The Dispatch Podcast - It All Leads to This

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

What do Republican lawmakers want the Republican party to look like in a post-Trump era? “There’s a great fear of one scenario which is that Donald Trump loses in a race that is extremely tight,�� Axios reporter Jonathan Swan tells Sarah and Steve on today’s show. “In that scenario, it would be much more difficult for elected Republicans to disown Trumpism and make the case that this was an aberrant cancer that needs to be excised.” Tune in for a discussion of Trump’s spending problem, the state of the polling industry, and what to expect from a Biden administration. Show Notes: - Join The Dispatch for a post-election gathering featuring congressional leadership and top policy experts November 9-10: Sign up here! - Preview of Jonathan Swan’s HBO interview with Sen. Ted Cruz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Go check out what's next event.com to read all about our upcoming post-election conference, November 9th and 10th. Tickets are $100 and include a new complimentary subscription to the dispatch. We've got interviews with Liz Cheney, Ben Sass, Tim Scott, and we're announcing more on the website all the time. lots of panels on what happens after this election. Our special guest today is Jonathan Swan.

You may know him from his memes based on his interview with President Trump, but he is a national correspondent with Axios, and he has new interviews coming out every Monday on HBO. Check them out. Let's dive right in. Jonathan, on Monday's episode of Axios on HBO, you talk to Ted Cruz. It was a fascinating conversation. I'm wondering, there's a lot of people talking about what the Republican Party will look like if Donald Trump loses.

But I guess I'm curious, when you talk to Republicans on the Hill now or otherwise, what do they want it to look like? to look like if Donald Trump loses? Well, I think there's a great fear of one scenario, which is that Donald Trump loses in a race that is extremely tight, that perhaps is litigated. Maybe it comes down to a couple of states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which haven't covered themselves in glory when it comes to election administration. and you get a situation where you've got, you know, Trump claiming victory on election night and then, you know, goes on.

And so in that scenario, it would be much more difficult for elected Republicans to disown Trumpism and make the case that this was an aberrant cancer that needs to be excised. and we can start from a fresh page and do an autopsy and, you know, reimagined what this party is, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the scenario that elected Republicans are most worried about. I think if it's an overwhelming defeat, it opens much more space, and let's say they lose the Senate. It opens much more space for a real conversation among Republican elected officials about what the party is. is and what the party stands for. But really, bottom line is the party's so weak now. Party brands are

just so, so weak that I'm very skeptical that there's going to be, I mean, even if some sort of 2012-style autopsy commission gets together and decides that, oh, we really need to, you know, be compassionate on immigration and reach out to immigrants and all sorts of things like they did in 2012, Well, I'm just very, I mean, it didn't work back then. And I think the party's only gotten weaker since then. So I think you're going to have a whole bunch of individual decisions that the 2024 Republican field will be making. And you'll have some of them embracing this sort of populism, nationalism.

You have someone like Josh Hawley, who is not exactly a small government conservative. And then I think you'll have some who are, I would say, more traditional, like Ted Cruz, who I think will, you know, he actually has been pretty consistent on matters like spending and debt and deficit. I think he will, you know, be in that traditional evangelical lane that he was in 2016. So it really depends who you're talking about. But I'm very skeptical of the ability of the party as a construct to come together and sort of, put forward a new vision. Steve? Yeah, that's really smart.

I think that I agree with that entirely. I don't think there will be a sort of coherent Republican Party vision until there is another Republican president or at least another Republican nominee. Until then, I think it's going to be these kind of these silos or these vertical sort of constituencies directed by maybe charismatic leaders inside the Republican Party. but unlikely to produce anything looking like a coherent party philosophy.

You know, it's, I mean, it's interesting, as you were talking, I was trying to think to myself, if I had to describe the Republican Party philosophy in a sentence right now, what would I say? And I don't, I can't come up with a sentence. I mean, you know, for years, the Republican Party was at least, you know, considered itself, however imperfectly it carried these things out in practice, the party of smaller government. I'm just not sure that's really the case anymore. I mean, I think relative to Democrats, yeah, maybe, but it's not a small government party anymore. Is that your sense?

Well, it's not even, when you say relative to Democrats, maybe, I'm not even convinced of that. I mean, you had this recent stimulus negotiations, COVID stimulus, where you had, you know, the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, like it or not, he is the leader of the Republican Party as the president. And he was actually saying, I want to spend more money than Pelosi in the House. I want more. And so he would have happily, I think, gone up to three or four trillion dollars. Now, to be fair, there is a restraint from the Senate. And McConnell really pushed back on that. And part of the reason we don't have a $2.5 or $2.2 trillion spending bill,

is because of that pushback from McConnell in the Senate. So it would be unfair to say that, you know, that Trump's philosophy has completely taken over the party. But just, I mean, it's just a matter of documented record that before COVID, Trump was running up incredible deficits. And, you know, the growth was strong, but so were the deficits. And I had this conversation with Cruz where he, you know, you know, well, Trump's policies have been profoundly pro-growth. And I said, yeah, and also

profoundly pro-deficit. And by the way, not just pro-deficit in a short-term sense, there were deficits as far as the eye could see in their own budget forecast, the Trump administration's own budget forecast. So not only had they given up on the idea of, you know, trimming back government, tackling entitlements. I mean, Trump has explicitly run against the concept of tackling entitlements. So I don't see, I completely agree with you. I don't see a situation where the Republican Party can cohere around anything until there is a new nominee for president. And just on that, and just on that spending point that you made, which I think is a very good one, you know, I think Ted Cruz has been more or less consistent. He certainly hasn't been as

vocal about his concerns about spending under Donald Trump as he has. has been under, as it was under Barack Obama. But the other thing I think that is, that is really striking when you stop and think about it is, you look at the House Freedom Caucus, which was in effect created to be the, you know, debt, deficit, conscience, spending conscience of the Republican Party. It was their sort of their main argument. It grew out of the tea party. Where are they on spending?

I mean, if you're nothing from them about spending, because they've basically transformed, into the kind of, you know, warriors for Donald Trump. They're the fighters, but they're not fighting necessarily on ideological grounds. They're just fighting for Donald Trump. The issues that are most animate the right flank of the Republican elected party right now, things like owning the libs, you know, going after the media. Yes, those serious policy issues that really land in Americans' lives. You know, trying to prosecute the case against the deep state.

You know, these are the issues that are animating them. I can't remember the last time I heard an impassioned speech from a Freedom Caucus member about the debt or the deficit. I can't remember it. I mean, I was talking about this with another reporter yesterday. One of the most amazing things to me about the past five years is you've had, you've gone basically five years without the leader of the Republican Party, ostensibly the smaller government party, ever making a sustained case on behalf of limited government. I mean, this was like the staple of Republican presidents and presidential candidates for years going back. And it was often the case that in Republican primaries, at the presidential level, they tried

to out maneuver one another to see who could be the most outspoken and aggressive candidate on behalf of limited government. And there's really no discussion at all of limiting government in this context. Look at the closing pitch. So you have a situation, someone who knows Mark Meadows pretty well pointed this out to me with some sense of Schadenfreude. So you have Mark Meadows, who is the leader of the insurgent Freedom Caucus, who, you know, arch-conservative bane of the establishment's existence, who had railed against large government and spending and whatever. So he is now the White House Chief of Staff.

What is their closing policy pitch? It's, we're going to send seniors $200 cash cards for drugs. We're going to import European price controls. Like, you talk about socialized medicine. That is literally socialized medicine. That we're importing European price controls into America. So, I mean, this is a policy that Trump has put forward to rein in drug prices. So, I mean, these are policies that Bernie Sanders, if he was president, would have happily, happily endorsed.

It's such an interesting point. Using socialism to fight socialism. Well, let's move to the Democrats real quick. you laid out two scenarios of a Biden victory, one in which it's a narrow Biden victory and one which is a sweeping Biden victory. Do you think that'll make any difference to the mandate that Democrats feel that they come in with in a 2021 Biden administration? Well, I think it's more reality than mandate. Mandate sort of suggests something less tangible. If it's a Biden thumping victory, that would, so if the national polls right now and the state polls are roughly

correct, that would indicate a flip of the Senate. And if that happens, and, you know, people like Charlie Cook, who's, you know, one of the election handicappers that most people kind of turn to, I think his upper range is sort of 55, 56 Senate seats for Democrats. If that actually happens, by the way, I'm not predicting anything. I have no idea. I guess Trump might win and whatever, they might keep the Senate. But like, if that upper range happens, just mechanically, they're going to get a ton done because they're not going to worry about, I mean, if they have 52, they can probably squeak through some big things on reconciliation. Basically, they'll probably lose mansion and cinema.

So they don't really have a lot of room to wiggle for getting something big done. My understanding is they're going to move pretty quickly. If they win the Senate, Biden wins. They're going to move pretty quickly to put forward a massive COVID. stimulus bill, which will have a ton of green, renewable energy stuff in it. And the very popular corporate tax hike, which is among the Democratic Senate, that is a very popular policy, bring that back up to 28% as a pay for. So I suspect they'll do something like that with infrastructure piled in. And if they have a little bit of room to play, because you could get a no vote

on the corporate tax hike from someone like a mansion, you know, they could get a lot done. But on the other hand, though, if it is, you know, 55 seats, you know, a big wave election, that also means that they picked up a lot of close districts, whether it's Senate or House. And if they want to protect those, the worst thing they could do is lurch too far to the left.

They could actually shut out the Republican Party for several cycles to come if they got all those seats, but then we're able to hold on to them. But if they then pass a, all of these far-left programs, they then leave an opening for the Republicans to come back in in two years and take back at least some of those House seats that were middle of the road and went to Biden, you know, because of the Biden wave, rather, this time, right? For sure. If Kevin McCarthy ever become Speaker of the House, it's probably because of

a backlash election in 22 where he got an electorate that's, you know, railing against an abolished legislative filibuster, a whole ton of leftist policy. see, you know, maybe a PACT Supreme Court. But, you know, that argument makes some logical sense. But just some of these people, like, let's say, you know, I don't think he will, but let's say Bullock gets elected in Montana, you know, he's not exactly a leftist. He's a very moderate, would be a very pretty moderate senator. But he's also got six years until he's up again, and there's going to be huge amount of pressure to, particularly when it's wrapped around the badge of COVID and recovery to get something really big past.

Yeah, and the 22 map on the Senate side looks pretty bad for Republicans, no matter what happens this time around. Exactly, exactly. So I don't know. I don't know that that kind of thinking will prevail. And let's take a quick pause to hear from our sponsor Keeps. Take it away, Steve. Hey guys, for those of you who have seen me on Fox News or know what I look like, you know that

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month free. If you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss, go to keeps.com slash dispatch to receive your first month of treatment for free. That's keeps, k-e-e-e-p-s dot com slash dispatch. Steve, any thoughts on Democratic side of this whole thing that's happening in four days? No, I mean, I think it's really interesting to contemplate exactly what they do. I mean, you know, we talked about this a little bit on our podcast on Wednesday. you know, Biden's closing pitch really is, I want to heal the country, I want to help the country recover from this, I can bring people together, no red states and blue states, just the United States. And you wonder, maybe naively, whether that constrains him a little bit in his, in his

governance. I mean, if he's elected and then he implements, you know, something closer, something along lines of what you're talking about, even. I mean, if it's just massive spending and, you know, sort of aOC pet projects stuff ripped out of the green new deal that they can spend a bunch of money on you know i i think that could uh they could face some pretty serious blowback because that's not i mean on the one hand he's campaigned you know on on big spending increases and he's he's been a fairly progressive candidate who's spoken in centrist tones but i'm not sure that's what people are voting for in this election if they're voting for uh joe biden particularly not independence and crossover republicans yeah and look i'm watching to see some of his early

personnel appointments because i think that will be a signal about how he intends to govern so you know obviously there's been a lot of speculation about elizabeth warren for treasury. If he were to pick her, and I don't get the sense from talking to people in Biden's orbit that he will. But if he were to, it would be a pretty strong signal that he's going to run against corporate America, that he is just going to stick up the middle finger to them and really pick a fight from the outset. I don't expect he'll do that. I think he'll try to make some selections that corporate America can live with. And again, I think it depends on what they do. I think that if there's, I don't know that the spending itself is the kind of thing

that would create a backlash because, boy, I mean, there's sure been a lot of spending under this president and federal republic and control. I think it's when you get into some of the more creative environmental policies that you could see that happening. There was a moment in Amy Coney-Barritt's hearing at the end where Lindsay Graham and Diane Feinstein embrace, which for some reason was one of the more shocking things to happen in that hearing because we hadn't seen a Democrat and a Republican speak cordially to each other, let alone like each other in a genuine moment. Do you think post-Trump we head back to at least some bipartisanship, or do you think, in fact,

things are about to move even further apart? I don't see. Look, I think the temperature will come down a little bit. I just think because of the nature of Biden versus Trump. If Biden wins, that he's just not as much of a lightning. rod as Trump is. So I do think the temperature will come down. But will the basic structural dynamics of American politics and the incentive structure change that incentivizes a lot of these people to treat their opponents like their enemies? Will that change? I don't really see that changing

without some major structural reforms which have no prospect of happening. So I don't think so, and actually, do you know, one thing I kind of get a sense of from some of these members anyway is the hatred is genuine now. It's not play acting. They actually believe, and more in the House, I would say, than the Senate, but they actually believe that these people are evil. And there is a real, this is not play acting at this point, particularly when you get into like the House Intelligence Committee and the two sides of that committee. I mean, this is, this is deeply, deeply personal at this point. So I don't see it changing.

Well, that's depressing. Thank you. It is depressing. Well, and you add in that this information environment where attention follows outrage, right? You want to get attention. You want to make a name for yourself. You say the most outrageous thing so you can get the most attention. Do it on social media, do it on the cable news.

channels and everything is incentivized in that direction. This is the Lindsay Graham. I mean, look at Lindsay Graham's fundraising strategy right now. It's going on Hannity and Ingram and telling people his website. Literally asking for money. Literally asking for money. But like he's only allowed to sort of, you know, have that profile because he's basically spent 12 months going and this has actually annoyed some Republican people in the Republican

base is he goes on Hannity, you know, every second night and says, you know, it's coming, just stay tuned, you know, and sort of, so now you have this Republican base that's basically being, you know, conditioned to believe and salivating over the idea that John Brennan and Barack Obama are going to be sort of dragged out in handcuffs. And as election day approaches and it becomes more and more clear that's not going to happen, you have this sense of disorientation and anger, you know, partly whipped up by a false expectation setting. So now we've we've spent a good chunk of time talking about the potential Biden presidency, but it is the case that the election hasn't happened yet. You know, I think

we have this conversation because the polls are pretty clear. And if the polls are right or even close to right, we're going to be looking at a Biden presidency. But there's a chance Donald Trump is reelected. If if Trump is reelected on Tuesday, what is it that that we all, missed. What is it beyond just like disastrous polling? If he's reelected, what are we talking about on Wednesday or Thursday? Well, it is, I think the story will be the polling, because the only reason the conversation has happened this way is because every public poll, with the exception of Trafalgar, I mean, I guess the guy who runs Trafalgar will be a newly minted millionaire and will have four years of dining out on how brilliant he is, kind of like,

Rasmussen had because they had a good election in 2016. No one mentions how catastrophic they performed in 2018, but whatever, you pick Trump as the winner. So I'd want to be the guy from Trafalgar at that point. But I think that it will be a massive conversation about polling and modeling of the electorate, because what it will have revealed is that the fundamental assumptions that people were making about the composition of the electorate, the architecture of the electoral role. And it will be because there have been, there was, even though pretty much every pollster after 2016 adjusted their models to wait for education, right, to make sure that there was more of a waiting for white non-college educated voters who brought Trump to the presidency.

So if even after that adjustment, we have a situation where, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who didn't vote in 2016 in the upper Midwest who perfectly fit the profile of a Trump voter, you know, white men, no college degree, you know, turn up and vote and overwhelm the Biden vote, it would just be a huge conversation about how we use polling. And, you know, it'll be actually an existential conversation for the industry. So one of the things that I think makes the polls more likely to be accurate this time is actually the record high turnout. If the number of actual voters becomes that close to the number of registered voters, then polls of registered voters don't need to wait for a likely electorate. It is weighted by definition when you use the voter

roles to reach out to people. That being said, I do wonder if aside from just the polling, there will be sort of another reckoning within the media of how it approached this election. as you said, very reliant on polls, understandably so. It's sort of the data that we have to some extent. But there is this issue where, you know, and Pew has done these studies, some insane number of reporters live in a county that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. They don't have friends who are Trump voters. They don't own guns.

They don't know anyone who owns guns. You know, there's like the group of people giving the news are not represented. of the country either. And I wonder if that would be another piece of the reckoning. Well, I'm actually quite skeptical of that. I'm not skeptical of what you just said. They're all facts. But I'm skeptical that it's created an environment where people have given Biden too much of a chance of winning or dismissed Trump's chance of winning. I, you know, John Harris, a Politica, I thought, has accurately pointed out that actually, given the data, how overwhelmingly bad it is for Trump. The media has been remarkably insistent upon continuing to say that he has a

chance of winning. And we've done the same. There have been far fewer obituaries written for Donald Trump this time round than 2016, even though his polling situation is objectively empirically worse than it was in 2016 and is not moving. You know, the polls aren't, like in the way that the Clinton polls were tightening at the end, we're not seeing the same dynamic here. So I mean, look, that's all true. And there could be a reckoning over whether coverage is biased and things of that nature. But I don't think it's, I don't think that that has caused people to overstate Trump's chances of losing. There's a rift. Yeah, there's a rift among Republicans, Trump supporters right now in these closing days really existed for the past week plus

on how much time he should spend talking about the Hunter Biden accusations that he's made. And you had the president raised this during one of his rallies yesterday where he said, you know, all these candidates who I beat in 2016 are calling me and telling me I should stop talking about Hunter Biden and start talking about the economy. And, you know, you went on to say, there's a reason I beat that. them. They don't know what they're talking about. I'm going to keep talking about Hunter Biden. How pronounced is that as we get closer to election day? Is that split as big as it seems to be? I mean, I suppose I have a fairly small sample size, you know, Trump advisors. But I can tell you

before his second debate, at least one of his top advisors had a conversation with him and urged him, urged him to stop with the Russia stuff, stop with the Hillary emails, stop with the Hunter, just talk about the economy. That's what people care about. It's what you have an advantage over Biden on. And, you know, Trump throughout his presidency has dismissed a lot of political advice because in his mind, and you know, you can see why he believes this, as he calls them, these great geniuses, he always uses that phrase. My great geniuses tell me I need to, you know, dripping with sarcasm, tell me I need to do this. And he almost takes pleasure in thumbing his nose at them. So this is really no different. I remember in the lead up to the

2018 midterms, Trump, someone I, this is someone who's like one of his, probably someone he consults more, just more than just about anyone on politics. I was having conversation with them and they were telling me about this conversation they had with the president where they were try to persuade him to talk about the economy, the great economy, and what he's going to do leading into the midterms. And Trump said to them, you know, when I get up and talk about that, you know, my people get bored. My people get bored. He's talking about his rallies. And, you know, so the way Trump gets a feel for what resonates is very visceral. It's what gets the crowd roaring at his debates. And turns out,

Crowds don't roar when you talk about tax policy, but when you say that Hunter Biden is you know, courting, you know, Chinese criminals in his garage, that tends to get a little bit more a bit more of the juices flowing. So it's really, it's not, what comes out of Trump's mouth is not data-driven, you'll be shocked to hear. It's purely informed by what gets the crowd roaring, what gets his own juices flowing. The one exception to that was his aides really did give him a big talking to after the first debate and they had internal polling, which was catastrophic. It just went sharply down. And they just said, for the love of God, stop interrupting him, let him talk, let him hang himself

and be more calm. And he actually was. I mean, the second debate, Trump was actually much more, you know, obviously grading on a curve, much more restrained. Okay. You have two questions to go. Last substantive question. the tech companies. What happens after this election when it seems like both sides are very frustrated with big tech, so to speak, social media, disinformation, conspiracy theories, even if they don't agree on what the disinformation is and what the conspiracy theories are? So I think policy with respect to big tech could continue in a reasonably straight line under Biden. They've got, as you know, the big antitrust case against Google, which I think

Biden's DOJ will continue. And then you've got a couple of antitrust investigations going on at the FTC with respect to Facebook and Amazon. I can see a Biden administration continuing with those. I think there'll be less sort of whining about. tick, but as it relates to stuff that actually matters, the policy actions, I could see a fairly straight line. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors, the Bradley Foundation. Americans are navigating through several unanticipated crises this year. We the People, a Bradley speaker series, offers insights and ideas on the current challenges we face from some of the remarkable organizations the Bradley Foundation supports. Visit BradleyFDN.org slash Liberty

to watch their most recent episode, which features Andy McCarthy speaking on the breakdown in respect for the rule of law and related social and judicial issues. McCarthy is a best-selling author, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In this episode, he addresses the characterization of Antifa, the dangers of court packing, and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Andy also provides perspective on the latest developments in the Russia investigation. That's Bradley with an L-E-Y at the end, FDN.org slash Liberty to watch the video. New episodes debut weekly. So go back often and subscribe to their YouTube channel to be notified whenever a new one is posted. Okay, now the most

important question. So Jonathan, we have sort of a 16 going on 17 thing with our two households. My son is two months older than your daughter. I'm sure they'll be going to proms together and whatnot until your daughter rejects my son. Because she's going to be so much cooler than my nerd of a son. Jury's out on that. He's going to listen to this, you know. But because of all that, I happen to know that it's your wife's birthday tomorrow. It's true.

And I just have to know, and I think I speak on behalf of all dispatch listeners, for such a momentous occasion, you know, her first birthday after becoming a mother, do you take her to the most well-known, well-regard? Australian Steakhouse in the United States and get her an awesome blossom? I'm embarrassed to say I actually have taken her to Outback Steakhouse on one of her birthdays. I did it as a joke and she really appreciated it. And one of my main complaints is this horrible chain has convinced Americans that we eat something called bloom and onions, which don't exist in Australia.

Most of their menu doesn't exist in Australia, including the beer, Fosters. It is, honestly, it's a total disgrace that chain, but Betsy likes it. Fosters doesn't exist? No, Australians don't drink fosters. It's something that people overseas drink and they think is Australian.

You cannot go to a pub in Australia, you cannot order a Fosters. They don't exist. Whoa. It's a joke. Anyway, Outback, I have many problems with Outback steak. cast, but Betsy likes it. So we'll see. All right. Well, I won't ruin the surprise. I won't tell

her. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm glad this is off the record, right? Yeah, totally. I should have asked that at the start. Okay, good. Thank you so much for joining us, Jonathan. Jonathan Swan of Axios. You should absolutely be subscribing to their newsletters and check out all of his great interviews on HBO. Thanks, guys. I'm going to be able to be.