The Dispatch Podcast - How the Epstein Files Stumped the White House

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Sarah Isgur, Kevin Williamson, and Mike Warren to discuss the New York Times report on the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files and Graham Platner's primary win in Maine. The Agenda: —"Dumb-dumb meetings" —Trump admin crisis management —How presidential staff spin stories —Graham Platner's primary win —Can Democrats take the Senate? —NWYT: The World Cup Show notes: —New York Times report on the Epstein meetings —Kevin Williamson on political tribalism —Kevin Williamson on excusing Platner's past —Sarah Longwell on Republicans and moral authority The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll look at the New York Times report on a series of damage control meetings held in the Situation Room of the White House regarding the release of the Epstein files and what it exposes about the dynamics within the Trump administration. Then we'll take a look at Graham Platner's unsurprising win in Maine's Democratic Senate primary and look at the Senate map around the country. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues, Sarah Isker, Kevin Williamson, and Mike Warren. Let's dive right in. Good morning, crew. I want to start today by talking about this major New York Times investigation on the White House and its handling of the Epstein Files. This is a long piece published Wednesday morning the New York Times. It's an excerpt from a forthcoming book called Regime Change.

by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, two of the newspaper's best reporters, and incredibly well-sourced. And I think that probably as much as anything comes through in this piece, in reading this piece. The piece is an in-depth look at how the White House handled the Epstein files and lots of sort of in-the-room Bob Woodward-esque detail on debates that they were having, on meetings that they convened on where they got together on who was involved, we will put a gift link to the piece in the show notes.

So those of you who haven't read it can go and read it there. Set aside a good, I don't know what, half hour or 45 minutes? It was quite an excerpt. But let me start, Sarah, with you. I had about 50 different reactions as I read the piece. And I'm wondering if you have a major takeaway. What was, what did you think when you got to the end of that piece? I look forward to the Apple TV series.

Based solely on this piece. Lots of drama. I also had several reactions to it, though most of mine were pretty meta, like that one, that congrats to Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman for the upcoming book that is just going to get option. Like, each chapter will have a separate Hollywood option. My second reaction, though, was, huh, I wonder if people, will realize that this is actually how government works at the highest levels. Now, forget that it's about Epstein in particular or, you know, forget all the particulars. But even though you have

really big important things going on, it will be these things that will convene the sort of most stressful highest level meetings. And that will be what consumes sort of, you know, in the box of important and urgent, you know, the quad box. Like, these will be the unimportant, urgent things that take up the most amount of time in government a lot of the time. And, you know, there was this sort of throwaway line in it of like the sit room, the same place where Obama ordered, you know, the strike on Osama bin Laden. And I'm like, I promise you that the Obama administration had similar dumb, dumb meetings to this one, because everyone in government has, dumb-dum meetings like this, because when it's about your own team, your own base, these sort of

mini scandals that can consume a news day, there aren't a whole lot of people usually sitting in that room saying, you know, in five years, that's not what people are going to even remember, so let's not worry about it, because so much of government is winning the news day, the news cycle. So I don't know, I had this very like meta, like, oh, I think people may think that this is like a Trump special. and it's really not. I think that's a fair point. There are a lot of those kinds of meetings.

I'm not sure anything quite like the Epstein Files stuff. I don't know that Obama had, I think Obama had plenty of scandals. Most of them are having to do with governing, fewer, obviously, personal scandals. I promise they had crazy meltdown meetings about the Obamacare website. I bet they even had, you know, well, they obviously had meetings about fast and furious. Now, you're right that these at least had some bearing on, oh my God, Do you know the number of dumb, dumb meetings they would have had on Benghazi?

And to be clear, I'm not saying Benghazi is dumb, dumb, I'm talking about what was being discussed in the meetings and what they thought was the most important thing they had to do that day was dumb dumb stuff. Right. I wonder if there was a tan suit meeting. So, you know, that's what was almost coming out of my mouth. And then I was like, you know what? Probably not, actually. They probably knew that that was not worth a meeting.

Kevin, when you read this piece, I'm just interested in your overall reaction. Well, a couple of things. One is you really have to credit the cultural impact of the West Wing because you've got a whole generation of people who were too young to watch the West Wing who act and talk like their characters on the West Wing, which was pretty fun to read. And also, you know, all these guys talk about how much they hate the media and the media's crooked and you can't trust the mainstream media. Man, they love to talk to the New York Times. So when you're getting material about Dan Bongino's interstate, you know, he priestly. You know, he privately seethed about this, that or the other thing. Well, that means Dan Bongino talk to them for the story, right? Because no one's reading his mind. They don't have the New York Times psychic out there. I would say it's fun just to jump in on that, Kevin.

It's so fun to read stories like this doing what we do. Because, I mean, you can read it as what it's presenting and the story itself. But the guessing game, I mean, it was interesting in our Slack message about this. I think the first comments were about who was the sourcing on this and how do we know. And you're exactly right. inner thoughts of Dan Bongino or descriptions from three sources in a four-person meeting. It's like, okay. I think I know who that might be.

Yeah, so J.D. Vance had a busy day, I guess, apparently. And the Bonchino stuff was especially fun for me just because I've written about this guy. And you can tell it was him because not only is he being presented as a complete douche, but the kind of douche that he wants to be perceived as being when he starts yelling about, I'll give you $100,000 if you can prove that I, you know, leak this information and all that kind of stuff. So that part of it was fun. I don't know if any of you all have had this, but as I've gotten older,

it takes a while for my eyes to wake up, so sometimes my reading's a little blurry in the morning. And I wasn't really entirely sure I was seeing the words, aggressive nipple fetish in a story about the White House in the New York Times, but as it turns out I was, which actually was the name of my band in high schools,

I was sharing with you all earlier. But, yeah, what a crazy thing. Sarah's worked in government, of course, and so I'll take her word for it, that this is how government works. But it just seems, Gosh, how to put it. My experience with government,

what I know people in Washington, is that the United States government is largely made up of smart, capable, honest people who are doing the best they can. And that's the scary part, right? This is the best that they can do. This is the work of people not trying to undermine the country, not trying to, you know, enrich themselves necessarily

or follow some sort of crooked private agenda. This is the work of the best people we have doing the best that they can do. That's somebody we should keep in mind And it kind of, that's what makes a libertarian out of you, right? We should have limits on what we expect from these folks. But this kind of play-by-play of these ding-dongs, just sitting around this table talking about the Epstein stuff, which just, it makes me want to immigrate.

But then a lot of things do. Mike, Kevin sort of dangled out that very interesting tease, but it was a significant part of the story. Can you explain to us what was alternatively, described as quote unquote the nipple claims, or I think there were, there was another reference to nipple related materials. And I don't, I would rather have us not spend a lot of time on this part of the story. But the contrast was so striking. And, you know, they reported in the story that this was evident to people kind of in real time who were involved in these discussions,

many of them in that situation room that Sarah mentioned. So what's up with nipples, Mike? What did I do to you, Steve, that you would turn to me to explain all of this? Do you remember when you let Sarah ambush me? This is payback. Oh, wow. This is it. I see. Mike, please walk us through the nipple controversy.

Okay. So, log story short, so in these documents that were in this trunch of documents that the debate was whether to release them or not, this is sort of the crux of what everybody is arguing about in this series of meetings that these Trump administration. officials are having about the Epstein files. One of them includes a claim from a woman in, it's hard to, I'm trying to trace the exact origin of this. It's like from a legal case involving one of the women who had accused Jeffrey Epstein of things. There were claims from another woman in that case about a third woman who the claims were

supposedly about Donald Trump having, you know, a sexual relationship with a woman and, that this woman claimed, not with a whole lot of evidence, that Trump had abused, this is from the New York Times article, abused the nipples of this woman to the point where the woman, ransom, who was being quoted in this, said that she remember seeing them. And they looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen. I remember wincing when I looked at them.

So it's like a pretty graphic and shocking kind of allegation made against Trump that this young woman, maybe even underage woman, I can't keep it all straight, had made this claim to this woman who made this claim in a separate case involving a case against Jeffrey Epstein. So the debate within the situation room is what to do about this claim. This is out there. If we release these documents, we will demonstrate that we had this claim in writing and what should we do about it. And actually, this all is a run up to what I think is the most revealing paragraph of this. story, which was in the midst of this debate, I'm going to start here, the vice president said,

that's vice president, J.D. Vance, said he thought the president would be okay with releasing the nipple-related documents, arguing that Trump had been accused of worse. Quote, I think we should put it out, he said. It would cause people to say we're going further than we need to. Wiles, that's Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, quickly responded that the president would not, in fact, be okay with it. It was a point. No one wanted to continue debating. And I actually think everything you need to know about the principles in the White House is maybe contained in that paragraph.

Because my impression, as I finished reading this, knowing that it's very clear that J.D. Vance and Susie Wiles and a number of the other people featured in this story were sources for the story, is that Susie Wiles and actually Dan Bongino seemed to get it a little more about how the media response, and particularly the kind of right-wing base of the Republican, party would respond to withholding information or holding back certain information and not being forthright about it all, how they would respond. They were more correct and more astute than the

vice president of the United States who really comes off here as out of his element and not really understanding, I think, what we have seen in the subsequent months, which is just a lot of far right outrage about the Trump administration's handling of all this. Yeah, I mean, I would say out of his element and sort of ignorant or naive is the best possible framing for J.D. Vance. I mean, if you wanted to look at this in more Machiavellian terms, you could say he was consistently pushing to release information that would damage Donald Trump. That's fair. I don't know that that's the case. They don't give us much reporting. It's a fair theory, though. Believe that that's the case. But you can certainly imagine that we're Donald Trump to sit down for a half hour and read

this piece of reporting, he might come to that conclusion. Why was J.D. Vance continually telling them to put out more information and put out more information. Sarah, I want to go back to you on, there are a number of things to talk about. I think among the many things that sort of struck me is you have all of this. I mean, this is the watching the duck glide across the pond to use a bad analogy where you don't see anything on top and all this stuff is happening underneath, right? And the extent to which the New York Times headline describes this as a freak out. And I think that's an accurate description of what. what this was. The entire time the administration is putting forward a public face suggesting

this is no big deal. We're not concerned. Trump's not really in it. It doesn't really matter. We're just trying to make good on promises that we made before the administration to go after these pedophiles and others who are guilty of these things. And it turns out that they were not only concerned about it, they were obsessed with it and all of these meetings. Again, not low-level people. These are the people who in, you know, other situations might be thought to be running the country involved in these kinds of conversations. And it unfolds over a time period where we're looking at major decisions on the economy, where we're watching inflation run up, where you're having the authorization of the extraction of Maduro in Venezuela,

where there are strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities. All of this stuff, there's such, to me, a dramatic contrast between what we're seeing in this story and the duty, the responsibility of these people that carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. You've been in government. You've been on the other side of this. In addition to just the time spent in the meetings, which is what most of this focused on, it's how much time do you spend beyond that? I mean, it's not like you're just in the meetings and you're only thinking about this in the meetings. Is this the kind of thing that just overwhelmed?

in administration that engulfs it, that eats up, you know, they got into a little bit of the backbiting between Von Gino and Cash Patel, the FBI director and Pam Bondi. How much more are you focused on sort of positioning and who's on what side and who's the leaker and those things? So, boy, a lot there. In government, there are things called principal meetings, basically, and what they're describing here would be sort of a version of a principal's committee meeting. that would be the heads of the departments necessary to make a decision. So you might have a principal committee with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Attorney General. And if, for instance, you don't really need them all in a room, because that can be very difficult

scheduling-wise to get the principals in a room together, you have what's called a paper PC, where everyone sort of circulates their views on paper, but still from the principal, like not just staff, etc. So yeah, I mean, this is a principal's meeting. You don't see a lot of staff in this meeting, or at least they're not mentioned, which means that back home in your home department, you're having a meeting before the meeting, usually. You would never go into a principal's committee meeting without having the staff meeting first to prepare the principal for the principal's committee meeting. Now, I say that because that's how it would normally work. This does feel like a bit of a, this part might be a Trump special, right? Because these people are in a lot of ways

not acting in their principal capacities. They're acting in their staffer capacities to the president. And the big problem here is that the president is on a significantly different page than his staff. And so you have a president who does not want to do this, does not want to engage in it, and has a very different view on the entire thing. And so think of Trump as the duck above the water and think of all these guys as the feet underneath in a lot of ways. Because Trump knows he's in it. He knows exactly right what all is going to be relevant here. And as he said, he also knows his friends are in it. And if he suddenly is the one who outs his friends as these like Epstein guys, I would think he has to be a little concerned what comes back at him, that they're like,

oh yeah, well, guess who I was sitting next to? Like if you're F me, no F you. So Trump is just going to say no to all of this, and he wants to run his normal play, which is deny, deflect. And he doesn't understand why his staff basically keeps having these meetings to engage. Now, the staff is like, because deny deflect isn't working. But I don't know that they made the situation better rather than worse. This might have been a situation where Trump's play would have worked if the staff had backed his play. But these meetings are happening. You know, you made it sound, Steve, as if like they're the ones who are calling these meetings. But really, they are responding to external events. Each time there is something else that has triggered this that has caused them to all come into

this room once again. And again, I'm not really engaging with the Epstein part of this because I think this does repeat itself so often in government. But in that sense, it's not that different than the Russia investigation stuff that I was involved in, where we were at the mercy of whatever leak or news story or, you know, something that someone found. And we were. we'd all have to sit around and be like, okay, how are we going to respond to this? I mean, I remember one specific time where we got a call, I won't out the outlet, because they didn't run it. It was so foundationless. And they were like, we have evidence that the attorney general parked his car at the Russian embassy, you know, three months ago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

and I was like, what? And so I had to call everyone together and be like, okay, we got to go through all the calendars. We've got to figure out, like, sir, is there anything near the Russian embassy that you might have parked it there to get to a restaurant or whatever? And in the end, like, nobody could find anything, and I had to call back. But, like, it's my job to call that meeting for everyone to say, if this went forward,

it would be so catastrophic and, like, knock us off everything else we're doing. We've got to address this, even though it's totally insane. It had never happened. And then, of course, the reporter was like, okay, I was just checking. I was like, what the? So, like, that reporters never going to get their, you know, phone call returned again. Like, you just wasted the time

of all of these principles when you said you had a source and you don't have a source. You don't have the pictures you said you had. Like, give me a break. Like, you lied. So this is the sort of stuff that happens in government. That's what I mean. These dumb, dumb meetings happen all the time. And it's a comms person whose unfortunate job it is to say, we've got to all sit around and deal with this now, even though, as you say, there's all this other stuff going on, because it's very hard as a comes person to say, let's just let this destroy the day and that somehow it was still be doing my job if I let that happen without telling everyone what's coming down the pipe. Can I say this, Steve?

One thing that is different about what you've described in the general, Sarah, and what this story, you know, what was the origin of all of these dumb, dumb meetings about Epstein, is how much it's driven by own goals by the administration and that these sort of outside events were set in motion by the people who then have to deal with these things months down the road. I mean, the story does a very good job of retelling a story that we kind of already knew about Pam Bondi, the attorney general, delivering these binders that claim to be part one of the Epstein files to a group of conservative influencers. This was like back in February of 2025, these conservative online influencer chuds were

all meeting folks at the white. House and they got a briefing from Marco Rubio and I think they got a briefing from J.D. Vance about what the administration was going to be doing so that they could go, you know, tell their followers how great this new administration was doing. And then Pam Bondi seemingly surprised everybody and delivered these binders claiming this is the first of our release of the Epstein files, which was something that many of the other principles, including Dan Bonino and Cash Patel, the number two and number one at the FBI, sort of involved with before they were in government saying, you know, when we get in, you know,

that's going to be one of the first things we expose. So these principles kind of chum the waters for this sort of thing. And then they, when they tried to kind of partly deliver, they didn't deliver all the goods and the conspiracy that, again, you can go all the way up to Donald Trump sort of chumming the waters for conspiracy-minded thinking in the general. And I would say specifically on Epstein, people in his orbit who were supporting him in 2024 being on stage in many ways at those campaign events. And they... And then putting them in incredibly high level, like, you took the biggest Epstein conspiracy theorists and put them in the number one and number two spot at the FBI. And then you have them in these meetings saying, there's nothing there, guys.

And I'm like, one thing I missed out of the story was, wait a second, at what point, and did these guys ever believe in what they were saying about Epstein, right? Bonchino's bragging about making millions of dollars from chumming this Epstein conspiracy went before he goes into government. Then he's quoted in the story as saying there's nothing there. There is no list. Why do you guys keep basically chumming the waters as you say, Mike? And I'm like, so which was it? Do you now realize you were wrong or did you never think you were right? And again, if you're the president who has a very different take on what to do about all the Epstein stuff, then why in God's green earth, Did you put someone who had made these promises who, as he says, made millions of dollars from this specific conspiracy theory?

And you put him in the position where he was going to have to do something on this specific conspiracy theory, the one that you, Donald Trump, don't want to talk about. Yeah. And then Bongino, by the way, very helpfully publicly explain this where he said, well, this is government. Now, I had to like pay attention to evidence and stuff. He literally said something very much along those lines. Show business. That's a really important question. Sarah, because, I mean, this was, again, another of these things that sort of left off the page as you're reading this.

Did Donald Trump put Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, who the authors of this piece, the authors of the forthcoming book, portray as the most agitated about the absence, the ones who really stirred the pot beforehand had been focused on this on their own podcasts, beforehand had been amplifying conspiracy theories about this for years. So does Trump put them into these positions because he has seen from his people over the years such undying loyalty that he's convinced that if it's about him, they're going to just light out and take it. Or does he do it because, in his mind, there's no there there. He is not implicated in any of these things. There isn't anything for them to really push on. And so they'll understand this and let this go. And it should be mentioned that the piece reports that the Times analysis of the documents,

some three million pages of documents, that Trump or his family or Mar-a-Lago were mentioned 38,000 times. So whatever the case, Trump is in the middle of it, whatever the truth is about what he may or may not have done. I don't think that Trump ever totally understood how much his base cared about it. I think he saw it just as a thing that they did to beat up on the left. And in that sense, this is a weird comparison, but it's kind of like the pro-life community. You know, there's a very small number of people who are truly pro-life, but the vast majority, you know, simply we're using it as a way to justify hating the left, voting against the left, self-sorting tribalism. And so when he came into office, abortion didn't really matter that much.

It didn't affect his base vote. Very different than what Donald Trump thinks about immigration. He thinks immigration actually is an animating, political tool for his voters. He would never back down and be like, never mind, we're just going to keep the border open because he has this very good instinct. He was right that abortion was not a real issue for a lot of these voters, but immigration was. I think he thought that Epstein was not a real issue. It was just like abortion, a way to sort, you know, are you on my team or not on my team? Do you drink macho lattes or drive a pickup truck? And in that sense, by the way, I don't I'm not sure that he's wrong. I think his team is wrong. The one thing I kept coming back to reading this was like,

why do we think these guys are right about any of this? Because as you said, Steve, they're the ones who keep screwing it up and keeping it in the news. They're the fluffers. And so what I don't understand is why Donald Trump didn't just fire the lot of them. I mean, Bondi looks like an idiot throughout this. But Cash Patel and Bongino aren't covering themselves in glory. Frankly, Vance isn't either, although you can't fire your vice president. He's elected. Susie Wiles, not surprisingly, looks like the adult in the room. I mean, the thing that Mike read about the nipple thing where Vance is like, I think Donald Trump would be totally fine with releasing this thing about his, you know, aggressive nipple fetish. And just the dead pan. You can just, you can see a woman like Susie Wiles saying it.

No, in fact, he would not. And I don't think they, like, Jay, Andy Vance is not going to want to debate that from that point on. We're sure about that? And Sarah, just to clarify your pro-life point, you mean the way that the Trump campaigns and the Trump and Trump world use the pro-life movement, not that pro-lifers don't believe the things that they say? Or do you mean?

Because that's not my experience. I mean, I know a lot of pro-lifers who believe very deeply. There are a number of people who work for and in the pro-life actual movement, who of course believe what they've been saying. But as it turns out, the vast majority of voters who identified as pro-life clearly didn't care that much about it. It was like what was supposed to be the number one issue to determine whether you were a Republican or a Democrat did not matter to the vast majority of Republican voters the way that immigration actually does seem to. Yeah. All right.

We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. If you're a regular dispatch podcast listener, for months you've heard me talk about. how my mom loves her aura frames. Yes, frames, plural. In these ads and also on the show itself, and yes, I'm happy to report that my mother was thrilled with her second aura frame last month for Mother's Day. Well, it's not just my mom. My dad loves their aura frames, too. Just the other day, we had a conversation about pictures my daughter uploaded from her semester abroad. My dad loved seeing the highlights of her many adventures in regular photographic updates. It made my parents feel a part of her daily life and it drove their conversations when they connected by phone or video.

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Carver Matframe with the code, Dispatch. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Promocode Dispatch. support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Kevin, one of the other reactions that I had as I read this article was that nowhere in the, I don't know how many words it was, five, six, seven thousand words.

Was there a moment where any of the people involved in these debates in how best to make this thing go away? stopped and said, is this something we should be doing? Should we be making this go away? Is the president guilty of the things that are implied or people have accused him of? Is this something worth defending? Are the claims accurate?

Now, maybe that happened and the reporters just didn't get a lot of detail on it. I'm willing to believe that. But Dan Bongino seems to be the only one who quit over this. And at least the way that the story depicts that departure it was much more about his wanting to get back to his very lucrative podcasting career and that he was that he had been pushing this stuff hard on the outside and wasn't really doing anything on the inside.

Do you imagine that these people, as they're figuring this out, stopped and said, what's right? Should we defend this? That's about the most loaded question I've ever asked you in the history of this podcast. I'm sorry. I don't expect you to say, yes, Steve. I think they spent a lot of time. But look, that's not really what these meetings are.

about, right? That just to go, these are comms meetings. These are how do you deal with the crisis that is happening in the next hour? Like, again, in all the dumb dumb meetings, it's just not really anyone's job in that room to say like, bigger picture, guys, what is our moral responsibility here? Like, that doesn't happen in dumb, dumb meetings. Steve, sorry. Well, that's, that seems like a big problem to me. Does it happen? Does it happen somewhere? I've never seen Sarah speechless before. That was nice. That was a moment. That was, for Those of you who aren't watching this on video, go watch the video. Sarah opened her mouth and then nothing came out and then she closed your mouth.

And it was what I would have imagined we would have had if we'd asked David French if he were here to explain the nipple situation. I guess the question is just so big. Like, when do you talk about the morality of policy proposals? That does happen, but not in comms, crisis, dumb, dumb meetings. But these aren't policy proposals, right? This is just like basic humanity.

But what's the humanity, whether to like have... No, like these victims, the women. Well, I think a lot of people looking at this will say that one of the big problems with Washington and with the way we do politics is that when there is a crisis, the people who get together are the comms people, right? The issue isn't how do we actually deal with this thing in a substantive kind of way? What are the real issues here? It's how do we talk about this stuff in a way that seems clever and minimizes

is, you know, criticism of us and makes it seem like we know what we're doing. And the problem is the centrality of these people to this whole process. Whereas, you know, one of my kind of longstanding, let me pick a fight with Sarah here. One of my longstanding criticisms of the way we do politics is the centrality of both comps, people, and lawyers to the process. Now, I understand that there's a rule. Double shot. Oh.

Mike, Mike, let's you know. We can go get a cup of coffee. There's a place for all these people. And there are actually many places for some of these people and some of them were jail cells, but that's another story. But, you know, the way in which they're just sort of right in the middle of everything as though these were the big compelling controlling concerns. Now, obviously what's legal and what's not legal is a big compelling controlling concern for a lot of these things. But I think this story really confirms people's worst suspicions about how this stuff gets done and what the priorities actually are and who is in charge of these things and who is at the center of the conversation and what the conversation is actually about. So yeah, if you want to have a conversation about how do we talk about this stuff,

how do we handle our comms and you get the comms people together. But the fact that that's the conversation you most want to have, and that's where you get the vice president and the chief of staff and everyone else to sit down and talk about this stuff, I think says something about the process that is not good. Here's my pushback. And like, I put that in quotes because it's not really pushback. But I promise you in the meeting about Hillary Clinton's testimony about Benghazi

that would have had a whole bunch of principles in it, there was no conversation about the families of those who died, for instance, because that's not what the meetings about. And so, Steve, you're acting like they should be talking about the victims of Epstein, because nobody thinks that it's okay. Just like nobody thinks that the men in Benghazi should have died. So, like, no, that's not a topic of conversation because it's not relevant to the actual comms crisis. I guess the question is whether it was okay that they died or whether it's okay that these women were abused. But, you know, is it something that you're comfortable defending? But they're not defending Epstein.

But they're defending the president's behavior in the context of Epstein. And they are defending being misleading and dishonest about their accounting of it. Yeah, fair enough. Just like in the Benghazi situation, they were defending telling this BS story about what happened. That's right. Yeah, it was all made up. Yeah, yeah. But just to be clear, in what we see at least, they're not defending the president's behavior yet.

I'm not saying they wouldn't. Right. They're talking about how to quell their base who wants this is. information when they know that there is negative stuff about the president in this information. And so how to balance transparency with protecting their boss. Like that is what every single one of these meetings is about. It's not about all this other stuff that the Epstein stuff could be about. Just like Benghazi and Hillary's testimony is going to be about what can she say politically

because she's running for president and Obama is president and blah, blah, blah, it's not going to be about what decisions they should have made. that day. Like, that's not what the meeting's about. It's a very, very calm-sperson thing, by the way, to put that, how do we balance transparency with protecting the boss, which is a nice way of saying, how do we go about not telling the truth about this situation or not sharing what we know? Except that the guys in that room desperately wanted to release the stuff. That's what makes it compelling. Some of them did. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean, that, like, some of them did not want to protect the boss. They just wanted to get it out there for their own political bases, right? Bonjino

has his own political base. Vance has his own political ambitions and his own political base. That's what makes us a compelling story. Yeah. Is that while they're trying to balance transparency in protecting their boss, some of them have no interest, actually, in protecting their boss. Susie Wiles is the only one representing Donald Trump in that room, which is fascinating. Yeah. I don't know. I think there were moments where the others were primarily interested in protecting their boss. I think the tricky question was for somebody like Dan Bongino or Castro. how do I protect the boss?

I mean, they've shown themselves willing to say anything and everything to protect the boss. But in this case, they had a difficult time doing it because they themselves were the source of so much of what is at that point causing him grief. I think you're wrong. Wait, Steve, you're wrong about this. Cash Patel and Dan Bongino have gone out and reversed themselves and tied themselves into pretzels on all sorts of other stuff when it's to protect Donald Trump. They won't do it here on Epstein because they have their own political. bases and concerns. That's what makes it different. Right. I'm not saying that they didn't do it. I'm saying that the way that they're wrestling with it is how to reconcile those two things. I mean, they've also gone out repeatedly and defended Donald Trump in the context of Epstein and exonerated him and said there's nothing here.

There's no big deal. But I think that the thing that they were wrestling with, which comes through in this reporting, is on the one hand, they themselves had made this such a big deal. And on the other hand, there's this impulse to just protect the boss. And that's what I think made it difficult. I think sometimes they did. Like Bonino, in effect, said, like, there's a story here. There's a problem here. I've got to get out of the administration because I've made this such a big deal. And I think you're right. A hell of a principled stance, isn't it? Protecting him, yeah, based on what he had said. But I think just a moment on your broader point, which I think is so interesting. And it's to me, yeah, I think sometimes when I'm doing reporting on things like this or other kinds of scandals,

it's where the huge disconnect is for me. Because I don't understand. and somebody who could sit in a discussion about Benghazi and set aside the question that you say they set aside because they're just interested in figuring out, how don't we get out of this thing? And to me, the thing is the thing, right? The big thing was that Hillary Clinton went out and said, this has nothing to do with al-Qaeda.

This is, these are, you know, this was a riot that went haywire. No big deal. Meanwhile, they were looking at evidence that made very clear that the opposite was true. And in particular, the individual people involved were, you know, had al-Qaeda ties, were parts of these groups. Yeah, but by the time you're having this meeting,

all that's already been done, Steve, we're not taking, you're not putting that horse back in the corral. So the meeting is there to solve a specific problem or else you wouldn't have the meeting. There aren't general meetings in government. That's a waste of everyone's time. But why isn't part, why, so I take your point on a descriptive level. Why isn't it ever the case that you stop and say,

you know what, probably a thing to do is to tell the truth. But Steve, like, that is part of the meeting. But again, it's about this congressional testimony. I'm sure someone in that room was like, okay, what if we try a mea culpa? Let's see what that sounds like. Someone write that out. Oh, okay, we don't like that. Let's try this other thing.

So in that sense, Steve, that does happen. But I guess what I'm saying is there isn't some, like, great, you know, moment where everyone sits around and rehashes something that's not the question of the day. You know, I hear you. I find this so fascinating. I hear you. And I think you're right about the way these conversations... I mean, any organization, this isn't just government.

No, but I mean... Any large organization has dumb-dum meetings just like this. But at some point, it seems to me, in life outside of government and where you're concerned about things beyond just protecting the boss or telling the best story, you're spinning the way that you spin, not you, Sarah, but one spins. But also you, Sarah. There is this sort of fundamental point where you're like, is it true? Is it not?

right, is it wrong? And I just am sort of struck again and again how that's not sort of the central part of, like that's where things would start and end with me. I've never been in a meeting where someone says, should we tell the truth or not the truth. That's never going to come up in a meeting. Everyone already agrees. I mean, if that's true, that's absolutely an amazing statement. No, no, no, but you're hearing me the wrong way. Nobody ever, like, because everyone presumes we're telling the truth. You're never going to sit there and say, should we tell the truth or lie? Except for when you come up with a strategy to lie, right? Except if you're, you're, If you use the Hillary Clinton thing, you're saying, no, this was a riot that spun out of control.

This had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or radical Islam. And you've got documents. Steve, different meeting. You're talking about what she originally said after Benghazi. I'm talking about the meeting where she's about to testify before Congress. And so at that point, your argument is they've already made their decision. Right, right. They can't go back and change what she said right afterward.

That did not have a dumb, dumb meeting. It happened too quickly, right? That's how she goes out and says something that's just false. No, they went out and lied about it. They went out and talked about it right away. They knew right away that she was lying. Yeah, yeah. I'm saying there wasn't a dumb, dumb meeting about it because it moved too fast.

So there was no meeting where everyone sat around and thought about what she should say. They just went out and did it, right? Now we're talking about the meeting where she's going to have to testify about that. Right. Now you're going to have a whole lot of meetings about it. You can't go back and rehash what she should have said. That will be very unproductive and you will be the most annoying person in the room. That's a waste of everyone's time because you don't have a time.

machine. So now the question is, what is she going to say about the thing that she said that everyone agrees was not accurate? They're not going to say, she doesn't believe that she intentionally lies. So now they're going to have to come up with all the different ways that they can say why she said something that wasn't true, but wasn't intentionally lying. No one in the room is going to say, why don't we lie some more? And no one else in the room is going to say, I think we should tell the truth. Like, that's not what's happening in these meetings. Everyone is talking about different versions of the truth that they can move forward with. Of the truth, that's not true, though.

That's, I think, my hang up. We don't need to go down. Every conspiracy theory is based on the idea of quibono, right? Like, who benefits? So I think what we have to conclude from this is that somehow Aziz Ansari is pulling the strings in Washington because this has been really, really good for his career because he gets to play Cash Patel on Saturday Night Live.

And otherwise, this is happening. There's a conspiracy we can at least laugh about. It doesn't have the serious implications. So I want to move quickly, before we get to not worth your time today, I want to move quickly to politics. There were a number of events that took place this week, including the contest in which Graham Platner, a guy who was a bartender at the tune-in in Washington, D.C., and later farmed some oysters, won the Democratic nomination in spite of a long history of inflammatory Reddit posts this Nazi tattoo that he has on his chest. Janet Mills, the incumbent governor of Maine, who was in the race, suspended her campaign

a little more than a month ago. She remained on the ballot but was a non-factor. She wasn't campaigning. She didn't run. And Democrats made this decision to put Graham Platner up as their nominee against Susan Collins in the general election in November. There were a number of other races and there were a number of other, I think, really interesting contests that aren't getting as much attention.

that we're looking ahead to in November. So I wanted to just spend a moment on the politics of this. Sarah, I'll start with you. What's your reaction to the Democrats nominating Graham Platner? I mean, I don't think we can possibly be surprised. What's always frustrated me is Democrats who think that Donald Trump defeating the Republican Party was somehow unique to the Republican Party and that it could never happen to the Democratic Party.

Democrats would never trade virtue for power. principles for access. And it's like, no, no, this is a human reaction in a hyper-polarized tribal moment in American politics. It is not one belonging to one tribe or the other. So here we are, and the Flight 93 metaphor is alive and well on the left, right? It's this idea that this is an existential threat. The possibility, by the way, the existential threat is not the presidency, which is not an existential threat either, but at least that's a pretty important thing. This is for control of the Senate when you will not control the White House, right? That's at their best. And so, nevertheless, to defeat Susan Collins, who voted for Donald Trump's impeachment,

but has voted a lot of the time with Republicans in the Senate, no question, to defeat Susan Collins, it doesn't matter. Many have said, Satan himself. Satan himself. I would vote for on the ballot in Maine if it meant control of the Senate. It's like, that is fine. I mean, it's not fine. But yes, that makes perfect sense to me why you would say that because I've seen Republicans all say it. But please do not think that you are morally superior in any way to the Republicans that

said it about Donald Trump in 2016 because they said it was an existential crisis of Hillary Clinton won the presidency, that she would come after their way of life, that America would be fundamentally changed, and therefore they would vote for anyone to defeat Hillary Clinton, and they did. I mean, I quote a man for all seasons too much. It profit a man, nothing, to sell his soul for the whole world, but for the Maine Senate seat? But Maine? Kevin, do you buy that? Do you buy Sarah's argument? Well, one thing I would take a little bit of issue with, you said the people, the primary voters, chose Platner in spite of these things. And I don't think necessarily in spite of was the right way of putting it.

There are a lot of people who are very angry partisans who setting aside the, you know, questions of his behavior toward women and allegations of abusive behavior, they like... Setting that aside. What else? They like the Twitter trollery. They like this history of inflammatory statements. But part of the Twitter trollery is misogynistic stuff against women. Yeah, I know. I know. I think that they draw. a distinction probably between the stuff that is said and the stuff that has allegedly been done. Same thing Republicans did with Donald Trump, BT Doves.

Well, no, exactly. So I thought in many ways just she's a similar candidate in some ways and obviously in terms of her personal life, not a similar candidate. But I thought that Crockett in Texas was probably actually the Democrats' better choice as a candidate versus Tala Rico, this sort of, you know, nice guy, liberal Presbyterian seminarium. because this is a really good time to be an angry social media bomb thrower. It can get you elected president of the United States. And I think that if you'd had, I think you would have had a version of Platner that had the online stuff,

but not the real life stuff, that he would have been a much, it would hardly even registered, I think. It's a bundle of sticks. Of course the online stuff comes with real life stuff. This is the Donald Trump point, right? You have the grab-em-by-the-whatever audio. Nipples, apparently.

Yeah, I guess so. And that's like, well, well, that's locker room talk, right? And then people were like, yeah, but there's all this real life stuff. And they're like, well, I don't believe that. I'm fine with the talk and I don't believe the real life stuff. And that's exactly what the Democrats are saying about Graham Platner. I don't mind the talk. The online stuff is kind of a virtue. And I don't believe everything else that would fit with someone who talks that way, who would also act that way. It'd be very weird to have someone constantly talk about how terrible women are, how rape accusations are. aren't real, and then not ever act on that, that'd be stranger. It would mean he doesn't believe what he's saying. Right. Yeah. And of course, politics is full of people who don't believe what they're saying, but it's the good stuff they say they don't believe, not the awful stuff, apparently. Always. I wasn't super surprised by any of this and the fact that people are willing to say, well, okay, we're going to go along with this because the main sentence deed is so important or because these are special, urgent existential times or whatever, is just that's the of the conversation we've been having for the last, you know, 12, 15 years.

In some ways more than that, I can, you know, I suspect that I'm not the only one here who can find a dozen quotations every four years from saying this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. Yes. Because it's always the most consequential election of our lifetimes. And how this Republican candidate, just because I, you know, come from the right and I've been paying attention to that sort of media bias, is the most radical and dangerous and extreme person who's ever been nominated for this office, which they would say about

Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. And of course, you know, with Donald Trump, it's probably right, but it's a boy who cried wolf sort of thing. And that's just how we talk about politics now. But worse, I think it's how we think about politics that people really do at some kind of, you know, id, emotional level, experience all of these elections as both national and personal crises, that the world is about to change in some horrible, irrevocable way that is going to leave me alienated from my country and my society and put me in a position where I can't be a happy, normal, productive citizen of my country

if the right people aren't in charge or more specifically if the wrong people are. Before we take an ad break, we're recording a special live episode of the dispatch podcast on Tuesday, June 23rd in New York City. And you don't want to miss it. We're bringing the roundtable together to discuss what's left of the right.

Jonah and I will be joined by dispatch contributors is Megan McArdle and Chris Steyerwalt in Manhattan to discuss the biggest news stories of the day and the evolving identity of conservatism in the Trump era and beyond. What does the war in Iran mean for Trump's coalition ahead of the midterm elections? Is MAGA still a conservative movement?

Was MAGA ever a conservative movement? And who is the future of the Republican Party? The show starts at 7 p.m. on June 23rd. Head to the events page at 929.org. It's 92ndY929.org and purchase your tickets today. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion.

I think we saw an example of this. Kevin, I'll come back to you on this week, not from a lifelong Democrat, but from a Republican or a former Republican this week in Sarah Longwell at the bulwark, who wrote, Democrats are still a mostly healthy, good faith political party made up of people who care about things like objective truth, you know, are uncomfortable at the prospect of supporting someone who evinces immoral or unethical behavior of the kind that Platner has been accused of. And her point is, hey, Republicans have no moral authority. They can't really even criticize Grant Platner here because they have supported people like Ken

Paxton. I think there's a narrow point there. But the broader argument, that's because Democrats are a party filled with virtue. As long as Democrats are uncomfortable with it, Steve, they can still vote for him. It's totally fine as long as you hold that discomfort in your heart. The follow-up was about the Commentariat, where she says, whereas many liberal and mainstream punits are compelled to be intellectually consistent in their thinking conservative commentariat's main incentive is to show religious devotion to the party line

and to win it all costs by doing so. In other words, there's a hack gap. Now, I certainly agree with a lot of what she's saying about the Conservative Commentariat. have made those points here again and again and again and again. I don't think that it's necessarily the case then that Democrats have this moral authority because they haven't gone as far as Republicans have gone on Donald Trump right now. Yet. Well, I think it's important that people be honest with themselves about what their thinking is and their motives. So I'm not with Longwell on this stuff exactly. But I can see and certainly sympathize with someone who would make the argument that

the Republican Party at this moment is, to quote myself, dangerous and depraved. Yeah. And that you cannot support a Republican candidate, even someone like Susan Collins, who's a relatively moderate, sort of nice sort of person, and therefore I will hold my nose

and pull the lever for grand platinum. I can see the argument, and I think it's a perfectly fine argument. The problem you run into then, of course, is that people to revisit the Yuval of endpoint that we've all repeated on here a million times, people have a hard time maintaining that level of cynicism. And so they have to tell themselves,

either this thing isn't true or it's actually good and virtuous in some way or something like that. So, you know, I could see in 2016, I could certainly see someone saying Donald Trump is a creep and a cretan and a weirdo and I don't trust him, but I'm going to pull the lever for him over Hillary Clinton. What I can't see and can't accept as someone saying, this guy is a good, heroic, patriotic sort of person. Yes. Who represents where the country really should be going. And if you're in this cycle saying that about Platner, that he's awful, but I'm sorry. going to vote for him because I want to vote against the Republicans. It's a perfectly fine argument to make, I think. If you feel the need to go out there and lie to yourself or to others about what sort of

person it is you're supporting, then that's a different sort of thing. But it's hard to, it's hard to avoid going down that road, I think. And you'll see the opposite in Texas, of course, with people who will make every excuse for Paxton that people are making for Platner on the same grounds. I wrote a piece earlier this week in which I wrote to Democrats' argument about this Senate and I copied it verbatim for the Republicans' argument because it's the same argument. right? Yeah, it is. I think that Democrats, though, do not believe that there are Republicans who said what you just said, which plenty of Republicans did in 2016. I don't like Donald Trump. I'm deeply uncomfortable

with him, but I'm going to vote for him anyway because this is an existential threat coming from Hillary Clinton. Democrats think that everyone who voted for Donald Trump loved everything about him so that they are somehow morally superior as long as they feel discomfort. I agree with you entirely that I accept someone who says I don't like anything about him, but I'm going to vote for him anyway. At least you're being intellectually honest with yourself. But you're not being intellectually honest with yourself if you think that makes you special because your side is special because you are able to believe that. But somehow the other side never is able to say that. There's plenty of people in Texas who think Kevin Ken Paxton is the worst. But they're going to vote for him anyway.

I feel microaggressed against there. That's payback for you're going after comms people and lawyers, Kevin. To be clear, I think you could make that argument about Trump in 2016. I don't think you really could in good faith or good conscience make that argument about Trump in 2020 or 2024. I think it's different in 20 and 24. I totally acknowledge that. But if you're not willing to acknowledge it for 2016, then you're not having an intellectually honest conversation. Mike, big picture.

We look at the Senate. I mean, one of the arguments you get for people who are getting comfortable or trying to get comfortable with voting for Grand Platner or Susan Collins, this is Trump rubber stamp, which is not actually true. If you look at the way that she's voted, particularly on things like Supreme Court nominations, is it's so important that Democrats take the Senate. Democrats are still presumed to be in a position to take the House despite some of these redistricting changes. And the question is, can Democrats take the Senate? The U.S. Senate has 53 Republicans right now, 47 Democrats, two of whom are independents. There's 35 seats up in 2026, special elections in Florida and Ohio. 22 of those seats are held by Republicans, which means Republicans are on the defensive

in an area where they probably ought to be on the defensive. So Democrats have to pick up four seats. As you look at, do you think it's possible, Democrats pick up four seats? I look at this and I see basically eight competitive Senate elections or potentially competitive Senate elections and Republicans are playing defense in six of them. Is possible that Democrats could take the Senate? I think it's possible. Is it probable? Remains to be seen. I mean, look, the economy continues to be just kind of abysmal if you look at inflation, which I think is the most relevant when it comes to how people feel about the economy, unemployment. Those are

important numbers and things aren't as bad as they have been in the last several years. Stock market stabilized after some ups and downs over the last year and a half. But inflation remains a problem. And so at this point, it's like anything is possible or almost anything is possible. The probability of it, I think, will depend on how people feel in a few months. But if you look at the map, it is difficult for Democrats to win the majority. But there are paths. and I think you can even see paths without Maine.

And I'm actually somebody who believes that Platner has a pretty good chance to win, despite all of Susan Collins' assets that I think are unique to her and to Maine. I would still put money. I'm not putting money on any of these races, but I would put money on Susan Collins. Please don't. No, I won't. But what money am I putting on any of these races? I've got three kids.

But if you take that, so if you take Maine off the map, I still think you can look at several races, including some retraces that don't look at. look so reach, don't look so sort of out of reach or barely in reach for Democrats when you look at some of the nominations. So for every grand platinum, there is a Josh Turrick in Iowa who was the Chuck Schumer choice. Chuck Schumer did get into his choice in Maine with Janet Mills, but he got his choice in Iowa with Josh Turuk, who is a Paralympian, is from a Republican, he's a state senator from a Republican district that Trump won, and Turich also won. He defeated a more progressive

and a more stridently progressive person in that primary. And it is an open seat because Joni Ernst, the sitting Republican senator, is retiring. I think there's a good chance. There's a lot of dynamics going on in Iowa. The farmers are not happy with the tariffs and the costs of inputs into this upcoming ag season. There's lots of other problems.

Iowa is just one example where you can see Democrats sort of, if not pulling off a win, sucking enough money into that race for it to be a problem in some of these other re-traces. The big one that I think is the sort of the opposite of what we're seeing in Maine in terms of who the Democrats have nominated is in North Carolina. Tom Tillis, the Republican is

retiring at the end of this cycle. And what you have there is Roy Cooper, the former two-term governor, Democrat, who is the nominee. The Cook political report has just changed the rating for the North Carolina Senate race from toss-up to lean Democrat. Lean Democratic, Cooper has a

I think a pretty good shot of winning that race, a very good shot of winning that race against Michael Watley, who is the RNC chair, who is running in that seat. He's really, I think, not a proven campaigner, does not really have a compelling story. Roy Cooper is a known quantity. I guess I should pronounce it Cupper, which is how Cooper says you should pronounce his last name, Roy Cupper. And North Carolina, I think, is a very good shot of winning. You know who we never hear about is Roy Cooper. We never hear about anything regarding tattoos he may have or or anything he said to women, and I'm not, you know, saying that...

You could just see the Roy Cooper tramp stamp. You know, why are you giving me this stuff, see? Why you have said... I don't know what it would say. It's the worst. But the point here is that you never hear about him because he's as conventional and boring as a candidate can be, and he's likely to win because of that.

Democrats love to fall in love with a guy like Graham Platner because he is... He's got the Bernie Bro credibility. I think they even like all this bad stuff about him because it suggests to them that he's a real man and maybe we can win if we can put up a real man who's like a misogynist. Actually, that's not like a real man or it's certainly not my conception of what a real man is. But I think the future for a Democrat, you know, the hope for a Democratic majority in the Senate, which is still possible but not necessarily probable, is in more Roy Cooper's and fewer grand planters.

Yeah, and I'll just add to that surprising poll results from Fox News this past week, found Sherrod Brown, former Democratic Senator running for Senate in Ohio against John Hustead, who was appointed by Governor Mike DeWine to replace J.D. Vance. Found Sherrod Brown up five points in a state that Donald Trump won by 11 points in 2024. It's an outlier. It shows Brown, it's the strongest poll for Brown that we've seen. And yet, Houston's winning in some of the other or was thought to be prevailing in some of the other polls, but certainly something that I think caught the eyes of Republicans and Democrats across the country. Finally, not worth your time. Sir, it's very tempting to ask you if you've had any more broadoffs if there's any other food things that we could talk about.

But I won't do that. I'll spare you. And instead, I want to ask you about your plans for tomorrow night. what are you going to be doing at 9 o'clock tomorrow night, Eastern time? Well, my children will have just been locked into their rooms, whether they're asleep or not. And I will probably be out on my deck, curled up in the fetal position, just exhausted from the week. I mean, I can identify with that in a number of ways. Mike, Kevin, do either of you have plans for 9 o'clock Friday night, June 12th?

I myself am normally in bed at that time. I will most likely be driving home an 11-year-old from baseball practice. So that's what I'll be doing. Is this the UFC thing? Is that what's happening? No, that's on Flag Day. Okay. That's on a Sunday, of course, isn't it? No.

The thing that's happening tomorrow night at 9 p.m. is the U.S. men's national team playing in the World Cup against Paraguay. And I was going to ask you if you have planned. Where are you going to be watching this? Are you gathering with friends? you bringing people in? Are you going to a huge rock party? I hate soccer. Why do you hate soccer? It is so boring to me. Look, I can acknowledge the enormous athleticism of the athletes. I want to be very clear about that while finding the game dreadfully boring. It's like, I mean, you watch for like

an hour, maybe nothing happens. You watch for two hours, you go to the bathroom and like that's the only score that happened. Like, no, no, no. So it has to be, there has to be real offense to compel you to watch. Well, like baseball, for instance, is a slow game, but you also know when to watch. Don't go to the bathroom for, you know, the top four at bats. That would be like a really bad idea, probably. Kevin, when do you go to the bathroom when watching soccer? You know, I don't really watch sports at all. And, well, we don't have television for one thing, so we don't watch a lot of sports. But I like, I like. I like. You know, I don't really watch sports. like play in sports.

I played high school football in Texas. I was a wrestler, all that stuff. I've always found watching sports almost always just dreadfully boring except like sort of very fun, in-person things. Like I've gone to an NFL game, and that's pretty fun. And I used to go see the Knicks play sometimes when I lived in New York, and that's pretty fun.

But the idea of sitting watching a football game on television is I just don't understand why people do it. I think of it as something closer to heaven. Mike, a Sunday afternoon with a cold beer, maybe, well, I don't drink beer much anymore. I used to get a cooler, put it at my feet, beers on ice, eating brots. We did come back around to brats. That's the best relaxation, family around, sitting on the out, watching the outside television and a crisp fall day.

Hey, Steve, you want me to really set you off? I used your brought suggestion. Actually, I mean, Scott used the brought suggestion for last weekend. And so we had, you know, I forget exactly the order of operation, but we followed your exact order of operation to do the beer bath at the end, right? Yeah. And I thought my Hebrew National Quarter Pounder Hot Dog was better. It was just the best.

And you didn't put that in the beer bath? No. Just like the point being that, like, my complaint with hot dogs is often just that the ratio is wrong with the bun. But if you get the Hebrew National Quarter Pound hot dog, you were in great shape. And it is cheaper, easier, funner, faster, yellow mustard, life's greatest choice. We've got to go back and get the mustard rant and plug that back in here. Well, I guess this tells us everything we need to know about how people think.

The question I was originally going to pose is, are you going to watch the World Cup? I think the fact that we're talking about hot dogs and mustard at the end of Not Worth Your Time suggests that you all are not. I will be watching the World Cup with Grady. Yeah, we picked that up, Steve. I don't think the U.S. team will probably do very well. But I think it will be fun and compelling. And if we're eliminated, I can always root for the Spanish team, which has a number of players from Athletico Madrid, which is my Spanish team.

They'll be so grateful to have your support, Steve. They will be. Can I say something about the World Cup, Steve, because I also do not care for soccer. I have very good friends who are obsessed with it. And one of my favorite pastimes is to mock them for their interest in soccer. That is correct. And it's a whole lot of fun to just ask asinine questions about this game that they are obsessed with. But I will say this.

It sounds like a blast. Wow. It's a lot of fun. Great. But I will say that I am really enjoying the, on social media, there are several accounts, and there's one in particular that I've been, it's been popping up, international travelers to the United States for the matches that are happening here in the United States. So, you know, people are making vacations out of this.

And there is one in particular, a German fan, which may be an op, by the way. Like, this may all, like, end up being a run out to some kind of advertisement. which will make me angry, but not that angry. But this is a German fan who is basing himself in Atlanta, which is the metro era where I'm from, and is ahead of the matches that are happening there, is going around and experiencing things that are sort of like Uber American. He's going to Buckees.

He is like, oh, I saw the Buckees thing. I didn't know that's what the guy's deal was. I saw the little German flag and he's like, this is a gas station. This is a gas station, yes. He did some very specific things that like only somebody who grew up where I grew up would know. He went tubing down the hooch, which is an experience where you go to a little fake alpine town in North Georgia called Helen, and you get in a tube,

you may or may not have several beers in you when you do this, and you tube down the Chattahoochee River and have a grand old time. And he's posting like pictures of this and saying, this is amazing, this is America. And to me, this is the greatest thing about soccer, which is that when people come to watch it here in America. What they leave with is a better and richer understanding of what makes America such a great place. And it really has nothing to do with soccer. If you'd ask me what tubing down the hooch means, that wouldn't have been my guess. No, I thought we were going to come back to the Epstein files. This is what, Texas invented Buckees, but we also invented like tubeing. That's like all we do is sit in New Bromfels and get, you have a separate tube for your beer, Mike, by the way.

Yeah, totally. Yes. One hundred percent. Yeah, the beer goes in its own inner tube, and then you're in an inner tube, and you form a posse of inner tubes around your beer inner tube, so the beer inner tube can't go faster than you go, and then you float. We call it floating, by the way, not tubing. I mean, again, I guess this is a commentary on our interest in the World Cup that we keep finding. We're now on tubes. We're on beer. We went to brats, who went to everything. But soccer, I will be watching.

I am not, I'm not a soccer showbinist. I'm not a soccer partisan. I don't need to ram it down people's throats. But I don't understand people like you, Mike, who feel the need to pick at people who like soccer. Like, what's the point? Get a life. We just like to watch soccer.

It's not that big a deal. Yeah, no, it is. There's a little bit of chauvinism among most soccer fans. They can't believe. Yeah, fair. They can't believe how backward those of us who don't like it. It's a beautiful game. Kill me now.

Kill me now. All right. Thank you all. I appreciate this. fine conversation, and we will see you next time. Finally, if you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us

at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who are soccer haters. We got a lot of good emails about our tipping discussion last week, so please keep them coming. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure.

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