The Dispatch Podcast - January 6 and Those Mark Meadows Texts

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

On today’s episode, our hosts discuss the House’s vote to hold Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6 Select Committee. Plus, are we taking threats to vote counting seriously enough? Is Jonah right about Omicron? And, is President Biden being unfairly treated by the media?   Show Notes: -TMD on Mark Meadows text messages -The Atlantic: “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” -Jonah’s G-File with his Omicron argument Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, with Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Steve Hayes. We are going to do an expanded January 6th update, including where we are in the States on nearly the anniversary of January 6th, a discussion of Omnacron and what it could mean. And finally, is the media being unfair to Joe Biden? But before we dive in, if you are still looking for that perfect Christmas present, and supply chain woes got you down. We've got an idea for you. Send a gift subscription to The Dispatch. You can go to the dispatch.com slash gift.

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Let's dive in. Steve, we're starting with you. January 6th updates. Yeah, we've talked about January 6th and the January 6th committee, occasionally, I would say, updated sort of as warranted. But most of the work of the committee has been behind the scenes. doing interviews that we're not really reading about, that we're not really hearing about. That changed in a pretty dramatic way this week when the committee considered a contempt of Congress

vote for former White House Chief of Staff and former Republican member of Congress, Mark Meadows. Liz Cheney, representative from Wyoming and vice chair of the committee, one of the two Republicans on the committee, read aloud text messages that Meadows had sent and received from a wide variety of people, including colleagues in the building or former colleagues in the Capitol that day as it was under attack, prominent television personalities, three Fox News hosts, and others. These text messages leave no doubt. The White House knew exactly what was happening. here at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others

wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway. One text Mr. Meadows received said, quote, we are under siege here at the Capitol. Another, quote, they have breached the Capitol. In a third, Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol, breaking windows on doors, rushing in. Is Trump going to say something? A fourth, there's an armed standoff at the House chamber door. And another, from someone inside the Capitol. We are all helpless.

Dozens of texts, including from Trump administration officials, urged immediate action by the president. Quote, POTUS has to come out firmly and tell the protesters, to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed. In another, Mark, he needs to stop this now. A third, in all caps, tell them to go home. A fourth, and I quote, POTUS needs to calm this shit down.

Indeed, according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts, knew the president needed to act immediately. They texted Mr. Meadows, and he has turned over those texts. Quote, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy, Laura Ingram wrote. Please get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished.

Brian Kilmead texted. Quote, can he make a statement, ask people to leave the Capitol? Sean Hannity urged. As the violence continued, one of the president's sons, texted Mr. Meadows, quote, he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough. Donald Trump Jr. texted.

Meadows responded, quote, I'm pushing it hard. I agree. Still, President Trump did not immediately act. Donald Trump, Jr. texted again and again, urging action by the president. Quote, we need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand, end quote. Sarah, what are we to make of these texts?

to Mark Meadows and what they tell us about what was happening first what they tell us about what was happening on January 6th well a couple things one I do find it interesting slash weird that Don Jr. is texting Mark Meadows the White House chief of staff when at least for me I mean I have my dad's cell phone number like I can text my dad directly and do like pretty regularly. So that's just an interesting family dynamic that comes out of this. But look on the broader picture, I think I'm the minority voice here probably, but I don't see anything actually relevant. That doesn't mean I'm not interested, titillated by the text messages. Of course, it's always fun to see private text messages that people send, especially on a day like January 6th.

But what Laura Ingram was saying in her text messages to Mark Meadows looks a lot like what Laura Ingram was saying publicly. And I don't think it even contradicts what she's been saying since then, right? Like what she was saying was these people are hurting the MAGA movement. I think that what she's been saying since then, and a lot of them, I think if we were to summarize it, would be that Democrats are waving the bloody shirt a la, you know, post-Civil War era concept that it doesn't mean that the Southerns didn't believe that the Civil War happened. Their point was that Northerners were using the Civil War and its tragedies for political gain. And so I don't see a contradiction. Again, like I understand why everyone's like, ooh, text messages. But to me,

Yeah, this all, you know, the thing that I think is weirder is the idea of journalists trying to influence the outcome. But they've said in multiple lawsuits, right, that their evening program people are not journalists, their opinion people. So I don't know. This is not a big deal to me. So, David, I think Sarah makes a good point. I mean, if you look at what Laura Ingram, at least part of what Laura Ingram said, that day look at her her public tweets around the same time she was sending this text to Donald Trump and they do sound a lot like what she was saying in private she was saying hey the president should stop this president should make a speech these people doing this are a disgrace uh I think that the complication to be I think generous about it comes later that

evening. She starts a show and she has sort of a monologue that night where she does say, hey, this is not like the behavior we've seen from MAGA. And I take it to read, I think you can read it in a number of different ways, but I take it to mean sort of this is not acceptable behavior from people who would call themselves supporters of Donald Trump. She did lean into the possibility, much discussed at the time, that there were Antifa infiltrators. And I think it's fair to say that Sean Hannity and probably Brian Kilmead have leaned even further in the direction of this is no big deal. What they what they said was a big deal in their private text messages to the president's chief of staff on January 6th has become a

much less of a big deal in the time since. Do you do you buy Sarah's argument? I mean, I don't think the text messages are a big deal by themselves. I do think that The significance of them is kind of to make an obvious point, which is these guys were all on the same team. I mean, these guys were all on the same team in the whole stop the steel effort. You can go back, you can document this process, how it unfolded, how Trump kind of bullied Fox into jumping on to the stop the steel effort. And that any sort of intimation later that this is not a big deal or that this wasn't Trump supporters or what this wasn't Trump led is all garbage because in the moment they're saying stop this stop this they know who the key guy was everybody knows who the key guy was and and sometimes it's

just important to be able to restate obvious truths here because one of the things that has happened in both before January 6th and after January 6th is there's just been an avalanche of BS trying to obscure obvious truths trying to obscure the obvious truth that Joe Biden won the election trying to obscure the obvious truth that this was MAGA that stormed the Capitol and not Antifa and not it wasn't whipped up by the FBI

and to obscure the obvious truth that this was a big deal. So what did these text messages say? It was a big deal. What did these text messages say? They also say that this is Donald Trump's baby here that we are watching being birthed all over the capital.

What else do they say hey, this is all the same team. This is a team here when we're talking about these Fox prime time hosts and the Trump campaign. That's all a team. Now, these are all things that are obvious to people who are not deep, deep, deep inside the right wing bubble. And I don't know that you can even penetrate deep deep inside that right wing bubble anymore. But sometimes it's just necessary to say obvious truths. And I think that these text messages help you do that. As far as sort of saying something that we didn't know before, that we all didn't know before, no. They don't.

Of course they don't. We all knew all of those realities well before these text messages were read, but they're just sort of like putting an exclamation point on true facts we already knew. Jonah, if you look at what many, I mean, what I think many prominent Fox News hosts, many Republicans have said in the 11 months since January 6th, there's definitely a different tone. It may be that we we sort of know what happened on January 6th. I would argue that what we know has shifted in part because of the work of the committee. We've learned a lot. We've learned a lot because of recent reporting. We've learned about the Eastman memos. We learned about Donald Trump's repeated efforts to press Mike Pence into not certifying the vote. And even as we're

seeing these texts from Fox News hosts from Republicans in the Capitol that day, imploring the president to speak out and to stop this, obviously indicating that they think that he, that these were his people, that Donald Trump could influence them. We've seen in the months since, I think, a pretty systematic effort to downplay what happened then, even as we've learned more, that this was actually a plan, that Donald Trump acting on the advice of John Eastman Mark Meadows and others really wanted to stop the certification of the election. He wanted to steal the election. Yes, he definitely wanted to steal the election.

I have, you know, I wrote a piece from dispatch on November 20th saying this was the plan all along, November 20th last year. And I, but I think you're making, this is where I wanted to jump in, but known as I am for my restraint on this podcast, I waited for everyone to have to say. Wait, wait, let me just. interrupted. He's known for his restraint. I take Sarah's point about like

what she said in the text doesn't really contradict what she said that night on her show, her being Laura Ingram, although what she said on her show had a just a sea of it might be Antifa. We don't know

this is shocking that anyone would associate this with these people. But if it's an, oh, and also, this is just a case of good people's passions boiling over. I mean, there was a lot of that, you know, caveating to it. But that's fine. But I don't think that contradicts what she said. Right. Yeah, no, that's fine.

I agree. It minimizes. It minimizes it. For sure. Yeah, but what she was saying in the text message was, this is giving, this is hurting your whole movement. It wasn't, she wasn't saying, and these people are evil. So I have two points about that.

One is, who gives a rat's ass? Because the issue is not what she said on the night of January 6. The issue is what she said on the nights of January 7 through last night. And the way she has kept, the hypocrisy isn't to be found in the contradiction, although I think there's some, the contradictions between what she said in her text and what she said the night of January 6th. I mean, frigging Lindsey Graham was denouncing Donald Trump on January 6th and 7. It is how these people knew what they were seeing with their own lying eyes on January 6th.

They knew who was responsible and they certainly know who had the ability to stop it. And then they spent the next year doing cleanup operations pretending. First they went through the it was Antifa thing. And I am still trying to get my head around the logical, the sort of the logical proof that says, if this was Antifa raiding the Capitol, defecating in the hallways, stealing laptops,

calling for the hanging of the Vice President of the United States and the kidnapping of soldiers, I mean the kidnapping of Congresspeople by militia who brought zip ties to take people hostage. If that was Antifa,

that would be really bad. But if it was Trump supporters, what's the big? deal. And that is the net position of Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson. And this is my bloody sure point. Wait, I want you to respond to this part. Okay. Which is, uh, and I think I can make this point because obviously, you know, I think everything that happened on January 6th was terrible. I just feel like I need to say that. I had

friends in the Capitol who had barricaded the door with furniture. Their staff were crying. Like, this is not to minimize at all what I think about what happened. I wasn't suggesting that you were minimizing it. I just want to be very clear lest someone, you know, misunderstand. But someone misunderstand the podcast? That is not happening. It's hard to imagine

that sometimes people yeah. Nancy Pelosi politicized this from the beginning when she didn't have any Republicans involved in drafting the article of impeachment against Donald Trump

that was an intentional move. She wanted this to be political and to put Republicans in the position of having to pick, turn on Donald Trump or be tribal. Either way, she saw it as a political win for her instead of what she could have done,

which is make this not about politics, about an election, about tribalism, include the Republicans who were out there denouncing it, who ended up voting. for even the article of impeachment, they weren't even involved in this. As a result of that, it did turn into a bloody flag.

You can argue that we should waive the bloody flag a little longer, but Democrats absolutely want to use January 6th for political reasons. And so it can't be that surprising that then Republicans respond to that in a defensive manner. Yeah, okay. I mean, to the extent you're, I mean, look, first of all, I mean, I've been pounding my spoon on my high chair about how Nancy Pelosi handled the impeachment terribly for a very

long time. I just talked about it again on the latest remnant. In this committee, by the way. Yeah, and the establishment of this committee. She is the speaker for the Democratic caucus and not the institution. If she was going to take impeachment seriously, she would have had, she would have

not just kept quoting Liz Cheney, but she would have made Liz Cheney a manager of the impeachment thing. She would have, I mean, one of the things I should say that I do think, and I will get to your point in a second, that is really interesting about the timeline that is unfolding is that it basically corroborates my former colleague Andy McCarthy's argument for what the real impeachment should have, an article of impeachment should have been, which was dereliction of duty.

That on the day, an institution of the government was being attacked, processes of government were being attacked. People were calling upon the commander-in-chief, who's charge of the National Guard in the District of Columbia to do something and instead this person watched it on TV and I think that 187 minutes right 187 minutes the problem is she couldn't do dereliction of duty because then more Republicans would have signed on to it she needed okay sorry Joan is making the would they though would but that's my but that's my point is that she should have she should work tireless I'm like Chip Roy you know his arguments against the actual text of the impeachment article were perfectly valid.

I mean, I still think they were wrong not to vote for impeachment, but I think Nancy Pelosi handed a lot of intellectually honest people or people who want to seem intellectually honest, a perfectly safe harbor to avoid voting for impeachment. Intentionally. She did it intentionally. Yeah. Okay, that's all fine.

But part of my problem with whatever. I mean, that's my problem. Seriously. I mean, it's a bit of a distraction because what you're seeing about Nancy Pelosi and all that. It's a perfectly fine explanation. It is in no way an excuse for Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity to knowingly lie for a year about the nature of the riot,

about who is responsible, about what could have happened, to constantly float trial balloons to say it was really somebody else. How Tucker Carlson, to this moment, to last night, is still suggesting that this was somehow some sort of like deep state operation. Isn't that the most fascinating part, though, that there's no text from Tucker to Mark Meadows in any of this? Yeah, but he might have been texting the president. Oh, I think that's exactly what was happening.

But that's the other thing I think that is interesting is the way in which Mark Meadows is these texts are written in a way to persuade Mark Meadows and hopefully get Mark Meadows to persuade the president. And so it's all of this stuff about how it's ruining the legacy, right? None of these freaking texts say, this is terrible on the merits. Right? They're all like, this is bad for you. This is bad. And by extension, this is bad for us. This is going to hurt our legacy and all that you, we, us have done.

Which is not a good argument against people beating up cops with flagpoles. It's at best a tertiary argument. The primary argument is this is outrageous. The president has a moral and legal and constitutional obligation to stop it. And I don't care who's doing it. He has to stop it. And now we know that the president did not want to stop it because he thought it was to his advantage. And that, I think, is the real import of the text messages.

And they're just one small part of the larger mosaic of assinity and corruption that was the Donald Trump presidency. I think the least interesting argument in all of this comes from Republicans saying to Nancy Pelosi and Democrats with extraordinary high-handed attitude, you. madam, have improperly investigated our party's rotten core. That is essentially what we're hearing from Republicans. And maybe if you had properly investigated our party's rotten core, we would join you in calling it out. But you did not, madam. And so therefore, I will confine my comments to condemning you. That's lame, lame, lame. So I agree. With you in the way that you framed it, I do think it's relevant that Nancy Pelosi screwed this up from the beginning. She screwed up the impeachment. She screwed up this committee. There was a chance.

Screwed it up. It implies accidental. It wasn't accidental. She's a strategically brilliant politician. It wasn't a screw. Maybe. I mean, I guess. Monkey wrench. Fair enough. I don't know that we know that for sure. But what she did at the time that this was being discussed, both the impeachment and then later the committee, there were Republicans and a much bigger. group of Republicans who were willing to take this seriously and do a real investigation. And remember, she sent the letter announcing how the committee would operate only to Democrats. She didn't even address the letter to Republicans. Did it, did it unilaterally, and it was a big mess. My sort of big point, I think this can lead into David's topic, which is related, set aside

all of the, all of the intrigue on the Fox News hosts and everything else. The vote last night, told Mark Meadows in contempt, was almost strictly partisan. Two Republicans voted in favor of holding Meadows in contempt, only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger, who serve on the panel. You know, feel free. We can get into the legal arguments in the next segment. But that, to me, is sort of a big moment. We have learned a lot about what happened on January. 6th since January 6th. And as I said earlier, none of it is good for Donald Trump. I mean, the extent to which this was an actual campaign with a strategy and a desired outcome known and pursued is now indisputable. They had a war room at the Willard Hotel to game this out.

The phone call that Rudy Giuliani mistakenly made to one senator when he was trying to reach Tommy Tuberville was designed to stop the process so that Mike Pence would decertify. Lawyers around the president were making the argument that Mike Pence alone could stop this. And the president within the last couple of days is making the argument that Mike Pence is no longer a viable Republican. because he didn't stop the election so the president could steal it. And you have two Republicans voting in favor of holding Mark Meadows in contempt because he's defying the committee not producing the documents that they've demanded after having voluntarily produced many of them. I guess I'm just struck by that contrast.

The more we know and the worse it looks, the more dug-in Republicans have gotten. and it's in a world and in a political moment where very little is shocking, that's shocking. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

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Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right, David. So in the last week or so, I've kind of started to say, finally we're having a real conversation about the threat to American elections. Because for almost a year, we've been having this conversation about GOP-controlled states engaging in quote-unquote voter suppression. And by voter suppression, typically they're talking about a set of laws that are more permissive

of voting than 2016 and maybe less permissive than 2020, but almost all of the states, including the reddest states that have enacted sort of voting reforms, it's still easier to vote there than, say, New York. So the voter suppression argument where you've had words and allegations like a new Jim Crow or the worst since Jim Crow, that has been overblown dramatically. Here's what has not had enough focus and the focus is starting to change. And that is not the emphasis on vote casting. People are going to be able to cast votes in the next elections. It's vote counting, vote certifying.

Who is it that runs the election itself? Who is it that decides the identity of the electors? And this is the issue where we're going to have potential real vulnerabilities. When you're talking about this Bart Gilman piece in the Atlantic about the Trump coup has already begun. And here's how I would, and here's a tweet from an unnamed or, I mean a text from an unnamed Republican congressman to Meadows, to Meadows. Here's an aggressive strategy. Why can't the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other Republicans, controlled state houses, declare this as BS, where conflicts and election not called that night,

and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS. This is the core concern with a Republican Party purging or attempting to purge and may well purge in the next primary season, those individuals who resisted the pressure to steal the election and replacing them with people, for example, who endorsed Trump's effort to steal the election. the election? Is that the real threat? If it's the real threat, is it something alarming enough to be dramatically, to be truly concerned about? Or is this hype? And Sarah, I'll start with you. On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you? Okay, let me tell you my area of concern. Let me tell you what makes me feel maybe hopeful. Hopeful might be the wrong word in any of this context. But

better. My main area of concern is that based on all the data that we have right now, both sides of the political extreme believe that the other side is preparing to take the election from them when they win it. They believe that there's no world in which they don't win it, and that the other side will take it from them. Absolutely. the Republicans who believe that the 2020 election was taken from them, believe that the 2024 election would be taken from them as well. And look, Democrats believe that Republicans are doing all of this stuff to take the election to steal it from a legitimate Democratic win.

Set aside whether one side is wrong or right, the fact that both sides believe that genuinely is very dangerous for the health of the country because you end up with this China-U.S. first mover problem. If you believe that the other side is going to be aggressive, then it's actually your rational interest to be aggressive first. That is my biggest concern right now. So what Republicans are doing at the state level and the count stuff that David mentions, that simply provides further evidence to people on the left who then say, well, then we need to be the first movers. That's why it's concerning for me. But let me tell you my area of, we're not there.

yet. Um, 2024 is a long way off. 2020 at this point is still just under a year off. Republicans have to get through primaries. They have to get through the primary for all these Senate races in 2022, you know, seven highly contested Senate races. Uh, almost all of them open seats, except maybe Wisconsin. We'll see if Ron Johnson runs again. Um, sorry, open seats for the Republican primary. Um, And of course, 2024. Doug High made this point in the Washington Post a month or two back, and I don't think people

have really fleshed out what it will mean, because the whole election is being stolen thing will happen within the Republican primaries as well. There will be the person who loses who says, well, I didn't lose. The election was stolen from me by an establishment Republican, or it doesn't even need to be what we would consider establishment by whoever won Republican. Republicans' intra-party will have to grapple with that and come out of the other side with how they're going to deal with people who claim that elections were stolen when they weren't within the Republican Party.

I actually think that might do some good to reduce the temperature of the conversation overall when it's not R versus D and when it's R versus R, they'll sort of burn themselves out on this. Steve is shaking his head, no, I'm not saying that I'm like, And therefore, it's all going to be fine. But it is an intervening event that has to happen that I think will change the dynamic heading into 2024. Yeah, I don't disagree with you that it'll change the dynamic. My conclusion is that it will worsen the dynamic considerably because what you have, look, I mean, again, this is, this is, I think we're at a point where we are not taking this stuff seriously enough.

You have, depending on the poll, you have, you know, 60, 70, 80 percent of Republicans that think the 2024 was was not. fair, was not fairly decided. And I think you very, very accurately and perceptively described the dynamic in the first part. It's really poisonous when you have both sides thinking that the other side is cheating because then anything goes, because then you can rationalize anything. Oh, well, if they're going to cheat, we've got to do what we can do to win because they don't play fair. I think the more that happens even inside a Republican primary, the more the net effect is just to blow up any remaining trust in elections themselves. And that makes this even more dangerous.

You have, again, Donald Trump right now and his committees, the money that they're raising, much of it going to, helping to decide state-level elections in swing states. He's making an aggressive push supporting the state representatives in, Michigan trying to come up with the makeup of Michigan state legislature that would back Donald Trump in the event of something like 2020 happening again. And there's no reason to believe that he won't be successful, particularly in the context of a Republican Party that remains awfully loyal to Donald Trump. At the same time, what you're seeing many places on the right is an effort to shift that power, ultimately who makes these decisions, who's the final arbiter of these outcomes

from bureaucrats, secretaries of state, election boards to the legislature. So you're shifting the powers, in many cases, to the legislatures, trying to get a more Republican and more Trumpy Republican legislature at the same time that you're shifting the power to make the decisions to those people. I think this has catastrophe written all over it, particularly as people at the same time have less and less trust in elections themselves. Okay, I just want to make one point on the data that you cited, which was the 60 to 70% of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was unfair. If you, like that number to me is very misleading because it makes it sound like 60 to 70% of Republicans think there was like

ballot stuffing and number changing, a lot of those people believe that the COVID changes on, for instance, when you get an absentee ballot application were done unfairly because of the pandemic. No, totally. And I'm sympathetic to some of those. Look, I'm sympathetic to some of those. I will say I'm skeptical that most Republicans have gone and actually done the deep research that would require to come to that conclusion. But I could be wrong. Do you know this is a question not meant to challenge you, but meant to just clarify, has there been polling on those specific questions? Are you, for instance, concerned because you heard on Fox News that Dominion and Smartmatic did these things? Or you've listened to Donald Trump versus are you concerned

because the state legislatures weren't given, you know, didn't follow the proper procedures to make the changes to accommodate COVID voting? I've seen no polling. pulling apart that data, which is concerning because I think saying 60 to 70% of Republicans believe the 2020 election wasn't fair has created both a permission structure on the right. Oh, see, everyone believes this. So come along. And catastrophizing on the left, if 60 to 70% of our opponents believe the election was stolen, they're going to steal the election from us. And so that polling data to me is like awful and I hate it. But I don't think it fundamentally changes my...

Let's stipulate, for the sake of discussion, let's say that you're right. I think that the net effect, again, is fewer and fewer people trusting outcomes of elections. And that leaves us in a bad and I think pretty scary place, honestly. So in a rare mood move of fan service, I'm pretty much on Sarah's page on this. And I think that I just wrote my L.A. Times column about how I think there's more and more evidence that we just, are reluctant to see that Trump is fading and as in his role in the Republican Party

for example by almost two to more than two to one almost three to one Iowa Republicans say they're more aligned with the party than they are with Trump and and I agree that the polling on the election you know the way the

the sort of tendentious left-wing media or pundits cover the polling on this is that 70% of Republicans believe the election was rigged in the way that, you know, somewhere between Donald Trump and Sidney Powell believe the election was rigged, when instead, I think this is a motivated reasoning response that just basically says, screw you mainstream media, we think we were treated unfairly, well, we are victims, and, you know, my, I would be interested to see what the polling looked like after Bush v. Gore, or even after the, you know, the diebold voting machine stuff in Ohio in 2004, you know, I think partisans, hardcore partisans tend to look for proof

that they were treated unfairly in the last election or they were robbed and that kind of stuff. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they buy into the hardcore conspiracy theories. So while I, I just, like the Bart Gilman piece was very good. but it's a little lighter on the specifics about what is going on at the state level to support his argument than I would like, or at least that's the way I read it a week ago. And so I think the democracy is over a catastrophization that we're seeing is bad on both sides. And while I think democracy will probably be okay in 2024 and 2028 in 2032,

I think the odds of political violence are skyrocketing. I think we will, and like, this is one of the problems that you get with the kind of rhetoric that we have today is if I say, look, I don't think democracy is about to die. People say, oh, is the Eurocated? No, it's like, things can get really bad and be short of the end of democracy, right?

It's like now people say, if I say Donald Trump wasn't Hitler, people say, how dare you? You know, wait a second. I thought Hitler defined the outer boundary of badness, not the minimum threshold of badness. You know, it's not a compliment to say someone isn't Hitler. And so I think that we are at a place where I think about a quarter of the GOP, and I mean that I define that broadly, not necessarily registered voters, but like the core that shows up in the polls saying Trump can do no wrong and all that kind of stuff. that group is is making peace daily with political violence.

The left has spent a long time. You know, you just look at the apologies we've had about Antifa for 10 years now. You know, if I have to see one more friggin picture of G.I. storming Normandy and some left-winger saying the original Antifa, because they were anti-fascist, I'm going to lose it, you know.

And so I think you could see true, you know, brown versus red kind of street violence, the likes of which we, haven't really seen. We saw a little bit in the 1960s, like at the 68 convention, but really we haven't seen since the 30s. And that can spiral off its own huge political dysfunctions and problems and all the rest. But I'm moving more and more in the camp, but I don't think Trump runs in 2024. And that that lowers the stakes for a lot of this stuff, because I don't know that a lot of secretaries of state are going to steal an election for Ron DeSantis. Let me just respond.

directly to that. I don't think that what you're, the two points you're making are mutually exclusive. I think it's entirely possible that Donald Trump is fading right now and that the trust in elections among Republicans is also diminishing in a problematic way. And that's, that's basically the position that I have, just because Trump himself may be fading. And I, I am increasingly of the mind that he may not run in 2020, may not actually run in 24, but we'll do everything he can as long as he can to give people the impression that he is going to run. But I don't think that his running or not running, his continued hold over the Republican Party necessarily is a sort of a silver lining or a bright spot if you're talking about faith and elections. What we're seeing,

And I think this is motivated, like I've talked to a senior Republican strategist, well-known Republican strategists in the weeks right after the election, who made a strong case that there are real questions about the way that a lot of this happened, not the sort of dominion, smartmatic, crazy Sidney Powell conspiracy questions, but actually the changing of the rules. And I think there were Republicans who approached those with good faith and wanted to address those. The problem is there, I think there are, well, there are lots of problems with it. Part of the problem, I think in effect, is that it contributes to this lack of trust in the elections generally. And that's where I think we have big problems, whether Donald Trump remains the center of the Republican Party or not. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you as a trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race terms and conditions apply learn more at mx.ca.ca.com. All right, Jonah. It's Omnacrom time. Um, all right. So we wanted to do this last week and I wanted to do it last week. I lobby before it last week. And then because we had biblical, technical issues, we didn't have a podcast last week. So, um, because as we all know, David can attest. He's the expert on this. But in biblical time, Wi-Fi was spotty. So, um, uh, that's I said, basically, I wanted to do a sort of somewhat tongue in cheek why Jonah Goldberg was right about Omicron segment last week. I think I still want to do that segment because I'm still right. I think that Noah Rothman and I and a few others from the very beginning, we were making

the point that Omicron is scary because it's new mutant strain and we understand why it's scary and all that kind of stuff. But there was no evidence. And since then, there's a scan evidence, not I'm saying now there's, you know, there's some interesting things that are happening, but at the time it was more an example of how the public health environment, the public health

you know, sort of bureaucracy, the COVID panic addicted press wanted a new reason to freak out when all the evidence that we had two weeks ago and even almost three weeks ago now

was that this was less dangerous than Delta and that there was no reason to jump the gun with vast new lockdowns and states of emergency like the state of New York did. I still hold to that. We've now got quotes from people like Anthony Fauci saying it looks like it's less mild. There has now since been, I believe, one reported death in the UK from Omicron, but it was of a kid and it's weirdly reported so we don't have great details on it. And it is true that we are still losing like a thousand people a day in the United States,

but that's from Delta. And it would be better in many ways if people were getting Omicron instead of Delta because all of the data says that hospitalizations are less, that deaths are less with Omicron than they are with Delta. So, Steve, you've been giving me grief about this off and on for about a couple of weeks now and taking the side of some of my harshest critics in the comment threads. So what do we start with you?

Explain to me why I'm not right. I think you are probably right. I don't disagree. All right, so David. See jumping in again. No, I think that the data that we have so far suggests that you are probably right about what we're seeing from UMNACRUN.

I'm just going to keep offering new ways of pronouncing it because we've done Omnichron, Omicron, Omicronophilus. We've got lots of different pronunciations. So put aside on this. So my dad had this obsession of not using the new post-independence names of colonial cities. So he liked to talk about Leopoldville and that kind of thing. The fact that they skipped over G and new to go to Omicron. I think maybe editorial policy at the dispatch is that we just call it, G, called by some Omicron, just to like stick it to the Chinese dictator.

But anyway, go on. I'm sorry. So for me, big, big picture. And, you know, some of this, we have these discussions inside the dispatch to try to figure out exactly how we want to write about this. And we've had email exchanges and comment discussions with some of our members about how to cover this properly. I think that the early data suggests that you are right.

And we've quoted an epidemiologist, biologist, Dr. Gandhi in the morning dispatch reminding us that this is how the Spanish flu went. It became more transmissible and less virulent. And as a result, people became more accustomed to it and kind of went away. that seems based on the data that we've gotten, at least a strong possibility with Omicron. What we can't do, I think, we have two weeks more data than we did at the time. You made your proclamation. What we can't do is say that for sure yet. I think we're still gathering data.

I think we're still assessing what's happening and we will learn more. So as a discussion in this context, I think it's great. I think you're probably right. And we can have a conversation about it. What I don't want us to do internally is to say, this is what's happened. And we now know this about Omicron so we can all be, you know, we can all relax even more. And I said over and over again that on the science, I could have been out being wrong. And I still could end up being wrong because now we're learning some interesting things about the mutation and what does the people who've had the delta variant.

they may have a harder time with it than other people, that's all fine. But David, you're, you've gained, your argument has gained credibility over the last two weeks. As almost all of my arguments, too over time. That's not true. That's not true at all. But, David, so, my main point was that we now have a certain segment of the sort of public health, political, meritocratic elite that is disproportionately in the Democratic party and in the mainstream media that I don't think it's some cynical thing. I think that it's a sincere psychological emotional commitment to a certain level of

constant panic, of a constant sort of let, we can't let go of the pandemic mentality. And as someone, like the rest of the guys on the, like all of us have gotten grief by by being neither hysterics on one side or the other side for two years at the dispatch. We were given the anti-mask people hell for a long time. And I favored the initial lockdowns, all that kind of stuff. But the question is, like, should we just stop looking at infection rates or case rates and only look at hospitalization and death rates? Because that's what the original thing was all about is.

Don't swamp the hospitals and care about mortality and hospitalization. And if people get it and it's not deadly and we've got these pills, why the constant state of panic about it? Yeah, you know, I think there's a fundamental insight here that David Leonard exposed several months ago, which was the from the beginning, if you're going to track responses to the virus, blue America overestimated the danger of the virus red America underestimated the danger of the virus and so tons of decisions were then based on those starting presumptions and if you're on twitter and god bless you if you're not but if you're on twitter you're looking at a huge community of people who are by and large blue americans living in blue america spaces talking about what is their continued overreaction to the danger of the virus.

I mean, I'm somebody who I was pre-vaccine, pro-mask, post-vaccine, my position has been get vaccinated and live your life, much more interested in hospitalization and death numbers than case numbers because one of the benefits of the vaccine is that it makes the disease less severe for those who've been vaccinated. But I think that when you look at it through that prism, that blue America has overestimated the danger of COVID and red America's underestimated, you begin to realize since so many journalists are clustered in that blue, not just in, they're not just blue Americans themselves, they're clustered in blue America, even if they're red.

There's been an extraordinary attention paid to the subset of America that is continuing to overestimate. And what's happening right now, where I live, we're at a stage of life where people basically treat COVID as if the pandemic ended a long time ago. And so you feel disconnected just as a human matter from this argument. I mean, somebody like me who's living in a place where you're not seeing masks, they're very, very rare. School's been open. School's been open since last year.

My daughter did not miss a day of school to COVID in the 2020-2020-2020 school year. You just feel disconnected from the whole thing. But I think that framing that Leonard exposed is how Americans have been approaching it. And so everyone's still playing to type when it comes to the emergence of Omicron, that there's an overestimation, in my view, going on,

and it's clustered in elite spaces. So, Sarah, just very quickly, you can respond to anything here, but what is your theory about why the Democratic Party still thinks it is in its interest, at least at the national level, to be where it is on this stuff? I mean, we just saw Jared Polis, you know, interestingly say, enough enough,

but is it is it is it sort of a david shorian capture of of urban effete elite types who are freaked out about all this i cannot for the life of me figure out like what gavin newsom is thinking from a strategic standpoint what possible data he's looking at to justify for instance going further into lockdowns in California than they were in. It makes politically no sense. That's how you got the recall, right? Yeah. I there is

no good political reason for what Democrats are doing right now. Now, that's left with me believing that they just actually believe it, that they believe that lockdowns are necessary and this is just sincere and maybe that's from some group think, but

politically there's there's no data to support the idea that it is politically popular, even in sort of the democratic mainstream voting space. So very, very strange. Okay, last topic. So there's been this discussion happening about whether Joe Biden's media coverage has been unfair. So if you look at the first hundred days of Joe Biden's media coverage, you will not be surprised to find that 32% of stories had a negative assessment, 23% had a positive one, 45% were neither positive nor negative. This is according to Pew. That's at the end of the first 100 days. Which actually, for a president, not too bad. I mean, Donald Trump's in the first 100 days were nowhere near

that close to positive negative parity. Also, 65% of Joe Biden's stories were framed around his policy and ideology compared to 74% of Trump's stories at the same point were framed around his character and leadership. Very few stories about his policy and ideology. But August happens. And boy does it happen. It happens big. And what happens in August is that Joe Biden's media coverage positive to negative ratio just falls so far below what Donald Trump has. had at that point. Way, way, way down. It rebounds a little. It is now just slightly above where Donald Trump was at this point in December of his presidency. And there are those on the left who believe that because of sort of this, hey, we're the media and we're just going to cover presidents

really in the negative frame because positive news isn't news. Negative news is news that therefore Joe Biden is getting negative coverage the same as Donald Trump was, even though they're wildly different in terms of the effect perhaps that they're having on the country and that this is an indictment of the media. Some have pointed out that this is simply because media are corporations too, my friend. So that it's a money-making business, right? Len Moonvez of CBS at the beginning of the Trump administration said Trump was great for business. And so he was by every metric that we've seen. And so, look, they're trying to make money.

They need people to tune in. They need people to click, et cetera. And so saying Joe Biden's doing a pretty good job, all things considered, just isn't going to drive eyeballs. And there are others who think that just the media is, and I think I am more on this side, that it is much easier to write about Kamala Harris's wired headphones because everyone can have an opinion on AirPods versus wired headphones.

You don't have to have any policy expertise. You don't have to have any experience in journalism. You don't need to go talk to economists about what actually drives inflation or supply chain issues. And so we end up with a lot more of those stories because it's just easier. You can turn them out faster. You can turn that story out in an hour and everyone can do it versus the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, you can't turn that out in an hour, unless you, of course, have decades of expertise behind your back and quick dial on various experts. I think that's what

drives some of the worst parts of our media coverage. But I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, Steve, you've been in this business a long time, like a really long time, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that. So I think your last point is a very important one. And I would add to it, part of the job of journalists, of the media is to simplify things, is to translate things. And when journalists themselves don't know, aren't sort of don't understand the details of the policies they're describing, it's much easier to do the kind of gossipy stuff that I think we see. And that's not good for, not good for the business, not good for the country.

there's um you know i think in the in the case of joe biden a lot of what we've seen i think is just a reflection of of reality um and they have they have invited a lot of the negative coverage i mean go back to afghanistan go back to the problems that he had in august it's not just that the the withdrawal was so badly mismanaged it's that he had set expectations about what would happen And then they were not only unmet, they couldn't even explain why the rolling catastrophe that we were seeing was the rolling catastrophe that we were seeing. And in service of that, they often said things that weren't true. And I'll just give you one example that I think, frankly, makes a bigger point.

And could you show a lot more attention? Remember the claims that we heard from the Biden administration about how many Americans were left? 100 was the answer. Sometimes they said 100 to 200. And they were not only, every once in a while they would caveat out. I think Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

caveated it best would say, well, it's really hard to get an accurate count, but we think 100 to 200. At other times, you had administration officials who gave you that number as if it were certainty and totally confirmed

and couldn't be questioned. They took umbrage at reporters who would ask about the accuracy. of these things and pushed back hard. It now turns out that, you know, so the number between lawful permanent residents of the United States and citizens was a thousand. So they were off by 10x. And that's assuming that their new number is accurate, which I don't think we can assume. You know, at the time, I remember we had these discussions internally at the dispatch. We were talking to people. We had reporters talking to people. I was talking to people, members of Congress.

who laughed at the administration's suggestions that it was 100 to 200. Nobody believed that. Nobody who was working on these things actually believed that. And yet the administration said it again and again and again and again. And it didn't get a ton of scrutiny. It got some. We wrote a piece about it. But here you have the administration, what, three, four months later,

suggesting that the number was 10x what it was. And it's not getting any coverage. Like, where is that? And why are, why, where's the big, you know, front page New York Times analysis of, of why the administration got that so wrong? And look, I think the Trump administration earned every bit of the negative coverage that it got. And it was the case that the president of the United States seemingly said things that were untrue as often or more often than he said things that were true. And sometimes they were wildly untrue. So he lost the benefit of the doubt.

At a certain point on things like this, Joe Biden should lose the benefit of the benefited it out. Final point. The White House put out a graph yesterday, meaning to demonstrate the lowering of gasoline prices. But it was a silly sort of limited graph of limited scope and a limited time frame meant to make it look like the release of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve or Strategic Petroleum Reserve had had this profound effect and that Joe Biden was responsible for lower gas prices. Well, a researcher from the Republican National Committee just pulled back the camera,

took the camera back a little bit, and showed what gas prices have done over the last year. And the graph looks entirely different. Look, was what the White House put out wrong? It wasn't wrong, but it was laughably misleading. I think at a certain point,

you lose the benefit of that out. Journalists are supposed to be skeptical about everything at all times, not cynical but skeptical about everything at all times and ask those hard questions. I don't think they get the kind of questions that they should. And the idea that they're unfairly covered at this point, I think, is just silly.

Jonah? Part of my reluctance here is that I think that Dana Milbank was one of the people who sparked this conversation. He was? short of a land war in southeast Asia or getting into a duel with a Sicilian when death is on the line, avoiding getting into conversation started by Dana Milbank is a good idea. That said, I think part of the, like my old boss, Ben Wattenberg used to say you only have one president at a time. And when you only have one president at a time, the guy who happens

or one day gal who happens to be president is going to get the lion's share of presidential And, you know, and the temptation to do what about this or what about that is very, very strong. And I think particularly for a bunch of people in the media who thought that Donald Trump was a for sometimes entirely legitimate reasons, but was a singular evil or problem in American politics. And therefore, there was nothing you could say or write about him that wasn't legitimate. And there was a real sort of like, you know, loss of break fluid at a lot of the mainstream media in the coverage of Donald Trump that, which again, I think Steve's right. He often invited because Donald Trump was this guy who thought that negative attention was better than no attention. And at the same time, the problem is that even normal negative coverage of an administration that is not doing a great job politically seems unfair to a lot of people. people because they think Biden is so much, certain people think Biden is so much better than Trump, that therefore any negative coverage is unfair. I mean, it's sort of like saying, you know, a little negative coverage of Betty White is, it triggers some people to think

it's as bad as coverage of Jeffrey Epstein. It's not. It's just like you can be a little, you know, like, and so I think the coverage of Biden was accurate and, fair in August. You know, I don't normally say that about the mainstream media, but the mainstream media covered the Afghan pullout at the time as the disaster that it was. And I agree with Steve that we could have better follow-up on some of the other things that have happened since. But I just think that the, these debates about whether or not coverage is unfair

always sort of bother me because you end up lumping in vast swaths of different media outlets into the same bucket. And I don't know how Playboy has covered the Biden White House, but I'm sure it's different than the way national journal has covered the White House.

And I think there's still a lot of cleanup effort and a lot of Praetorian effort around Joe Biden in the mainstream media, but I think it pales in comparison to the kind of cleanup effort that we saw from, oh, I don't know, the people who are texting Mark Meadows on January 6th.

Well, David, this is one person's point that on the right, there's this, you know, industrial complex to turn out positive news about their candidate, president, people, whatever, and that actually that doesn't really exist on the left. And there's sort of this knee-jerk reaction. Well, what about MSNBC?

But their point is, sure, MSNBC is more likely to be positive, but that MSNBC, and more importantly, all of the other coverage still sort of base it first on journalism, which is still about, frankly, negative coverage instead of positive coverage, just overall. And so there is no equivalent on the right conservative media on the left when it comes to the Joe Biden presidency. And so there is no equivalent that Trump had to balance out that negative coverage for his own people. I think that, you know, I'm not sure I buy it like into it so entirely, but it is interesting because I think that Joe Biden gets attacked actually from his left flank more on MSNBC than Donald Trump, of course, ever got attacked from his right flank on Fox or the equivalent.

Yeah, I think the one sentence way of saying that is Joe Biden doesn't have a cult. And when you don't have a cult, you have a lower floor to your coverage, I think. And I think that we saw this, I mean, not to go back to not to trigger Jonah and go back to Milbank. He tried to prove that that Biden was being treated unfairly. He had a chart. He had a chart. And the chart shows in August Biden's coverage really bottoming out. But I don't think it shows what he thinks it shows, because if you're 20 years from now and you're showing that chart to a student, here's how you're going to explain this.

You're going to say, yeah, when you see that sharp downward plunge, that was when Joe Biden decided to lose a war, unilaterally, just went ahead and used his commander-in-chief powers to lose a war. Not into war, not into war, just flat out lose it. And to lose it in a bloody, deadly, horrible, chaotic way, the way that wars tend to be lost. That's what happened then. And it was covered. And I'm not quite sure how you're going to have the positive coverage when people are falling out of the wheel wells of airplanes trying desperately to escape the Taliban. How do you cover that? How's that positively covered without a cult, without a cult?

Now, when Trump had this horrible, messy, chaotic withdrawal from northern Syria, which ended up with, you know, Russian mercenaries sort of marching through American facilities triumphantly filming themselves, sitting in, you know, American chairs and picking through American equipment, well, Trump had a cult. And they're saying, well, if you don't like that, you're some sort of war monger. But Biden didn't have any of that. Biden didn't have that unconditional support. And so he decided to lose a war. And so he got bad press for that, which he should have. And then since that time, part of the question is, well, wait a minute, you know, are you not supposed to cover what inflation is doing to normal average everyday Americans' lives because it might help Trump in 2024. You know, here's the real deal.

You know, if you want to stop Trump in 2024, try being more competent at your job rather than trying to work the refs. And so, you know, right now, I think, in my view, we have a floundering presidency, to be honest. I think we have a presidency that has made a catastrophic, historic error in Afghanistan, so far seems to be pretty ineffective at deterring continued Russian saber rattling and Chinese saber rattling, which Lynn creates an air of sort of potential

chaos in the world when we need calm, where we still haven't worked out our supply chain issues, and inflation is really bad, and that hurts people. That hurts people. And so when you're in that kind of circumstance, it's not the press's job to say, well, we need to soft pedal the coverage of that because if, unless we do, then Donald Trump might come back. The real job here is for the Biden administration to get its act together. That's their job. And so I think that the press in covering these events that are symbols of the Biden administration flailing, that's just what the press has to do. And the way to fix that is to do a better job. And just to add to your final point, I mean, on inflation as on Afghanistan, the

Biden administration here helped set those expectations. Remember, they were the ones who claimed repeatedly that this was transitory, that this wasn't a big deal, that this wouldn't have broader economic effects. They went after even Democrats, like Larry Summers, who suggested that the opposite might be the case. So even going back to Sarah's original point, even if you have reporters who aren't sort of well versed in the history of inflation, what it could do and why it matters, reporters can look at that and say, well, you told us in the spring that this was transitory and wouldn't be a big deal. And now in the fall, it's not, and you're crafting policies around this new reality, but you screwed it up. But this didn't work. The things you said

before weren't true. That's part of the job of a journalist. And the Biden administration now has been having these sessions to meet with journalists to sort of walk them through their policies, in reasoning in order to get better coverage, there's a sort of fake outrage on the right that the Biden administration is meeting privately with journalists, as if every administration forever doesn't meet privately with journalists and try to get better coverage. That's what happens. But there's a reason, I think there are many reasons, but that adds to the reasons that they're giving this bad coverage is they make one claim. They say that their policies will work in certain ways, and then they don't. That's the job of the journalist is to point that.

And with that, we'll leave you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And don't forget, you can give that gift subscription for the dispatch one year, one month. It'll arrive by Christmas, we assure you. And it'll be super fun for your friends, family, and other people who really need that morning newsletter. There's a lot of bears coverage, but I'm hoping that will go away, you know, after the bears are very much knocked out of this whole sport. We need to have... Haven't they already been?

What's it called in soccer? Relegation. Yeah, there needs to be relegation in the NFL. The Jets, the Bears, whatever it might be. But that would make the NFL a lot more fun. All right, thank you so much for listening, subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating, tell your friends about it,

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