The Dispatch Podcast - Hell's Comin' With Me

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss the debate over unemployment benefits, the firing of the State Department’s inspector general, the recently declassified email from Susan Rice, and the team makes their VP picks for Joe Biden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. 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. And as a perk of membership, we've invited all our members to join me and the guys this week for a live dispatch happy hour. Thursday night, where we'll take questions, the political, the trivial, and the very, very trivial. Today's podcast is also brought to you by ExpressVPN, which we'll get to a little later, because today we are jam-packed with topics. Will Republicans support extending unemployment benefits through 2021? Is it an inspector general scandal or just inspectors general moving on? The DNI released the unredacted Rice memo about Michael Flynn and hot topics for the guys. I asked them each to pick their vice presidential pick for Joe Biden and their most rewatchable. movies. Let's dive right in.

Now, before we start, I do have a correction from last week, and I want to thank some savvy listeners who brought it to my attention. Always feel free to send in your corrections. I said last week that California's 25th district had flipped from Democrat to Republican for the first time since 1998. That is not correct. It is the first time that Republicans have flipped a Democratic district in California since 1998. Apologies for misstating that.

Now, our first topic, gentlemen. So President Trump attended the Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday and privately, behind and closed doors expressed opposition to extending the weekly $600 boost in unemployment insurance for laid off workers affected by coronavirus. This was part of the $2 trillion relief package passed by Congress earlier in the year. It's set to expire this summer. House Democrats have proposed extending it through January 2021. And what I'm interested about is that there's a tension here, right? On the one hand, Steve, you have folks who don't believe we're ready to reopen the economy until we meet certain benchmarks. And at the same time, you don't want to disincentivize

people to go back to work once the economy is reopened. So, you know, you're a conservative who wants those work incentives, but you also are someone who I think does want to wait for those benchmarks to be met. So how do you square that with the unemployment benefits moving forward past July? Yeah, it's a good question. And if you look at the legislation that Democrats in the House offered, the CARES Act, where they did extend some of these, that raised objection, that provision raised objections not only from Republicans, as you might expect, but from a number of Democrats as well. I think the question here goes back to a problem with the original legislation. and it was identified before the legislation passed by Ben Sass and Tim Scott and others,

and that is the perverse incentive these additional unemployment benefits create for people who are supposed to get back to work when it's time to reopen. Part of the original design of the benefit was, as you suggest, Sarah, to encourage people to stay away from work so that the virus would not continue to spread. in addition to providing, you know, just financial benefits for people who aren't getting paid the way they would have otherwise gotten paid. I think there's a real case for not renewing the $600 benefits. We had some reporting within the first few days of the passage of the original legislation from Declan and the morning dispatch folks about employers who were saying, I can't get my employees to come back because they're making more money now with the

additional $600 a week than they were as employees. And that kind of incentive, while it might have made sense in the short term for public health reasons, does not make sense in the long term for economic reasons. But Jonah, I mean, if you're still thinking that restaurants shouldn't reopen at full capacity, hotels, casinos, et cetera, how can you then, on the other hand, be a encouraging higher unemployment benefits through that time until we say, you know, these businesses can go back to normal. Are we going to really delay unemployment benefits saying, well, we need to look at your specific job that you had and whether you could go get

another job now or what you were making at your job to make sure you don't make more now? Yeah. It's it's all really, really complicated. And it's kind of, you know, remember that's scene in Apollo 13 where the Gary Sinez character is trying to figure out the sequence to start up the lem or whatever. And if you do it in the wrong sequence, you'll blow out the fuses. There is a, when it comes to like a really complicated piece of machinery, like say a nuclear power plant or a massive $14 trillion economy, when you turn it off, you can't just flip a switch and turn it back on. There's a whole sequence of things that you kind of need to do.

And this is sort of like that, where you also have, you know, like the demagoguery against the liability fix that the Republicans want kind of drives me crazy because it's a legitimate thing. You can't tell a business that if they reopen and their employees get COVID, that they can get sued and lose their business,

then they're not going to reopen. And you have all of these sorts of things. It's like, you know, what is the correct sequence of switches to flip to get this thing back going? You also can't tell, you know, they're also, right now, if you tell an employee come back to work and the employee thinks it's not safe, they lose their unemployment benefits, which is another hard, And it's another example of how if you don't fix the health side of this, you're just going to constantly run into these sort of stutter-stop, false start kind of problems from the demand side, the supply side, when it comes to the labor market, when it comes to consumers, when it

comes to employers. And I don't think there's any obvious, oh, here's the obvious way to fix this problem kind of thing. I think ideally what would happen is that the federal government would slowly pull out of a lot of this additional unemployment benefit stuff, but maybe do it by giving lump sums to the state governments for this purpose and let each state figure out, maybe each county figure out sector by sector what works on their case. But any one-size-fits-all approach to this, I think is destined just to create a steady stream of outrage stories for both the pro

and anti-side on all of this. David, this seems like it is. heading towards a direction that we've had several other topics head in, which is sort of the partisan conservatives revert back to their preconceived ideas. Democrats head back to theirs. But I think conservatives have a problem here again, saying we're against, you know, increased unemployment benefits because we want to incentivize work, works from, you know, 1980 to 2019, maybe. Right. But does it work in July of 2020? I don't think it works very well in July of 2020, in part because until this virus is really, and we really have a handle on this virus, work in most situations means more risk.

So this isn't a kind of situation where you're saying, well, you know, get off your bud and stop playing Xbox and, you know, get back. Get thee to Walmart, worker. is not that kind of message in a time where people do feel greater risk and where, again, a lot of these unemployment benefits are going to folks who are not managerial class employees who can work at home and are having their Zooms and their Skypes and all of this. A lot of this is these benefits are directed at people in some of these industries, many of the hard-hit industries like the hospitality industry and others, where there's just more contact with people.

It's just part of the job. And while there are a lot of places in the country that have not seen much coronavirus at all, there are other places that have been relatively harder hit, even in those states that are reopening. And I still think it's a time to err on the side of generosity because there's two things going on at once. One is a lot of this unemployment is directly related to government actions. Not all of it, certainly, probably the biggest chunk of it maybe is not because it's just related to how human beings respond to the virus, but a lot of it's unrelated to government actions. And the other thing is this just isn't a normal get-back-to-work environment. It's just not.

And so in that circumstance, I think these factors add up to continuing to err on the side of generosity with the not. that there are going to be news stories like I've seen where so-and-so wants to reopen their coffee shop. And finding workers is virtually impossible because those workers can still make more money. And usually the story kind of ends there. They can make more money not working at the coffee shop, but there's another side of it, make more money and not be exposed to that public risk. And I think that that is, that's a factor here. And again, why, at least for the time being, probably through the rest of the year, airing on the side of generosity seems to be wise.

Switching topics, Joe Biden pledged on Tuesday that he would not fire any inspectors general if he became president. I think this was a sub-tweet, if you will, a verbal sub-tweet of President Trump, who has now ousted four agents. watchdogs and we'll star the fifth. So most recently, the State Department, who that IG may have been looking into whether the Secretary of State Pompeo acted illegally in declaring an emergency to bypass a congressional freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He had previously ousted the intelligence IG over sending the whistleblower complaint. The defense IG was looking, was tapped to oversee the committee to look at the two trillion pandemic-related stimulus

funds. The HHS IG was fired over releasing a report on hospital shortages. And then most recently, we have the transportation IG. Now, there's some disagreement over whether this person was designated acting IG or whether they were simply deputy and were never acting IG. But I'm not sure that is a distinction with a difference at this point. So, David, I'm going to start with you on this one, because the president is allowed to remove IGs. Yep. The statute says the president shall communicate in writing the reasons for any such removal or

transfer to both the House of Congress, to both houses of Congress, not later than 30 days before the removal. Chuck Grassley, for instance, has been dissatisfied with the explanation, which has been short. But there's always been this discomfort within the conservative legal eagle community on the constitutionality, if you will, of IGs who oftentimes have obligations to Congress, but then live within the executive branch. So they don't run into the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau problem of not being removable by the president. They're at will removable. But their reporting structure, what their purpose is, is not really an executive branch purpose.

Where is this going to shake out in a few years on IGs? I think it will shake out as a footnote to the campaign in 2020, and the IG system will just keep rolling on afterwards, quite frankly. I mean, I think this is the kind of thing that, number one, what Trump is doing to the IGs is completely contrary to what Congress intended when it set up the IG system. Number two, I think if you care about accountability in the executive branch at all, you should be concerned about what Trump is doing. Number three, it's one of these really obscure issues that unless the IG is fired for something

really, really explosive that the IG had uncovered and was trying to be suppressed, And at that point, the story is going to be the explosive thing that the IG is uncovering. This reminds me of, you know, some of the kerfuffles around like George W. Bush firing U.S. attorneys or some of the other actions that, hey, look, if you're going to step back and say, on the merit, should he have done that? And no need to revisit all the mess around the Bush U.S. attorneys. But, you know, it's one of those things that the president has the power to do it. I don't like how he's exercising the power. The legal argument around the IGs is a little boring and tiresome to me in a way. It's because it's getting back to this sudden, well, I'm not going to say sudden,

but this renewed vehemence in which there's a subset of the conservative legal legal community that it seems to take two positions and one of them is not mandated, two positions, one legal, one political, and the political is not mandated. by their legal position. And the legal position seems to be something along the lines of, I'm suspicious of this whole IG thing anyway. This is totally in Trump's prerogative to fire. And therefore, shut up about it.

And we can talk about the first part. I tend not to completely agree with that. I do think, in fact, that when Congress is setting up instruments of accountability within the bureaucracy, there is going to be some ability to kind of leak congressional oversight into that so long as still this is an employee that works at the pleasure of the president. But what I really object to is this sort of, you know, how you don't argue with the president when he's got the power to do this. No, of course you can argue with the president, especially when the president is pretty plainly circumventing the intent of the why the entire system was set up in the first place. David, sounds like a good advisory opinions topic for the two of us.

Oh, it does. Steve, let's take the State Department in particular, this selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, UAE, sorry. Boy, that sounds like something I remember from the late 80s. Yeah, I mean, there are several different reports about why this State Department IG, Steve Linick, was investigating Mike Pompeo, and I don't think we know the entire story at this point. But before getting to the substance, just to pick up on something that David said, I mean,

to me, this is an accountability issue more than anything else. And what I think we're seeing the president do, and he's not been shy about his reasons for doing this. I mean, you know, in responding to the IG, the State Department IG thing, the president said in effect, well, Mike Pompeo asked me to get rid of him. He didn't like what he was doing. So I got rid of him. That's not how this should work. And I would think that small government conservatives would be interested in more accountability for how these agencies operate, not less.

The, on the specific question with respect to Pompeo, I do think there are real questions about this emergency funding. for Saudi Arabia, particularly when viewed in the context of the other things that the administration has done to bend over backwards for Saudi Arabia. There are other questions about the possible use of a state department or a government employee to do sort of menial, you know, personal attendant type tasks that, you know, the stuff that Pompeo's wife should have been doing. Which is what the president, which is what the president said. That's what President said.

you know, I don't have any, I'd much rather have him making foreign calls, calls to foreign leaders than doing the dishes. If his wife is away, that's how the president defended Pompeo on that. And then there's this third issue that which surfaced last night in a lengthy report from NBC News about Pompeo and these dinners, these Madison dinners, that he's been hosting for VIPs, foreign dignitaries, CEOs, leaders, what have you, at the State Department. I'm not troubled by the Madison dinners, at least what we know about them now. These are dinners that I think have been common over administrations at both parties at the State Department and elsewhere, the kinds of dinners where the Secretary of State or a Secretary of Defense or a Vice President brings together, you know, sort of big thinkers, Supreme Court justices have attended lawmakers, you name it. And, I have a big discussion. Sometimes there's a lead speaker who leads a discussion on a particular issue,

and then there are table discussions. I'm not troubled by that unless there's a direct connection to some kind of a fundraising scheme or what have you. But the NBC report, which went on at great length, didn't detail any of those supposed connections. But it does seem that this is what the IG was looking into, things of these nature, those three different topics. some. And the same was true of these other IGs that have been removed. Some of them sort of fired immediately. Some of them just not allowed to do their duties. I think you want to have people like IGs performing this kind of accountability check. It doesn't mean that IGs are always going to be perfect. Doesn't mean that they're always going to be as non-anological or nonpartisan

as you want them to be. But I think it does provide both in the interest of congressional oversight, but also just more broadly in terms of allowing the taxpayers to see what's going on, a level of accountability that seems to be disappearing from the federal government at every stage in every way, every single day. Jonah, one of the things that I think the president that confuses people is, if you're going to fire the IGs, just fire all the IGs. The sort of drip, drip, drip over time seems to just create a new news story every two weeks about firing an IG.

On the other hand, to David's point about the U.S. attorneys or some, you know, some of these other quasi-scandals, a lot of it was that the explanation didn't fit with what people sort of knew in their heart was going on. And to Steve's point, Trump has been very authentic in his communication about why he's doing it. So politically, I guess the question is, Aside from Chuck Grassley, maybe wanting a better explanation, are there any Republicans who are going to come forward and say firing IGs because they're investigating your administration isn't going to work? I don't. I don't know. You know, Mitt Romney obviously put out a pretty strong statement. You know, that gets you to two. you know, hey, that is a, that is a, you know, massive increase from one, mathematically.

And so, I mean, I think part of the problem is that we've defined Devency Down so much. Like, the general level of background radiation, scandal, outrage, going on, justified or not. This is not necessarily entirely an anti-Trump point, but it is just simply that there is so much drama that this feels like small-time stuff, even though in a normal administration, it would not be small-time stuff. I agree with you entirely. There's an, you know, I think it was it Reagan who came in and just fired all the IGs and replaced them with his own appointees? I have no principled problem with that whatsoever because, you know, you come in at the beginning of administration and you're just like, like, I don't want these holdovers. Obviously, they're not investigating my administration because I just got here.

That's totally above board and fine. I have the same basic position with the U.S. attorneys and all that kind of stuff. Which Trump did at the very beginning. He fired all the U.S. attorneys. What the Bush administration did was slightly different. But I think most of the difference was that they didn't say we're firing them because of politics. And that's what came out later. And I think that caused a lot of the problem.

Sure, sure. But my point is that I had no problem with Trump doing that. It's a much bigger problem when you only fire them when they start finding the stuff that they're supposed to find, right? I mean, that's why you appoint them. You know, it's like firing the health inspectors when they find the rat droppings. You weren't supposed to do that. That is nuts. And the fact that everybody seems fine with. that I find very depressing. The fact, you know, it sort of points for honesty to Trump for his explanation. It's, it has the, as they say, as the kids say on Twitter, it's funny because it's true. But I think in a normal time, this would be the kind of thing that could hurt or help his campaign, but it's priced in. People just don't care. And I agree with David entirely. There is this tendency.

It's very much like whenever somebody on your team says something that is just absolutely indefensible on the merits, the retreat position is they're just exercising their First Amendment rights. Are you against the First Amendment? And it's the same thing with this IG stuff. Of course, the president has the power to do this, but he has the power to do lots. He's the power to nuke Tokyo. that doesn't mean he should. And but I don't, I think this is going to be largely forgotten in six months or six minutes. I was going to say minutes.

Speaking of things that may or may not be forgotten, David, I want to talk about this Rice memo that was released. This is a memo from January 20th, 2017. We had seen parts of it, but a paragraph had been redacted. It has now been unredacted. It was Susan Rice's sort of memo to file about a meeting that she had with President Obama FBI director Jim Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Vice President Biden, and then, of course, Susan Rice was there. This is about the Flynn atmospherics, if you will, at that point.

And the paragraph that had been redacted was about Director Comey, this is her words, affirmed that he is proceeding by the book as it relates to law enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA director Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian ambassador Kisliak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied, potentially.

He has said he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kisliak, but he noted, quote, that the level of communication is unusual. Rice has since put out a statement yesterday through a representative that said no discussion of law enforcement matters or investigations took place despite accusations to the contrary. And Ambassador Rice did not alter the way she briefed Michael Flynn on Russia as a result of Director Comey's response. Why do I see all these headlines about this letter, David? Well, you're seeing the headlines for a couple of reasons. One, there's sort of a subclass of

right-wing punditry now that is sort of like everything that happens related to the Russia investigation is explosive for reasons only they can fully explain and only they truly fully understand and everybody else just doesn't get what's going on. And the argument here is that what this does is it shows how malign an actor. It demonstrates once again how malign an actor Comey is that Comey said he had that he has no indication. Flynn had passed classified information to Kisleyak, but he's still at the same, he's still engaged in casting aspersions on Flynn, saying, you know, potentially, you know, that there were potentially there was a problem. them other things that, you know, does this mean that Obama was more? Can you imagine, by the way,

a less helpful thing for your FBI director to say when you're like, hey, should we be briefing this guy on Russia or not, like from the President of the United States? And your FBI director's like, potentially shrug. Well, A, that's not helpful. B, it's not helpful to the country to have this guy being the incoming national security advisor. So, you know, this is one of the problems that you have is that a lot of this sort of right-wing punditry about this sort of takes Flynn as not just a normal guy, but an especially shrewd former three-star general who was going to come in, clean house, blow up everything that the Obama administration had done, when the reality was this was a guy who had taken tens of thousands of dollars from Russian affiliated entities

in 2015. In 2016, he was an unregistered foreign agent of the government of Turkey, taking over half a million dollars into his Flynn intelligence group. He had participated in a scheme to try to get a Turkish dissident extradited to the U.S. out of the U.S. to Turkey for almost certain execution. He had written a op-ed on Election Day that was opposed to American foreign policy that was while in his capacity as an unregistered forward agent of Turkey. So I think, actually, the answer, is there a problem with Flynn? Potentially, yes, is frustratingly vague, but also accurate as it relates to this individual. And so what we can hold in our head two thoughts at the same time.

One is, did the FBI pursue Flynn in a way that although many defendants in this country can say, hey, I think the FBI was just as mean to me as they were to Michael Flynn, did they engage in some subterfuge when it came to Flynn? Let me use the Comey word, potentially. at the same time, is Flynn a person who would be a reasonable object to suspicion? Absolutely. And he was the incoming national security advisor. I mean, this is the thing that just the sort of the whitewashing of Michael Flynn, as if history with him stopped shortly after the surge in Iraq, where he did, you know, really incredible work. I was there when he was there and saw just a tiny bit of this intelligence. machine that he had put together. But the, the treating this individual as if he was just like every other national security advisor in, and the incoming Trump administration is just like every other administration. And it wasn't in fact the case that Russia had tried to help this

guy win. And it wasn't in fact the case that people in his, uh, in his campaign had reached out to Russians during the course of the campaign, um, is, you know, to treat it as of, of none of that had happened, I just think ignores, you know, it's ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Steve, David, runs through the substance of this well, but I think far beyond what most people understand about the Michael Flynn situation, perhaps, or what's penetrating. To me, the relevant seems like it's another drumbeat in hashtag Obamagate heading into the November election? Yeah. How much will the Trump campaign be able to keep this drum beat up? How relevant will this be come November? You know, is Michael Flynn going to turn into, you know, one of those names

that everyone then has an immediate opinion about that is correlated to their vote? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's pretty clearly where Trump world would like to take this. They want to make this a campaign. We've already had stories about the Trump campaign, looking to use Michael Flynn on the campaign trail. You know, they're building this story, and their media amplifiers are hyping this story, I think, for a reason. And it has a lot to do with politics. I think David is right about the history that he provides. I think you can add some additional contextual information about what we knew about WikiLeaks and at least the communications that had gone on between Trump world. folks and Julian Assange, we know that the Russians had been hacking Trump's opponents.

I mean, it's not like this came from out of nowhere. And I think too often Trump's most ardent defenders these days want to just dismiss the idea altogether that Russia was a bad actor in this. I mean, a smart Republican strategist the other day basically framed it as saying, say, ah, Russian spent a couple hundred thousand bucks on Facebook. It was a lot more than that. I mean, there were reasons to ask these questions. And it was also the case that, you know, not just Michael Flynn, but others had been dishonest in response to questions, including the president, then candidate Trump, in response to questions about their involvement with Russia.

So, well, it may be the case that there wasn't the kind of resistance style, you know, conspiracy, Michael. or Christopher Steele conspiracy that some on the resistance left conjured up. It also isn't the case that there was just nothing there. And I think it's important to remember that when you're looking at this Flynn stuff. I would say, however, there's also some pretty sneaky, questionable, suspicious stuff that was taking place within the national security hierarchy, bureaucracy there. And this memo that you originally asked David about, I would place that. in that? You know, this is a memo to the file that Susan Rice wrote on inauguration day on January 20th, the day that Donald Trump is sworn in the day that she's leaving the White House. And it's a memo to the file supposedly recording the details of meeting that had taken place two weeks earlier. Who does that? I mean, that's odd. You know, if you want a memo to the file and you want to remember. You should see my files. You have no file. We all know you have no files. You've never written a memo of the file.

If you want to record exactly what happened and be able to quote people in a meeting and so that it reflects for sort of history what happened, you don't write that a couple weeks later. We also know that Susan Rice lied about what she knew about this meeting and these efforts. I mean, she was asked, I think it was on PBS in April about whether she knew whether Trump and people around him were caught up. in surveillance of foreign officials, and her response was, I know nothing about this. This is a categorical black and white, flat-out lie. And we know that Susan Rice has a history of such fabrications in the past. But I do think there are legitimate questions that Trump defenders and Republicans are asking about the way that law enforcement, the FBI, or national intelligence apparatus conducted themselves in this. And I do suspect there are a lot of, I think,

legitimate questions around John Brennan's activities, around what Jim Clapper knew. And I don't think you have to be sort of a tinfoil hat resistance person to want answers to those questions. Jonah, Vice President Biden was in some of these meetings. He's mentioned in the Rice memo. At what point is his campaign going to have to start responding to some of this? You know, it's a tough question. You know, I'm with DMC on the big picture part.

of it. I've getting a lot of grief for not setting my hair on fire about the Flynn thing. I still don't see why this is a five-alarm scandal. I think the FBI behaved badly. I think Comey looks like a jackass. I think that I also think that Flynn was worth a hard look, and particularly when it was a counterintelligence operation, before it became a criminal operation, the downside risk of having a foreign asset as the national security advisor is just huge. And it is the fiduciary obligation of the FBI and the Attorney General and any administration. It's just like basic patriotic due diligence to sniff that out. And the idea that somehow Flynn did nothing to warrant attention amidst all the Russia stuff is lunacy.

see. The problem for the Biden campaign is that it's sort of like, but her emails and all of that kind of thing, right? I mean, like, they very much want to Hilaryify Biden. And this depends on so many tiny little details that you know Biden will get wrong because he's Biden. And so baiting him into addressing this in any serious way, I think is particularly fraught. If I were Biden, and if it got to the boiling point where they felt they had to address this because this was actually getting traction with the American people, which I very much doubt it will. The whole thing is designed to inflame a base that is already going to vote for Trump, right? This is about ginning out turnout among the converted.

I don't know very many people I don't think there are very many people out there who are like, you know, I was going to vote for Biden, but now that I know that Biden knew about looking into Mike Flynn, I guess I got to vote for Trump. I mean, that has got to be a very small demographic. But anyway, if for whatever reason this turned into something where the Biden seemed felt like they had to address it,

I would have Biden give a written out, non-extemporaneous, no chance of shouting, get these squirrels off of me, speech where he lays out how ludicrous this is, how reasonable, I mean, he can be political about this and take the case further than any of us would, and make the case of how just simply reasonable it was for the Obama administration to investigate the foreign penetration of our election. system by the Russians, bring the Russia stuff back front and center because the whole rhetorical trick of all of the Flynn martyr brigades is to make it sound like there was no reason to investigate Flynn or Russia meddling at all because the Russia hoax wasn't the allegation of collusion. It was the very idea that Russia did anything bad at all. And you find people over and over again, including friends of mine at Fox News, who will say, well, we now know that the Russia thing was a hoax without being very clear that, first of all, the Russia hoax thing was supposed to be allegations of a collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

And even that's not really a hoax, by the way. I mean, there's some smoke there that wasn't insane to think, to look into that. But now they want to make it same as if, I mean, I had some. some bat-guano crazy fever swamp people coming at me about how somehow this stuff somehow proves the crowd strike Trump theory? They want to muddy all of this up. And if I were Biden, I would go back on offense and say, look, we know Russia did this at the time. This has spent very little time on Flynn just enough to drive Trump people crazy. And then say the real outrage here is that Trump has done nothing to try to prevent Russia from doing it again.

He still denies it happened, and he is comfortable with the idea of a foreign power meddling in our elections and go on offense. I very much doubt Biden will do this because Biden has a tendency not to take my advice on things. Can I just echo Jonah for a second? Because I do think that there is a lot to go on offense about here, because in the, because of the top line conclusion of the Mueller report of this no collusion, which he interpreted as, you know, no active conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign, I think a lot of people have totally forgotten the extent of actual wrongdoing, like the shady stuff that was going on, a campaign chair passing on internal

polling data to a suspected Russian operative, the trying to set up a back channel to WikiLeaks, taking a meeting with a Russian lawyer where the purpose of the meeting was to receive information from the Russian government as part of the Russian government's efforts to help Donald Trump. I mean, trying to strike a business deal with Russia and lying about that to Congress. I mean, there's a national security advisor coming in who was a foreign agent. I mean, all of these things, I think the level of penetration about those facts in the public is minimal. It's minimal. And even amongst, you know, I remember I recently had a conversation with an individual.

He was a pastor of a big church pretty up to speed on, you know, various Trump controversies. And I went through those facts and he said to me, isn't that the Russia hoax? And I'm like, no, those are the Russia facts. the Russia hoax is going to be is the is the active conspiracy but these guys tried it's in emails they tried and and so you know I think those facts putting them out there in a way that is it's fact that's just factual and it's bullet point this happened this happened this happened this happened we had to be suspicious is I think would be a good move for Biden But again, he takes even less advice for me, I think.

Well, I think, you know, I think both Joan and David give good advice to the Biden campaign in this respect. I mean, it's clear that this is coming from Trump world. So if you're Joe Biden, you might as well get ahead of it and actually lay out the case, lay out those. And what David laid out there are indeed facts. I mean, he doesn't need to exaggerate. Those things happen. There's documentary evidence of them. And if you rely on, you know, reporting that there was the Washington Post.

post story about Jared Kushner trying to set up a back channel to the Russians that would exist outside of U.S. intelligence communications. I mean, there are lots of troubling facts and reports that if Biden wanted to marshal this into a case he could and could go on the offensive. I do think the one reason he might elect not to do this is if there are additional questions like the ones I raised about what those, even if you believe as, I do, that what David and Jonah say about the fact set leading up to this, which makes the investigations of Trump World and of Michael Flynn, I would say not only defensible but

necessary, is it also then the case that you had bad actors in the national security apparatus doing things that went beyond their charge? And I think the likelihood of that is pretty high. I think we've seen some evidence of that that the Trump world folks can point to. And the struck in page texts, which have been something of an obsession, I do think are problematic. James Comey's behavior, I think he still has a lot of questions to be answered. Hasn't been straight with everybody. Susan Rice repeatedly saying things that aren't true.

I mean, all of these things are things that probably Trump world, undoubtedly Trump world is going to say anyway. way as part of their indictment of Joe Biden and of the Obama administration as they try to make this about the 2020 election campaign to some extent about the 2016 campaign. But there is the case that as there are further investigations and we get the results of the Durham investigation, that that gives the Trump campaign more to work with as they make their argument. Okay, pretty sure you're all wrong. This, except, Jonah, you're right that this is an enthusiasm ginner for the Trump campaign. So a win for them.

The Biden team shouldn't talk about it at all. They should focus on the economy, job losses, coronavirus, make it a referendum on Trump. Don't relitigate Russia because all the phrase Russia does is gin up Trump's base. You will not convince them with David Frenchian diatribes. Wait, are you saying I don't have my finger on the pulse of the Trump base? But I don't think the goal, just to respond to that real quickly, I don't think the goal would necessarily be for the Biden campaign to win over the Trump base. I mean, you're right.

If you built a campaign effort with that as your objective and you're Joe Biden or his campaign managers, you should be fired on the spot. I do think that the case would be to sort of lay a preemptive defense of what you know is coming from Trump world for independent and persuadable. I don't think, to be clear, this should be sort of the leading charge of a Biden campaign. I think you're right that they're much better off making the case on the economy, on the handling of the virus, on competence, on accountability, on a number of other issues. But the second they engage on Russia, it becomes that playing field because that's where

the Trump campaign will want to battle. So you can't give them that, even if they're... there might be some percentage of independence or persuadibles who care. I don't think you give an inch on it. I guess I just don't think you can leave it. You can't just ignore it. You can't just not engage on it because it will be. If the Trump world wants to make it a huge part of the campaign, it will inevitably be a big part of the campaign.

It'll be in the debates. It'll be in the debates. And I do think, I agree with Steve. I expect Durham to come up with some additional evidence of wrongdoing and the part of the Obama a national security and law enforcement apparatus. I've been expecting that for a long time. And if I'm the Biden team at those debates, I pivot right off of it.

Like you watch me not engage on this issue. I can not engage with the best of them. And now let's take a quick break and talk about our sponsor this week, ExpressVPN. Okay, so we all know how ExpressVPN protects your privacy and security online, right? But here's something you may not know. You can also use ExpressVPN to unlock

movies and shows that are only available in other countries. See, ExpressVPN hides your IP address and lets you control where you want sites to think you're located. So you can choose from almost a hundred different countries. Just think about all the Netflix libraries you can go through. Love anime? Use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix and be spirited away. But it's not just Netflix. ExpressVPN works with any streaming service, Hulu, BBCI player, YouTube, you name it. There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is ridiculously fast. There's never any buffering or lag, and you can stream an HD, no problem. ExpressVPN is also compatible with all your devices, phones, media consoles, smart TVs, and more.

If you visit this special link right now at ExpressVPN.com slash Freedom, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Support the show, watch what you want, and protect yourself with ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN.com slash freedom. Okay, I asked each of you this week to come with your vice presidential pick for Joe Biden, which, you know, we'll see where you guys all end up. Jonah, I'm going to start with you. Tell us who you are picking on behalf of the Biden campaign for vice president. some pros and cons perhaps yeah so um you know i am um i'm not wildly enthusiastic by this

thing of i'm going to pick a woman i just promised to pick a woman i i i get the politics of we know you hate women jona like just go ahead it is no and um uh no i mean like i i think it's a good example of the politics of primaries hurting the politics of a general election, because by just promising in advance to pick a woman, it makes, I think it somewhat lessens the impact of when you actually pick a woman, right? I mean, if he could have decided, you know, behind the scenes, I will pick a woman. It's obvious I should pick a woman. It'd be better to pick, you know, an African-American woman. But by announcing it in advance, there's something about it's just going to tick off some

people. And I think it's not necessarily a good idea, but it seemed like it was necessary for him during the primaries. So here we are. That said, I think there are a bunch of perfectly acceptable candidates. I think the people, I think that the Biden team in particular, particular is underestimating the degree to which the Trump campaign is going to make, try to make Biden seem scary and dangerous. And, you know, I mean, Eric Trump is all but declaring that Biden's a

pedophile. And it's disgusting. I mean, it's really disgusting. And I mean, I think he, I think it was Eric Trump. It might have, I can never remember if it's Uday or Cuse, but one of them put out a tweet saying, you know, would you feel comfortable having Joe Biden drive your kid to school? And the young Republicans for Trump or whatever it was put out a video basically cut to make it look like Biden was molesting children. I mean, they're pizza gating him. And I think it's outrageous and disgusting, but I think all that stuff combined with Biden's gaff-prone. this could gain traction. It worked with Hillary about how sick she was and all this is a long windup to your

vice presidential pick. Yeah. So I'm thinking pick vanilla. And I think vanilla is Amy Klobuchar. The Klobos, she doesn't scare anybody. She's reassuring. Let her drive your kids to school. No problem.

So I say, and she's competitive in Minnesota. She won every race there. Clobes is my pick. And any downsides you see to picking her? She's boring as hell. And she's more left wing than she seems, which I think could be spun as a plus or a minus because it'll help them, help Republicans paint the ticket as really your left wing, which could actually help gin up the Democratic base, which is non-enthusiastic about Biden.

That's probably her biggest downside is that she is not. a goose, the Bernie Sanders-based turnout candidate, but I think that the need for that is exaggerated. David, turning to you next. So full disclosure, Jonah took my draft choice. So I'm going out of the box. I'm wondering to what extent this choice should be influenced by the coronavirus pandemic and by the public's desire for some to for steadiness and leadership with a record of success. And so I'm going to say coronavirus hero London Breed. Who is London Breed?

That's the mayor of San Francisco. Basically, everything that de Blasio did wrong, she did right. And one of the interesting subplots of the entire coronavirus pandemic is, well, Why did things go so, so poorly? Why did the combination of Cuomo and de Blasio fail so badly in New York when the combination of Newsom and Breed succeeded at least so far, so well in California? And lest we minimize the accomplishment. Now, a lot of this, you know, I'm sure when we kind of unwind all of this over the next

months and years, will be struck by the extent to which terrible luck played a particular kind of role and incompetence magnified it. Many factors went into it. But the fact of the matter is, San Francisco is a place that has an enormous amount of, it's an enormous amount of commerce with China, an enormous amount of traffic with China, you know, way above the power curve of most American cities. it's a dense, it's not as dense as New York, but it is densely populated. And it has not, it is not suffered what New York has suffered.

California has not suffered what New York State has suffered. And so, and also she has a ridiculously compelling personal story. I mean, this is somebody, you talk about up from absolute poverty. She, she came out of nowhere, basically. And so it's an out-of-the-box pick. I know it won't happen, just like Biden won't take my advice on Russia, and he will take Sarah's. But I think there's room for somebody who stared the coronavirus pandemic right in the face and can come to the American people and say, look at my record.

Steve? So I think Jonah's right that Joe Biden would be smart to pick somebody who's more or less safe. David is right that Joe Biden would be smart to pick someone who has a compelling personal story, but they're both wrong about who that individual is. And that individual is Tammy Duckworth, the senator from Illinois. I think, I mean, I'm maybe the only person in America who believes this, although it's been reported that the Biden campaign has asked for her references and some background material to potentially better. So maybe I'm not the only one, but I think she's a very compelling choice, the most compelling

choice of any of the folks who have been out there. Duckworth, for people who aren't familiar with her history, is in Iraq war veteran. She won a Purple Heart. She was shot down. She's a black hawk helicopter pilot who was shot down in Iraq in 2004, lost use of her legs, partial use one of her arms, uh, went on to work in several different roles in Illinois state government on behalf of veterans. President Obama picked her to be, uh, to take a position at the VA in Washington, D.C. She ran for the House. She ran for the Senate. She won. And, uh, I think she's a, I think she's a good spokesman for sort of the center left, uh, position among Democrats. I think she's more liberal than many people regard her. She founded the environmental justice caucus in the

House, and she's been active on those issues. So I think she could appeal to the base of the Democratic Party in a way that somebody like Amy Klobuchar might be a bit of a tougher sell. But I think the main reason to pick her is because Joe Biden wants to make this a contest about, sort of returning to normal America and getting beyond sort of the last three years of chaos and crazy and to make this in effect an argument about character. And I think you can point to Tammy Duckworth and just her experiences and her background to make that case. She also, I mean, Biden has made very clear that he's interested in only a list of women that he's going to be choosing from, she's the first, Sarah, correct me if I'm wrong, the first

senator who gave birth while she was in the Senate. I was going to say it if you didn't. Perfect. Perfect. I'm your new feminist ally. You've been waiting to get the title. So what do you think is her biggest downside? I think her biggest downside is probably experience and sort of national stage exposure. She's, she's, she's, she's, She's not that well-known. She's relatively new to the Senate was elected in 2016, just a few terms in the House. So she doesn't have the kind of national profile that Kamala Harris or an Amy Klobuchar developed because they ran for president. That, I think, could be a strike against her.

But other than that, I think she's got a pretty good record and would be somebody that the Democrats would be happy with. Yeah, I'd make one point about the Tammy Duckworth thing. I think the one asset, which is a difficult thing to talk about without seeming insensitive, but is not only she disabled, she is at least partly Asian. Her mom was Thai, but of Chinese descent. But vice presidential candidates tend to be the attack dogs. And baiting Donald Trump to insult a disabled female Asian veteran is a very attractive thing to the way for the Democrats, right? Because he's this counterpuncher, right?

He attacked the parents of a Gold Star, you know, like he takes bait and having Tammy Duckworth go out there and bait him and having and trying to get him to say something. grotesquely and sensitive, if I were the Democrats going for all the marbles, I would find that very attractive. Just putting it out there. Full disclosure, Duckworth was also my pick, but Steve took her first in our game of vice presidential bingo. I do think that the cons that you raise are real. I also wonder whether her, you know, Biden really needs to pick someone where he can make the case that this person's ready to be president on day one. And her lack of national, not just exposure, but practice, you know, there's some unknowns around that when you don't know how someone's going to do under the bright, bright lights. So my pick was Governor Grisham

from New Mexico. She replaced Susanna Martinez after 2018, beat the Republican by nearly 20 points. She's only 60 years old. She's a 12th, generation New Mexican. I'm a third generation Texan and I'm like, I'm a Texan, like 12th generation New Mexican. She's one, she was the chairman, chair rather, of the Congressional Hispanic caucus when she was in Congress for five years. So, you know, Biden has been lagging in Latino support in a bunch of the polls from where he should be. This would be an easy pickup there. I don't believe in vice presidential state bingo. I don't think it does you a ton of good, so I don't really care whether she's from a state that helps him a lot. You know, lots of executive experience,

therefore, to, it's the closest mimic to the bright lights, if you will, when like the buck stops with you and you can't just decide which media cycles to jump in and out of. Ready to be president, governor experience, also in Congress, understands D.C. a little Hispanic and not controversial. She's not Amy Klobuchar vanilla, Jonah, but this isn't someone who's been a lightning rod where her name already sends people into their corners. You know, cons are nobody knows who she is, which is the downside of being the governor of New Mexico and not the governor of some of these other more populated states. All right, we're heading into our final topic,

which is rewatchable movies. Now, I'm going to let each of you define what we mean by rewatchable. Back in the day, back when we watched TV live, I would have said rewatchable meant that when you're scrolling through the channels and TNT is halfway through the movie, you just can't keep scrolling. you have to start wherever that movie is and you just keep watching

that that's the test of rewatchability. However, in our current era, I think rewatchability means something else. So I will let each of you define that and give me a few of your movies that you think are the most rewatchable movies for you. Jonah. This is the question I get to go first on.

Okay. So I basically subscribe to your definition of rewatchable, right, where you're, you gotta head to the store and you're like just, you're clicking through the channels and all of a sudden you see that the Godfather is on and you're like, oh, crap, I can go to the store in about a half hour and you sit down and you just start watching it, right? And so I do think the Godfather is the top of that list.

I mean, I think there's a very strong case. It's the best American film. But the reason why it's rewatchable is that, each scene is compulsively watchable and propels you to say, okay, I've got to hang out for just this next scene, even though you know what's coming and you want to watch it again. I used to feel this way about Animal House thinking that the only place where I could grab my car keys and get out of their house because I don't want to watch is that is the Donald Sellerland getting high, hey Paula scene.

It's like, this is dumb. I can get out of here. But like if it's behind you, you got to watch the end. Other rewatchable movies are mostly silly movies because they're like on TNT and they're just sort of chewing gum. Tombstone, one of my personal favorites,

which nobody is seen except for the Cognoscenti. A movie called Diggs Town, which I love con movies and there aren't that many of them. Ocean's 11, eminently rewatchable. and I got to say saving Private Ryan is a really rewatchable movie even though there are scenes where you just like got to look away.

I think that's interesting because I think that Oceans 11 is like a personality test of whether you find that to be one of your rewatchables or not. David, what are on yours? Yeah, so my definition is similar to Jonah's the rewatchable concept.

I think the apex rewatchable movie and all of the history of humanity by the old T&T standard, which always had the movies, was Roadhouse, Patrick Swayzee. Yeah, yeah, strong. I mean, you know, you just had to keep watching because it was so, you don't want to say ridiculous,

but it was almost like the director said, okay, Patrick Swayze, you're the, you know, the troubled bouncer, and act that 70% more than normal. And you're the small town villain plus 90% like it was so over the top but look tombstone incredible I just I was up till 2 a.m. rewatching tombstone last night I mean the lines that just the lines you know I'm your huckleberry or you know skin that smoke wagon and see what happens like you just wait for it and then

by the way listeners Steve hasn't seen tombstone so what makes this particularly funny is that David's citing these absurd-sounding line. Yeah, as you say, does nothing to make me want to see it. What was the Latin fight? What was the last one? The last line? There's a, Wyatt Earp confronts a crooked dealer. White Earp is unarmed.

The dealer is, of course, you know, he's healed. He's healed. So that means he's got a pistol. And so White Earp stands right above him and says, skin it. Go ahead. skin that smoke wagon and see what happens, which is essentially pull the gun on me and

you'll see what I'll do. Great, great line. Sounds great. It sounds really great. It's so good. Ready to go watch it right when we're done. And then, but I think the ultimate really is the

AEU, the Anchorman extended universe. Strong, strong, strong. Yeah, I'm with you, Dave on this. Anchorman won. and Anchorman don't do not Sarah do not sleep on Anchorman too um one of the slept on Anchorman too I will acknowledge do not sleep on Anchorman too it's one of the underappreciated comedic classics in modern American cinema so that's those are my those are

movies all right Steve you know that I save you and I for last because we're not Jonah and David correct yeah I mean I should say I defer to a certain extent deferred to Jonah and David because I know that they've seen exponentially more movies that I've seen. Fair. Not a huge movie guy. And I'm afraid my choices will give away my sort of preferred genre. If you pick Citizen Kane, it will.

You're afraid it will give it away? I mean, what do you have to be ashamed of? I mean, I don't have any of it to be ashamed of, but I can't come up with, you know, sophisticated choices like the ones that that you all laid out based on your... So you're a secret women's prison movie guy, right? You're like Shane Heat, you know. So, I mean, the obvious choices, airplane, top secret, naked gun, Fletch, Caddyshack, Stripes.

I mean, those are sort of... I can't tell you how many times I've watched each of those. I don't know which one I've watched more, but I would... If I had to wager, I bet it would be stripes, and I bet I've watched it three dozen times, more or less. It was a favorite when I was growing up and also in college. I was going to say, I think all of those are your coming of age movies. Pretty much, pretty much. And part of it is, you know, since I'm now a mature adult and have a lot of kids, there's just not as much time to watch movies that aren't, you know,

frozen or the princess and the frog, that kind of stuff. But the one rewatchable movie that probably isn't on a lot of other lists and would definitely be on mine and maybe at the top of mine is bottle rocket which has every single time you watch the movie there's a new classic line and when i mean classic line i don't mean like skin the wagon heel man or whatever it was that david said i mean i mean like a true classic line like when this is basically like a Bad News Bears criminal, would-be criminal gang, that's the movie. And they walk into this guy's house that's pretty nice. He's doing pretty well.

And the key line is, how did an ass like Steve get a kitchen like this? It's just a great kitchen. And I don't think I've picked up on that line until like the sixth or seventh time I watched it. The sixth or seventh time you had a visitor come see your kitchen? Yes, exactly. but bottle i highly recommend bottle rocket i think it is it is sort of the classic and a classic rewatchable movie all right well i'm shocked that my movies don't overlap at all with any of yours uh not shocked not shocked at all due to age and gender so clearly the most rewatchable

and i already said how i defined it like t and t scrolling through no matter where it's at. I will then just watch till the end. And like, unlike Jonah, I'm not like, this can wait 30 minutes. I'm like, well, there goes my afternoon. Oh, well. Everything's off. So in no particular order except the last one, Apollo 13, which weirdly, Jonah, you mentioned earlier in the podcast. I agree with you. These are all good picks so far. I mean, from everybody, yeah. Go on. I'm sorry. A few good men, sort of one of the, you know, original Aaron Sorkins. Mean girls can pick up anywhere there.

And drum roll for most rewatchable movie, Independence Day. No question. Hands down, no matter where you are in the movie. Because there's like five movies in it. So like you're just like starting wherever you are. You're trolling David here. I can't believe David didn't say Aquaman. Oh. I didn't want to trigger Jonah.

Yeah. I just have so many more movies that come to mind. Listen to you. There's stuck on you. There's Rushmore. Rushmore was filmed near where I grew up. Rushmore was a great movie. So listeners, we hope you will send in both your VP Dark Horse picks for Joe Biden and also your most rewatchable movies, particularly if you strongly disagree. with David, per usual.

Thank you for joining us. And don't forget, if you're a member of the dispatch, you can join us for dispatch live tomorrow night, Thursday night. And we'll be taking more hot topic questions like these. So we'd love to have you there with us. The guys will have their drinks ready. I will have some spin drift, sparkling water. Who knows?

We thank you so much for listening. Rate us on Apple Podcast. podcast, wherever you're getting your podcast from. And we look forward to talking to you next week. Bye.