The Dispatch Podcast - January 6 Panel Details Trump's Inaction

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Sarah and David are joined by The Morning Dispatch editors Declan Garvey and Esther Eaton to discuss the vivid testimonies during Thursday night’s January 6 committee hearing. Also on the agenda: In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Republicans are wary of giving Democrats a win with a contraception bill currently on the Senate floor, and a same-sex marriage bill faces an unclear way forward after Tuesday’s House vote.   Show Notes: -TMD: The January 6 Committee Presses the Secret Service -TMD: Donald Trump’s Inaction on January 6 -The Dispatch: A Timeline of What Trump Did—and Didn’t Do—on January 6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger, joined by David French, editor of the morning dispatch, Declan Garvey, and deputy editor of the morning dispatch, Esther Eaton. This will be fun. We've got plenty to talk about after last night's primetime hearing for January 6th. And we'll make sure to talk about a little bit of what else has been happening on the Hill as Republicans struggle around votes on gay marriage and contraception and on the left, climate change. Let's dive right in. David, you watched the hearing last night. What was effective?

What wasn't effective? Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting to me that this was the primetime hearing and the Cassie Hutchinson hearing was the daytime hearing. I would have flipped them. Now, that's not to say that this wasn't an important hearing that didn't uncover important information, but just from the standpoint of you're trying to make a maximum, you're trying to make the maximum impact with the content,

Cassie Hutchinson, my goodness, I mean, the content and the factual, the information that she disclosed during that hearing was far more explosive, and legally consequential. This had some vivid moments to be sure. I mean, there's no question that testimony that Secret Service agents feared for their own lives was incredibly vivid. There was the shot at Josh Holly that, where, you know, earlier in the day, he's fist pumping the very crowd that he's sprinting from later in the day. And then comprehensively establishing Donald Trump's

indifference, seeming just utter indifference to the events, he's in a room, watching television while it unfolds, was interesting to me, in some ways, honestly, that was the most interesting part to me was the combination of the indifference in the Mike Pence tweet. Because as Sarah, you and I, we, you know, we have talked about this incitement issue a lot on advisory opinions, the flagship podcast. And I keep trying to, the key question on the incitement issue is intent, did he intend for this to happen? What is the evidence that he intended for this to happen? And his defenders have always had a pretty good, quite frankly, defense that he said peacefully

and patriotically. So there's evidence right there that he did not intend for this to happen. Those who believe that he might have commended incitement have a lot of other evidence, be there. It will be wild. You have to be strong. You have to fight. Go to the Capitol. The new knowledge from Cassie Hutchinson allegations now that he knew that the mob was armed and was not a threat to him. And the interesting additional piece of evidence to me is if you did not intend for this to happen, why are you not stopping it? If you're, if you did not intend for this to happen, Why are you just sitting there and watching it unfold and even stoking the flames with, you know, your Mike Pence tweet?

But that's a marginal additional set of facts. So overall, I found it to be a less legally and politically consequential hearing than the Cassie Hutchinson hearing. But a dad added additional detail nonetheless. Declan, the two witnesses, one of whom was a very senior member. of the Trump administration, the deputy national security advisor, the other was a deputy press secretary, obviously, in the communications operation, didn't really offer anything. I mean, it was important to hear, I think, once again, from Trump officials who were there on January 6, who were horrified by what was happening personally themselves, and resigned as a

result of it. But in terms of giving us legal or political insight that would be helpful for what President Trump was thinking or even doing, they didn't have much to offer. They did not. Yeah. Esther and I were keeping a running doc watching the hearing last night as we were preparing to write this morning's morning dispatch. And it came in at about 10 pages, I think 3,500 words, something like that. and maybe 300 of them were quotes from the witnesses, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, where, you know, David talked about this a little earlier, but with Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony last month,

what she had to say really was the reason for the hearing. She was revealing new information. Some of it, you know, is in dispute and will continue to be over the next coming months. the witnesses last night, they didn't really reveal anything new. It was more of a, this is what Trump was doing. How do you feel about that? Why did it make you resign? Would you have done what Trump did here? And the answer to that was obviously no. If anything, I thought we heard more from Pat Cipollone's deposition videotape. And that provided weirdly a lot more information about Trump and what Trump was thinking.

even though Cipollone, of course, was not able to answer questions about his communications with the president. Well, actually, the president's communications with him asserting executive privilege, which is a whole other perhaps flagship podcast conversation, David, about how executive privilege works in those situations. But he was almost the star witness last night. Oh, for sure. And his facial expressions, even when he was asserting executive privilege answered a lot of the questions. It was like, look into my eyes. can't say it out of my mouth, but it's in my eyes. Come find it. I think it had to do with Trump's response to learning about Mike Pence being in danger. And Cipollone looked at his lawyer and just

look back at the January 6th committee members and it's like, I cannot answer this question. Well, at one point he was asked, did everyone in the White House want to stop the violence? I think was the phrasing of the question. And he said yes. And they said, everyone. And he said, y'all, all the staff. And they were like, that wasn't our question. He was like, yeah, but you asked about the staff. And they said, no, we said everyone in the White House. And he looked at his lawyer.

He said, oh, that's different. He looked at his lawyer, paused, looked back, paused, and said, yeah. And that was the end of his answer. Which another fun, you know, if you haven't ever been deposed, first of all, congrats. should just have a, have a nice day. Toast yourself, good that you've avoided that like a root canal. But when you are deposed, your lawyer will tell you after every question to pause, and that's very good deposition technique. But for this, where Pat Cipollone, sure, it is a deposition, but also, you know it's going to be used on TV. The pauses could come off a little bit, I think,

maybe more than they were supposed to, when in fact, you're pausing to let your attorney object potentially, which they almost never do, but that's, you know, you're just a pause, really listen to the question, think about your answer, give your attorney a time to object, and then answer Pat Cipollone doing that very well, a master class in how to be deposed, perhaps, except on primetime TV. Yes. Esther, the morning dispatch broke a little news this week. We were talking about Cassidy Hutchison and the Secret Service agent, who was, you

driving the car represented by counsel now. What are we expecting? When are we expecting to hear from them? What is happening with that? It's a good question exactly what's going to happen and when with those agents because, of course, initially they were putting out that they were eager to head up the hill and, you know, counteract Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony say that never happened. And now we have kind of crickets. But what we scooped the other day was that a couple of them have retained criminal defense attorneys. That's interesting because it just implies that there's a little bit more going on there than eagerness to set the record straight. So we don't know exactly what they're going to say and when. And in addition to that, we learned yesterday that the Department

of Homeland Security Inspector General is opening a criminal investigation into the deletion of text messages having to do with January or around the time of January 6. And obviously this is, to anybody who's ever worked in the federal government document retention is one of the cardinal sins that you could commit. And so, you know, this is something that is going to be taken very seriously. I think that that would definitely have a lot. to do with why these agents are. It's not just the January 6th committee that that would lead someone to hire counsel. But what we did also see with that story is that there's kind of been

a little bit of a hurry up and wait approach with the January 6th committee side as well that they had Cassidy Hutchinson come out. They had her share some. of the anecdotes about President Trump in the back of the beast and his interactions potentially a skirmish with the agents. And then it came out that the agents were willing to dispute that without the text messages that were deleted and am I able to be recovered right now. The committee can't as effectively question them. And so I think that the committee side is now waiting instead of, I guess I just, I would say it's not necessarily the case that the agents are unwilling to testify at this point.

There's kind of a both sides hesitation that is leading to the delay here. It's worth, I think, just a moment to point out, if you remember during the Mueller investigation, there was a big controversy over missing text messages between two of the FBI agents, potentially. potentially, I think it is worth separating out how documents, relevant documents, go missing. For instance, when you turn in your phone back to the government, they wipe it and give it to someone else, or they stick it in a drawer, or it gets, you know, dust and doesn't work anymore, whatever else. That's one way the documents get lost when you open an investigation several months or potentially years later, you know, mishap or just routineness. Another way the documents get lost is that you intentionally delete them in real time

in light of an ongoing investigation. That's the no-no, just so we're clear. Yeah, document retention in light of, in anticipation of litigation, as David knows well. So, David, I do think it's worth revisiting a little. Where are the areas of real legal jeopardy that the committee has moved the ball forward on, if any, and where are the areas of political jeopardy that the committee has moved the ball forward on?

Because I think those are two totally separate conversations and they get mashed together when you're watching TV or something. And for me, at least, the committee is basically making the impact impeachment case, a constitutional case to not have another President Trump, for instance, and to make sure that we understand politically what happened in the run up to January 6th or in the wake of the 2020 election, I think is actually a more accurate. I wish they had called the committee something other than the January 6th committee, because to me, the political case is what happens when a sitting U.S. president decides not to leave office, doesn't want to

leave office. That's the wake of the 2020 election, not. January 6th. January 6th is a symptom of that, if anything. The legal case, even criminal referrals that the committee might make to the Department of Justice, totally different. And frankly, we're the chairman of the committee, Benny Thompson, said they would come back in September. We'll see if they do. But at this point, this was sort of like the end of at least volume one of the committee. And I don't, I at least feel like they have. haven't tried to do much on the legal case. And the Department of Justice, of course, doesn't confirm or deny the existence of ongoing investigations, except in very unique circumstances.

And they don't tell you when they've closed investigations. They don't tell you what investigative steps they're looking to take. However, you can read a lot of tea leaves. This is what I used to tell, you know, heads of news organizations when I was at the Department of Justice. Look at what we've publicly done. We've indicted these Twitter. GRU officers. Now, look at what we haven't done. Do you think we're magically going to like pop up just suddenly? And they were like, yes, you will magically pop up and arrest everyone. And I was like, that's not how this works. Investigations take a long time. There's search warrants. There's subpoenas. If you're not seeing any of that activity, just bear that in mind.

Think about that. Let that soak in for a second. And in this case, of course, we have a lots of subpoenas, lots of investigative steps that look to focus on the fraudulent slate of electors. And there's a variety of federal fraud statutes that they could be looking to charge under, but it's definitely about the slate of electors. They've subpoenaed or searched about 15 people. Jeff Clark, Easton, you know, Giuliani, all these people seem focused on the slate of electors. We have not seen any investigative steps taken, it looks like, on that incitement idea, David. So I'm curious. Separate the two out for us. Yeah. Yeah. So the, and the fraudulent slate of electors is, the real focus there is also Georgia as well. So you've seen,

you're seeing a Georgia grand jury. There's a state. Yeah. The Fulton County prosecutors looking at that as well. So there's an interesting, here, here's the way I would put it, Sarah. I have thought, and I think we have a disagreement about this. I have thought, if you're going to look at the legal significance of the January 6th committee, they have advanced the ball on incitement. But I haven't seen a lot of investigatory momentum in that direction, just the way you said. Instead, I've seen investigatory momentum in the fake slate of electors, especially in Georgia. And we're still at a point where in many ways, I think the clearest criminal liability for President Trump is in the jurisdiction that is least likely to prosecute a former president, a state criminal court.

That's a big, huge step. But if you look at the actual Georgia law, it has a criminal solicitation statute. Super short, I'll read the key part of it. A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree, when, with the intent that another person engaged in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes. And by the way, isn't that a great word importune? I need to use that more in my daily life. Importunes or otherwise... What are the elements of importuning? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't even know how I exactly use it. I would importune you. No, that's already wrong.

Okay. Man. All right. So commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause another person to engage in such conduct. Now, what would be a relevant felony? Because you're soliciting a felony. Well, Georgia Code 21-2566 prohibits willfully tampering with any electors list, voter certificate, numbered list of voters, ballot box, voting machine, et cetera, et cetera. So there's two ways there you've got a potential problem for Trump.

One is he's wanting to find, remember, the 12,000 votes. That's like tampering with actual vote totals. The other one is this tampering with the electors list. And now a number of the fake electors have received notice that they are potential targets of this investigation. So I agree with Sarah that the electors list side of this, that's where you see a lot of the activity. The incitement side of it, I think you have a much stronger case for incitement that you did before the January 6th Commission started. The only question there is, is that a prosecution you want to bring if you can bring another prosecution that doesn't implicate the First Amendment? So the incitement prosecution has direct First Amendment implications.

A fraud prosecution or a conspiracy against rights prosecution centered around the electors list doesn't have the same. kind of constitutional sort of doesn't have the same sort of constitutional concern attached to it. Let me give one more reason, which is of the 15 people or so that they've taken, you know, they've subpoenaed, searched, et cetera, you know, let's say they charge Eastman, Clark, I don't know, three or four of them with conspiracy to defraud the United States or obstruction of official business, some of those federal statutes. idea there, of course, is that they would get testimony. They would flip them, basically. There's no one to flip, really, on the incitement, because there's nobody else particularly to charge.

I mean, we have some of the proud boys. But at this point, we have no evidence that they were in touch with President Trump himself. We know that Eastman and Clark were. And so when it comes to the slate of electors, think of this like a RICO case. Think of it like a mob case. You go after the little fish. You go after the medium fish. The hope is that all of them will just sort of eat each other all the way up until you get to the big fish. And that's where I think the slate of electors is a way more productive line. Of course, that's where the Department of Justice is going versus that incitement, though I agree with you on the First Amendment concerns. And just that I don't think they've ever come close to showing the evidence for it. But that's a point of disagreement that you and I have explored before. Declan, let's talk the political side.

What's the Republican reaction? January 6th committee, volume one, in the books. Where do a Republican and saying. Yeah, I mean, I think that you guys are right to discuss the criminal aspect of this, the legal aspect of this. There are plenty on the left who are hoping that a criminal referral will come out of the investigation. Not that a criminal referral in and of itself means anything, really, but I think it's much. From a Department of Justice standpoint, a criminal referral means a letter from Congress and they get a lot of them every day and they go to the head of the legislative affairs guys office. Could I make a criminal referral? Yes. It's like this term that people keep using on the hill and I'm like, it is not what you, that does not mean what you think it means.

Yeah, it's a symbolic thing. But I think it's much more important to think about the committee in the goal of the committee is for enough Republican primary voters to not vote for Trump in 2024. I think that that is the frame that you should think about this through. And in that respect, I think it is succeeding. I don't think it will succeed in leading to criminal prosecution of Trump. I guess the Georgia stuff notwithstanding. But like kind of in that way, How else can you explain them, including the outtakes of the speech last night? I think that's, like, from a legal perspective, I don't think that adds very much to any of the cases. I think it embarrasses Trump.

I think it makes people laugh at him. I think the Josh Hawley thing was in a similar vein. Like, that didn't really add anything to any narrative per se. Yeah. Yes. So the committee brought up the infamous picture of Josh Hawley holding his fist up to the rioters the morning of January 6th and then flash forward to a grainy hallway video of Josh Hawley, I would say, frolicing out of the... It wasn't a dead run, but it was maybe more than a job. Josh frolicy.

Yeah. But, yeah, essentially running away from those very rioters that he was embracing in the morning. The representative Elaine Luria, who introduced the video, was like holding back smiles as she was leading up to it. The room burst out into laughter afterwards. There's no real reason to include that other than, again, to embarrass the people involved, to laugh at them. And that's, I think, what this ultimately is, is just for my mind. reminding people, this was a ridiculous clown show of the last two months of an administration. Do you really want to do that again? I think it's providing an off-ramp for Republican primary voters

who can kind of be like, all right, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I forgot that he threw ketchup at the wall or whatever it is. I'll go vote for Ron DeSantis now. And I think we're seeing in polling, kind of starting to shift that way. I think, you know, everybody's using the result, the primary results this year as kind of the template. I think there's more to it than that. But in that sense, I think we're much, much less likely to have a Republican nominee, Donald Trump now than we were when these hearings started eight weeks ago. Wow. So Esther, in the backdrop to the January 6th, primetime hearing. We had Mike Pence up on the hill in a closed-door meeting with Congressional House Republicans at least. And we had several members of the House come out and say that he was

welcomed as a massive understatement, standing ovation, applauded, thanking him for his courage on January 6th. At the, well, end of this week, where we're taping right now, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are set to have dueling events in Arizona for their different Senate-endorsed candidates. And then they'll both be back in D.C. at the same time, Donald Trump for his first D.C. speech since leaving the presidency, Mike Pence speaking at Heritage, I mean, Mike Pence couldn't be drawing a bigger contrast.

I think at this point from Donald Trump, he's waited, you know, a year and some change to do it, but doesn't seem nearly as shy about that. crowbar separation, if you will. Yeah, it's true. I mean, Pence has so far resisted sort of commenting. You know, the committee has taken pains over and over to talk about the danger that Pence was in and how Trump egged this on with his tweet.

And we heard last night this anonymous White House security official testifying that Pence's security detail was fearing for their lives, calling to say goodbye to family, et cetera. And Pence hasn't, you know, called that out and said, yes, the president put me in a lot of danger and that's not okay. But he is choosing these events, choosing to endorse opposite Trump. And so I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how that develops and where exactly he's trying to go with that. I think there is a lot of frustration that he hasn't come out more forcefully testified before the committee himself said more in response to what we've been hearing at the committee because so much turns around him. And yet, you know, at the speech he gave in Ohio, which was, I think that was around the Cassidy Hutchison testimony, I expect what we'll hear in Arizona.

I don't expect him to actually ever talk about January 6th. It's like you're just supposed to know and say, ah, here's the person who was, who stood up on January 6 to the president and did the right thing. But he's never going to talk about it. I mean, is that, is that enough? Yeah, it's all this subtext. and no actual follow-through. He did the right thing in this moment, and then it's like, all right, let's close the book on that. I'm not going to discuss it.

He did, I think it might have been January or February of this year. I think he gave a speech at a Federalist Society event in Florida where he did say, like, once President Trump asked me to do something that I could not do, which is about the most straightforward and least an abrasive way of saying that. But yeah, I do think that he views that in his mind as this has been addressed. It's very, very difficult for a Republican who needs to win votes from Republican primary voters to talk about January 6th without tipping over the edge into Liz Cheney, Adam Kinsinger.

Like, you're helping the left by talking about this. You're not one of us anymore. And so to thread that needle is going to be difficult. And I think that's what we're seeing with him just deciding not to talk about, letting other people talk about it for him. So in June last year, he did say the idea that one person could change the results of the election is un-American. You know, he says kind of puts a little breadcrumbs out there. But David, his Secret Service agents were calling their families,

radioing in goodbyes to their families. It feels like the guy who they were, there to give their lives to protect, might want to say something about that because I have to be honest, as someone who watches Republican primary politics, you know, for a living and has done it for 20 years, he's not going to be the nominee. So to the extent he's protecting some political future, I don't see the path. You could have waited for my butt. Always wait for David French's butt. But what Sarah said, plus it's kind of futile, to be honest, because if Trump gets in the race and all indications are still that he's going to get in the race, you're not going to be able to avoid this.

You're not going to be able to, you know, fly above the clouds on this thing. You're going to have to be direct about it because, you know what, Trump is going to be living in 2020 during his race. He's going to be living in 2020 and you're going to be on a debate stage with him. and you're going to have to take sides, and you cannot just sort of sit there and pretend that, you know, let everyone else sort of talk about how heroic you were on January 6th. And look, I have written at length and tweeted and all of that stuff that what Pence did was absolutely praiseworthy, was heroic, was, you know, arguably he saved us from the worst constitutional crisis since April 1861. But at some point, the man himself is going to have to say something and the idea that he can avoid it if he's

in a race against Trump is completely there's just no way he's going to be dragged into that mud and he's going to live in that mud throughout the entire primary so might as well get started now did any of you watch the new disney plus series obi won no i haven't i'm ashamed to say i've Not yet. Yeah, it's on the list. Okay. I'm getting extreme. So there's the big confrontation at the end of Revenge of the Sith between

Obi-Wan and Anakin, right? And then for like 20 years, they're just kind of hovering in opposition to each other. They confront each other a couple of times, but they're just waiting for that next big confrontation. And Obi-Wan tried to avoid it for a really long time. But it's unavoidable. He's eventually going to have to return to Darth Vader what he... created. And so Mike Pence, Donald Trump. And perhaps actually, to continue this metaphor, I think that the

role that Mike Pence should play in the Republican Party at this point is he has the gravitas and the respect to get everyone in a room and say we will not have Donald Trump as our Republican nominee in 24, and the only way that that will happen is in a one-on-one race. We can't have 15 of us running, or Donald Trump will be the nominee for what should be very obvious reasons at this point, C-2016. Mike Pence running himself, I just don't see him becoming the nominee, but more importantly, it will invite the 15 other people to enter the race. And the thing that he says he is standing against will be the very thing that he is opening the door to happen. You know, people ask me all the time about whatever regrets I may have.

Regret's probably the wrong word, but to the extent I feel at all responsible for anything Donald Trump's done, it's that we all got in in 2016. That's what led to this. And I just, I'm horrified watching it potentially happen again. 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

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dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. Let's talk about, though, other things plaguing Republicans. In the wake of Dobbs and Justice Thomas's concurrence, which was odd, Justice Thomas saying that he was in favor of revisiting other cases based on substantive due process, like Obergefell, the gay marriage case, Griswold, the contraception case, Lawrence, which struck down a criminal law in Texas against sodomy, there has been some movement to codify those into law at the national level. Think back to the early odds, 2000, 2004, Republicans kept saying that gay marriage should be voted on. That should be up to the people, right?

It should be a state issue, civil unions, whatever, similar to abortion. So now that it is up to a vote potentially in the Hill, you have various Republicans saying, this is stupid and a waste of time, and why are we doing this? Declan, what's actually happening on the Hill with these votes? There's a gay marriage vote, and there's a contraception vote. Controception, I don't even know where to start on that.

Republicans should be for over-the-counter contraception. I, Sorry, listeners. I'm in a TMI for a second here. I went to the pharmacy the other day. It was a Sunday. And they said that I couldn't refill the prescription until Monday because of the stupid sugar pills. And I was like, no, no. My doctor has instructed me not to take the sugar pill. So I need my other, like the next packet now. And they're like, no, I'm sorry, ma'am. You can't do that. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. right now. This is the most paternalistic, misogynistic bullshit. And if birth control was over the counter and we trusted women to be able to take a small pill, mind you, plan B is over the counter, but not plan A. Declan, how are Republicans not voting? Not eager to vote for both of these, frankly, just to disprove the narrative that Republicans are trying to outlaw gay marriage, law contraception, get rid of Griswold, no Bergerfell, go all in on this sort of religious

right stuff. Yeah, well, as a man, I'm really happy to weigh in this. I have a lot of thoughts. Yeah, I think what's going on on the hill is that Democrats have a winning hand here and Republicans are annoyed that they're playing it. Essentially, I mean, as you mentioned earlier, same-sex marriage. It's, I just looked it up. It's up to a, the most recent Gallup poll in June of this year, 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage that you can't get 71% of Americans to get in anything at this point. And so, you know, this is something that Republicans are kind of, it's heads, heads-I-win, tails-you-lose situation for the Democrats with, with a lot of these votes. Either Republicans go along with them and they enact these

statutes that, you know, Democrats believe should be in place in the case that, or that the Supreme Court does do what Clarence Thomas has hinted that he wants them to, or Republicans block them, and then Democrats can run in the midterms and say, look at what these Republicans are doing, blocking these very popular things. I don't think that will be enough to save their chances in the fall of this year, but it wouldn't hurt them. And so I think that you're seeing some frustration with Republicans just like, why are you making us do this? Because it will annoy some of my primary voters back at home. And there's no immediate threat to these rights that were established in previous Supreme Court cases.

That being said, the political aspects of it, I think it's interesting to see the 47 Republicans who did decide to vote for the, on the gay marriage aspect of it, the entire congressional delegation of Utah, a lot of people from Florida. It's an interesting coalition here. And I do think that there is a real chance that in the Senate they can get 10 votes, at least on the gay marriage aspect of it. The contraception, I don't see that. I think Republicans have voiced some concerns that the language of the bill as currently constructed would open the door for some forms of what they consider to be abortion to be legalized and kind of codified in that way. So maybe there's a, maybe there's a world where they can come to a slightly different definition of what they mean by birth control

that garners more support. But gay marriage, I do think, has a real chance. Esther? Yeah, I'd have to agree with that analysis. have, you know, raised procedural objections and this isn't necessary objections and there's just this general tenor of irritation because this is an annoying vote for them that they don't especially want to take. Someone's going to be mad at them regardless. And for Democrats, it's that beautiful rare bird at the moment, which is a political win. It's not going to be enough to shift midterms, but it's something that they will happily hammer on. David, I'm curious because on the left, Democrats have really wanted, promised during the 2020 election to move

the ball forward on climate change. And here they are, you know, getting some votes on gay marriage and contraception. But their climate change push has been totally stalled. They blame Joe Manchin, the president stopping short of declaring a national emergency. Worth pointing out, by the way, that Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border. Democrats freaked out. Pelosi said it was a threat to our constitutional system. Mark Meadows, by the way, even said that this was a slippery slope that would lead presidents to over-declare national emergencies when Congress isn't moving fast enough. Fast forward, Joe Biden, toying with the idea of declaring a national emergency over climate change, similar to how he's toyed with an idea of student loan

forgiveness, blanket student loan forgiveness. And then when push comes to shove, they don't actually do it. And that stop and start seems to be what's really frustrating Democrats, that he's sort of, they leak out that he's thinking of doing something. Maybe it's a strategic leak from the White House. Maybe it's just the left trying to force his hand. But regardless, he doesn't then do it. And so then the progressive base gets once again more demoralized. And I'm just not sure that votes on gay marriage and contraception are going to super hype them up when it's something they already had. Yeah, that's a good question. I think the, votes on contraception and gay marriage. Let's put them in one bucket. The contraception vote,

the bill actually contains a bit of a poison pill because it supersedes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So you put that in there, and that means conscience protections are going to be in jeopardy. That is a real problem. But only related to contraception. Related to contraception, right. And so what ends up happening there is that, is a bill, I think that it's different from the Marriage Act, which the Marriage Act was a, is a, it may well be passed. I mean, it may well get through the Senate. I would kind to actually be somewhat surprised if it doesn't. The contraception bill, because of the RFRA element and some of the vagueness and the definitions, seems to be designed not to pass and to sort

so you can have the issue. Now, climate change, climate change, this is, you know, there are two sources of frustration here. One is the Joe Manchin frustration that I'm less sympathetic with and from a democratic standpoint. And the other one is the Joe Biden administration frustration that I'm more sympathetic with from a democratic standpoint. If your climate change plan is hinging on the senator from West Virginia,

Okay. Ambition should not be your main goal. Who started and owned a coal business if I don't. Yes. If I, yes. And who if he wasn't in that Senate seat, it would absolutely be a Republican. Yes. I mean, it's not like he's some sort of like... It's not him or AOC.

It wasn't like, ooh, the primary didn't go your way. And now, bummer, you have this senator who is voting against your stuff. Nope, it's Joe Manchin or Josh Holly in West Virginia. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, some guy like Don Blankenship, the guy who did the cocaine Mitch at, right? Oh, that cocaine midchad was amazing, though. That's an incredible ad. So if you're a Democrat and you're really furious at Joe Manchin,

my question is, how do you get another Democratic senator from West Virginia? And if you're not getting one from West Virginia, you're going to have to wait to 2022 and get more Democratic senators somewhere else. So in a red wave year. Now, in the Biden administration, it is very interesting to me that he has done the stop, start for now, for now, on climate emergency. Because when those of us who are arguing against Trump's state of emergency, one of the things that we said in the argument is if you set this precedent of declaring emergencies on every legislative priority that you can't get through Congress, what's next? What's next is you're going to see a climate emergency, and you're going to see major efforts to try to reform the American economy through executive orders and regulatory action through climate emergencies. It's very interesting that Biden hasn't done that yet, and I don't know all the reasons why he hasn't.

But in that circumstance, if you're talking, if you're a Democratic activist, and we've just come from a Republican presidency that was quite activist, on declaring emergencies, and here you have climate, which is far more, climate is a far more, an issue of far greater magnitude than surges at the border. And you're not going to have the same level of executive activism that the prior Republican president had. I can understand why Democratic activists would be frustrated. That's a more understandable frustration. But from my standpoint, I didn't want to see the border emergency declared. I don't want to see a climate emergency declared. This is classic, this is classic arena for congressional action. That's where this should be. And that's where I think, frankly, recent Supreme Court precedent is going to be

pushing the executive towards anyway. And with that, let's do just a little not worth your time. Declan, what's not worth your time this week? It can be ballpoint. pins. It can be ice machines, whatever you want. What hasn't been worth my time this week is supply chain hiccups. I have been, I moved about a month ago and I have been waiting for a month ago plus two weeks for a couch to be delivered. And it's finally supposed to come in about an hour. but I have been sitting on folding chairs in my living room for a month. And every week, it was like, okay, it's actually, it's coming July 11th. Oh, wait, never mind. We're canceling it. It's coming July 13th. Nope, July 50.

So we'll see if it actually comes in. What do you think the chances are that you have a couch in an hour? In an hour. You've caught me in an optimistic mood. I say 80%, but I'll report back. I'll report back next week. We will report back on Declan's couch. Esther, what's not worth your time this? week. I'm going to take a very bold stance and say mosquitoes are driving me nuts this week. It's my, I moved to D.C. recently. I have never experienced mosquitoes like this despite growing up kind of in the woods and losing my mind. Tell everyone where you moved from where there aren't

mosquitoes. Well, I moved from central Virginia and before that Maine, and there are definitely mosquitoes there. Huge mosquitoes. I know. So I don't know what the difference is. DC mosquitoes just love me, I guess. What can I say? D.C. is a marsh. D.C. is a marsh. It's a swamp. Yeah. I've heard it called a swamp before. David, what about you? Not worth my time.

You mean worth my time. The greatest typo ever in the history of Twitter comes from a medical professional named Benjamin Ryan, and he's responding to misinformation about monkeypox, where he

says in this tweet, debunking all the misinformation. The outbreak is occurring almost entirely among men who have sex with me. So just to be clear, he's missing an end there. Yes. That was the typo. But what he said from a medical professional correcting misinformation is that monkeypox is really only spread among men who have sex with him with this medical professional. With this dude. And But the best part of it is it goes super viral. It's an obvious typo. Everyone's calling the greatest typo in the history of Twitter.

And he says, I'm not deleting it. I'm leaving it up because, frankly, we kind of all need, we just need to laugh. I can't hop that. We're going to leave it there because I'm crying. Thank you so much for joining us this week. Leave us a comment wherever you're listening to this podcast or become a member of the dispatch and hop into the comments section. Yep, I read all the comments. I get in there from time to time, and Declan will too. So maybe will Esther? I don't know. Esther,

Esther can be a little shy, but we'll see. We'll see if we can coax her into the comment section this week. Thanks again, and we'll talk to you next year. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot 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 very good. by race. Terms and conditions apply.

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