The Dispatch Podcast - Iceberg, Right Ahead!

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Last week, President Trump experienced one of the most challenging interviews of his presidency when he sat down with Jonathan Swan from Axios. Swan asked some tough follow-up questions, and Trump’s responses demonstrated that he is not used to this level of pushback. What’s more, the interview highlighted the fact that the White House’s media strategy revolves around reassuring the president rather than getting the facts straight. The gang breaks down the interview and Trump’s answers on the latest podcast.  According to Jonah, the videography of the interview was also damning for Trump: “It was sort of like one of these twenty-something consultants from McKinsey going and interviewing the paper mill owner who still uses the fax machine.” If he knew what he was walking into, why did Trump agree to this interview in the first place? Our hosts have some theories. For weeks, the president has been telling his supporters that mail-in ballots will rig the election in every state except for … Florida? Trump knows many of his supporters in Florida are elderly Americans who will vote absentee. But as Sarah points out, telling all of his other supporters that mail-in voting is rigged might just work in his favor. Polls show that there will be a partisan divide in this election when it comes to in-person versus mail-in voting, with Democrats more likely to vote by mail. What these polls aren’t telling you is that a not-small percentage of mail-in ballots that are likely to be invalidated for technical reasons, especially given most states are wildly unprepared for the sheer number of mail-in ballots that are coming their way. Whatever happens, the election is going to be ugly. Tune in to today’s podcast for some punditry on how American civil society has mishandled the pandemic, a debate over whether calling female political candidates “ambitious” is inherently sexist, and some bickering over America’s best sit-down diners. Show Notes: -Jonathan Swan’s Axios interview with the president, Sarah’s newsletter The Sweep, Jonah’s column this week on mail-in voting. -25 percent of the mail-in ballots cast from Brooklyn for the primary election were disqualified. -“How the Pandemic Defeated America” by Ed Yong in The Atlantic. -“ ‘She had no remorse’: Why Kamala Harris isn't a lock for VP” in Politico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined as always by Steve Hayes, David French, and still Jonah Goldberg. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, Gabby. Today, we're keeping with our new format. The guys have brought us some great topics, the president's HBO interview, mail-in ballots, Okay, that one's mine. Civil society in the pandemic. And Jonah tries to convince me that he isn't sexist just because he doesn't like Kamala Harris. Let's dive in. Steve, coming to you first with the Jonathan Swan Axios interview with the president. usually it is behind the HBO paywall, but they released it, quote, in the public interest.

Yeah, I think it's one of the best two interviews, most effective interviews that we've seen of Donald Trump since Trump has been president. The other one was Chris Wallace, our colleague at Box News, from just a couple weeks ago. But it's the kind of interview that I think, if you haven't watched the whole thing,

you should take the time to do so. we'll put a link in the show notes. But it was a fantastic interview. I think there were several reasons that it was as good as it was. Jonathan asked very smart follow-ups. He came obviously very well prepared, knew his brief and was able to push back when the president came back at him,

sometimes with sort of bluster and volume. Jonathan was able to sort of calmly and dispassionately point back to the president and point him to the facts on which his questions were based. And that goes to the second reason I think it was successful as Jonathan clearly knew the material very well, in some cases, pretty clearly better than the president himself did. And then the third reason I think it was a good interview was it was devoid of the kind of show-off theatrics that we see so often from reporters who question the president. in the White House briefing room.

You know, it's certainly the case that the president loves the entertainment aspect of those exchanges in the briefing room when he does, his press conferences, but so do a lot of the reporters. And the criticism of reporters for not taking the briefings seriously for focusing on things that they know will get them a viral clip rather than trying to extract information, I think a lot of those criticisms are well-founded. There was none of that in this interview with Jonathan Swan. There were a number of topics that he covered that I thought were particularly interesting

in a number of exchanges that we can get into a little bit in more detail. I think one that stood out was about the status of the coronavirus. And it was very interesting to listen to Swan, who conducted this interview on July 28th, so almost a week before it was released on HBO, press the president on what some had described as the president's new tone. where Swan said, you know, Mr. President, you're taking this more seriously, you're advising people to wear masks. There seems to be a shift in the White House messaging on this. How long can you stick with that? And suggested that some happy talk from the president was likely coming.

And as it happens, as of this morning in an interview on Fox News, the president said, this thing is just going to disappear. It will go away soon. So Swan, I think, press the president, it in a number of different ways that were not just the kinds of things that got caught up in the moment but spoke to sort of broader issues. I'll leave it there. I know you all have watched the interview eager for any impressions that you have or particular highlights. David? You know, I watched it and I just had a one word question. Why? So after the Chris Wallace interview which did not go well for the president. He sits down for this interview when everybody knows that Swan is going to come prepared. He's a very sharp questioner. He's

fearless in interview settings and that the president's just not up for that. Is this hubris on his part? Is this him believing he can take on all comers? Because there are a couple of segments, the ones that were sort of most popularly shared around that were kind of that were downright embarrassing for the president the exchange over the data surrounding the coronavirus you could tell that the president was just flummoxed he came across as sort of going from almost trying to bully the questioner you know trying to bully swan you can't you can't say that or you can't you can't do that and and then having nothing and and clearly not truly not truly comprehending what was going on. And then you also came away from the interview thinking,

does he even know what John Lewis was truly famous for? It was almost like imagine if Trump was talking about the death of John Glenn and saying, oh, the senator from Ohio. And so I just, I couldn't figure out why. Why? I have a theory. Yes. Let me jump, let me just jump in to give people context for the John Lewis comment because I think it's important. Jonathan Swan asked the president whether he thought John Lewis, the famous civil rights activist, longtime legislator, had led an impressive life, John Lewis, who passed and was memorialized this past weekend. The president didn't go to the memorial service. And Swan had asked the president whether John Lewis had led an impressive life. And the president's first response was he didn't come to my

inauguration. He didn't come to my State of the Union speeches. That's okay that he didn't come, but it was a big mistake. He should have definitely come. So the president's instinct, to David's point, was not to recognize any of the things that John Lewis had done, but to focus on these perceived personal slights. Sorry to interrupt, Sarah. No. So I think my theory is wrong, but I nevertheless enjoy my theory. Because I think it would be an interesting comm strategy, if it were true. So here's my theory that's wrong. What didn't make sense to me,

so I had the exact same thought as you, David, and I was like, okay, the other problem versus the Chris Wallace interview is Chris Wallace makes sense because he does want to reach that audience. But he doesn't need to reach the HBO Axios audience. Those aren't his voters. So why would you do this interview?

Theory. Jonathan had actually been a pretty effective, as Steve pointed out, sort of non-hyperbolic critics the wrong term, you know, reporter on the president. And my theory is that they actually accepted the interview in the hopes of Jonathan overstepping, becoming a little too hyperbolic,

getting under his, that the president could get under Jonathan's skin and discredit him moving forward for the last hundred days of the election so that they could sort of move Jonathan off the board, same as they've done with some other reporters, There's Alcindor comes to mind, Caitlin Collins,

you know, Jim Acosta, I think you could argue who's done that to himself. But so it was a calculated risk, but one that the president thought, you know, every other reporter has taken the bait before. And what I think was remarkable about it

is that Jonathan didn't. And so in that sense, it didn't work, even if my theory is right, which again, pretty sure it's not. And two, the only part is, you know, the what, the videos had, 39 million views as of, I think yesterday afternoon was when I checked.

But those 39 million people probably aren't that relevant to this election, if you know what I mean. They're going to be high information voters who were not undecided when all of this. So, you know, was the risk that great to the president? Maybe not as much as you think. All right. So can I chime in now? No. To be clear, Jonah, like, has this, he's wearing a fleece.

like he's in Silicon Valley, but then he also has the bandana for the mask. So I told him he looked like he was ready to rob a bougie, you know, Starbucks. And I did go to Starbucks this morning. I'm in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the family truckster parked in a parking lot. There's a great house, I mean, there's a house nearby that's got laundry out on the clothing line. And it's got a great sign on its fence that says, beware of, the log and it's just has it's over a log on the front lawn which is just that was interesting anyway so um i uh um i don't necessarily disagree with everything i have a one of the things i

two of the things that steve said um and we're supposed to respond to Steve a little bit so i'll give it a whirl um i think need a little pushback a little bit one was where he in a tone of almost surprise said something to the effect of and there were even times when swan seemed more prepared than the president um i think trump goes into an enormous number of interviews less prepared than his interviewer but for the reasons that sarah alluded to usually the interviewers can't resist preening and doing their sort of a costa routine. And so the preparation doesn't really matter because they get sanctimonious and they kind of lose it. The other thing, which is related, that Steve said is that there's not

a point of disagreement, but it should tell us something interesting. Steve said that the two best interviews, two most effective interviews of Donald Trump in his presidency, were the Chris Wallace one and the Jonathan Swan one. I'm inclined to agree. Now, those. Those, both happened in one month towards the end of his first term, which should tell you something about the state of the media. It should tell you something about the media strategy of the Trump White House that it took this long to have a really effective probing interview where people, where the reporters didn't take the bait, but instead asked competent follow-up questions. And I don't think it's all on the media. I also think, you know, Trump is trapped without the

ability to do these rallies to have to do more media. And he went into this with a confidence that he often has, but was more misplaced than usual because it really does seem that now I don't know what letter are we on. It's not the B team anymore. It's like the D team of the people around Trump. And there have been all these stories about how there are these people who are giving him information that is bad for messaging, that is also not true, but that reassures him. And so when he goes into the interview and repeats the stuff that his staff told him because that's the stuff he wants to hear rather than stuff he needs to hear, he looks even more out of touch. The last point I'd make, and I alluded to this on Twitter, but it's interesting,

I used to be a television producer. When I was still doing television, you still had different formats of tape and there was still a big debate about whether you should, whether film was better than video and all of these different things. And, and most of that is behind me now, but, uh, and the rest of us, but there was something I think significant. I don't want to go all Marshall McLuhan and meta here, but there was something really significant about the videography or the cinematography of that interview. Hmm. The camera style of it moving around.

Uh, the fact that Trump has gained what many of us call the code. COVID-19. And the almost, and because it wasn't on cable news, which, whether it's Fox or MSNBC or CNN, is so garish in sort of its colors, sort of like, what is that, Lichtenstein, the artist, you know, it's those bright comic booky colors that are on cable. This was, that was all bled out and washed out. And he looked like an overweight man sort of out of his death. in terms of, and Swan looked like, you know, the young whippersnapper who's got all

his facts together. And it was sort of like a consult, one of these consultants from 20-something consultants from McKinsey going and interviewing the paper mill owner who still uses the fax machine. And I think there was just something that was sort of bad messaging for the president on a level that we haven't seen before. So if I can jump in with two quick responses, I think to pick up on one of Jonah's points, absolutely correct that those two interviews have taken place within this last month. I think that's notable, not just because it suggests that the campaign is putting the president out a bit more, maybe taking more risks, but also what it says about the

interviews that have been done to this point, right? They've mostly been done. I mean, I don't know how many interviews Sean Hannity has done on Fox news. But when Sean Hannity is doing interviews, he's not asking probing follow-up questions. If anything, he's trying to clean up when the president makes a mistake. Sean Hannity is one of the only people in America who's more pro-Trump than Trump is, which is saying something for somebody who's such a well-known narcissist. So I think the president is out of practice. He's not used to getting this. He's used to getting

some pushback in the briefing rooms, but not this way, not the way that both Wallace and Swan did it so effectively. Second, to Sarah's point, I have a theory. I'm not sure it's wrong. I think it actually might be right about why the president is doing this. I think the president's campaign thinks that their main argument right now, they've been flailing, they've been looking for an argument to use against Joe Biden now for months. They've tried Ukraine conspiracy theories. They've tried suggesting he's senile. They've tried saying he's, you know, a far less activist in sheep's clothing. All of these different arguments, none of them have seemed to work. And the one they seem to be settling on, to the extent that they're ever going to really settle on one,

is he's afraid to come out. He lives in his basement. He's afraid to talk to reporters. He'll never do the kinds of interviews that this bold, tough. President Donald Trump will do. So they're choosing, I think, to put Trump in riskier interviews than they would have otherwise with the idea that when he succeeds, they can say Joe Biden is not done an interview with Chris Wallace. Joe Biden has not sat down with Jonathan Swan. Why is Joe Biden so afraid? Why is he hiding? And look, it's not a, it's not really a crazy strategy, but it depends on one very important condition, and that's the president succeeding in these interviews that he's bombed. So I think, in effect, what they've done is build a strategy around a supposition that

turns out not to be true, and for which the president is now paying dearly because we've had, you know, several days in the case of the Jonathan Swan interview, they posted, we discussed on this podcast last week, the first excerpt of the Jonathan Swan interview. related to the Russian Bounty's question that he asked. So it's been now a week worth of bad news coming out of this. So this is, I think, pretty clearly backfired on the Trump campaign if that was their objective. Okay. Can I actually tell you what I think the real strategy was?

Because I think Steve's wrong, too. I think my theory is wrong. I think Steve's theory is wrong. And it goes to a question that I have, maybe for all of you. I don't know. Everyone likes Jonathan. The president likes Jonathan. The staff likes Jonathan.

He's a likable guy. He has that Australian accent. He's non-threatening in a certain way that's a little hard to pinpoint that is just sort of that... I don't know. Jonah will have some, you know, French, like, you know, the uvra of Jonathan.

And I think there's a reason that you're not seeing... You know, if that had been a woman interviewing Donald Trump, anyone from the White House press corps who's female, I think it would have been a very different interview, even if that female reporter had said the exact same things because he reacts so differently to women pushing him. And so I think you sort of have this like perfect storm where Jonathan was well liked.

He makes the ask. And the president's like, yeah, of course, I like Jonathan. And it's as simple as that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not saying either of your wrong theories aren't partially right theories. Like, you could see people saying, okay, let's give it to him as we like Jonathan.

And here are some reasons why, other reasons why this is a good idea as they talk themselves into it. But, you know, look, I think Jonathan's a great reporter. He's a really nice guy. I like the guy. My only lasting complaint about him

is he once said something that I had said during a commercial break on special report. He then quoted me on air. Oh, no. He felt really bad about it afterwards, but it was fine. I was just like, dude, what happens during the commercial break stays in the commercial break. And, but some of his reporting, I mean, again, this is not a criticism, but some of his reporting is he's very good for getting Trump White House trial balloon stuff out there.

He does, you know, people give him little things. He makes a lot out of them. He parlays that into things like presidential interviews that are career making and all the rest. So good for him. But you can see how in the currency of the White House, he's probably done a really good job of cultivating a go-along to get-along kind of thing. And they thought they could get away with more than they could, in part because just the state,

I mean, this is one of the other points. It's like the same thing with the Wallace interview. Just the stakes of what is going on in America right now, presidential campaign, the prospect of losing, which apparently just drives Trump crazy, but also this massive pandemic that is ruining the economy and terrifying people.

Just the stakes of it, Trump needs to up his game, and instead, it seems like his game is getting worse. And those things give a little extra oomph to these interviews as well, I think. You know, that's one thing. I'm so glad you brought that up, Jonah, because the giant gap

that is being seen right now between everything we've ever thought of, before this presidency of what a president should be in a time of crisis, whether it's, you know, the actual presidents that we have, you know, witnessed throughout, you know, our adult lifetimes and the sort of the gravity that they assume and the way in which their demeanor and their rhetoric changes in this time of crisis in a time of crisis in a way that's, you know, obviously different from the back and forth of normal politics to the cinematic depiction. of presidents in times of crisis.

There's sort of this, there's this expectation that we've long had of a level of sort of knowledge and gravity and seriousness. And you just, it's just not there at all. I mean, the impression that he gives is he just wants this, all the trouble to be over. It just needs to be over. Let's, can we, can we, can we, can we move on from this virus?

and you know what's i think what is interesting to me just as a thought experiment if this had if this had emerged in year one or say month month four of his presidency in a way i think it'd actually be much more damaging to him because he is so defined um the he has so defined the the role of the president down or the the cultural the cultural presence and the gravitas of the presidency down that we've kind of thought, yeah, this is basically going according to the Trump script here. And a lot of us are just numb to it. I mean, it's just numb.

You know, I've noticed that the presidential race has pretty much stabilized right now. It seems like if you go to 538, it's around a bouncing between 7.9 and 8.2 gap. his approval and disapproval ratings have stabilized once again at what, guess what, his norms. I just think it would have been, it's an interesting thought experiment to think before we were habituated to who Trump is as president, it would, how would this have landed? Well, speaking of the election and how things are going, let's move to our next topic, which is me.

And I want to talk about mail-in balloting with. all of you. Oh, man. I thought our next topic was you. We said our next topic, which is me. And I was like, we could have like an S session here. And we could all talk about Sarah for a little while. We'll do our 360 feedback live on the dispatch. Erring of grievances.

So the president yesterday tweeted, whether you call it vote by mail or absentee voting. In Florida, the election system is safe and secure, tried and true. Florida's voting system has been cleaned up. We defeated Democrats' attempts at change. So in Florida, I encourage all to request a ballot and vote by mail. Hashtag maga.

Okay, this is interesting. So for weeks, he's been encouraging his supporters not to vote by mail, and a vote by mail is rife with fraud, and that the election will be rigged because of mail-in ballots. And the pushback from reporters repeatedly in the briefing room or to the press secretary in her briefings has been, yeah, but the president voted absentee in Florida. So I think that him now exempting Florida

and he also, I believe, has exempted Texas a different statement. But anyway, is like, well, that's why it was, that takes away that argument from the media. Okay, that's fine, I guess. But, and Jonah, you wrote about this in your column this week, and name-checked me. Appreciate it. But my take on this is that in the past for polls, you haven't had to take into account absentee voting at all because there's no partisan divide.

And so it doesn't really matter how you vote as long as there's no particular difference in what a voter looks like who votes absentee versus votes in person aside from maybe. age or something like that. But if it doesn't change who they're voting for, no problem. There is without a question going to be a partisan divide in who votes by mail. If you vote in person, there's like a 0.1% chance that your vote isn't going to be counted. You know, you show up to the wrong polling place or something maybe, kind of. If you vote absentee, there's a big question of the likelihood of your vote counting. Now, in past election, it's usually between one and three percent of actual absentee ballots that get rejected once they're turned in. But that's sort of the usual number of ballots with the usual number of

people who request absentee ballots every four years, et cetera. What we're seeing right now is that something very different is going on when you then multiply the number of mail-in ballots wildly. So in New York, for instance, the number being rejected is between 20 and 20. 25% they think. Michigan just this week saw a huge problem with tens of thousands of ballots not ever getting anywhere because of mail delays. And then the election officials having to tell people, you know, if your ballot just arrived today, election day, just drop it off. Please drop it off. Please come drop off your ballot. Don't mail it in. And, you know, Jonah, you cited a great stat that in Wisconsin's April primary, 23,000 absentee ballots were thrown out in 2016.

Trump carried Wisconsin by 22,000 votes. So here's the problem. The polls right now are telling you how likely voters, the people who are likely to cast a ballot, intend to vote. But right now, the polls are not telling you what the valid vote count will be. And in the sweep this week, I ran, you know,

the numbers because I missed algebra class. And, you know, I had all these assumptions in it and you can question a lot of my assumptions. but the point being like this could be two points off it could be up to five points off that that Biden's lead could be wrong if his voters are more likely to vote by mail and therefore their absentee ballots are more likely to be rejected or never arrive all right since I wrote about it this week maybe I'll go first um I think your point about the partisan disparity of absentee voters is a very good one um it is

also a very likely scenario for how this country will lose its mind if Trump wins narrowly with an electoral college win but a massive popular vote loss because tens of thousands more millions it'll be millions hundreds of thousands or millions more democratic ballots than Republican ballots were thrown away I'm inclined to think that if they're thrown away, for the most part, it's not a conspiracy. It's not anything. It's just technical errors, right? Which is sort of your point. There is no way you'll be able to convince. If you can't convince a lot of Democrats that Stacey Abrams, in fact, didn't have the election stolen from her. There is no way you're going to be able to explain to them that Trump didn't steal the election

this time around. And some of them are objective and some are subjective. Like, objectively, you know, you need a postmark on your ballot. You need a signature on your ballot. That's objective, although New York notably has said that they're throwing out the postmark requirement for their absentee ballots. But then there's also subjective ones. Does the signature on the ballot match the signature card that the voter turned in when they registered?

Tons of ballots get thrown out because the signature doesn't match. You think that that's not going to end up with like... Yeah, I mean, blown up pictures in court of signatures and pointing to them and like, well, no, see, look at the eye on here. And so the only sort of just the point I've made in my column which dovetails with David's point from the last conversation

is just simply that this is another this is downstreet this is another another facet of how the administration's response to the pandemic is to just sort of pretend it's not there and if you listen to the way

Trump talks about absentee balloting, whether you agree with him or not, if it was a movie, you would think it was leading up to him saying, and that's why I am announcing this massive federal effort to make sure that absentee balloting works during this pandemic. We are going to do everything we can to work with the states to assure the legitimacy of our election. And he doesn't do that. He does some other thing. And because he, whatever his motives are and I have theories about his motives he doesn't want to do the hard work

that the predicate would require in saner times and I personally thought that the Florida tweet that you read at the beginning was the jump the shark moment for the whole mailing balloting argument it was almost I mean you could

it was almost you could almost you could almost hear his advisors saying hey by the way most of your voters are old oldsters in Florida, and they really need to do absentee balloting. And so he just says, okay, well, I'll tweet that it's okay in Florida. And it just, I think it's just completely muddied the waters. He's not going to have a great response to follow-up questions about that. And at this point, I think just everyone needs to ready themselves for the fact that the,

that the election month is going to be a very ugly time. and we may need to all decamp and do this podcast from David's house because he is prepped for the end times. Oh, I'm ready. But, you know, Jonah, you raise a great point because you feel like, and news just came out today

that a fully 25% of the mail-in ballots from Brooklyn in the New York primary were disqualified initially. 30,000 out of 120,000. and the vast majority weren't because of voter error. I mean, that's a disastrous ratio right there. I mean, that's a disastrous ratio. And you feel like you've got all of these people,

they're like on the deck of the Titanic going iceberg. Yeah, it's right there. It's getting closer. And we're still heading towards it. It's still there. And again, like as Jonah is saying, and no one is saying, and therefore at the national, you know,

the president of the United States, not saying, and therefore we are going to turn the wheel of this ship to avoid the collision. Instead, it's, yep, we're going to collide and it's going to be their fault or it's going to be their fault. And if we do have a meltdown, which is at this point, an election, not night, we wouldn't even say night anymore, an election week meltdown. If we do have a meltdown, we're going to talk about a stressor on this country that it does not need. It does not need this. I mean, this is something, you know, at some point, if you're looking at the scenario that

Jonah is talking about of could it be that Trump could be reelected by very narrow margins in the swing states, in spite of with hundreds of thousands of excess ballots being cast out, and in spite of a multi-million popular vote loss, we would have to raise the question of it, does that present an existential threat to our country at that point? That we would literally have to be raising that as a real question. Can you imagine the passion and the heat and the rage and the anger around that? Can you even imagine?

And we're saying, and what are we doing about this? What are we doing about this? And at the national level, the national response is so phenomenally ineffective. And look, that doesn't relieve the state officials of their obligation of competence. What happened in the New York primary, God help us if that happens in a swing state in the general election. And they, every state election officials should be doing everything that they can to prepare for this. But the fact of the matter is our states right now are stressed financially.

They are stressed financially. And the entity that has their resources is not moving in to prevent. the necessary assistance. And that's a national scandal. And it could threaten the very fabric of this country in less than 100 days. Steve, are you going to vote by mail? Actually, I already send in my request for my absentee ballot. I'd like to say that David is being hyperbolic here. And usually from somebody who's the voice of reason, I mean, David is the always telling us, calm down, calm down. This is not flight 93. The country's not going to go into a tailspin. I think he's right. And there are additional reasons to be concerned.

One of the things that's been striking, if you've read the reporting recently about these problems in New York and elsewhere, is that the rules don't seem fixed. The rules change. If you go back to the questions that sort of caused so many problems in the aftermath of Florida in 2000, it wasn't necessarily that, you know, we couldn't figure out how to tabulate the results so much as it was you had both sides pushing and pulling on a daily basis in courts, on cable television, at the secretary of state offices, to change the rules, to change the rules that ought to have been fixed. And I think the problem right now is you're starting to see this play out in these lesser elections that are of much less consequence. And the concern is

this is a harbinger of things that we'll see at the national level. I think it behooves state election officials to get out soon and get out often in a public display of how exactly these votes will be tallied when they come in. Arguably the most important thing that state officials can do. David is right. I mean, the states need an infusion of cash in order to do this. There's no question about it. We've been fighting about it in Congress now for the past couple months. I don't think the amount of money that they're talking about is likely to be adequate, but, you know, it comes in the context of us pushing trillions of new funding for anything and everything at a time when the country is in dire straits in terms of our debt. So you can see why there would be some

reluctance. I think we're going to spend money on anything, making sure that we have free, fair, and transparent elections is one of the places to spend it. The final point, there's something else the president and his supporters are starting to do and it's even more worrisome they are calling now publicly for a victor to be cleared on election day and you're you're starting to see this this is picked up this week given everything that all three of you have just said about the likelihood of that happening it's dangerous if you reduce the legitimate the legitimate of the election to that one criterion, can we declare a winner on election night? If not, the thing is suspect.

That's what they're doing right now. And it's extraordinarily dangerous when you know that they know that likelihood is decreasing every day and that the Trump campaign and the RNC are actively taking steps to make it less likely. Well, here's the good news. Like, and by the way, David, we haven't actually talked about what our topics are going to be for advisory opinions. Plug, plug, plug on Thursday this week. But clearly we have to talk about the Nevada lawsuit and the difference between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots and what, you know, I can't believe states are still deciding this.

That, Steve, to your point, to not have that regular order, if you will, we're less than 100 days out. But look, here's, oh, we'll end on a sunny note. if in-person votes, which we will have tallied on election night, you know, 9, 10, 11 p.m. are favoring Biden, then it's done. Like, the election's over because we'll have enough polling showing that Democrats were far more likely to vote absentee. So there's really no chance that even with tons of absentee ballots outstanding, that they're going to make up a difference for Trump, most likely.

The nightmare scenario is the reverse. to your point, which is, you know, Trump's up two at 11 p.m. on election night and 40% of the ballots are mailed. Then we've got a problem. And let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor today, Gabby. We're all looking for ways to save money, especially now. When's the last time you looked at how much you're spending every month on car insurance? Homeowner's insurance. Now is the time to check out Gabby and see about getting a lower rate for the exact same. same coverage you already have. Gabby takes the pain out of shopping for insurance by giving you an apples to apples comparison of your current coverage with 40 of the top insurance providers,

progressive, nationwide, travelers, you name it. Just link your current insurance account, and in about two minutes, you'll be able to see quotes for the exact same coverage you currently have. Gabby customers, on average, save $825 per year. If they can't find you savings, they'll let you know so you can relax knowing you have the best rate out there. And they'll never sell your info. So no annoying spam or robocalls. It's totally free to check your rate and there's no obligation. Take two minutes right now or after this podcast to see how much you can save on your car and homeowners insurance. Go to gbby.com slash dispatch. That's gabby.com slash dispatch. Gabby.com slash dispatch. Next topic is David. David, you recommended an Atlantic

piece to all of us, which it's funny because it's written now, and yet it feels like it could be written five years from now looking back on this year. Yeah, it really. And Sarah, you said you're going to end up with an up and then you went up and then you went down. And then now I'm just going to go further down. Yeah, let's do it. Because it's we still have Jonah. Yeah, that's right. It's one of the best pieces that I've read sort of a, you know, and this is going to be done at book link. but one of the best magazine pieces that I've read so far on how we have failed in confronting the virus. And it's called How the Pandemic Defeated America, and it's by Ed Yong. And it kind of hits a lot of the different points, everything from the bureaucratic failure of testing from the CDC,

the failures in leadership from the White House. And then what I think is really important is kind of the failure of civil society here in the U.S. to deal with this. And I guess that's the thing and with the focus on how, you know, conspiracy theories have gone viral, the pandemic video, you know, the mask culture war that I've harped on. And I guess what I want to open the question, what I want to open the questioning for is if, as we're looking over these last, since the beginning of March, these last few months, I do think there are circumstances in which better leadership would have made a real difference. But my, one of my questions is, is our civil society degraded to the point

where we were going to be at a disadvantage compared to many other developed countries anyway? And the reason why I asked this, at the very beginning of all of this, I wrote a newsletter where I said this is a crisis that requires a very high trust response in a really low trust time.

It was a novel coronavirus, new. We were filtering what we knew about this, through the very sort of administrative bureaucracy that people so distressed. And, you know, in the background of a lot of demonstrated incompetence from government officials, it just seems like this was the perfect weapon

to hit this culture at this time. And, you know, I think the thing that's most dispiriting to me about all of this is that aspect, you can correct the failures of leadership. Can you correct the failures of civil society that we've seen? And that's the thing that's been most dispiriting to me about this is that failure of civil society.

Woof. It's a great point. It's a great point. First of all, to underscore David's initial point, it's a terrific piece, very much worth reading. And it's written by somebody who wrote a piece in 2018 talking about how the United States was not prepared for a pandemic. So this is someone who has deeply reported this.

issue, and I would say has focused on the kinds of government level failures that David references. But to answer your question directly, David, I think there's no doubt that our sort of crumbling civil society and widespread and growing lack of trust is a huge factor. I don't know that it's as easily separable from the leadership deficiencies that we've seen, because in this case, I think the leadership deficiencies have contributed to and exacerbated those divisions and that loss of trust. But you just go back and look at how the 2016 campaign itself unfolded, and you can see evidence of the kinds of problems that we're seeing manifest in response to this every single day.

I went yesterday to get a COVID test myself, mostly just to be. be safe. I've had a sore throat, a headache, saw a doctor. He doesn't think it's COVID. But in the course- It's dealing with us, listeners. It's, yeah. In the course of talking to him, he was just exasperated by the unwillingness of people to do what he kept calling the common-sense things. Do the common-sense things. How is, is this political. I got the sense that if I, he didn't say this, he didn't announce this, pretty clear that he leaned to the right politically, but was incredibly frustrated that he would see people who were coming in and would acknowledge that they weren't wearing masks and didn't

need to wear masks and didn't think it was a problem. He talked about a wave, this is a doctor in in Maryland talked about seeing a big wave of people over the past week to 10 days who had been spending the better part of the last month or had come from some time spent in the last month in Ocean City, Maryland, at the beach. Not because they were at the beach, but because they were interacting with people and otherwise letting their guard down about what to do. He said that his office has been basically inundated since then because people haven't been doing the common sense things. And to your point, David, this lack of trust sort of among Americans and certainly a lack of trust that many people, I would say people in particular on

the center right, have toward expert opinions and the kinds of advice that they're getting from leadership is a huge problem. And I think that problem itself has been exacerbated in this crisis, as we've talked about here before, when you have epidemiologists and public health specialist saying you can't go to your uncle's funeral, but not condemning people who go to 100,000 person rallies, they're undermining their own authority there. Well, you know, just one quick thing. And this, a lot of this is colored by my own experience here in Tennessee, where if you were going to talk about effective leadership from the local to the state level, by the time we ended our lockdowns, we were top 10 in the country and per capita

of testing. We were bottom 10 in the country in mortality per million. And then, you know, and the admonition was, okay, be careful. Be careful when you're opening up. Social distance. Wear a mask. Nope. Nope. And then we quickly tip over into uncontrolled spread, like quickly. Now people are putting on masks and you get this feeling of like you're closing the barn door after the horses of escape. But it's deeply dispiriting to see happen. To your point on civil society, David, I guess my take

is at this point, any ball that's rolled down the lane, everyone wants to whack at it as a culture war issue. Like there's a craving for more culture war, which is a little bizarre and I can't, I don't have a great

explanation for why people are craving culture war moments. But what happened here is like we'd had culture wars over sort of side issue stuff. And then you have a pandemic rule down the lane and people want to make that a culture war issue. And so they did. And the problem is it's a national threat

to our economy, to our health, whatever, you know, it's a threat. And turning it into a culture war issue was the exact opposite thing that you would want to do. And, you know, you look at pre-pearl Harbor, for instance, and, you know, to some extent, maybe something similar was happening like do you want to help the british or is it not our problem that uh germany is bombing them every night but then pearl harbor happens and it's like up you know

what screw it all in that hasn't happened here there's no okay now the threat is big enough enough of enough of these fun fights that we're having in discussions and debates now we all join the same team that just didn't we didn't turn that corner um so just to join in um I don't really dispute any of this, but I want to, not quite devil's advocacy, but, but push back on it a little bit. I think we all agree that there's lots of blame to go around and it's, it's not just leadership, it's followership, but I might apportion the blame a little differently than everybody else. I don't know, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I've been driving around

this country a lot this summer for bizarre reasons. And almost everywhere I go, I see people taking the pandemic more seriously than you would think on going from national television on one side or the other. And, you know, as I said, I'm in Jackson Hole, which I understand is not necessarily representative of the country and all the rest, but I've been in, I've been in Tennessee, I've been in Georgia, I've been in Florida, I've been in lots of places this summer, I've been in Alaska. And everyone, for the most part, has had a pretty kind of like, hey, these are our rules, please put on a mask before you come in kind of thing. And this is one of the, it's sort of like before Steve was saying, oh my gosh, David's not being hyperbolic when you're

saying all these kinds of things. One of the things that David normally points out is the problem of nut picking, where we take these extreme examples and we make them representative of the entire other side. These videos that people are only too eager to share to dunk on the left or the right or whatever of people freaking out about being forced to wear masks, I think these events are actually shockingly rare statistically. And we blow them up to be representative of this major dysfunction in American life. And I'm not saying there isn't dysfunction. All I'm saying is that the volume of it may not be a nine.

It could be more like a six. And I think you look back on World War I, which, you know, I'm not a huge fan of. And when David was just a teenager. That's right. Civil society was a lot healthier by almost all of the metrics that we talk about. civil society. And its response to the pandemic of the flu was terrible. And its response to the war itself was terrible. You had people, you know, there are hundreds of these cases, you know, a guy refuses to stand up for the national anthem and he shot to death and the jury lets them off.

A guy, you know, says something about the war effort and a crowd beats him to death and no one is arrested. That's the, those are examples of civil society galvanizing the other. way to everybody's detriment. And I kind of think that our response to it on the ground level is not great in every instance, but it's not as bad as people claim. And the one thing that I didn't get to point into the last segment, I think actually fits here, is that we are blaming local leaders, we're blaming the Trump administration, and they all deserve their blame for the mail-in-balloting stuff.

But the mainstream media also deserves a chunk of blame for that because because Trump is so opposed to mail-in balloting, they want to make it sound like there's nothing wrong with mail-in balloting. And there are huge problems with mail-in balloting that we need to address. And that just points to my larger point is that everybody, you know, Sarah, I completely agree with you. People idiotically want to turn this into a culture war fight. And I've written about how I think the nationalists, however you want to define. it blew a once in a century opportunity to change our politics in their favor, and they blew it, and it's amazing to me. But one of the reasons why people are so desperate to turn this into a cultural war fight is that cultural war fights are monetizable. Charlie Kirk is beclowning

himself, but it's a chiching moment for him to talk about how, you know, like he won't wear masks because he believes in liberty. And when you actually meet people in the real world, there's just not a lot of people who actually subscribe to that point of view, but they like listening to people who do. I'm glad that you're experienced, Jonah, about people taking it very responsibly.

There's about a two-week span of time in Tennessee. Now, in Nashville itself, in the city of Nashville, I understand it was different. Outside of the city of Nashville, I would go to Kroger. One out of 10 people would have a math. on. Go to, you know, I would go, you know, I'd go to get some food at Chipotle.

Nobody had a mask. You know, nobody would have a mask on. Like, so I, I, maybe I had some really bad luck. But I was, I remember coming back from a shopping trip and saying to my wife, buckle up because it's going to be bad. Just what you, what I was seeing with my own eyes. And so, you know, I think we, where you stand is basically. on where you sit, and I got really dispirited based on where I was sitting and what I was seeing. So other people have had different experiences, to be sure. Let me just follow up on that. I mean, I think, well, first of all, I think you're right, Jonah, to suggest that as a general rule, if we want to believe that the media is engaged

in sensationalizing individual incidents or making trends out of things, that may not be trends. That is one of the surest accurate critiques of mainstream media that one can make, and I would say including it especially cable media. I think the problem here is even if you're right about that, given the nature of the virus itself, those low nuts are a huge problem, right? They can be the super spreaders.

So even if it's a relatively small or a smaller than one might think given media coverage of the phenomenon issue, it's still a significant problem because you can have these moments that are super spreader or immense. You can have these individuals who become super spreaders because of their individual careless behavior. And I think that's the problem. The bigger question, I think back to you. Totally fair point. The one question I would say is if, let's say you're right, for the sake of argument, that this is overblown, that your experience is representative, that really this is, it's not the way that it's been depicted in the media.

We still have to explain why the United States is doing so incredibly more poorly than everybody else, which was one of the, to go back to the original thing, one of the, the way in which I thought Jonathan Twan so effectively pushed the president. The president would say, no, our cases aren't that bad. Our desperate cases aren't that bad. But in virtually every other metric, we have been badly, badly outperformed by developed nations, by less developed nations, by nations without the infrastructure that we do, by nations that are almost by definition poorer than we are that don't have the medical. How do we explain that? if it's not the case that the American populace,

the civil society that David is talking about, has played a significant role in this. Oh, I don't do anything of that. I was just saying it's not necessarily a 10 or 9 or 10. It may be a 6 or a 7. We're going to leave that as a mostly rhetorical question because we have reached the part of the podcast where Jonah is going to tell me to smile more.

All right. So I admit this is not cutting edge on the, the news, punditry, the likes of which that our listeners have come to not only expect, but demand from us. But, so let me just walk you through my thinking

on this. So, and I'll, as Winston Churchill said, when his robe accidentally fell off on a visit to the White House in the private quarters, I have nothing to hide from our listeners. Part of the reason

why I picked this topic is I basically want to bait Sarah. So Kamala Harris, according to the latest you know, scuttlebutt is in the final two or three contenders. And last week there was a there were a bunch of stories in places like Politico and elsewhere about how some Biden supporters were lobbying against her. And one of their arguments was she was too ambitious. And this was something of a bloody shirt for a lot of prominent sort of media women, feminists who see this as a code word. And I want to stipulate up front and take away a big chunk of Sarah's opposition to my point.

I agree it's a code word. I agree that it's sexually loaded. it's loaded sexously in certain ways. At the same time, the argument that people have been having for a very long time about what Biden's pick for vice president should be is should he pick someone who is sort of a loyalist, who will help him with his agenda, or should he pick someone who is looking to, has outside power bases who will from day one be looking to launch their own presidential bid.

This is particularly important given Biden's age, the sort of caretaker agenda that he's kind of implicitly running on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, this question of whether or not to have an inside guy, inside person, who's dedicated to helping the president versus an outside person who has independent basis of support and therefore can help the administration by, you know, galvanizing support outside of a traditional thing. This is a debate that has occurred with every VP pick going back 200 years. And the idea that it is implicitly sexist to think that Kamala Harris

who definitely falls in the wants to be president outside power base own agenda camp that somehow it is sexist to mention that even though the word ambitious is problematic I find ridiculous

Ted Cruz has been described as overly ambitious for not only his entire lifetime but in prophecies of Ted Cruz's arrival on this planet for thousands of generations. There are caves that prophesied the arrival of Ted Cruz as an ambitious politician, okay?

Same thing with people like Tom Cotton. And so the idea that somehow you, look, I'm one of these people, I talked about this with Megan McArdle, which is the only reason why I'm wearing this up. I am, you know that bumper sticker that says feminism is just a radical idea that women are people too? I believe in that. And the idea that female politicians cannot be overly ambitious in this context, the same way males one can, seems to be, to me, to be a more sexist position than my position, which is a totally natural problem in politics.

And just one last point, to add in that this is the sexist thing that would say it about Kamala Harris, when Biden has already agreed that no matter what he's going to appoint, I think the way CNN puts it now a person with a cervix it just strikes me additionally bizarre I'm done with my rant All right

so first of all Jonah told me late last night that this was going to be his topic and so as I was drifting off to sleep I was just going through all of my Jonah arguments and you know what Jonah I totally knew you were going to bring up Ted Cruz and I was ready for it

but I can't believe you actually did it it, like, makes me so happy inside, um, that I now can, like, speak Jonah in my head. That's not something to be happy about, but anyway. So, first of all, I'm very pleased on this podcast, for instance, that, uh, most of the criticism that we get is that I interrupt you guys too much, which is sort of like reverse sexism, uh, that like, you guys never interrupt me. I'm constantly interrupting you. So good for us, right? Like, we're, we're in the 21st. I don't think that's true. I mean, I don't know what you do. I reclaim my phone.

Okay, here's what started some of this, Jonah, which maybe you're not, maybe you're not actually familiar with. It was Ed Rendell saying that Susan Rice did well on her TV appearance because she smiled more and, quote, that's something that she doesn't do all that readily and she was, quote, actually somewhat charming and then said that Kamala Harris can rub people the wrong way. Okay, first of all, totally agree. Men can rub people the wrong way and women can rub people the wrong way. It reminds me of my calculus class in high school where my best friend and I would do our exams together and she would get an A, not exams, homework, exams together is a problem. She would get an A and I would get a D and I would go up to the teacher and say, I don't

understand, like we have the exact same answers. And she would say, yeah, but it's not that your friend deserved an A. She also got the wrong answer. She just has nice handwriting. So I, you know, her wrong answers got counted as right. Yes, Ted Cruz, Jonah made a face. So my point is that if 10% of women and 10% of men actually are the Ted Cruz, even Kamala Harris, I'll throw her in there, sure, of like ambition in the way that people

don't like to see, the problem is that it's only 10% of men who get tagged with that. But like John Kasich is just as ambitious, but nobody ever describes him as ambitious or unlikable because of it, even though he's arguably both of those things. Okay, everyone raised their hands. This is a feeling. Whereas I think more women... Notorious for that, isn't he?

I don't think so. I hear all these people who are like, John Kasich seems so nice. What a good guy. And I'm like, seriously? Oh, no, he's awful. Very unpleasant dude. All of the men running for president are ambitious. All of the women running for president are ambitious, because the things, the type of personality you have to have to

throw your hat in that ring, you have to be a near sociopath at this point. But we describe far more of the women as ambitious. So, Jonah, it's not that I disagree with you, or even that Kamala Harris, it's not actually that she's ambitious. It's that her desire to be president will outflank her desire to be a good number two to Biden. That, I think, is a criticism you could make of any number of men as well, but you don't hear it very often, I think. Like when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, I never heard someone say, but Paul Ryan wants to be president,

so he may not be very loyal to Mitt Romney. Never heard it. That's fair. Look, that's fair. I think part of the problem is that... And Joe Biden, by the way, had run for president, what, three times before he was picked as Barack Obama's number two? never heard that he was too ambitious because he'd want to be president.

And I think that is, that is an entirely fair point. I think my problem is, and look, I can go back and forth on this. I think that the word ambitious is a little bit like the word articulate for prominent African-Americans. It's just a trigger word. It's like, what are you trying to say, you know, and, but, you know, you read the Federalist papers, the word ambition shows up in there a lot. And, um, and the, the, the desire to turn it in, I mean, to me, it's not as bad as the binders full of women thing, which I thought was one of the dumbest moments in American politics.

Um, but, uh, there is this desire to weaponize these words. And I'm just, I'm unsatisfied with most of the explanations I hear from people. I thought yours was perfectly fine. Um, uh but this idea that somehow here's what i get annoyed about i get annoyed about i get annoyed see i'm interrupting i get annoyed i wouldn't explain me when uh you know if if a woman pushes back and says that it's sexist to criticize kamala harris for being ambitious that the first answer is well i've described a man as ambitious as well that's my point is that like saying that like you can find one or two men that you've described as ambitious, when you've described 27 women as ambitious, that's my point about the calculus homework.

Yeah, but I haven't done that. And my point is, if we can't use the word ambitious, which I'm open to, sort of like the word articulate, right? We still need a word or a label to describe politicians who are more monomaniacal in their desire to be president than other politicians. And some of those politicians, because this is a glorious world after the feminist revolution, are going to be women. Correct. Totally agree.

You can't shut down debate when it's about women the way, you know, a lot of people are doing. That's my only thing. David, can we shut down the debate? Never shut down. We're all about dialogue and discussion here. I, you know, it's, I think you raise a really good point that there is a level of ambition when you're talking about, yes, I'm going to run for president that. is pretty much off the scale from normal human beings. But even in the, I'm taking this,

there are some people who take it, let's just take the baseline is to use the spinal tap reference. The baseline is 11. There are still some people at 12 and 13. There are still some people who, they're just a cut above. And I think Ted Cruz is the classic example of that on the guy side. I here's my question for you Sarah

because this goes back to some of our really fascinating discussions on advisory opinions surrounding the Hillary the Hillary show the Hillary documentary and also the oh gosh I've already forgotten the name of it the Kate Blanchett Phyllis Laughley Hulu

Made in America or Made in America Mrs. America. Mrs. America. Yes, yes. Mrs. America. And this is some of the difference between the second wave feminism and the third wave feminism and that America never got comfortable with a lot of the female public figures

who were the second wave feminists and seems to be more comfortable with the third wave feminists, public figures. And in a way, when I look at the Kamala situation, she seems more Hillary-like in her presentation, more of that more aggressive second-wave feminist, compared to an Amy Klobuchar, for example.

But I wouldn't, I don't think that Amy Klobuchar is necessarily less ambitious. I mean, if some of the, you know, behind the scenes stories about Klobuchar to be believed, you know, she's sort of, you know, the, she's like the inspiration for Selena Meyer in some way. So, yeah, so I do wonder if part of this is that, that second wave, third wave distinction that you've talked about. Steve? David wrote a newsletter that we released last night about self-censorship. And I find myself not wanting to say anything for fear of angering people who would think that I'm somehow insensitive. Kamala Harris is clearly very ambitious.

I don't think there's anything, I don't think there's really any dispute. about that and i don't think there's anything wrong with saying it i think that the the the key question to those who object to this and and let's be clear there are a lot of people who object to that characterization of her is the one that jona posed which is what would you say instead to describe somebody who displays i think in manifest uh ways the characteristics that Show ambition, which I think she has from the beginning. I think it's not particularly healthy to have to dance around something when there's a word for it, like ambitious.

We should just use the word ambitious. But I guess I don't think we mean ambitious, actually. To your exact point, like, I'm not sure that's the word we mean. Because when you're talking about Kamala Harris or Ted Cruz, it's not that they're ambitious, which to me is like they want to be president. All of the people on the stage want to be president, but we acknowledge there's a difference between some of them in terms of how they strike us in their desire to be president.

And I think it's that their desire to be president is above, far above what we think they actually believe or are saying to us. So then really what you're arguing for is a qualifier. So they're all ambitious. Ted Cruz and Kamala Harris are brazenly ambitious, progressively ambitious, openly ambitious, which sets them apart from the rest of the group?

Is that fair? I think it's, I think, I don't know that there's a word for it, maybe in German. They want to be president more than they want to do things, I think is what we're actually trying to say when we talk about that. Like, they just want to be president, that's it. And I think that when we like someone

who's running for president, of course they're ambitious. They want to be president. but what we like about them is we think they're running for president because, you know, they want to do something with that power versus just wanting the power itself. And again, I'm not saying that's true of Ted Cruz or Kamala Harris, but I think it's what people are responding negatively to. No, I think that's a fair point not to interrupt you,

but I am willing to test drive the proposition that feminists will have no problem with me referring to Kamala Harris is Craven. You're right. That's the word that I, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't think they're going to like it, but I don't think they're going to,

I don't think it's sexist. Remains to be seen. Okay. We're done with our four topics. Here's our last topic. It, you know, it maps on to the French fry war discussion that we had earlier,

which was, you know, it got pretty violent, I would say. If words are violence, the French fry discussion got violent. Jonah, you said you've been driving around the country. Presumably you've had to stop to eat several times. Most of the time on road trips, you know, there's the fast food options. But then if you, like, just need to sit down. I would say that your three main options that you really know throughout the country

are Cracker Barrel, Denny's, and IHop. Have I missed any? And if not, where do you fall? Oh, Perkins. Okay, I'll include Perkins. Where do you fall on the sit-down diner Americana? And we're going to start with you. Fast food chain, sit-down diner Americana? This is tough for me.

I don't frequent any of those three places all of that regularly or much at all in tens of thousands of miles of cross-country driving. driving. My favorite fast food chain in the United States is probably Culver's, which is from basically Steve's neck of the woods. The custard? Custard is great.

Cheese curds are great. Butter burgers. Enough said. Res. Equalopator. And what was that? Res. Iqlipator? If I had to choose from the three that you listed, probably Denny's because it's like the bottomless pot of coffee, your classic greasy breakfast kind of thing, which I still love. I'd rather go to a real diner than a chain diner like that, but I would say probably Denny's.

David, you look horrified. I'm horrified. Let's put it this way. My loyalties run so deep that when we lived in the Northeast and we would drive back home to Tennessee. to visit in Kentucky and Tennessee to visit family, we would call our return to civilization entering the cracker barrel zone, which at that point in the early 90s only extended as far north as sort of like just in sort of in northeast Pennsylvania is when you'd hit your first exit with a cracker barrel. And that was a big moment for us. We would pull over at the very first

cracker barrel that we hit and I would sit down and with enormous joy order and Uncle Herschel favorite, which is the all-meat breakfast at Cracker Barrel. And it's just a cut above. I mean, Cracker Barrel, for those who are not familiar with the lore, was kind of a bit player. Shoney's, especially in the South, was just the dominant force. And Cracker Barrel came in, and, you know, you want to talk about creative destruction, like the kind of creative destruction that the nationalist conservatives just hate.

What Cracker Barrel did to Shoney's was just ugly. It was ugly. And we're all better off for it, to be honest. I got an emergency message from Caleb, our wonderful producer. I mean, I'm stunned as he is. I forgot Waffle House. That's what I was going to say. I forgot Waffle House.

The categories that you gave us, the restaurants that you gave us all include a breakfast option. I would have guessed for Jonah if we were being more expansive that Fridays would have been. his favorite because he's so into flair like everywhere you put her in flair but since you didn't since you didn't include that i mean the answer the answer is clearly denny's and the answer is denny's for one reason denies has on its menu the moon's over my hammy and there's no better breakfast sandwich i mean there are but given the constraints that you've placed upon us i mean there's a better

bagel sam photos bagel bacon egg and cheese in in charlotsville virginia better um Um, but the moon's over my hammy. That's, it's just an extraordinary sandwich for this restaurant character. Uh, and I think that's, that makes Denny the hands down winner. Their hash browns are usually crisper than the others as well. So I, I have, IHop nostalgia. IHop was next to our rival high school. So when we skipped school, we'd go to the, IHop next to the rival high school.

Uh, and one time when we skipped school, we saw our principal there. And that, like, has, forever endeared me to going to IHOP because I have such happy memories of like sneaking, like trying to like army crawl out of the IHop. But also in Houston, we have a great place called House of Pies. And it is actually like this. It's like a 24 hour diner breakfast place, but that also has endless pies. And so if you're from Houston listening to this, you'll know House of Pies. It like, I was thinking about it last night, which is why I asked this question. because, man, I could really go for a, like, 3 a.m. slice of pie when the brisket wakes up.

One thing about Waffle House, it's fabulous, except that one out of every five times of you visit Waffle House results in what physicians call Waffle House stomach. Tell us more. Give us detail. No, no. We'll just leave it at that. We'll let that linger in our listeners' imagination and their memories, perhaps. Let us know what you thought of today's podcast. You know, if you're ambitious enough to email Jonah, go for it.

If you want more descriptive Waffle House, stomach. We call those things Waffle House butt here in my house. Well, that's so much worse. You just really escalated. Subscribe to the podcast. leave us a review. We love to hear from you guys, and we'll see you again next week. Thank you.