican. We were waiting for this recall to see what the margins would be, what the Latino vote turnout would be. It looks like that did tick down a little, but turnout ticked down, not who they voted for. and then we're waiting on Virginia

where it looks like again the Democrat will win so is the prediction of the House the Republicans taking back the House looking really bad today or about the same about the same maybe a little more shaky

but look I mean a lot's going to depend you know here we had and I think Jonah was right to zero in on Larry Elder here you have a situation where it wasn't just that Gavin Newsom was running against Republic and he was basically running against the talk radio right. I mean, in California, he's going to win that. You know, he's going to win that. And the extent to which, you know, one of the things just politically about the Biden vaccine mandate, what that's aiming at is he's aiming at the very online talk radio right, the very community

that has been proven to alienate a lot of suburban voters. There are different buckets of people right now in, you know, in the broader sort of more right-leaning coalition. And one of the pretty big buckets is, I'm sick of the crazies bucket. I'm sick of the furious constant anger bucket. And if the Democrats engage in policymaking and put up candidates who don't alienate those folks, and the very online right is dominating the discourse with this anti-vax nonsense and other things that are actually, you know, in rhetoric and actions that are actually costing people, their lives right now, then the Democrats to this key constituency are going to look better.

And, you know, I remember back in the 2020 Democratic primary, there was this constant refrain that had a lot of truth to it, that most of the Democratic candidates were way too online. Their staffs were too online. They were too Twitter focused. And then the one guy who wasn't too online was Joe Biden. And he ended up just sweeping the field. right now the GOP is way too online it is way too i mean they are driven by twitter fads time and time and time again that's what drives programming on fox that's what

drives the talk radio world and that is not a world a lot of people that is not a world that most people like to be in and the extent that that is the dominant culture of the party they're going to continue to alienate an awful lot of people who just flat out don't like that. And I think that this is further evidence. What happened in California's further evidence. All right. Last bonus question, Steve, did AOC's dress prove that she is the goat of political media trolling? And why is no one else as good as she is at this? I'm not, I'm totally serious when I say this. I was thinking, okay, how am I going to tweet out and boost this podcast? How am I going to promote the podcast? because every week after we're done,

I sent a tweet saying, hey, we've done this podcast. And I was going to do it by saying an AOC dress free podcast because everybody else is talking about it and writing about it. Washington Post, I believe, had three op-eds about this stupid thing.

But they're writing about whether she's a hypocrite, whether she's right, whatever. The point is they're writing about her. I want to talk about the meta part of her being a political genius. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Right. Fair enough. But I mean, you know, is she a political genius in the same way that Marjorie Taylor Green is a political genius? Because everybody talks about her. I just have very little patience for it. I think she's, I think it's a stunt. Yes, but lots of people try. They all try to do stunts. Some stunts are not effective. The vast, vast majority, Jonah, the whole point. To me, what makes it such an effective stunt was that she wrote, Tax the Rich on an incredibly expensive dress at the MetGala that's $30,000 a night.

It's like, again, my point is not the hypocrisy. That is the stunt. The way you're going to get people to talk about it is having controversy about it. I don't understand like why, like in this era, she really does seem to be just far in a way. Like she is the Usain Bolt against all these other people who are like out of the camera shot of how talented she is at this? I agree entirely.

I really do. I think it is fairly genius. I think, and I know this sounds a little sexist, it helps to be very attractive. You know, like she can pull off that sort of millennial glamour look,

you know, like, and it helps to be very left wing. I think Steve's analogy to Marjorie DeGream has a lot of merit to it. Marjor Taylor Green is never going to get invited. I mean,

to be fair, Marjorie Taylor Green is crazier on the merits than AOC is. AOC is just as wrong on a lot of things, but she's not crazy the way Marjorie Taylor Green is. That said, Marjorie Taylor Green and no one like her is going to get a photo shoot and glamour or anything like that. And it's not just because Marjorie Dio Green isn't as good looking as AOC. He's also because she's right wing.

She has a lot of wind at her back to pull off a lot of this stuff, but she's also just really good at it too and it helps a lot and um and you know I got into a couple of debates with people about whether this was bad at all and all that kind of stuff and I think there was some

I don't like what she did because I don't like the trolling and I think it's obvious that what she's doing is trolling and we have enough of that even if she's good at it I do think though um Megan McArdle had it right which is that it does reveal what her true base is

and her true base is this very online group of people who are into what shade of lipstick are you wearing glamour kind of stuff while pretending to be politically radical it's like what is it uh is it cosmo for 17 you know the teenage teen vogue yeah she's yeah she's the teen she's the candidate from teen vogue and um she's really really good at it um i think and she's really really good at when people say oh this you're being so frivolous of saying, well, that's because

you're being sexist. And there's a lot of sexism aimed at AOC, but she's also really good at deflecting legitimate criticism as sexist as well. And I just, I resent having to be sucked into the game as much as as we are, including by the likes

of one Sarah is good. David, now we're going to go meta on the meta. Is this a legitimate conversation? Or am I just feeding the troll? I mean, I looked at it and I just thought, this has just been going on for years and years and years. This is radical chic.

I mean, this is, you know, there's a term for this, the glitterati adopting radical causes and doing it in the glitteriest way possible in the glitteriest places possible is just normal. And it happens all the time. And, you know, there's like different terms for it. Radical Sheik, Limousine Liberals. I mean, this has just been going on forever,

and we've had the same conversation about it forever, and AOC is just the newest vehicle for it. So boring. But just to be clear, it reminds me a little bit of the conversation we were having about the George W. Bush speech, that the only, like, if you hear that and you immediately jump to, he's talking about me, we already tax the rich. So if you see that and think it's a troll,

you've already taken the bait, so to speak. Like, it was controversial sort of in a fake way to begin with. All right. Well, thank you for listening. Sorry that I ruined Steve's tweet. Have a great week. Subscribe to our podcast. Go check out the morning dispatch and the F bomb that happened on Wednesday

because Steve, you know, didn't wake up at three in the morning. And we'll see you again next week. September 15th, a day that you'll live in Infant. This is going to be. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

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