The Dispatch Podcast - I’m Not Inflaming Political Violence, You Are | Roundtable

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Sarah and Steve are joined by Mike Warren from the campaign trail in North Carolina and former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp to discuss the state of the race and the Trump campaign's ground game (or lack thereof). The Agenda: —Are we going through a political realignment? —Teamsters won’t endorse a president —Ground game vs. legal strategy —Political violence this election season —The former president grasps for “media bias” straws —The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio —Paging Hezbollah Show Notes: —What Would Stop the Steal 2.0 Look Like? —New York Times poll —Boiling Frogs: Hot-Blooded The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro dash Canada. Conditions apply. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures.

And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgur. We've got Steve Hayes, Mike Warren, and drum roll please. Special guest, Heidi Heitkamp is joining us, former U.S. Senator from North Dakota, and founder of the One Country Project. Heidi, thank you for joining us.

Sarah, it's always great to be with you. Heidi and I have been doing a lot of ABC stuff together, and if you're ever curious why people, you know, are looking down at their phones sometimes, and you think maybe they're looking at the polling. Nope, it's Heidi and I texting each other. Can you believe he said that? What's the hell?

Also, listeners, you may notice a certain depth to my voice, a certain raspyness. Yes, I have somehow lost my voice. I'm not even sick. And I talk for a living. This is all a problem. So if you're hearing cough drops or maybe even occasional cough that Adam was not able to cut from this, my apologies. Heidi, let's start with you. If the election were held today, where are you handicapping this right now?

I'm handicapping it in Pennsylvania. You know, numbers are better for her in Pennsylvania. I have always thought she was going to carry Michigan and Wisconsin. And then the bonus is obviously her opening up the Southwest, opening up opportunities in Arizona. I think I have more confidence in Arizona, Sarah, than I do Nevada, actually. and then, you know, Georgia and North Carolina, you know, smart people, people smarter than me think if one goes, they'll both go. So the interesting thing for me is that I think Trump was going to run up the score before Harris stepped in. He was looking at running up the score, campaigning in New Mexico, campaigning in Minnesota, you know, really thinking he had a shot in those places, and then locking down the blue wall.

And now he is, he is playing defense in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. And she's got to play, you know, serious offense in Pennsylvania. But tell me about where you are on this political realignment that I'll just speak for myself. I thought we were witnessing since 2016, you know, a realignment around education, a realignment around gender, an unalignment around race in a lot of ways. And that was really ramping up in the run-up to the Biden-Trump election in June and in the, you know, 11 or so days afterward. Now that Harris has stepped in, on the one hand, we're seeing a lot of those trends recede. On the other hand, I could argue that what we were seeing before was, in fact, where the Democrats are weak and there will, that realignment will continue, even if just not at the speed that it was.

On the other hand... Wait, we have too many hands. I've got a lot of hands, Steve. The Teamsters didn't endorse the Democratic nominee for the first time in 35 years. Yeah. And Sarah, I have to say this. Do you know how pissed off I am about the Teamsters? Tell me. Tell me, Heidi. Give it to me.

This is personal to me. There was something called Central States Pension Fund, which basically was broke. and it got turned over to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund, long story. And literally, Trump kept saying when he was president, I'm going to fix it. All these Republicans said they're going to fix it. It meant millions of dollars to hardworking, retired Teamsters. And the Democrats came in, led by Sherrod Brown, and I helped when I was there, basically

fix their pension problem. If anyone got anything, from any union got anything. directly as a result of Democrats. It was the freaking teamsters. And for them to be so ungrateful is just beyond the pale. And so, I mean, you know, the message is, is not a good message when you deliver for people and you're working as hard as you can. And this is the thanks you get. On the other hand, though, to be a constituency up for grabs can be pretty valuable. You get a lot more from both sides then. Well, good for them. Good for them. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's amazing. And now what you're seeing is the local unions, they aren't endorsing.

So the local unions are going to be endorsing. And so what's, you know, these endorsements haven't mattered much from a leadership, but the, the last few cycles. And in fact, this, this realignment started with the so-called Reagan Democrats, right? Blue-collar Democrats. who moved over to Reagan, you know, what we always say, do you know what, do you know what I call a Reagan Democrat, a Republican? And so a lot of these folks are, in fact, Republicans. And they are going to continue to kind of realign until the Democrats figure out a message that's going to deliver. But again, the vast majority of Teamsters fall within the gender demographic and the age demographic and the racial demographic that has trended more Republican.

All right. Speaking of on the ground stuff, Mike, you have been in North Carolina. Tim Waltz is in North Carolina and J.D. Vance is in North Carolina. And it happens to be a swing state. You just vacationing down there, buddy? Yeah, I figured I'd take a few days at the beach in the outer banks, maybe trek on over to the mountains, do some hiking. No, you know, trying to do.

Tar Heels. Yeah, trying to do some work here. And I saw Tim Walls in Asheville, North Carolina on what day was that, Tuesday. It's interesting because North Carolina is this state that Democrats have had dreams since winning it in 2008 in the presidential race, have had dreams of repeating. And it's always sort of just outside of their grasp. It's always close in North Carolina. but Republicans, Republican presidential candidates certainly always seem to win it. On the other hand, there's a Democratic governor, two-term Democratic governor of North Carolina. There's a governor's race this year that, you know, if I were betting on it, I would bet, I would put a lot of money on the Democratic Attorney General, Josh Stein, succeeding Roy Cooper and having another Democratic governor here in North Carolina. Of course, Roy Cooper was elected in 2016, reelected in 2020, both years that the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, won this state at the presidential level. But that margin is shrinking, and I think Harris's, you know, ascension to the nomination has given them Democrats a lot of hope that they can do. The state has shifted slightly toward Democrats because of demographic change.

It is a younger state than it has been in the past four, eight, 12 years. A lot of people moving in from out of state, bringing maybe more democratic, liberal politics to the state. The question is, are they going to vote? There's always your question when you're talking about the southeast, the black vote being energized. Of course, that's what happened in 2008 when Obama won the state. But, you know, the folks that I talk to in North Carolina say, watch the new North Carolina voters, young people, educated people.

Those are the numbers to watch. The registration is up. And it's just a question for me of whether they can pull it out. I'm a little skeptical. And actually, I don't know if I agree with you, Heidi, about Georgia and North Carolina both going. I think Georgia, just like in 2020, is likely to go for Harris and the Democrats. that's before North Carolina is. It doesn't mean they won't.

They couldn't both go. But North Carolina is just slightly more Republican than George. Can I just say, because I've been asking people about this, do people who are turned off by Robinson, then not vote for Donald Trump? And I've gotten a mixed bag on that from people who know the state. Some people say, like, Republicans will still come out to vote for Trump. They're just not going to pull. There will be a significant number who won't pull the lever for Robinson.

So I think it's a real question, but I will say the Democrats are working hard to appeal to Republican voters and say, this is not the party that you thought it was. Come over to our side, or at the very least, stay home. They're trying that in North Carolina. They're trying really hard. So we'll see if it works. So, Mike, this is a question I've been dying to ask someone who's actually on the ground in one of these are slightly leaning swing states. because it seems to me talking to Republican officials that they have moved a lot of their resources from traditional ground game stuff, neighborhood offices, door knocking programs

over to election fraud and hiring 200 lawyers on payroll at the RNC, which is never heard of. And yet the Democrats are running a traditional ground game. Is that asymmetry, something you can see on the ground? What are folks saying about it? Is the ground game in our hearts? You know. It's a good question.

Dispatch politics on Thursday. We're recording this on Thursday. It'll air on Friday. But we have a great item from our colleague, David Drucker, on this very question. Look, Democrats are energized. That matters when you're trying in a state this close in North Carolina. And it's the same way in Pennsylvania and Michigan. We know all seven states.

It matters if you can get more of your people to, you know, and this is where the, say, the black vote in North Carolina and Georgia, where this will matter for Democrats, convincing black voters, hey, this is important. You need to come out. That rely, like you have to have a ground game. You have to have people who are out there, you know, at. you know, outside, you know, at church events, at various other places, reminding people that they need to get out to vote. I'm not so convinced that, well, to me it's a big question about whether this matters on the Republican side of things, whether Republican voters need to be gotten out, you know, is the sort of information, is information coming through mass media and not through sort of door knocking and that sort of thing? That's, seems to be, that seems to be the overall strategy, right, is not to really necessarily focus on, you know, individual offices, hey, we've got this many offices in this state. It's just

kind of flood the zone with, with Trump. To answer your question about what you're seeing on the ground, there's just a lot of enthusiasm from Democratic, the type of people who walk around to like the walls of NISO, asking people to, you know, make sure they're registered to vote, hey, do you know anybody in your family who's not registered to vote? Here, here's some information about how to do it. You're seeing that a lot at Democratic events. Republican events, they're just a lot more about the party and about the, I mean, the small P party, like the event, the happening that's happening there.

So I am seeing less of it. I just don't know if it'll matter as much. All right, Steve. Tell us why Mike and Heidi are wrong. I'm not sure they're wrong. I will say, I think it's a big risk for Republicans. I mean, first of all, to put it in proper context, remember in a panel discussion with Jonathan Martin of Politico at the Republican Convention, Chris Lasavita, Trump's campaign chairman, in response to a question from Jonathan said, basically our goal, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's a close paraphrase, our goal is not to win on Election Day, it's inauguration day. So the preparations for the post-election fight are underway, and I think as you suggest, Sarah,

with dozens or hundreds of lawyers looking to fight on those grounds, that's where Republicans are gearing up to fight. I think it's a big risk. You look at the kinds of voters, both in 2016 and 2020, who came to the polls for Donald Trump. Of course, he has this very enthusiastic base. We've discussed here, you know, just how big that is. he has Republicans who are, you know, less enthusiastic about him, but are loyal partisans and

will show up to vote. He has a collection of people who might not be Republicans at all, but don't like what the Democrats are doing and are worried about Kamala Harris. But then there is this collection of low propensity voters, low propensity, low information voters. If you look at the people who are voting for Donald Trump, according to a New York Times poll that dropped this morning Thursday and the people who were evaluating their votes in the context of the debate last week, people who saw the debate and paid attention to it are supporting Kamala Harris. This is from the Times. The debate was viewed live by more than 67 million Americans, making it the year's most watched broadcast outside the Super Bowl.

Ms. Harris fared strongest among the 80% of voters who said they had either watched that night or seen clips afterwards winning among those voters. Mr. Trump was winning a majority of the far smaller share who had either only heard about the debate or had not heard anything about it at all. Trump is going to need to get those voters to the polls. The way to get those voters to the polls is to have an extensive and effective get-out-the-vote operation.

And if they don't have that, I think that's potentially a huge detriment. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if we're having this conversation a week or two weeks after the election, if Trump loses, that we look back on this conversation and these decisions. And, you know, we've been reporting on this pretty consistently in dispatch politics about the shift away from the ground game and, you know, taking those resources away from the Republican National Committee. Sarah, can I ask a question? Steve, I thought that

what Trump did last cycle in 2020 was really political malpractice telling people, don't vote early, don't vote by mail, you know, ignore all that because it's untrustworthy. he seems to have changed his tune a little bit about early vote. How do you think, I mean, although I think, you know, as we watch Donald Trump, we know he can't be consistent. He was convinced one day to be early voting, and I'm sure, you know, in two days he's going to be, it's all nonsense. But how much are the Republicans pushing early vote in these swing states? Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of the real key questions, Donald Trump. sent out a message on truth social about early voting starting, encouraged Republicans to

vote early. You know, this was within the past 24, 36 hours. But as you say, we saw that from him on occasion in 2020, right? You can tell. You could almost like, if you could map it to conversations he had with his campaign advisors, they would say, Mr. President, you can't tell people not to vote. You've got to tell them to vote or you're going to lose. And then he would go and post something on truth social or he would, you know, say something at a rally or, you know, Trump has this pattern. He usually opens the rally. It's very funny if you watch enough of these rally speeches. He opens up the rally by doing sort of the housekeeping work that one would do. He would remind people during the primary season, primaries coming up on this day, talk to these precinct captains. These are the people helping me. These are the people you should be in touch with. And he's reading often from a binder.

Then he very quickly, when Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate, would shift to trashing Joe Biden from reading from a binder. And then Trump would, you know, sort of ramble for a long time and then return, close the speech by going back to the prepared remarks and back to the housekeeping stuff. And you know that that's where Trump is sort of reverting back to a more traditional political candidate, reading his cues, doing the stuff his advisors are telling him to do. When Trump does that, it probably stands him, provides him an advantage if he's not

trashing the earlier vote or trashing the mail-in vote or trashing all these. But I think it's fair to assume based on what we saw last cycle and even back to 2016, he's not going to do that consistently. And the problem is if they're making these preparations for that November

5 to January 6 or January 20 time frame, at what point, you know, depending on where the polling goes, do they say, you know what, we really need to shift our rhetoric in the same way that we're shifting our resources to that post-election fight. Yeah. Sarah, can I, can I mention, you know, I did an exercise with vote vets, and you know that's the more progressive veterans organization, been very active politically. But we did this two years ago. It was called War Game, and War Game has turned

into a documentary. And the premise is, what happens if January 6th happens again, the incumbent is the existing president, but close race, kind of back pattern that matches where we are. And we do a lot of these talks after the airing of this movie. We've been all over the country. And people ask me, you know, how likely is this going to be happening? And I said, forget January 6th because one thing Trump learned is once those ballots are in the box, it's really hard to change the outcome. And so what has to happen right now on election integrity for so many of these election officials is they have to be prepared exactly for what you're talking about, Steve, which is this mammoth questioning of the validity of the election post-election voting.

And I think there's a real, you know, I mean, you don't want to predict this, but there is a real concern that people should have about. not only a lot of litigation. That's the other lesson Trump learned. Litigation is not his friend because it's really hard to prove voter fraud. And so is this going to be a mob movement to change the election in each one of these states that are going to be close? And I think the preparation that these states need to have and that we all need to be thinking about is exactly what is the methodology that they're going to use to win the election

post November 5th. Heidi, we spend a lot of time talking about what will happen if Trump is narrowly losing on election night, for instance, and for good reason, that's what happened in 2020. But how do you think Democrats react if Harris is narrowly losing on election night one state 10,000 votes in Georgia,

let's say, a state that, you know, Republicans control the apparatus of the election. I mean, I honestly think that, and this is going to sound biased, obviously, given my political affiliations, but I honestly think they're going to take a wait and see they'll use the courts if they think there's been any amount of voter fraud or if things need to be recalibrated. But, you know, take a look at what's happened in the past. Hillary Clinton lost a close race, right? won the popular vote overwhelmingly. She didn't, she didn't try and change the outcome. No, but let me push back on that a little bit on Hillary Clinton because I think what Republicans

would say about that is, okay, fine, she didn't challenge the election. What she did and said was say the election was illegitimate, that it was stolen by Russia, that Trump colluded with Russia, and that took away two years of his presidency as they investigated him for that. There were violent riots all along K Street on inauguration day that closed down businesses, you know, injured people, burned businesses, et cetera. I think 100 people were indicted for that, although all the charges ended up being dropped because many of them were wearing masks, et cetera. It was very hard to prove who was who. So it's not like when Hillary lost narrowly that everyone was like, well, good effort team and went home. I think Republicans would say

quite the opposite. They undermined President Trump at every opportunity, and there was violence. And that now that Trump has perhaps, let's say, up the ante in 2020, Democrats learned from that too. And so each side keeps one way ratcheting what happens when they lose. Do you think that's a reasonable interpretation or no? No, I don't because I think that what you have is, do you have a political party that it has a culture, you know, and I don't like to use Republican because I know lots of Republicans who were mortified by what happened. This is the MAGA movement. This is the cult movement that Donald Trump has ignited. And I would tell you, you can say, well, look what happened in 2016. What I remember in 2016 was not a lot of people showed up for the inaugural. And I've been to a lot of

him. And so I can say his crowd size was not large because I was on the podium looking out over the mall going forward because it was a senator at the time. The next day, there was this incredible peaceful demonstration, mainly from women, marching. And so, you know, they didn't, they didn't say, you know, let's march on the Capitol and try and prevent him from taking office. What they said is, let's get organized and win the next election, which in fact, women did. for Biden. And so, you know, I'd like to think that wouldn't happen. I want to push back on one other thing. There have been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump in this election season. Is that the message that Democrats are hearing that they can't stop him at the ballot box? And so the

sort of most mentally unhinged thing that they have to take things into their own hands. Show me where the people who have attempted this are Democrats. The one is mad because it presumably if we know what we know right now, is mad because he believes that Trump will not support the effort in Ukraine. That's not on Democrats. He, in fact, he's a Republican voter. The previous, the young man who was killed in Pennsylvania, again, a Republican voter, a Republican and aligned voter who, you know, researched both sides and found opportunity in Pennsylvania. And so for this idea that somehow this is, you know, for Republicans today to say, stop calling Donald Trump a fascist, give me a break. Donald Trump had an excellent opportunity. At the day of when he

accepted the nomination for the Republican nomination in Milwaukee, I could have won him this election. And it would have been simple. He should have stood at the podium and said, there's no room for political violence in this country. Everybody needs to tone down their rhetoric, including me, and we are going to have a discussion about the issues. He did not say that. He started to say that. And then it's just like it fell flat. And then we got 90 more minutes of something. Yeah, of crazy, right? Of taking on, you know, slaying the dragons and calling people fascists and communists and, you know, calling people names. And now all of a sudden it's a Democrats who are leading the mean fight. And I think it's legitimate to say, what will

2025 mean? I mean, you have the, he picked a vice president who wrote the forward for that document. And so I, you know, I, I just don't buy that this is somehow a Democrat-led effort to take Donald Trump. Do I think this is horrible? Absolutely. Do I think everybody should tone down the rhetoric. But, you know, do, does Donald Trump and J.D. Vans have clean hands coming to this? Think about Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, by the way, it irritates me. People say she did an endorsement. She did not do an endorsement. She said, I'm voting for Kamala and you do your research. And so, you know, and she hasn't corrected this endorsement stuff. So I'm not going to go on it. What does Donald Trump say? He writes a tweet that says,

hate Taylor Swift. And he's been on her ever since. And so that, you know, if somebody, you know, has an attempt on Taylor Swift's life, is that Donald Trump's fault. I definitely baited Heidi there intentionally because obviously she's 100% right that neither of the assassination attempts were tied really to Democrats at all. So, Mike, let's be real. This most recent assassination attempt, if anything, is tied to anti-Trump Republicans. Do we have a responsibility for the rhetoric that is leading to these sorts of violent attempts on Donald Trump's life? I am very cautious about drawing a line from general rhetoric that is, you know, deployed during

campaigns and violent people who are maybe mentally disturbed, schizophrenic, you know, whatever it is. It was really wrong for Democrats to claim that the man who shot Gabby Giffords was inspired by Sarah Palin. He was clearly not. He was clearly a disturbed individual. And I do think it's wrong to draw any conclusions unless there is any actual proof of some sort of I got direction from when so-and-so said, let's go kill a bunch of Democrats or let's go kill a bunch of Republicans. Like if there's actual evidence of that, which there had, I mean, the congressional baseball shooting, I think there's a

maybe a more direct line there. So I think you have to take it on an individual basis. I don't believe that this one in Palm Beach over the weekend, that you can draw any sort of conclusions. This guy is clearly delusional about his own role in world history. He wanted to go fight in Ukraine and couldn't do that. He was recruiting Afghanistan, people from Afghanistan to fight there. He was sort of living in his cause.

I mean, look, there's a lot of sort of, in this individual instance, some mental problems. And I think that the Trump campaign is sort of is trying to do a little too much here to lay this on their political opponents. And it's frankly why the actual attempt, which he didn't fire his gun, by the way, we should note, he just got very close. The actual attempt is sort of receded from the conversation a little bit. I think it's because that initial, in part, it's that initial reaction to blame this on his political opponents. It just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. And the other thing I would say, just from a practical standpoint, and we've discussed

this, the Secret Service, I mean, there's a lot of concern about the Secret Service and how this guy was able to get close, but I am interested to know if, like, this is how the Secret Service should have operated and that the system worked. that's a question I have. I don't have an answer for that. But I think that there's a little, there's too many questions now to be able to draw too many conclusions about what it means

and what should have happened. Yeah. I agree with Mike that what you need to do is have a real question about what is the scope of protection for Donald Trump. I mean, we are just so incredibly fortunate in this country that the Pennsylvania assassin was not successful. Thank God. I mean, I, I mean, I, you know, I, I, I worry about

the escalation of political violence. I think that would have inflamed the entire country. This is a little more, you know, like when, when people said shots were fired, they were fired by the FBI. They were fired by the Secret Service. And so, you know, it'll be interesting to see, but, you know, was he too close to the president with a weapon that could have killed the president? Yes, he was. And so what is the Secret Service doing to basically draw a bigger perimeter? The former president wants to play golf as opposed to, you know, going out and campaigning. I'm all for that.

Keep playing golf. You know, keep using your time that way. That's fine with me. But we need to protect this president. against people who would do this former president against people would do them arm. And I don't think that I have a lot of faith in the Secret Service right now.

Steve, obviously nobody wants to take credit for inspiring gunmen who, as Heidi and Mike have both alluded to, could have really changed the direction of this country in a horrible way, especially when you think about that Pennsylvania shooting. But that's not the only thing that's happened. We have a very close call

on the assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh. he's outside his home. We have more than a close call against Nancy Pelosi's husband who was seriously injured when someone broke into their home for, and when I say political reasons,

I mean, because the person is political, because of who they are, because of the office that they hold, the congressional baseball shooting, of course, two attempts on Trump's life. Fine, nobody wants to take credit, so to speak, for any individual one of those. But can't we acknowledge that this isn't happening in a vacuum?

Sure. Yeah. I think we have an obligation to acknowledge that. And I do. And it feels rich to me. I'll just add. It feels too much to me when I hear folks on the left say Donald Trump has brought this on himself because he's the one who started it or something.

Like, no, just not only are people not willing to say that my rhetoric isn't helping the situation May is maybe contributing to a situation of increasing levels of violence, but also not only did I not do it, but they did it to themselves. No, I'm, I fully reject that notion. No, I think you're right. Having said that, there's no question that Donald Trump has contributed to this environment. Oh, yeah, sorry. I don't mean that he hasn't. I mean that everyone is. Yeah. It's it's a bit rich now for me to hear. his most ardent supporters complain about toad and tenor of our political rhetoric. It's like, really?

They've been calling, you know, people like me, the enemy of the American people for eight years now. They've talked about how the real threat is Kamala Harris and the Democrats. You know, J.D. Vance said the other day that it's irresponsible for somebody, for Democrats to suggest that Donald Trump is a fascist or has fascist tendencies. Trump himself has used the word fascist to describe Kamala Harris repeatedly, communist, Marxist, fascist, and talks about the end of the republic if Kamala Harris is elected. So it is a bit real.

Funny people on the left talking about the end of the republic if Donald Trump's elected. For sure. I think that's true. We've spent time here talking about sort of the challenges of that kind of apocalyptic rhetoric. And I think it's unhelpful when people are. on, you know, in and around Trump, obviously, lie about things that Harris has said or vulnerable communities eating cats and dogs is the obvious example that we'll get to here in a few minutes.

But I also think this idea that the left never does that, never misquotes Trump for the purpose of saying that he's hateful and racist. He says plenty of things that you can quote and say that. But they will instead make up quotes, take things. take things out of context for the purpose of making Trump sound dangerous. Well, what do you think? Why would you be doing that

if you didn't think it was effective? I understand you want it to be effective in making people believe Trump is dangerous so that they go vote. But yes, of course, some people are going to take that believe Trump is dangerous and think,

boy, I can't leave it to voting. Yeah, no, I think that's right. We've published two very good pieces this week on this. One was a column from Jonah Goldberg and the other was a newsletter from Nick that we called Hot Blooded, I believe. And, you know, Nick in particular, you know, goes on at some length to explore this challenge. And I think it's a challenge as reporters as people who are covering this and people are talking about this.

Because on the one hand, we don't want to do anything to contribute to this environment. I do think that there is, you know, this sort of elevated rhetorical environment. gets people hyped up. And there is a connection between, you know, the kinds of things that will cause unhinged people to act on their views or their beliefs or their mistaken beliefs. I mean, you know, to go back to the reason that Joan and I ended up quitting Fox News, a lot of it was because of this Tucker Carlson faux documentary where he was telling people,

He was telling MAGA people that the federal government was coming after MAGA, that they were putting MAGA folks in Guantanamo, and that they were confiscating their guns. And my view was that was dangerous. I thought that people would act on that. I still think people will. And to a certain extent, we've seen that people have. I think it's a challenge to talk about this and to write about it in a way that's not contributing to this broader environment. But at the same time, it doesn't shrink from telling the truth about these things. I mean, as Nick wrote in his in his newsletter yesterday, it's hardly a stretch to suggest that Donald Trump is a threat to sort of the democratic norms in our country when he literally tried to steal an election and remain in power after he lost. Like that is by definition not abiding by democratic norms. How else are you supposed to describe that? He lied about it for months, and really now has lied about it for an additional several years. That's what he's doing. So you can't sort of shrink away from, shy away from making that point and making it forcefully and condemning it. It's hard to do that without seeming to engage in the exact kind of apocalyptic rhetoric that I think got us in this conundrum to a certain extent in the first place.

Okay. Let's talk about the cats and the dogs, Heidi. because I do wonder if when we look back on this election you know anytime you look back on an election 20 years out there's sort of that like thing that defines it I think 2004 for instance is swift boat vets for truth there's a thousand things that happened in the 2004 election but like that's sort of the one that we remember it for it

it's not that we necessarily remember the thing that changed the election we remember the thing that kind of encapsulates the narrative about the election and how the election turned out And I think it's really interesting because in this moment where we don't know how the election has turned out, I think both sides already have their narrative and how the eating the cats and dogs fits into that, right? For the Democrats, if Harris wins, eating the cats and the dogs was when Trump jumped the shark, right? He's talking nonsense. He seems unhinged. He's terrorizing a community with a now, as we all know, completely false accusation. that came from a woman who was missing her cat for two days, decided Occam's razor, my Haitian neighbors, probably ate the cat, and the cat was in the basement. And she has since walked over and apologized to her neighbors,

which, by the way, I think is really cool. And I just want to say, like, that's what it looks like when you actually live in a community and actually care about what's going on. Maybe you make a mistake. Maybe that mistake feels a little bit racially driven. And then you own up to it and you walk over and you apologize.

Good honor. The Republican narrative, though, is, see, look, here's an issue that the media wasn't talking about. And so we make this cats and dogs, you know, is it a joke? Is it a meme? Is it whatever?

Democrats all freak out. It's the only way we get them to talk about immigration and issue that works for us more than Harris. And you may not like busing migrants into New York or Chicago, but it works.

Now they're declaring some national emergency just because they got a thousand people when Texas gets, you know, a thousand an hour. And you may not like cat and dog memes, but it works. And now we're focusing on what happens when 20,000 people descend on a community of 60,000, not through you know, applying for green cards, but temporary protected status, which is different. They are legally here, but that doesn't mean they came legally to the country, for instance. It is a status that someone is granted. And so now we have fights over that.

So which narrative is right, Heidi, which one's going to win? Tell me everything. Well, you and I may have a different definition of legally in this country. They are legally in this country. Right, right, right. But doesn't mean that they came illegally and then got certified. I mean, they showed up at the border. You know, there's two ways.

And just so people understand, there's people who try and sneak in. And then there's people which has really led to the crisis much more. And those are people who present that the border and claim asylum, which then they have to be adjudicated. And this has turned into a big mess and has really taxed the entire system. And we can talk about immigration reform and refugee reform and the work that Langford did and why it was 5,000. but you know what, we're not talking about, we're not talking about any of that, which is legitimate dialogue about what's happening at the border and how it's affecting, especially the communities on the border. And this might surprise you, Sarah. I thought it was an act of brilliance

to send people to Chicago. I thought it was an act of brilliance to send people to Boston, to New York. You know why? Because this is a national problem. And if you think that it's hard for you to accommodate 20,000 people in a city of 3 million, think about people accommodating 10 billion people in a community like El Paso. I mean, so I thought, I mean, I'm not critical of what happened there. I think people should have known that, and given broader consent. So we can talk about whether that was appropriate. But let me tell you, it has drawn attention to it, has made it a national issue. You know what Trump could have said? He could have said, I'm going to tell you about the city of Springfield where rents have gone up X percent, where this has happened because there is an influx of people who have come to this community.

Yes, they're working and they're good people, but it is disruptive to the community and the community is upset. Instead, he talks about eating cats and dogs because that's who he is because he will take the most sensational thing. And you know what? He believes it. Donald Trump believes they were eating cats and dogs. He has sent people into those communities to find people who are eating cats and dogs because they're, I mean, so he will find the most inflammatory way to talk about an issue that really needs a much more reasoned and seasoned approach to how we resolve it. He's not wrong about saying we need to fix this problem. He's been obstructionist.

He has stopped a fix that could have been pursued. And I don't think that the cats and dogs will have, okay, don't get bad of me, we'll have that many legs long term. Ooh. That many paws long term. But I think what it was, I think what it was, though, Sarah, I watched the debate. And I thought Trump is being measured. Trump is, you know, he's saying kind of some goofy, non-fabcial stuff,

but he's saying it calmly and then he hit the cats and dogs. And to the extent that the debate itself then turned on him being baited after that, that the kind of change in attitude, I think that's more relevant than that turning point to me. And to me, he was turning in an okay debate performance prior to that. and then it just blew the whole thing up. So, Sarah, I'm, you know, I'm a writer, so I appreciate storytelling and I appreciate the way that, you know, a story can... Once upon a time, I couldn't find my cat.

Exactly. And instead of checking my house, my own house, I just assumed the cat's already dead and not just dead, not hit by a cat, not hit by a car, but eaten by my neighbor. The end. what a great story you should read that to my kids before they go to bed sarah my son would actually totally end to that story he has asked questions similar to that that you know they're pretty obsessed with death at four yes my my my six-year-old has been obsessed with death and skeletons and the spooky season and all that stuff for for years um no but what i was going to say is stories i i get the sort of the power of a story so when jd vant says you know if i have to

you know, create a story to get people to pay attention to what's really important. There's something, there's something of the writer in me that, like, understands what he's trying to say. But I'm also a journalist and stories that, that matter for, you know, our politics, for how we talk about the issues that everybody's dealing with, they need to be true. They need to be based in truth. This is a very radical position that I hold. And I think what I don't know whether it will matter, whether we will look back and say this was the issue and this is how it turned the election one way or the other. The only thing I care about is that it was not true.

And when people whose job it is to, was to ask questions and find facts, when those people, you know, proved that it was not true, the politicians, sorry, Heidi, that don't mean to cast aspersions on an entire class people, but the politicians who were involved in pushing this just simply did not care. And I think that whether or not it matters or not, it is our job as journalists to point this out. Kevin Williamson did a fantastic, masterful job of this on our site this week. The Wall Street Journal had a terrific, well, deeply reported, well-reported piece from Springfield about what was actually happening. That's where, Sarah, you got the anecdote about the woman who, made the industrial claim, but whatever it is, I think it's BS that because of this story, because of this untrue story, but that has focused on, you know, that has allowed us to focus on a real issue, the real issue is not being focused on. That's just, that's just not actually

happening. And it's because it started with a lie. It started with a lie. And because because of that sort of original sin of this conversation, we have to deal with that first. And what J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have done is forced the rest of us to deal with the lie and not deal with the issue. And I lay the blame entirely, entirely on them for that. All right, Steve, I want to do a little not worth your time

question mark, and I want to talk about Israel's strike on Hezbollah members in Lebanon. According to reports that we have now, thousand plus pagers blew up in Lebanon. Those pagers belonged to Hezbollah members, and they were remotely detonated by the IDF, and perhaps more fun regarding to these reports, Hezbollah paid Israel for the privilege. They thought they were contracting with, you know, some company they could trust to make their pagers. And that company was at least owned or operated by or with Israel, who planted little explosive material next to the battery. So if the battery heated up, it would explode. Then, of course, the next day, they explode their walkie-talkies.

The pushback on this has been, Steve, that this is a war. crime, terrorism, early reports are that one, maybe two children died because of their proximity to someone's pager. The pushback to that is that this is the most targeted strike one can imagine on an enemy force that is embedded in a civilian population. So Steve, what's your take on this, obviously? Is it worth our time to even question whether this sort of thing should make us a little bit nervous, because I'll admit, as I hold my iPhone, I don't know, I looked at my iPhone twice yesterday. Sure, I think it's definitely worth a discussion. All of this stuff is worth a discussion. These are naughty and sometimes difficult issues. And you're right, Sarah,

I think the actual count of children who have been killed in these precision attacks is now up to for. And, you know, that's, you can't, you can't dismiss that. You can't set those aside. Those are, that's collateral damage that I think is deeply regrettable. Having said that, this is a targeted attack against a terrorist organization that has been lobbing rockets into Israeli cities with the express purpose of killing civilians. That's the goal here. I think from, the perspective of Israel, what they were trying to do in this instance was kill the people actually responsible for that terrorism. And it's a remarkable intelligence operation. I think we will be, you know, we've learned sort of the basic details of it, and they are as you just laid them

out. It appears that this was an operation years in the making, with a front company set up in Hungary to distribute these, to sell these. This was, it seems, planned for a second wave of these attacks. So Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, has been complaining both privately, but at times in public about the risks associated with phones, cell phones. And Israel and Israeli intelligence and the Israeli private sector, it must be said, is really pioneered tracking and utilizing technology to exploit cell phones. So Nasrallah had been urging Hezbollah operatives to switch to Pagers. He said this in a speech in February.

They did this. And of course, this was walking his operatives into the trap that the Israelis had set. The Pagers explode. And it totally freezes. has Belize ability to communicate because they don't want to use phones because of the dangers that we already know. Their pagers, they now understand, might kill them. So they switch to two-way communications and walkie-talkies, which then the following day are also exploded. It's an unbelievable, unbelievable intelligence operation. And I think we'll be learning about it and reading about it

forever. It has, I think, a couple of different effects. One, it, it, you know, basically destroys the communications capabilities of Hezbollah, at least on a temporary basis, a short and medium term basis. They don't know who to talk to and how to talk to people. They have no idea. That's, I think, that can have very significant tactical importance, particularly if this is sort of something that the Israelis have done in a lead-up to a campaign against, a broader campaign against Hezbollah, which we don't know. No, but we've been talking about this larger potential conflict for a while. Certainly, I think the Israelis would be morally justified in taking such steps, given what we're seeing from Hezbollah on a near daily basis.

So there is the sort of shorter, medium-term tactical significance. But I think the longer-term significance is psychological, and it's huge. you don't know if you are a Hezbo operative what you can use. It creates this sensation that Mossad, Israeli intelligence, military intelligence are everywhere. They're seeing everything. They're hearing everything. They have their hands in everything. They're in every piece of technology.

And I think that has to be nearly crippling to an organization. like Hezbollah. How do you prosecute a terrorist war if you can't communicate with your operatives? I think we'll look back on this as one of the most significant intelligence developments in recent history. Okay, so Heidi, is it Matt Damon? Is it John Krasinski? Is it Chris Pratt? Who's going to star in this movie? I don't know. But I do have a question for Steve. Do you think this leads to a broader escalation in the region? Or, Or is there going to be a more stand-down kind of reaction to this? I mean, I've been assuming that we're going to see a broader escalation in the region.

I don't know that it's inevitable, but it feels just short of inevitable. And I think, you know, certainly you will have Hezbollah and parties or states sympathetic to Hezbollah or Hamas pointing to this if there is an escalation or if there is a response from Hezbollah. I'm not sure practically, you know, the effects of this disabling of their comms will, how much it will hurt their ability to respond. But I think people will look at this as sort of the next Casas bell-eye. But I would say you can point to the Hezbollah attacks on the Drew's children of several weeks ago, killing 12 children. You can point to the various rocket attacks. So I think it would be inaccurate to say, Israel did this to take out Hezbollah's comms, therefore there's an escalation in the region.

And Sarah, I was going to say once again, what we're seeing in Ukraine, what we're seeing in all of these kind of what what we might call modern warfare is the deployment of low-tech, low-cost technologies that are incredibly effective. And I think it's got to lead to a real honest discussion when we look at our military budget, whether we're spending money the right way, whether we are in fact preparing for the kind of conflict that we're going to see going forward. Are we that clever? Or do we just want to build big stuff that is incredibly vulnerable? And so I think once again, I have a, you know, I did a thing with Gary Cohen, who was the chief academic advisor for a hot minute in the Trump administration.

And, you know, we did a thing on campus together. And he said, you know, you can give me an aircraft carrier or you can give me a keyboard. I'll take the keyboard. You know, I think that we have to have an honest discussion based on what we're seeing across the globe in these conflicts. and these wars on our preparedness to deal with kind of a more low-tech attack in our country. And, Mike, last word to you, it certainly looked last March, last April, that foreign policy could have an outsized impact on this election because of its effect on domestic issues, like campus protest and sort of the excesses of the left, rises of anti-Semitic attacks.

And then over the summer, of course, when all of the elite college students went home to their eye banking jobs, that seemed to recede from the background. Schools back in, we have, whether it's escalating or just simply high media attention on some of these events, is foreign policy going to be an issue in the next 45 days in the run up to the election? I have a very boring answer, which is I don't really think so, barring some sort of major event. and and then all, you know, sort of all predictions are off. This is not a presidential election about really anything. It's the Seinfeld of presidential elections. Exactly. So the idea that like this will, you know, this could turn on, you know, whether, you know,

how sincere Kamala Harris is about her, you know, about the need for a ceasefire at a certain point. during the negotiations this like it it doesn't matter i mean it matters but it's not it does not matter for uh the outcome of the election but i do want to say real quick back to your original uh question israel was going would would be blamed or or criticized uh for any level of collateral damage for uh this attack the fact that it was so precise and frankly the collateral damage as as as terrible as it always is, the fact that it was so limited seems not to matter, which should tell you what those sort of critics of this strike are really going for. And just to underscore the point, Israel was not seeking this.

They did not want to be engaging with Hezbollah and the north side of Israel. since October 7th, their focus was on Hamas. And this is Hezbollah's, if we want to start talking about blame and who is bringing the conflict and escalating the conflict to echo Steve, it's Hezbollah. And what are we really talking about? We're talking about Iran. And with that, thank you so much. Thank you, Heidi, for coming and joining with us. Such a treat.

It's great to be with you and Steve and Mike. And to everyone else, see you next week. You know, Thank you.