The Dispatch Podcast - KBJ's Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Wrap

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings have wrapped, and our hosts are here to break down the week on Capitol Hill. Jonah, David, and Andrew then turn to the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. Plus, what do the guys make of those Ginni Thomas texts to Mark Meadows? Or Trump dropping his endorsement of Mo Brooks in the Alabama Senate race?   Show Notes: -TMD: “Biden, World Leaders Huddle on Russia” -The Dispatch: “Inside the First Ukrainian City to Fall to Russia” -Washington Post: “Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgert. No, wait, that's the wrong script. Hi, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jonah Goldberg, and I am subbing for Sarah Isgher, because apparently, if you listen to the latest episode of advisory opinions, you'd know this. She sounds a bit like Wolfman Jack with the play. And so we thought Caleb called a rare, you know, indulgence and demand and veto and said she was. not permitted to be on this podcast. And Steve Hayes is off eating cheese curd somewhere.

So it is, it's the dream team. It is me, David French, and one Andrew Eger from this place called The Dispatch. And so today we're going to talk about a bunch of different stuff. We're going to start with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Then we're going to go back to Ukraine and Russia. And then a bit of political potpourri. Originally, we were We're just going to talk about Mo Brooks and Trump's endorsement problems and all of that. But then the late yesterday, the Ginny Thomas text messages with Mark Meadows story broke. So we're going to dive into that too. Speaking of diving, let's dive right in.

David, you are, for once, we only have one lawyer on this podcast. You are our legal beagle. What are your big takeaways from the confirmation thing about you? Yeah, I have a couple. And, you know, one of them we talked about at length on advisory opinions, which was what is, what was the sort of substance of the, what were the merits of the substantive attack on Judge Jackson? Substant attack on Judge Jackson really heavily focused on her role in sentencing in child pornography cases. And we dove into that and in some real detail. I'm not going to repeat a half or hour or 40-minute segment of a podcast. But what there really wasn't much there there to it,

her sentencing was generally right within the range of sentences recommended by the probation office. And then there was something a little bit disingenuous about the whole line of attack. I mean, it was initially launched by Josh Hawley, with the indictment being how she had departed from sentencing guidelines, which left out an enormous amount of context as to how sentencing actually occurs, where there's a defense recommendation, a prosecution recommendation, and a probation department recommendation. And her sentences were generally either in line with, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. than with the probation department and also not out of line with judicial sentencing in this area more broadly. So it was a disingenuous, I think, an unfair attack. And as we noted, if Congress has a problem with sentencing, Congress can fix sentencing. And our mutual friend Andy McCarthy wrote some really valuable stuff in National Review, kind of walking through each case and then noting

that if Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and others had real problems with sentencing patterns in child porn cases, they could propose legislation. That's actually how you deal with sentencing is through legislation. And that hasn't been done. So that was on the substance, it really was, there just wasn't much there in the attack on her other than I would just say, look, she's going to be a progressive judge. She's going to be a progressive judge. And I, you know, she's sort of nodded towards originalism a little bit, but nobody thinks she's going to be an originalist judge.

She's going to be a progressive judge. And the big question of me, is is she going to be more Kagani or is she going to be more Sotomay or E? And I tend to think she might be more Kagani, that she might be, which from my standpoint is sort of the better case when you're talking about a Democratic nominee. And so I got the feeling that we were looking at a progressive judge in the mold of Elena Kagan, and that they're, as we said, going into this before the hearings kind of got derailed by this child porn attack, and that it all is pretty conventional. It's all pretty boring, truth be told. So Andrew, I'll chime in in a second,

but I think it's fair to say that the point of this was not to derail her nomination. It was about a larger political effort or messaging effort. Do you think the Republicans came out of it with some successes under their belt along those lines? Well, I guess it kind of depends what you mean by successes, right? Because whenever you have an event like this where the outcome is never really in doubt, everybody on the on the committee their their their their thoughts sort of start start to stray to okay well you know my my sort of professional input here is is sort of irrelevant and so how can I you know pick up some wins on the margins in terms of messaging in terms of like being one of the one of the

preeminent names that comes forward you know when when conservative media writes this up or when Republicans tweet about the thing. And that's, you know, you did see a certain amount of that kind of grandstanding from, particularly Ted Cruz was kind of interesting. I mean, you, whenever you watch these hearings, there's always a little bit of sort of procedural jockeying when it comes to the weird way in which, in which these hearings are always set up, which is that every senator gets equal time. And you kind of just run down the list of names and everybody gets their chance to take their shot and usually there's only like two or three shots um you know quote unquote worth taking and and but everybody gets there gets their shot at taking those those shots um but and so there's always

a little bit of jockeying like like if somebody's time runs out in the middle of questioning and they're grumpy about that because nobody likes to you know build up a full head of steam and then get cut off right at the you know right right at the critical point but um but but with ted cruise in particular, it almost seemed as though more so than at hearings I've watched in the past, there were a couple of points where he was really kind of just refusing to play by the rules of how that procedure works specifically in order to kind of trend. It wasn't the stuff that he was doing or the stuff he was saying or the argument he was making that he was trying to be the hero. He was actually kind of jonesing against the rules of, okay, your time is up.

now it's somebody else's turn, which is real, like, kind of, you know, terrorism in the, in the Senate when you, when you think of how long these hearings are already, like, you kind of got a lot of people take their turn if you're going to get out of there ever. But, you know, there was one sort of weird moment where, where Dick Durbin, who was presiding over the hearing, like, all right, your time's expired, we're going to move on to the next person. It's like, well, you know, it's, I understand you don't want to let her answer the question. If you want to get down there, you know, on the bench beside her, as that was basically her teammate, you should do that.

And then he was overseen by a photographer immediately after that, searching his own name on Twitter, yeah, which is, I mean, we all know that the whole reason these hearings exist in these people's minds is, you know, to grandstand. And that's not specific to Ted Cruz by any means, but it was just kind of a very, you know, sharp illustration of that, of that phenomenon. The Ted Cruz checking his Twitter mentions things was so on the nose. Yeah. It kind of felt like the guys in the writer's room for this timeline just kind of mailed it in. You know, I mean, it would have been at least funnier or weird. He was checking Grindr or something, but like checking his mentions on Twitter. It was just like, you know, it would be shocking that if he wasn't checking his mentions on Twitter at a certain extent.

But I'd so like I agree with Andrew and I've had my say about this both on my solo remnant, which I recorded last night. end on um with g file but um i'm i agree that because it would be in part incredibly difficult to disagree that there was an enormous amount of grandstanding and there's always an enormous amount of grandstanding and the grandstanding i think has gotten worse because of the twitter stuff and the social media stuff and the you know the the the tendency of all these people just to want their soundbites to send to their channels and their fundraising and all that and At the same time, I'm kind of curious where David comes down on this, but, like, I think it was a legitimate question, even if it was done for trolling, grandstanding kind of lowbrow reasons, which I think it probably was given who asked it. But the can you give me a definition of a woman question strikes me as a legit, well, let me put it this way.

whether the question was legitimate or not, her answer is legitimately interesting and newsworthy for the following reason. We have been writing and talking about Supreme Court confirmation hearings and what are litmus tests, how do, you know, what do stealth nominees do or not do or say or not say? How do they avoid things? And up until five minutes ago, the, the, the, the, the quintessential dodge was to say I've never spent any time thinking about abortion, right? I mean, like, David Souter was, uh, frankly, it's just never occurred to me to think about what my view on abortion is. You know, I'm only a federal freaking judge who, and it's only the most controversial issue the last 40 years, but it's just never come up. I've never had a conversation,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, in part because of the way Republicans have answered that question for so long. Judge Judge Brown, no, Judge Jackson, it's driving me crazy because I get, Kevin Williamson pointed this out, Jackson Brown's in your head, so you have to say Jackson Brown in your head, then flip it around

to say Brown Jackson. But Judge Brown Jackson, she had perfectly politically smart Dodges on abortion. I think we all know what her reviews on abortion are actually, and that's, you know, to be expected. given that she was important by a Democrat.

But the fact that she felt it necessary to dodge the question of what is a woman when she was explicitly nominated because she's a woman is a very interesting thing as a social, cultural, political thing. And so, David, I've laid my cards on the table, just very curious. Where do you come down on the question and the answer? So this is, I think, was, in some ways, was her worst. moment in the hearings, but not necessarily for the reason that raced around Twitter. It was her worst moment for a couple of reasons.

One, her answer was just snarky and flippant, okay? And in a weird way, in a weird way, I think unintentionally anti-woke, because she said, I'm not a biologist. Well, critical gender theory is that, you know, gender is that gender is that. a social construct. I mean, in the same way that, you know, race is a social construct. Gender is a social construct in, at least in the minds of some gender, critical gender theorists out there. And and so biology isn't really the answer, right? Right. In invoking a biologist is actually to say that biologists have the right answer, which is under, it's a good point of undermining the whole

theory of gender stuff, right? Yeah. So I think it was, unintentionally anti-woke if that makes sense that that was that was not the intent of that's a good point yeah of the flippant answer um and then also it really sort of betrayed because there are and again this is something we talked about on advisory opinions um just as you could say to a senator holly or a senator cruise well as a judge my role is to apply the sentences mandated by the legislature and these are the sentences that the legislature is permitted, you know, the definition of terms in a statute is a matter of, that's a matter of legislative drafting. And, you know, an answer, a sort of, one answer to that question is, I will define terms

as defined in statutes, are as defined in the relevant laws. And she didn't, which would have been another way of dodging, but sort of a more legally accurate way of dodging, if that makes sense? So one, it was, I mean, the idea that you dodge that question. Number two, that you do it in a sort of a snarky way was troublesome. But number three, that it actually turned out to be sort of unintentionally anti-woke is a little bit humorous. But number four, the real answer to the question ultimately is that's actually a matter

of legislative definition. under the law, primarily, not a matter of sort of independent judicial discretion. So, yeah, I did think it was her worst moment, though. I thought, I did think it was her worst moment and, and demonstrated sort of a scorn for the question. And when I get it in some ways that it's obviously a cultural war type question, but my goodness, this is a legal issue in the United States of America. right now it absolutely is so uh yeah i did i did not think that was her best moment yes andrew

this is kind of what i was getting at when i was saying did the republicans have some wins and so far as we can you can people reasonable people can differ about how done the question was or even how bad the answer was on the merits and within the four corners of the hearing but as a sound bite and talking point for talk radio and and the sort of Twitter world um coming out of these hearings having this thing where you know a Supreme court nominee can't define what a woman is um again you you you can say it's cheap and tawdry and I'm perfectly open to that that's kind of a messaging win for the GOP these days well sure and I don't even I mean I personally don't even necessarily think I that I agree that it was cheaper toadry I mean it really be the

just conceding you can have that point of view yeah yeah oh absolutely absolutely but i mean and but but really i mean i think it was wesley yang who was who was pointing out on twitter like yes this is a question that's sort of coded culture war right i mean it's a it's the sort of thing that people have silly um overheated arguments about online um but when you strip that away um the only reason why it's not the kind of question that that makes everybody look at marcia marcia blackburn and like, are you okay? Like, did you get enough sleep last night? Why are you talking about this?

It's because there has been, you know, a very quick and sudden advance of an ideology that makes that a fraught question to answer. You know, 10 years ago, that was not the kind of question any Republican would think would be a gotcha in any context. It would just be, you know, you'd kind of scratch your head as to what's going on.

Like, is the sky blue or something like that? And, you know, it's even if, even if you're going to kind of write off as oh this was culture war posturing by the republicans um the i think the point of of asking that question always is to bring up the fact that that this has become a question about which you can fight a culture war over which is kind of the whole point right it's kind of the whole republican point is that it is insane that this has become that a question like that a question that everybody kind of a question that everybody knows the answer to but which a certain category of of of uh

you know, political figures now feel the need to kind of dance around and, and sort of plead ignorance, which is what we sort of saw, uh, uh, from, we don't call her justice Brown yet, from Judge Brown. Justice. Jackson. Jackson. I'm so sorry. I got, I got hung up on the wrong half of the, on the wrong half of the justice Jackson. Um, yes. Uh, but, but, but, you know, and it was, it was, you know, she knows, uh, what a woman is, right? So it's, I mean, even, even if, even if even if you were going to give kind of a progressive tented answer to it, which, you know, loops in trans women to the, to the answer, it's not, it's not like she wakes up in the morning unsure, right? So in that sense, it, it, it, I think was an effective line of, of questioning,

even though, you know, maybe tenuously connected, but, but maybe not tenuously connected, as David says, to the actual work since it's a protected class under federal law and like, you know, who's in that class? It's kind of an important question. Who is and who isn't a woman comes up in things like, I don't know, abortion, you know, Title IX. I mean, like I can come up with a bunch of things, you know. Title VII. Yeah.

But no, I think David's point about how saying I'm not a biologist and it gives up the game, it's really annoying me that I hadn't thought of that because like if she was truly trying to be loyal to the cause, her answer would have been, I can't answer that question because I am not a post-feminist. hermeneutist, linguist, political theorist, and, you know, as if they're the ones who get to decide. Well, Jonah, here, what about this as an answer? Well, Senator Blackburn, all I can say is most birthing people are women. Or no, that is the, that is the birthing person of all stupid questions.

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Application times may vary, rates may vary. all right so we should move on to a less a cheery topic alas even though there's some grading on a curve good news here the war I've taken this calling out the war on Ukraine rather than a war in Ukraine because

there's a certain sort of neutrality involved about the war in Ukraine when it's really like it was a one-sided declared unjust testified war from one side. But there's some evidence or at least some reports. We should always be a little skeptical of any reports that suggests that the Ukrainians are actually pushing the Russians back a bit militarily and that at least outside Kiev

and that as bad as things are going for Ukraine, things are going pretty rough for the Russian military. David, what is your assessment of? the situation on the ground right now. Yeah, so top line. And again, with all, all due grains of salt, my general rule is the more specific the report I receive from Ukraine, the more skeptical I am. Right. The more sort of high level where you can see a day or two or three of developments, the more you can sort of start to generate some, some thoughts on it. I would bifurcate the war in this way. Things in the north seem to be going well. There are now,

multiple credible reports of limited and local Ukrainian counteroffensives and counterattacks that we, that seem to have driven back Russian forces, sometimes maybe even up to 15, 20, 30 miles from some positions around Keev. So things seem to be going well. Kiv seems to be not in any immediate danger of encirclement any longer. And the Russian losses in the north have just been staggering, just staggering level of losses. We don't know with any specificity, but, you know, with our satellite technology and sort of with the ability to sort of the sheer amount of footage that's coming in from this war, just counting destroyed tanks and geolocating and counting destroyed tanks, you can begin to see some of the scale of the Russian losses.

I'm less optimistic about the South. So the Siege of Maripole is progressing. Russian forces or in the city, there's no reason to believe that Maripole can hold out that much longer. If Maripole falls, then you're going to talk about you've created this land bridge between Crimea and the Donbos. And there is at least some evidence that the Russians may drive north to try to cut off Ukrainian forces in the east of the country, which presents Ukraine with a massive strategic dilemma of if and when do you pull your army formations out of. of the East to avoid potential encirclement. And so the South is a real problem. And it's the only area where you've seen kind of concrete, substantial Russian advances.

So I have a bifurcated view. Well, I will say overall, I don't think anyone could argue that this offensive has gone the way that Vladimir Putin wanted it to go. Overall, that is sort of inarguably true. But now that we're past that initial shock of Russian, the combination of Russian incompetence and Ukrainian resistance, now you're just down to analyzing this war as it's going. And that's where I bifurcate it in the north

and the preservation of Kiev, great optimism in the south, great concern. So, Andrew, I mean, the, it's, it's funny. There is this shocking unanimity in America about basically taking Ukraine side on this. It's not shared among a sliver of right-wing, you know, sort of media elite types, but for the most part, most elected Republicans, most conservative commentators are on Ukraine side and are generally supportive broad brushstrokes of Biden's policies.

And yet they're not supportive of, Biden um and uh and the republicans can't seem to quite figure out exactly what their criticism of Biden is is he going is doing too much or too little right on all of this kind of thing you know do you have a sense of like you know do you think that this is going to be the status quo until the ukraine war is over or is there actually going to be a a a political fault line that makes some sense in all of this or does it does it make sense and I'm just not seeing it well I think that you I mean while we're talking about bifurcations let's do another bifurcation here which is that we when it comes to actual kind of procedural moves we

have not seen Republicans you know like using their actual political power to try to change anything that that that that team Biden is doing um i think that that that maybe if behind closed doors is is sort of too conspiratorial a way to say it but but you know there there is sort of a consensus that that you know to the degree in which it's possible for us to support ukraine uh we are supporting ukraine and that's a good thing because they're the good guys in the conflict you know such as it is um i do think if um you know you've seen a lot of uh I don't know if media pressure is the right word. Certainly any time there's a White House press briefing,

you get a lot of questions from, from, you know, institutional media in the room about why we're not doing more. You know, and not so much from Republicans, just from kind of the mainstream outlets, why we haven't established a no-fly zone, whether we were too quick to rule out direct military action. I do think, and, and, you know, for all the obvious reasons,

team Biden continues to say, well we're not we're not risking nuclear war basically um and and i do think that if if if that were to change you would start to see a lot more pushback um not just from republicans but for from from democrats and in congress as well about like hold your horses um on on this sort of thing but i but then of course um there's the there's the uh you know the the information game there's the media uh game and i and what what we continue to see um on on the right is is not really sort of a direct criticism of of anything Biden's doing on on the war, which is telling, but but sort of these bank shot criticisms, one of which is, you know, if Biden were stronger, Putin never would have done it

in the first place, you know, Trump is there, this never would have happened under a president Trump that that Russia would have attacked Ukraine at all. And then the second and I think the more constant drumbeat that we hear is, is the kind of economic pain at home point, talking about gas prices, energy prices in general, which is partially about the war, but also sort of using the war to just kind of talk about Biden's energy policies and suggesting that, again, under a different president, we would not be feeling the squeeze as much. But I do think, I mean, I don't think there's any sort of top-level debate happening about sort of the actions Biden's taking. There kind of was a couple of weeks ago when it was

a question of should we have tapped all of these wells of possible sanctions sooner, pushed all the buttons faster. But even that was kind of transitory. And I think it just kind of, it's sort of a tacit acknowledgement that there, Biden's kind of walking a pretty narrow path here. Like there aren't that many different, different points that it would be possible for him to have taken. If your inputs are, we can't risk nuclear war. We can't risk open conflict between, uh, between Russian forces and NATO, NATO forces. And Ukraine are the good guys. I mean, if you're, and, and so far as we're supporting anybody, we should be supporting them as best we can. So like, if those are your, if those are your, um, your inputs for your

equation, Biden's basically, and, and all these other countries, too, are basically doing what you can do, which is, uh, as much humanitarian aid as possible as, as many guns and missiles and, and, and, you know, equipment as you can funnel to the Ukrainians you do. And that's kind of all you can do. And obviously enormous, enormous financial pain on Russia. Yeah, I mean, I think Rob Portman had about as good a talking point I've seen against this, against the Biden administration. Um, you know, and as we all know, Rob Portman is, he's such a firebrand, you know, he always, he's playing to the base and everything that he does. Um, I mean, talk about Ted Cruz. Talk about a guy who checks his Twitter mentions. Anyway, uh, no, but so Rob Portman. Um, um,

he said look he said the other day Biden has done a very good job of organizing this coalition now he needs to lead it which I think is a good hair splitting praise the commander in chief during a difficult time while at the same time asking for more of them kind of phraseology on it um I mean I agree with you descriptively that that the Biden administration you know laid out these positions, but I think it is interestingly a broad consensus, at least among serious foreign policy types, that Biden has made a mistake in always talking about what we're not going to do, and, you know, why we should, you know, why we should be the ones who, I mean, this way, the only justification for constantly saying we are not going to get involved in a direct war with

Russia is for domestic consumption. it is a bad message to send to Russia. Russia should be really worried about ticking us off. And we should have more strategic ambiguity and we should talk more about keeping our options on the table. And you just don't hear that very much from the administration because I think the base of the Democratic Party and also just sort of Biden's own pretty serious anti-war instincts at this point,

mitigate against him being able to do those, do that kind of bluffing game. So I have one question. Either of you can jump on this hockey puck for me. We talked last time, I think, about Biden saying Putin's a war criminal. And my point was I have no problem calling him a war criminal. But it felt like he just did it off the cuff, as he often does. And I saw Chuck Todd last Sunday saying that was clearly planned.

and I just saw no evidence to support it. And Chuck keeps saying, and Chuck Dodd kept going to things that seemed to support my position, and I thought it was a very strange thing. But regardless, I've seen Special Report do a bunch of segments on this where the Biden administration said over and over again the point of the initial sanctions was deterrence. They said it point blank.

They said it often. They said it clearly. And, um, and now Biden is obsessed with saying nobody ever said it was about deterrence. Um, and a bunch of people in his administration are saying it was, we never said it was about deterrence. I don't is it, I feel like I missed two days of the story, like two episodes in the middle of the script. And did Biden say it and now the administration has to cover it the way it's done all these other things? It was this just a gap. Does this come from a gaffe? Is there, is it I'm missing about understanding this thing?

On the war criminal point or the deterrence point? The deterrence thing. Why is it like, why is the Biden administration so insistent that the initial sanctions were never about deterrence? Is it because Biden just doesn't want to admit he was wrong when he said they were about deterrence? What, I mean, what, what is the drama here that I am missing that has caused the administration to dig in on it? Oh, I think it's pretty clear. And it goes back to what Andrew said, which is the one thing that you can say, inarguably, is that deterrence failed, right? That whatever we were trying to do to stop this war from happening did not work.

And so I think that they're, that, you know, and then the Republicans have sort of their counter, which you can't, it's this, you know, one of these counterfactuals that you can never really know, which is, well, if we were in charge, this wouldn't have happened. And so I think that the more you highlight a failure of deterrence, or the more you highlight that the plan didn't work, the deterrent plan didn't work, the more you to put the attention on the one thing that is inarguably true, that whatever we were trying to do to deter this didn't work, and you take your eyes off the one thing, the other thing that's favorable to the Biden administration, which is true, which is we've been an indispensable part of mobilizing the West, again. against Russia in a way that, quite frankly, was not inevitable. A lot of smart people didn't know how NATO would really react when Putin went into Ukraine. And the way NATO has reacted has been surprising, even to me, and I was maybe a little higher on NATO than the average person. So I think there's something very understandable here that if we're talking about Biden's

leadership once the shooting started, that's where he's at his strongest. but the fact that the shooting started illustrates the failure of American policy, which is not to say that any other president could have prevented it. You know, it's not just a matter of I'm going to say strategic ambiguity. Usually strategic ambiguity is accompanied by actions, the movement of troops that would make, or fleets that would make a kind of, make it credible for Vladimir Putin to think that there might be an intervention. I mean, one of the advantages of dealing with Taiwan, for example, in our relationship with Taiwan, Taiwan's an island, and you can move a carrier task group pretty close. And it means a very substantial change in the balance of power when American task force is close to Taiwan. So, you know, I don't think there were magic words that it could have prevented this. I think it would have been very difficult to prevent this. But the fact that it wasn't prevented is in arguably, I think, a

The fact that American policy was to prevent it, and we didn't, that's inarguably a failure, and I think it's understandable he wants to take the public's eyes off that particular ball. Can I add just one thing on the, and I don't mean to kind of swerve here, but just another thing on the, on the kind of question of how domestic attitudes like this are continuing to evolve. And we covered this in TMD this week, how when you talk about, you know, Ukraine's winning more up north and maybe losing more down south, and you talk about how Russia has definitely been frustrated in its initial aims of, you know, this kind of Blitz Creek war and is now getting bogged down and everything, that and that we as kind of Ukraine sympathizers and, you know, even cheerily. online, it's easy to sort of just fall into that thing where you're following it almost like sports, how much better they've done than maybe it could have been expected. It kind of all obscures the fact that even where Ukraine is doing well, really what we're looking at is kind of the conflict settling into stalemate at best, right? And the sort of thing where we're settling into a position of just kind of a really grinding, brutal, bloody next few months to, God forbid, years.

And so when we're talking about how domestic attitudes here, and even attitudes maybe in like Europe are going to change, I mean, I do think that the humanitarian damage is going to just keep piling up, piling up, piling up, which is, you know, a pressure for, for us to get more and more and more involved. But also the economic sort of fallout from, from all of these sanctions and stuff that we've been putting on. It's going to, it's going to not be fun here. It's not going to be fun in Europe, especially in Europe. And, and that's, you know, pressure, pressure in the other direction. So I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to sort of swer, but I do think it's on the earlier point about

just just about like how how we are all thinking about it i i don't think it's it's necessarily like that's all fair that's all fair i and you know and lots of things can focus the mind in different directions you know if if you get ten dollars a gallon of gas um you can you know you can see that the Tucker carlson victim blaming things you know where you're saying it's this is all Zelensky's fault for not surrendering on russia's terms uh you can see that getting more traction I just think on the not deterring them being this huge failure thing, maybe it's because I was wrong, you know,

which is always makes one sympathetic to other people who were wrong. But like, so many people were wrong. Pro Putin people were wrong. Anti-Putin people were wrong. The realists were wrong. I mean, everyone who was supremely confident, which I was not, has been sort of be clowned by this because, like, the hardcore realist, like me, Sharmer, he would never do this because it's,

not in his interest, an interest covering everything. And the pro-putin... I think that's an exact quote. It pretty much is. It's how I read everything that he writes. And then there's, you know, the pro-Putting people, like Matt Taibi and Glenn Greenwald and all that crowd, minor things, are they all, yeah, we called this wrong. Tucker called it wrong.

You admitted he called it wrong. You can go down a long list of people who all called it wrong, in part, including a bunch of, like, Russian generals, you know, who were like... Like, we didn't know this was going to happen. You know, like, so it just, it strikes me, like, this is not something to get wildly hung up on when you have a better narrative, which is to say, we didn't think Putin had lost his mind. And there are countless people out there who are saying, this is not the Putin I knew,

from both administrations, from all across the international spectrum. And so to get bogged down on this, we never thought, you know, that sanctions would deter thing seems like a way to remind people that you were wrong. about something specific and just seems like dumb politics to me but that's the kind of thing I just couldn't understand in all this with amex platinum access to exclusive amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side 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 varied by race terms and conditions apply learn more at mx.ca.com slash y annex but speaking of dumb

politics we have a gosh we have a we have a we have a movable feast here um i don't originally we were going to talk about how trump's not doing great with his endorsements and we should still talk about that but there's also these uh this sort of blockbuster washington post story about uh jenny thomas wife of clarence thomas's tweets um so i'm going to i'm going to leave it open ended and Since I've gone to David first on all these, I'll go to Andrew first on all these. You can have the first bite of whatever Apple you want on this. Okay. That's good of you.

What the hell? Well, so this is, I've been thinking a lot about this because the... You go. You have to be in some way connected to these topics, but otherwise, yes. Well, okay, okay. Yes, yes, yes. So if for those of you who maybe haven't heard the story, basically what was revealed in texts that I think Mark Meadows handed over to the January 6th committee were a number of messages with Clarence Thomas's wife, Jenny during the whole Stop the Steel election fraud thing. Mark Meadows being Trump's chief of staff at the time.

Right, where she was basically kind of cheerleading for them to. to, you know, keep the faith and fight the good fight and stop this, this, you know, fraudulent Biden steel that had been organized by the forces of evil. And that's only kind of a paraphrase. I mean, it was all, it was extremely religiously, religious in its, in its language and very sold on the notion that Biden had stolen the election and that Trump basically shouldn't leave office. And, and not good, not very good at all. The, the, the thing that I've been, It's kind of been banging around in my head about it ever since then is, you know, clearly, really bad news stuff for anybody to be, you know, whispering in in the year of the president's chief of staff. But, but you run into this, this sometimes in, in the political world when you have a husband and a wife who are both involved in politics and who maybe are, and it's hard to know, like, how, how aggressively the transitive,

property applies, I guess. You know, it's, because the big question of the story is, I guess, the big, the big open question of the story is like, how should this color sort of our view of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was, who was asked, or who was, you know, considering questions related to the January 6th coup and, and, oh, not, not that specifically, but the stolen election kind of narrative at the time. And it's just hard. That's what I'm kind of nonplussed by.

You never really know how, how, uh, how aggressively the sins of the spouse, you know, should, should, should color your opinion. So that's what, that's what, that's what I don't know the answer to that. I mean, it's, it's, it's weird. It's fraught. It's kind of spooky to contemplate, but. David, let me take that to you in two ways. And you can obviously run within any direction you want.

One is, um, I saw somewhere this morning. I haven't had a chance to run. down that Thomas was the only person who voted to deny the ability for the January 6th committee to get these texts in the first place. A, is that true? And B, more broadly, what are just like the rules for Supreme Court justices in this stuff? Well, I don't know. So last night I was trying to chase down, was it true that these texts were part of the, the sort of the information that the Supreme Court allowed or the Supreme Court ruled should be produced and versus was this information in the documents that Meadows voluntarily produced.

That's a question of fact. And I don't think, at least as of 8 a.m. this morning, when the last I checked on this, I don't think that was clarified. And so I do think that when it comes to Thomas, that if his wife could be implicated or involved in any way in sort of even the information that is produced in connection with the January 6th investigation, he should recuse himself from anything involving a, anything that could potentially involve his wife. I think that, to me, is just crystal clear. If there's any dispute over documents or dispute over the investigation that could involve Jenny Thomas in any way, he should recuse himself. The problem we have is sort of as a matter of law, Supreme Court justices have a lot of leeway

over whether or not they're going to recuse. Now, Thomas has recused from multiple cases in the past before. I was reading a report yesterday that he is recused, I believe, in one case that might have been a family member in the past before. So he has recused. There's the VMI case that he recused on this quick one. So when his family is directly involved, he's recused. And so I do think that he needs to make it, if there is another case that comes up in the connection with January 6th investigation, I think they're very well, it is likely that this will occur. He should recuse. I think that's absolutely crystal clear at this point. What is much less clear,

is to what extent should an ordinary American worry about the fact that Jenny Thomas, and, you know, Andrew, as much as you were saying these were problematic texts, you're soft pedaling. I mean, this stuff is crazy. So she wrote, quoted from a right-wing website, Biden crime family, and ballot fraud, co-conspirators, elected officials, bureaucrat, social media, censorship mongers, fake stream media, reporters, et cetera, are being arrested and detained for ballot fraud right now and overcoming days and will be living in barges off Gitmo to face military tribunals for sedition. Okay.

But when you put it that way. Yeah. So this is literally the kind of thing that if one of your relatives said this stuff, you would be worried about them. I mean, you'd be worried about them. Are you okay? You know, you have, you know, you'd be very concerned. And so from my standpoint, where I am on this is, look, the general default is we just flat out do not impute the political views of a spouse to the other spouse. So I have one spouse to the other spouse. You should recuse when there's direct implication. But there's a level of extremism here and fanaticism here that crosses a line where an ordinary person would say, what is going on here? And that's why I think,

it's so important for Thomas to draw a line that says, I'm not going to participate in January 6th related cases or election steel related cases, period. But there is one thing I want to say about Justice Thomas. If you follow sort of Jenny Thomas's writings and you follow Justice Thomas's opinions, there's no crossing of the streams. Justice Thomas is one of the clearest, legal thinkers on the court. He has one of the most coherent legal philosophies on the court. He is probably one of the least erratic justices that you've seen in the last 25 years. There is nothing about his jurisprudence that says to me, oh, he's under the influence of a conspiracy theorist. And so I do think we need to sort of pause and take a breath and look at

Justice Thomas's actual work product and his actual work. product is clear. It's rigorous. He's one of the most respected justices, certainly by originalists in modern court history. So there's nothing about his actual work product that says, oh, man, you know, he's joined at the hip. And it sort of has a mind meld with a conspiracy theorist who thinks Biden's going to get mo. I mean, so I do think we need to make that very clear. But at the same time, he needs to make it clear that he's not going to involve himself in January 6 cases. And by the way, what unbelievable bad judgment by Jenny Thomas. And we haven't even gotten to Mark Meadows. We need to get to Mark Meadows, but we haven't even gotten

to Mark Meadows. Yeah. So let me, um, because we were talking in the green room beforehand, uh, figuratively speaking. And, um, our various little green rooms. You were talking about it. You were talking about how Mark Meadows responses in some ways more disturbing than Jenny Thomas's. And, and I agree with that. We, and we, you know, I don't, I don't, want to steal your thunder on the point, but I do want to just say that I can I can attest from personal experience and from the personal experience of many people I know quite well that Mark Meadows is notorious. Well, I shouldn't say notorious because that connotes widespread understanding, right? He is an egregious say whatever he needs to say to the person he's

talking to type. And so it is entirely possible. to me that he was also texting with, I don't know, you know, Ivanka Trump, who was saying, Mark, this is incredibly embarrassing nonsense. We got to pull out of this.

This is garbage. And he would say, I know, I know, I'm trying to talk the old man out of it, right? Because he just taught, it tells people he's talking to whatever he thinks they want to hear. And I know this in part because he's done it with me. And And so, but I do want to say more broadly that, you know, there's an interesting point here that I think gets overlooked.

I was listening to the morning Joe discussion on all of this, this morning. And, you know, it is a, it's a standard talking point. We talked about it in various contexts here about how people need to choose a line of argument sometimes. So, like, during the Iraq war or the war on terror, you. You could either argue that George W. Bush was an evil mastermind or you could argue he was an idiot. You can't argue both, right? Same thing with Donald Trump, all these kinds of things, right? Same thing with Barack Obama.

People would say, look, he's so stupid. Look how he pronounced corpseman, right? And at the same time, they would say, oh, he's this brilliant, you know, postmodernist philosopher who's going to undermine America. Well, like, which is it? and I think that a lot of people want to say that the Trump people, and I think my record and our record here is pretty solid on all that stuff, but they want to say that the Trump people hate democracy, they want to overthrow democracy, they want to steal democracy, they were ruined democracy. And if you read these texts from Jenny Thomas at face value, she's

wildly concerned about democracy. Now, she's totally wrong. I mean, totally and completely deranged wrong about the facts and she's clearly high on the the group think nonsense that was the virality of being in in trump's close orbit and all that kind of stuff i mean look anybody who not only watches the four seasons landscaping press conference and thinks rudy juliani was nailing it um but but afterwards cannot understand why even donald trump was distancing himself from Sidney Powell is just way caught up and stuff, right? I mean, and but nowhere that's why I'd say you'd worry about her. Like you'd literally worry about her when you read this. But I agree with that. I think the point you're making about about that the problem is not necessarily

like an ideological problem in the narrow sense. It's a problem of factual inputs, right? I mean, it's the fact that these people had swallowed insane, wrong statements of fact about what had happened in the election, but that if those things had been true, you know, that is how you would kind of expect a person who does have deep concern for like kind of the rule of the people to behave. And I think you're absolutely right, by the way, that that is extremely widespread, you know, at every, kind of at every level, which is also why, you know, you, why both you saw January 6th happening and that you saw widespread kind of horror about that after the fact, because a lot of these people...

you're if you're inclined to say, I found this video that was linked from Gateway Pundit that is talking about, you know, election people being put on barges sent to Gitmo. And I found it super persuasive enough to send to the White House chief of staff. Just, you know, we got to talk about some options here because that's just the mess. But Jonah is that, can I borrow one of your phrases and say, I've been banging my spoon on my high chair about this for a long, time, which is the specific religious delusions around this, this is Mark Meadows to Thomas. This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the king of king's triumphs. Do not grow weary and well-doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on

it, well, at least my time in D.C. on it. And even if he is only feeding what he knows his audience wants, it's troubling that he knows his audience wants the religious call to action. here. And that was all over. It was not just the D.C., the folks who stormed the Capitol and prayed in the Senate Chamber on January 6th. This was religious leaders declaring the election stolen. This was leaders in the conservative Christian religious or conservative Christian legal movement, helping trying to steal the election. This was all over, and it was full of religious seal. And one of the things that made it that contributed to the delusion of all of it and lurking in the background of all of this, and I had up-closed personal experience with this and dealing with

people like Eric Metaxis with this sort of belief in the divine sanction and holy divine purpose of Donald Trump. And so it's hard to overemphasize, and I know a lot of listeners are skeptical of that. Are you serious? Really, truly? I've been around it. I've heard it for years about this holy divine purpose of Donald Trump. And so when Trump's win, when West frustrated a lot of people went to, this is the work of the devil. And that's one of the most disturbing things about this entire episode to me as a Christian, is to watch leaders in this community lose their sound judgment and their sound mind and contribute to the religious zeal of support for Donald Trump. And honestly, of all of the texts, that one bothered me the

most. That one bothered me the most because it was a demonstration of whether Meadows believed it. He's long described himself as a committed Christian, whether Meadows believed it, or he knew this is what she wanted to hear as part of her participation in this. It demonstrates the religious zeal of this incredibly dangerous effort. And it's horrible to see, frankly, now I hear what you're saying as a more secular guy I just I can't get my head around you got to put Sidney Powell out in front um it's just uh but at the by the time that she was arguing that that was like one of the it was like you got to put the hungry wolverine in the crib with the baby it was just such a crazy thing to say um right uh I promised we'd also talk about uh another aspect

political story this week and we got a little time left. I'll try to do the bridge this way. So we saw this week that Senate candidate Mo Brooks, Trump has withdrawn his nomination and Trump has said, and Mo Brooks has recounted how Trump allegedly has said to him that he wants the, he wants Biden to be removed from the office before the end of his term. uh basically have the election repealed and trump should be put in now um don't trump said that and i am uh and and and moreover the the in some ways because i i i have difficulty parsing how much i believe what mo brooks is saying now in terms of his sudden studious righteousness about the constitution but we can talk about that later um the the at the same time the the the

sort of the political story in this is more that Trump's nominations, Trump's endorsements don't seem to be going very far. And I think the sort of connective tissue between this and the Ginny Thomas story is that Jenny Thomas and Mark Meadows and Mo Brooks for a long time and a lot of these other people really thought that the Trump base was the entirety of the GOP. And that it turns out, particularly over time, there's been a lot of attrition to that. And you have the fact that I think Trump's attacks still have considerable power, but maybe his endorsements don't. Am I misreading it, David? I mean, I think that his grip is, he is slowly loosening over the party, month by month,

week by week, month by month. And I do also think that his complete single-minded obsession with the 2020 election has cross the point to where it is out now affirmatively hurting him. That that is that that because that is the sole thing. And also that is kind of put in perspective by the fact that we're dealing with a land war in Europe right now. And we don't want, it is not, it is completely out of step where the vast majority of American people are to be relitigating 2020 day by day, day by day, day by day, especially when it's so crazy to do so. And so I think that there is a scenario in which he could have done more to maintain his hold. And he still has a, he would still be the overwhelming

favorite. Let's just be honest. If he announced today, he'd be the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. But I don't think it's a lock. I don't think it's a lock. And I think that he might take some real losses, particularly in Georgia, which our own Chris Starwalt has pegged is, properly pegged, is this really critical primary contest. And his guide, Purdue, David Perdue is struggling against Brian Kemp, struggling. And this is a showpiece endorsement for Trump, a showpiece. And so I think that his grip is loosening. It's loosening slowly.

It's not being pride open all at once. But I do wonder, Jonah, I do wonder to go back to you quoting whoever I forget you quote, that, you know, as companies grow bankrupt slowly than suddenly. Yeah, yeah. Hemingway. My optimistic, my optimistic case is that Trump's grip loosened slowly, then suddenly, and that it will hit a tipping point. So that's my optimistic take. Let me, let me, let me hit you with a maybe slightly more pessimistic take then just to just to get off a little balance. Do it. So we talk about the Trump base, right? Like to what extent is the Trump base still a deciding factor in, in Republican politics? And I do think that what the Trump base actually is and what Donald

Trump seems to think the Trump base is are two different things, right? The Trump base is just Republicans who are really excited about him, who feel a lot of affinity for him, and who that was kind of like the driving thing in their politics for a long time. But for Trump, it's people who specifically just do whatever he says they ought to do, right? I mean, it's like there's no other input other than for Donald Trump. He thinks the Trump base is going to go where he says they ought to go. But there has been a lot of daylight that has, and I totally agree with David about this, by the way, that as Trump makes literally everything about the 2020 election, including all of these other completely unrelated races, like the Senate race in Alabama or the governor's race in Georgia, you know, as Trump goes out and says, you know, you really ought to support this candidate rather than that candidate in this race because they were nicer to me in January of 2020. 21, that's not a very compelling case.

And I think that there's, with good reason, even voters who love Donald Trump, they're, they're not, they don't disagree with that necessarily. They're not, they're not like challenging him on those arguments. They're just not, they're just not, they're just not, they're not making those things, kind of their, their big, uh, decision point in, in which candidate they're going to support. They, they don't think that that's, that's the, the be all and end all. That said, I think 2024, is going to be the question, right? Because if Donald Trump runs in 2024, obviously he's still

going to fixate on 2020 in his rhetoric and everything. But all of the reasons why all of these people supported him in the first place will kind of come back into play again, which is it will be a question of who's going to be the president and all these people think he did a good job as president. And I don't necessarily see reason to believe that the share of the Republican Party who thinks Donald Trump did a really good job as president is shrinking. just that the share of those people who think that what Donald Trump says about every other candidate or every other politician who represents me, that might be shrinking. And in part because when he was president, when Donald Trump would say, you know,

you really ought to support this candidate instead of that candidate because it had actual bearing on those people's job performance, right? I mean, it would be support this candidate rather than that candidate because this candidate is going to be a loyal foot soldier to advance the MAGA agenda. And that's compelling the voters if they, if they, if they support. support the MAGA agenda in a way that this new thing now is not. And I don't, and I guess my, insofar as there's a pessimism, and I don't, I don't even know that I'm right and David's wrong, but insofar as there's this, there's this pessimism. It's that you could easily see

the, the circumstances again change such that there's reason for these people again to be kind of tuning into what Trump is saying. Given the last almost seven years, Andrew, pessimism is far more warranted than optimism. So I'm the one out on a limb here. I'm the one on the limb. I have been getting a speech called Cheer Up for the Worsts Yet to come for over a decade. And it's always been Prussian. I just want a quick point on the sort of Trump making everything about the last election. I think one of the things that I admit, it's just a stupid press release kind of thing. but at the same time, it's a great example of how Trump makes conservative and Republican messaging harder. When he denounced Mo Brooks, he said that Mo Brooks has gone woke by denying that the election was stolen.

Now, we can have an argument about what is wokeism and how much people talk about wokeism? Is it just the new term for politically correct and all that kind of stuff? but there are a lot of people who are deeply invested as a matter of sort of cultural politics and intellectual politics who've written books, you know, including like serious people like John McWhorter about how it's a new political religion and it's bound up with serious ideas about identity politics and all this kind of stuff. And when Trump reduces it to people weren't that so some hack politician didn't support my claim that the election was stolen, that's wokeism. It just, it just monies the waters and makes things very,

complicated for people who want to treat that kind of stuff seriously. And it sends a signal to like average people. It's like, oh, okay, so wokeism is sort of like the way left-wingers used to use the word fascism. It's just something that you accuse people who disagree with you on. And that's not helpful for anybody. Now that you brought up that statement, can I just add one really weird thing about this, this whole, this whole thing, which is that Mo Brooks doesn't oppose Donald Trump's narrative about the stolen election. He is all in. on Donald Trump's narrative about the stolen election and has been and has been for for you know since

the beginning since the very beginning he's been all in on it and it's it's it's this fascinating thing where Mo Brooks uh jumped out to an early lead in the polls because he'd run for Senate before he was known statewide he got this endorsement from Donald Trump but then after that he kind of just ran a pretty bad campaign he was not a very charismatic guy he didn't fundraise well he didn't spend the money that he did have effectively and and other candidates got in the race and have kind of just eaten away at his lead in the polls. And what happened this week was on, I think Monday, but early this week, there was a poll that came out

that was really bad for Mo Brooks. He was in a distant third place. And the next day, you see this statement from Donald Trump that in August of 2020, Mo Brooks crossed me about the stolen election. And I think that was the beginning of the end for him. And it's just, I mean, it's just, it's so transparent that he wanted to dump him because he's going to lose, right?

Yeah. He's absolutely back to the hill. I mean, endorsed by Trump is in his campaign logo. It's in his name on Twitter. It was until he pulled the endorsement. I mean, there has never been a candidate who tried to run harder in the Trump land than Mo Brooks. It's not Trump's fault that Mo Brooks didn't do well. Mo Brooks just didn't run a very good campaign.

And if Trump were kind of like a normal guy, like a normal political endorser, he could just point to that and be like, well, he kind of squandered my endorsement. But for Trump, there's only one thing in Trump's own mind. there's only one thing that sinks or sinks Republican candidates or wins elections for Republican candidates. And it's crossing him that sinks you and it's earning his good favor that wins you wins you the race. Like that's just how Trump sees every Republican primary, right? And so and so it's this bizarre, bizarre, kind of like through the looking glass statement from Trump that the reason that Mo Brooks, the Trumpiest candidate who ever walked to the earth, the reason, that he is losing the election and now Trump's endorsement is because he crossed the stolen

election. It's just, it's just kind of this perfect little vignette. Which is also a very weird thing for Trump to have endorsed them if according to Trump's own theory, right? It's like he's doing badly because he crossed the theory. This thing when and then Trump endorsed them anyway. I mean, how does that work? Well, it's just, it's just so naked. He endorsed him. He endorsed him in last April. And then it was in, in August that he got up at a Trump rally and was like, you know, we're all mad about the election, right? But like channel that, you know, don't look back. Look forward. Channel that. energy into 2022 and 2024 and they all got mad. It was kind of just a silly little thing.

All right. I think we are done here. David has to get on a get on the road. He's in yet another hotel room. And I hope I know I'm supposed to have some cute question at the end. I completely forgot. But I think I don't want to steal too much of Sarah's thunder. She's better at this than I am. And we wish we hope she feels better. And we hope the brisket and the husband of the A-O-Pod are weathering the situation as well. And I guess we want Steve to come back at some point, but I thought Eger did just fine. And thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time. No, you won't. It's a podcast.

Nice. Who's that? That's me. Hold on. Sorry about that. My ride is here to take me to the airport. Ride, dealer. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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