The Dispatch Podcast - GOP Flirts with QAnon

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

When Politico reported on Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Greene’s racist and bigoted comments in June, several top GOP officials—including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—condemned her campaign. But after she beat her Republican opponent Dr.  John Cowan in Tuesday’s primary race, McCarthy immediately switched gears. A spokesman for McCarthy’s office told Declan that the GOP leader “looks forward” to her win this November. Why on Earth is the House minority leader welcoming a racist conspiracy mongering candidate into the GOP with open arms? Our Dispatch Podcast hosts have some thoughts. It’s also worth exploring how she was able to win her primary in the first place, especially with all the negative media attention she’s gotten in recent months. A source close to her opponent’s campaign has a theory: “The most consistent thing we heard [about why voters were supporting Greene over Cowan] was that, ‘Well, she’s gonna go and she’s gonna fight, she’s gonna fight, she’s gonna fight.’ When you prodded a little bit deeper and asked, ‘Well what does that fight look like?’ They couldn’t tell you, but they just know she’s going to fight.” Tune in for some insights into what the future of the Republican Party will look like with a QAnon supporter in its ranks. Show Notes: -Declan’s piece on the GOP’s reaction to Marjorie Greene’s primary win, Audrey’s piece on the growing conspiracy fringe in the Republican Party, Politico article on GOP condemning Greene in June, Trump’s tweet congratulating Greene on her win, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsors, CarShield, and the Bradley Foundation. We're joined today by our own Declan Garvey, staff writer at the dispatch to talk about his latest piece for the website on a little race down in Georgia that's causing some. some turbulence in the Republican Party. Let's dive in.

Steve, we're doing kind of a special, special Friday dispatch today. Declan had this really interesting piece on the website that was pretty newsy about, Marjorie Green and talking to minority leader, Kevin McCarthy's office. And we thought we'd actually dedicate this podcast to discussing the implications of that. Declan, do you want to just give us a rundown of your reporting? Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on. Good to be, good to be back on the podcast. So we've written about in the morning dispatch and elsewhere on the site, Audrey Falberg had a great piece on the growing conspiracy. fringe within the Republican Party. But Marjorie Taylor Green in Georgia's 14th district

won her primary runoff on Tuesday against Dr. John Cowan. And given that this is a district that President Trump carried by about 50 points in 2016, it's pretty much assured that Green will be entering Congress come 2021. So in the lead up to this primary runoff, several kind of offensive and dangerous remarks from Green came to the fore. She's called the 2018 midterm elections a, quote, Islamic invasion due to several Islamic members of Congress being elected. She's made comments about African Americans and unemployment, and perhaps most notably, she is an adherent to the QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges a nefarious deep state that's working to take down President Trump and his followers and accuses several prominent

Democratic elected officials and other celebrities of being part of an underground child sex ring and among other things. And so this was this was all primary to the runoff in the day following the runoff, it came out. New videos surfaced by Media Matters, found that in 2018, she expressed 9-11 truth-trutherism, questioning whether an airplane ever actually landed or hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. And she also alleged that the Obama administration used MS-13 gang members as, quote, henchmen to carry out their dirty work, including the murder of a DNC staffer, Seth Rich, that has been... Certainly on the fringes of the Overton window, let's say.

How, what did McCarthy say? How does this fit into the larger plan for the Republicans? Yeah. So when those, when her original comments were first reported, I believe, in Politico in early June, McCarthy and through a spokesman condemn them. So did Steve Scalise, the Republican whip, as did Liz Cheney, the House Conference chair. But Scalise was the only one in House leadership to go a step further and endorse Cowan, Green's opponent, in the race. and he did some fundraising for.

I was able to confirm that with Collins' campaign staffer yesterday. But since Green won the runoff, they've all remained silent. And McCarthy actually told us in a statement yesterday that he will welcome Green to the Republican conference and that he's looking forward to her victory in November. And so that's been kind of a very stark flip in just a couple days there. Steve? Yeah, I mean, the obvious question is why? Why would any leader of any party welcome somebody who is, shall we say, a little nutty?

you know we try to be civil here at the dispatch but we've also made a promise to be blunt and call things as we see them the stuff that she's advocating is crazy it's not true it's false and it's it's the kooky fringe so why would somebody like kevin mccarthy who has in the past um you know eliminated committee assignments for Steve King after some others in his in the Republican conference had been publicly critical of King. Why would he flip this time? Yeah. My reporting suggests that it has a lot to do with his fight to stay on as minority leader post-November, I guess, Speaker of Republicans take back the House, but that seems increasingly unlikely. So Green was endorsed by several prominent members of the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan, Matt

Gates, Andy Biggs, among them. And they did not retract those endorsements even after some of these more controversial comments came to light. And so McCarthy relies on the House Freedom Caucus's support to maintain his position. in house leadership, and it's pretty clear that he is wary of alienating those members if he's going to end up going into kind of a pretty tough leadership fight after the November election. But it really is a pretty stark double standard. I know you mentioned Steve King. He, after he made some comments about white supremacy to the New York Times back in early 2019, Leader McCarthy met with King and the Republican Steering Committee voted unanimously

to strip him of all his committee assignments. And that ultimately led him to be primaried by Randy Feinstra in Iowa after serving, you know, almost two decades in the House. And so I caught up with Steve King yesterday, gave him a call to see what he thought about. Was he excited to hear from you? So I called him completely out of the blue, and he sounded like he was out doing something. He called, I called, and he answered and said, you know, I can't really hear you. Can you text me?

I'll call you back later. And that's happened to me several times where people just don't want to talk to me. That's a dodge. So I texted him, not expecting to hear anything back. He called me back an hour later saying something along the lines of, you've definitely peaked my interest with this topic. This is bait. I can't refuse. And so he did call me back. We had a 10 or 15 minute conversation. And, you know, he still harbors a lot of resentment for Kevin McCarthy and kind of what he sees as an authentic way for McCarthy to maintain his hold on power. he brought up several times

McCarthy stripping him of his own committee assignments based on what he says are fraudulent claims by the New York Times. He says he was misquoted and that he doesn't actually believe in white supremacism. We should point out as an aside for listeners. Steve King says this a lot

and he says this even in cases when he was accurately quoted. We had a little dust up with him in 2016 at the Weekly Standard where one of our reporters, Adam Rubinstein, had gone to a Steve King event. King was speaking to some voters and I think probably wasn't aware of the presence of a reporter in the room and seemed to compare immigrants to dirt. And when we published the comments later, King accused us of making up the quotes. His chief of staff accused us of doing that as campaign chairman. And then King finally did and did so repeatedly over the course of several days

until we furnished the actual audio recording where he made exactly the comments that we had quoted him making. So this is not a new thing for Steve King. Out of curiosity, when you showed them the audio or let them listen to the audio, what was the reaction then? Silence. We heard nothing. They, it was in, I mean, this is a little bit of a digression. But we, Adam had been taping, he taped everything during his trip to Iowa and was doing a story on Steve King in his race, which was expected to be a tight race. This was in a general election against the Democrat and what's a pretty red district. And Adam taped and we published, they claimed that we didn't have this stuff.

They claimed that we made it up. They, you know, were emailing me and calling me and telling me that. that my reporter was a fabulous and would be, he would be ruined and the magazine would be ruined because obviously we didn't tape this because obviously Steve King didn't say anything like what we had reported him saying. And we just, we waited for a couple of days.

And he then I think maybe because we waited, grew more confident that we must not have the goods because then he started taunting me and our editors on Twitter and saying, you know, if you've got the tape, you really just need to put it out, you've got to do it. And then we finally did. And they said nothing. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, like, this isn't just a one-off incident. He's, you know, engaged with very high-profile white nationalists abroad. He's, like, he endorsed a candidate for the mayor of Toronto. He's a congressman from Iowa's fourth congressional district. I don't know what he has to do with the mayoral race in Toronto, but that mayor mayoral candidate was a about white nationalist and white supremacist. And so, you know, so Steve King is, he has these beliefs. He's not a great guy.

And Republicans acted. They removed him from his committee assignments. They funneled, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donor money into that race in Iowa's four. the congressional district and they were able to defeat them and remove them from the party. And this was, you know, decade in the making, the GOP establishment wanted it gone. And they finally did. And then less than a month later, these comments from Green emerge. And now they're kind of facing a Steve King redux.

And actually, one top House Republican told me earlier this week that they view Green as, quote, 10 times worse, if not more so, than Steve King ever was. So what are other members saying, either in leadership or even backbenchers? Not a lot. So Adam Kinzinger, a representative from Illinois, Republican, tweeted out the day after Green won her race, that denouncing Q&N on saying that Q&N is fabricated, it might be Russian disinformation, and that nobody who adheres to this kind of conspiracy theory belongs in Congress. He got blowback for that for some reason.

The Trump campaign, one of the Trump campaign staffers, Matt Wolking, responded to Kinsinger on Twitter, not necessarily defending QAnon, but kind of playing this what aboutism of, well, why are you speaking up now when you aren't criticizing Democratic conspiracy theories? Why are you so focused on QAnon? And then I think, and Trump himself, it endorsed Green in her race and tweeted out that she's a rising Republican star, a real winner. And so. After she won the primary, he tweeted that out. Yes. Rising Republican star of the future. Yes. And so I think that that cowed a lot of Republican members into silence on this.

I reached out to 30 offices yesterday, and the only one that I heard back from was McCarthy's. People just don't want to weigh in. And I talked to this campaign source with. Cowan's campaign in Georgia, the losing campaign there. And he's, uh, he believes that it's because, uh, that they're afraid of alienating this growing, uh, wing of the Republican party, this QAnon wing. Yeah. I want to talk about that a little because Pew, uh, put out a study in March 30th about QAnon. So it was a few months ago, but, uh, 76% of U.S. adults had heard nothing at all about QAnon. And in fact, when you broke it out by partisanship, liberals were more likely to have heard of it and know about it far more than conservatives.

39% of liberals had heard of it compared to, you know, 18 to 20% or so of Republicans or conservatives. and what was even more predictive of who had heard of it was the media that people consumed. So New York Times readers, 59% knew a lot or a little about Q&ON. Fox News, 19% knew a lot or a little about Q&N. Network news even lower. If you get most of your news from ABC, you have a 92% have never heard of this.

nothing about it. So I say all that because, A, it seems like a very online phenomenon. And I don't doubt that perhaps it's growing within some portions of the conservative movement. And certainly having a representative in Congress will highlight some of this because the news media will no doubt enjoy, you know, taking the more outrageous things she says and gives her, we'll give her a a large platform to do that. But how much is this, you know, the right wing is Q&N, the left wing is Antifa, and the other side is, in fact, the one who likes to make it a bigger deal and say that it is representative of their opponents? Yeah, I definitely hear all of that.

And I think it obviously is a very online thing. It originated on a 4chan message board in 2017. It's very, very fringe. That being said, Facebook internal investigation was just leaked to NBC News last week that found that there were millions more members or followers of Q&N pages than they previously realized because so many of these groups were private.

And, you know, we posed this question in the morning dispatch today about kind of QAnon and Green and King. And we got a few responses. Here, I'll read one here. I have heard from, I have heard of Q&ON. I live in Northwest Georgia in the district next to where they're elected green. It's actually why I quit Facebook. I was muting so many conspiracy theorists sounding people I knew in real life that I decided

it was better to stop participating in social media rather than lose respect for so many acquaintances within my circle. You know, so it's not a lot of people. That's true, I think. But the people that do believe it are very hardcore about it and very willing to express their views about it. We've also seen, you know, there are people who will be wearing cue paraphernalia showing up at Trump rallies when there used to be Trump rallies. You know, there was a video a couple months ago of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn reciting the QAnon pledge. And Trump himself has retweeted. Wait, time out. There's a Q&on pledge? I don't ask me to recite it because then I'm locked in and I have to become an adherent.

Do you mean the hashtag like where we go one, we go all? Or is there actually like a pledge? There's a there's a pledge that goes along with that hashtag. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. By the way, just our listeners, like my QAnonon knowledge comes from Wikipedia at this point. So I am by no means an expert.

That's what they all say, Sarah. Actually, they don't all say that. Declan's right. They are much more aggressive. But I think, Sarah, you raise really good points. And I think it's good to be a little bit skeptical about how deep the Q&on reaches now. I would just say in a primary race where you have, you know, in all likelihood, the hardest of hardcore political activists, there's likely to be a greater percentage, I would think, people who are into this kind of.

thing. But there was another quote in Declan's piece that really struck me that went well beyond QAnon and got to, I think, you know, a core of one of the reasons that she had support and came from a source that was close to the Cowan campaign, the defeated candidates campaign, who, as Declan points out, is very pro-life, pro-gun. First thing he listed on his website was that he was strongly in Donald Trump's corner. But the source close to his campaign said the most consistent thing we heard about why Cowan lost to Green was that, well, she's going to go and fight. She's going to fight. She's going to fight.

When you prod a little deeper and asked, what does that fight look like? They couldn't tell you, but they just know she's going to fight. And I think there's a deeper truth there. I mean, I think, and we've talked about it on the dispatch podcast before. there's such an urge to be confrontational in the base of the Republican Party right now, particularly from those who are the most fervent supporters of Donald Trump. But that is what it's all about, in a sense. And I don't remember if I mentioned this here before,

but there was this moment back in the, I think we've seen kind of a transition on the right from the Tea Party days back in 2009, 2010. When that was truly an ideological movement, I think, where it seemed to be an ideological movement based on debts and deficits and Obamacare and the overreach with the stimulus, where you have what seemed to be this ideological movement. And now you have a movement that's basically, I think, more built on grievance and a willingness to fight. And there was this hinge moment that struck me as interesting at the time. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think really looks important. And it was Rand Paul's filibuster on droning, where he went to the Senate floor and gave a speech about the powers of the federal government. And there were, you know, the possibility that our own people could be droned at Starbucks. it was the kind of thing that we wouldn't have expected to animate and excite a Republican Party, even a Republican Party with a healthy slice of pretty libertarian folks.

But it did. It had that effect. You know, remember, there was the stand with Rand hashtag, and Ted Cruz went down and gave a speech on his behalf, and everybody went and stood with Rand. and you had even people who were strong national security conservatives standing with Rand. And it turns out, I think, people weren't that worried about being droned or the substantive issues that Rand Paul was raising. It turned out he was just somebody who was willing to have a fight. He was willing to be in the face of the Obama administration and take them on and raise these issues. And that's what rallied people to him at that time.

And I think we've seen this sort of hunger for that kind of fight. I think it explains a lot of why Donald Trump won in 2016. And I think it explains some of what we're seeing with Green in this race. I mean, as related by the Cowan campaign source. But I think the other thing is she is not, it was not just a QAnon embrace that sets her kind of apart. Even if you set aside her embrace of QAnon, she has, she's embraced conspiracy theories about the Parkland shooting. She's embraced conspiracy theories about a wide variety of things. And then to learn that she was a 9-11 truther at the after the primary who's over is sort of the capstone.

Fascinating that she has walked back her 9-11 statements and said that she now acknowledges that she was mistaken, and that, of course, there is evidence that a plane went into the Pentagon. I raised that not to defend her, but it's unusual for someone of her temperament who won for exactly the reasons that you're saying, you know, she's going to fight. You don't hear Donald Trump take back some of his more outrageous statements, and yet on 9-11, she did. And I wonder if that's an indication that she actually is, wants to. play in the sandbox in Congress, or if she's going to continue sort of a fringe congressional

backbench thing? Yeah. So when I talked to Steve King yesterday, he, he's, for first part, he says he is not interested in the Q&N conspiracy theory, which was interesting to hear. But he also added that he thinks that Green should be respected, but that he predicts that McCarthy will kind of use King and the example that King set in getting removed from his committees as, quote, the sword of Damocles against Green and that he might be able to, McCarthy might be able to reign in some of her more extremist. you know, statements or commentary by kind of threatening that action if he holds on to it in his back pocket. So does she become the AOC of the right, a boogeyman that the left uses more than she is actually influential over Republican politics? Yeah, I don't think that she's going to be all that influential over Republican politics.

I mean, maybe you can play this audio back in eight years when she's the nominee and out on me, but I think it more says something about the Republican Party right now that they don't feel comfortable distancing themselves from someone like her. I think that's the bigger takeaway from the story. And then, you know, who knows who else decides to run for Congress because they see, they see, oh, she can win and nobody's going to criticize her for having these beliefs. So why can't I? And, you know, there's an interesting piece. not comparing the Q&N and the Tea Party on the merits, but kind of just in how it spread, you know, a decade ago where a lot of people dismissed the Tea Party as kind of a fringe group

of activists 10 years ago that, you know, were, didn't really have any real grievances. We're kind of, you know, just airing, airing frustrations with Obama's election. And, you know, fast forward 10 years, that group was one of the most potent forces in American politics for the first half of the last decade. And so, you know, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see, you know, how things play out with Green and kind of with others. I mean, she's not the only Republican nominee that adheres to QAnon. She's the one that's most likely to win. but there are several others that have kind of expressed support for the conspiracy theory. So is there a chance he loses?

So I looked at, let me pull this up here, Trump won the race like 75 to 22 or something like that in 2016 in this district. The NRCC, the group that manages house races and tries to try to. to elect Republicans told me yesterday, a source close to them, said that they're probably not going to end up spending any money on Green's race, but not because of anything that she's said or done. It's because they're so confident that she's going to hold the seat. So no. Let's see Doug Jones in Alabama.

That's true. That's true. But, I mean, I think it's a little bit tougher in a house race that's very, you know, It's a much smaller electorate. It's a much more targeted electorate than a statewide race would be. And these kind of voters are greens kind of bread and butter. And her message seems to really resonate with them. She seems like she doesn't have too many regrets about her claims over the years.

I mean, I think she had to. She tweeted out yesterday a GIF from that movie, No Regrets, the guy with the tattoo. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, and that's one other thing that I'll note is that, I mean, this week has been great for Marjorie Taylor Green. Like, she thrives kind of with, with, and people like her thrive getting this attention and this, this criticism from, from the places that she's getting it, from the media, from, you know, anonymous GOP sources and, and whatnot. Like, that is, that is money in the bank for, for people like her. And, you know, know, that's the danger with some of this stuff is, are you elevating the fringe of the fringe to rebut it? Or does that elevation then cause more people to see these comments and see these beliefs that otherwise wouldn't have? And that's a struggle. I think it's, you know, I think once she wins the nomination for the party and is likely to be a congresswoman come

2021. That's a pretty fair point to start, you know, actually paying attention. But if it's somebody that's not going to go anywhere in a race and not going to do anything, is it worth elevating, you know, these voices and these, and giving them the attention that they want and that they thrive on, I mean, her pin tweet right now on Twitter is, quote, I've made all the right enemies, the fake news, media hates me, big tech censors me, the DC Swamp fears me. Now Soros and the Dems are trying to take me down. And it's, you know, every time somebody criticizes her in that group that makes her stronger to her voters. And so it's an interesting kind of dilemma. If you're not in favor of these theories and in favor of, you know, candidates like

Green, how do you treat them? How do you engage with them in a way that discredits or pushes back against kind of the extreme elements without giving them attention that otherwise they could use to their advantage. That's a good question. And I mean, 2016 played out very similarly, you know? Let me turn this on Steve. How does the dispatch want to approach

that sort of reporting question? Yeah, I mean, it's, obviously we've spent a half hour here talking about her, Declan did a piece about her. Audrey did the terrific piece that Declan mentioned earlier on, you know, the growing conspiracy movement in the Republican Party. So clearly we've made an editorial decision that we don't think that this is something that can just be ignored.

I think there's, you know, I think looking at the vote totals in Georgia's 14th district, it's not. Now, that doesn't, that isn't to say that everybody who voted for her believes in, you know, either Q&N or these other conspiracy theories, they may have voted for her for many other reasons. But they're not alarmed about the fact that she has amplified these conspiracy theories and believes them. I think it's a problem. I think, you know,

if you are a conservative who believes in sort of the basics of conservative movement principles, having people like her represent conservatism in the U.S. Congress is bad. I mean, it's bad for the country. It's bad for the conservative movement. I think it's bad all around. I think we sort of have an obligation to report on folks like this. And there's an argument to be made that because people didn't take these kinds of things seriously enough before, they've been allowed to grow and fester and they spread.

Now, it's not necessarily the case that, you know, because we write a piece pointing out that the stuff that she's saying is bullshit will change a lot of minds. If you're an online Facebook Q&On adherent, you probably don't care a ton what the dispatch says if you're a true believer. On the other hand, if it's the case that you're somebody's uncle who gets this thing passed along to you that seems plausible enough on its face and you're kind of a passive news consumer, maybe it's the case that if we say, you know what, this is not true, this is nonsense and this is a conspiracy monger spreading BS that those people might listen and might say, yeah, you know what, I don't think that's right. I mean, it's part of the reason that we have the fact-checking operation that we do is so that we can help guide people who, you know, normal people across the country who don't have time to spend all day digging into these things or doing their own reporting on them. It's important that some people, I think in particular on the center right, are saying, yeah, you know what, this is not true. And we're an authoritative source on this and you should believe what we're saying.

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choice for the Republican primary in 2024. And among Republican respondents, who are presumably the ones most likely to vote in a Republican primary, Mike Pence, 31 percent, Donald Trump Jr., 17 percent, Nikki Haley, 11 percent, Mitt Romney, 9 percent. So those are the top four. Pence, Trump Jr., Haley, and Romney. When you look among the general population, though, I found this really fascinating. 30%. Declan, do you know who got 30%

among the general population for the Republican primary in 2024? Shoot. It's Mitt Romney. Okay. Yeah. Mitt Romney comes in far and away first place. Mike Pence at 18% followed by Nikki Haley and then...

When you say... General population, are you just saying adults, so non-Republicans? Correct. As in people less likely to vote in the Republican Party. There are a lot of Democrats right now who, I mean, Mitt Romney's approval rating, I'm fairly certain is much, much higher among Democrats than it is Republicans. And I mean, in a different race in Georgia between Senator Kelly Loughler and Representative Doug Collins to replace Johnny Isaacson in the Senate. Loughler is attacking Collins for an old Facebook post from 2012 saying that Collins is

supporting Mitt Romney for president, the Republican nominee for president. Nevertheless, I mean, Kelly Loughler herself donated almost a million dollars to Romney's campaign in 2012. And, but that is more than she donated to Donald Trump, funny enough. And, but I mean, Mitt Romney is, is such a boogeyman on the right these days, that that that is hilarious, that that's what they're squabbling over. But, yeah, I mean, those Democratic voters are not going to vote for Mitt Romney in a primary or in a general election, no matter how much they say they like it now.

You know, another little thing worth noting is Tucker Carlson among Republican voters. comes in at seven percent, which ain't nothing. Silence, silence. He's got his hardcore supporter. I mean, I think the people who love Tucker love Tucker. I don't think he has broader appeal, but he's, you know, he's a talented, he's a talented television host, and he's an entertaining speaker, that's for sure. And he seems to have more of an actual defined worldview than a lot of these other pundits

and kind of people that you see out there on TV. I mean, he is one of the more likely people on Fox News to criticize Trump when he kind of strays from this more populist, nationalist bent that he's kind of taken the mantle on. That worldviews is different than the worldview he had just a few short years ago, though. I mean, Tucker was an adjunct scholar or a, an Associated Scholar at the Cato Institute,

the Libertarian think tank in Washington. Yes, I'm talking about Tucker PT post-Trump as opposed to BT. But among other Fox hosts like Sean Hannity, which is more or less just a booster of Trump and kind of Trumpism. So it's sort of fascinating that Sean Hannity does not make that list. Tucker Carlson does. Right. And so it's not simply a like, oh, these are people who support Trump and see Tucker as the error to Trump or else they pick Sean Hannity. There is something more unique about Tucker that I think does make him a more viable candidate in 2024. And I know I'm not the first person to say this. But I'm curious, there will be a Republican nominee in 2024, whether Trump wins or loses. Steve, do you think that there's a different. Republican nominee, depending on whether Trump wins or loses?

Yeah, I think it's night and day. I think if Trump, you know, David French in a newsletter maybe three weeks ago sketched out three different plausible scenarios, plausible outcomes in November. And I think they're probably right. I'd bet that he's right. One was a narrow Trump victory. One was a narrow Biden victory and the other was a Biden victory. And the other was a Biden blowout of Trump.

I think if you have a narrow, assuming Trump loses, which the polling today suggests, Nate Silver and 538, put that at 7 and 10 odds. The economist in their model puts it closer to 9 and 10 odds. There's a lot of- Funny about the Nate Silver numbers. That's exactly where Hillary was, though. Yeah, I mean, it's important to note that just because that's where the polling is today, It does not mean that that's where the polling will remain for the final couple months here, the final three months here. And there are the possibility of any of a number of external events shaping the outcome.

But if you assume that Donald Trump loses, I think if he loses badly, it's a very, very different scenario than if he wins, obviously. I think it's also a very, very different scenario than if he loses in a close race. and is able, at least to his hardcore base, to question the legitimacy of the election, which I think, I mean, I would put money that he will. He questions the legitimacy of every poll that shows him losing. That's who he is. It's what he does.

I think if he loses badly, you're likely to see sort of some relief among Republican elected officials in Washington, many of whom have never been enthusiastic. Trump supporters have just gone along. along with him and his program because he's the president. He's in their party. Some of their hardcore voters seem to support the guy, but are not passionate trumpists. And this is something, you know, Matt Gates, who is a passionate Trumpist, has acknowledged.

Sorry, I have some Harley Davidson's roaring behind me. This is something that Matt Gates, who is a passionate Trumpist, has acknowledged. A lot of his colleagues are not enthusiastic about Donald Trump. And I think we're likely to see that if Trump, in fact, loses badly. And look, I mean, the polls are interesting about a 2024 potential candidates. It's, I think they will look very different if Trump loses. And they also have a built-in recency bias because that's who's in charge now. I think get a year out if there's a big Trump loss.

you'll see an entirely different set of names, and some of whom will have worked in the Trump administration or been close to Donald Trump. You know, Mike Pompeo has often mentioned in that group, Tom Cotton, who has been friendlier to Trump than some of his Senate colleagues, Nikki Haley, who was mentioned there, worked in the Trump administration. You know, those are some of the people that you're likely to see on that list. But I think you'll see the emergence of some others.

as well. Yeah, there's a very real, there's a very real chance that the nominee is not on that list that that group pulled. I mean, if you took that, if you took that methodology and brought it back to, you know, August 2012 predicting who the nominee would be in 2016, I don't think you probably would have had many people saying that they believe Donald Trump would be that person. And so there's, you know, between now and 2020, there's, you know, two more elections for new people to kind of enter the fray. There's potential for, you know, prominent business people or celebrities to kind of start testing the waters for a run. And I just think it's, you have no idea what's going to happen

two weeks from now, let alone four years from now. And so there will be the knife fighting has already kind of begun in a lot of these quarters to kind of start positioning themselves for the best chance to be the heir apparent come 2024, but so much is going to depend on things completely outside of these players' control. Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think, you know, among the biggest sort of contours of this coming debate, again, if the president loses decisively in November, will be these questions that we've been discussing here. I mean, the willingness of these candidates to fight,

the willingness of them to entertain these kinds of conspiracy theories. It's one of the reasons that Marjorie Green presents a challenge for people like Kevin McCarthy, I don't think it's a challenge. Kevin McCarthy obviously does, given what we've talked about with his double standard, on Steve King and Marjorie Green. But, you know, it's not like the Republican Party can claim to be shocked that we've seen the emergence of candidates who embrace conspiracy theories. I mean, that's what President Trump has done for years, you know, from the Ted Cruz,

Rafael Cruz involvement in the Kennedy assassination, claim that he made to any of number of things that he's just made up of out of whole cloth to other times where he's amplified existing conspiracy theories. I mean, this is the Republican Party for, for all its many problems, has embraced this, at least some of its voters, if not the elected officials. So that will be, I think, a tell. And, you know, as Declan pointed out, you have the folks who endorsed Marjorie Green are apparently untroubled by this. And you have. somebody like Matt Gates, who was on Twitter, boosting Marjorie Green even after the 9-11 Truther video comes out. You have Kevin McCarthy embracing her. They're not troubled by that.

I think we'll find that there are a lot of Republicans in Congress and across the country who are troubled by that. And that will be a defining characteristic in these coming debates. And I would say, I mean, it's no accident that Steve Scalise got out and, and, made clear in the press and kind of in different reports that he endorsed Cowan, that he fundraised for Cowan. I think that that's, you know, you lay the groundwork now so that if there is this, you know, Trump landslide loss in November, you can point back to these things and say, see, look, I was against this and I have better political instincts than these other people. and I can forge a new leadership future.

You see people like Senator Ben Sass after kind of, you know, going a little bit underground in advance of his primary is now kind of reemerging as a leading Trump critic in the Senate. And so you'll start to see, I think, if the poll numbers kind of continue to look the way that they do, a little bit more leeway with these Republican elected officials trying to distance themselves. from the president and kind of the current state of the Republican Party

so that in the event of a massive loss, they can point back and say, see, I wasn't one of them. I was a different kind of breed of Republican. And a quick break to hear from our sponsor, the Bradley Foundation. Making sense of current events during this extraordinary time can be trying. Conceived in Liberty, the Bradley Speaker series is a new video series that offers meaningful perspectives through engaging 15-minute interviews.

Visit BradleyFDN.org slash Liberty to watch their most recent episode featuring renowned scholar Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, George is a 2005 winner of the Bradley Prize and a member of the Bradley Foundation's Board of Directors. In this episode, he makes the case against judging historical figures

by present standards and for telling the truth about America's history, protecting the integrity of the institutions of civil society, and being more understanding of those who have perspectives different from our own. That's Bradley with an L-E-Y at the end, F-D-N.org slash Liberty to watch the video. New episodes debut weekly, so go back often and subscribe to their YouTube channel to be notified whenever a new one is posted. Okay, last question. It's Friday night. August, this used to be like a, you know, go out, have some drinks type of, type of night,

uh, not anymore. Declan, what's for dinner in your house tonight? Huh. I've got, uh, some leftover frozen pizza from last night that I, oh, funny, funny story, actually. That's like the saddest of the sad. Leftover frozen pizza. So it's home run in, which is a great Chicago brand. Um, really, really good stuff in terms of the frozen pizza. But it's actually a funny story. I, uh, I'd been trying to get in touch with both Steve King and this source on the Cowan campaign all day yesterday. I've been emailing, texting different people trying to get them to give me a call. I'm about to put this frozen pizza in the oven.

And then I get a call from the Cowan source, answer it, sprint back to my room, grab my recorder, and put it on speakerphone. My girlfriend has no idea what I'm doing, why I just dropped the pizza on the middle of the counter and then I'm talking to him and kind of starting to do the interview and Steve King calls and so I'm on the phone with this other source and I'm like so sorry I have to hang up I'll call you right back but Steve King is calling me he's on the other line and he was very understanding and let me call him back but yeah so I have half pizza left that I can enjoy. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Steve

You're up in Wisconsin. What's for dinner tonight? Yeah, we made a swing through Costco on the way up to Door County, Wisconsin, and picked up some of their Tuscan pork tenderloin. Highly recommend it. This is a relatively new thing for us, but it's cheap, as many things that Costco are, and it's very good. So I am going to be grilling Tuscan pork tenderloin from Costco.

We, too, are having pork here. I'm going to throw a giant pork butt in the pressure cooker. And I made my own barbecue sauce for the brisket, not the baby brisket, but the actual brisket a few weeks ago. So I'm going to throw in my homemade barbecue sauce in. And how did you make it? What was, what are the key ingredients? I'm so glad you asked, Steve.

I am a, I'm not really barbecue sauce, connoisseur. I am a hot sauce freak. My first freelance story reported story when I graduated from journalism school was a piece I did for salon where I went to something called the Fiery Foods Festival, usually held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This one held in Reno, Nevada. But I went and covered the fiery foods festival because I'm sort of obsessed. I think I ended up losing money on the piece, but it was well. Well worth the trip. So what are the ingredients?

I'm a big fan of Fuego Box, by the way. Not a sponsor of this podcast, but they should be. So if you have not gone to Fuegobox.com, Steve, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas. Excellent. They do a subscription box, which is really fun. So, yeah, so I have some, I do put some hot sauce in. Here's the secret ingredient, though.

And you can't taste it, but it's espresso. Ooh, I buy it. Because I'm not actually a big ketchup fan. I'm actually not a huge barbecue sauce fan. I'm from Texas, and we don't believe in barbecue sauce. We do dry rubs. But with pulled pork, obviously, you need some moisture. So the espresso kind of cuts the sweetness of the ketchup.

And then you've got some hot sauce. And then, of course, you've got some seasonings that you need to just add in there to, you know, some chili powder and stuff like that. But I would say that those are the two key ingredients. I like it. Sounds good. All right. Thank you listeners for joining us. Subscribe to this podcast. And we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday for our normal roundtable very soon. Thank you.