The Dispatch Podcast - Lankford Hates His Job | Roundtable

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Steve rejoins the Dispatch Podcast roundtable with Sarah, Mike, and John to discuss the behind-the-scenes discussions that killed the border deal and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. The Agenda: —Does the GOP want to solve the border crisis? —Nikki Haley is having fun out there —How SCOTUS will treat Trump’s case —Quasi Moon Named Zuzvi —“Conservative curious” writer and Sarah’s New Yorker piece Show Notes: -Kelefa Sanneh's piece on George Strait Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar, and I've got Mike Warren, John McCormick, and Steve Hayes here to, to, you know, break down the week that was, the week to come. There's a lot going on. So we're going to tick through that border bill, the once in future border bill, perhaps, the state of GOP politics, based on what we learned from the border bill shenanigans, a little bit about what's going on with Trump's immunity claim that failed at the D.C. Circuit. And of course, a little not worth your time. time at the end new yorker edition so john let's start with you can you just fill us in on what happened on the hill this week where we actually thought we might solve the border crisis well yeah i think we never thought we were going to solve the border crisis because Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, made it clear weeks ago that he was going to kill basically anything that came out of the Senate.

So it was always kind of a question of what exactly the Senate was doing here. We didn't get legislative texts until Sunday night. And within 24 hours, it was clear that this thing was on the rock. So it wasn't clear it didn't have 60 votes quite yet. But eventually, you know, a bunch of the Republicans, even the ones who were amenable to the policies that Senator James, James Langford, Republican of Oklahoma, had negotiated with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. They began to come up with reasons such as, well, we haven't done enough time, and if a majority of the

conference is against it, why are we going to take this political hit when Mike Johnson isn't even going to hold a vote in this thing? So it was blocked yesterday on a 49 to 50 vote. It needed 60 to advance on the initial motion to proceed to debate. In my personal opinion, opinion, you know, this was, it was a really interesting on the policy. And David and Sarah did a really great job delving into the policies that were being negotiated behind closed doors. But, you know, we never really got a serious debate on this. You know, it was one of these things that was negotiated behind closed doors, but then just sort of sprung in everyone and the first vote to proceed to debate was just, you know, a few days later. So I guess the advocates of people like Langford would

say, well, we would still have two or three weeks to debate this. But, you know, the exercise is never really getting to, yes, to passing an actual bill that was going to make it out of Congress because, again, Mike Johnson, Speaker, the House made it clear that this thing was going to die in the House. So, to my mind, it was more of an exercise of showing a dead body. Okay, Republicans, you asked for a border security bill attached to a foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan. This is the best you can do. We spent four months negotiating in good things. faith. Here's what rock-ribbed Oklahoma Senator James Langford came up with. He's happy to explain this to all of you in detail and argue it. And there really wasn't much appetite for that. And so we now

stand in a situation where they're now trying to pass a bill without the border piece, but there is now negotiations going on about whether there will be an open amendment process to this bill that would actually allow some amendments on border pieces, whether any of them has a chance of passing. I'm skeptical, but that's where things stand right now. So that's a lot to unpack, I guess. That is a lot to unpack. Mike, two things.

One, the idea that Donald Trump will get elected and then they'll get a better border deal seems silly for the very obvious reason that the reason the Democrats are willing to do a security-only bill, that they're willing to compromise so much, to even get to this point. I'm not saying the bill's perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the reason this is by far the most we've ever seen Democrats come towards border security

is because of the politics, meaning they think the politics is bad for them right now on the border. But once Biden's not in the White House, it won't be their problem anymore. There won't be an election right away. And so all of their incentive to compromise is gone the second Donald Trump becomes president. Why would they ever come back? Not to mention what just happened to them here like you wouldn't compromise when our guy was president but you think we're going to compromise when your guy's president no thank you so that's one number two mcconnell and the republicans in general for that matter said hey this is our moment to actually get a deal on the border in exchange for ukraine funding hey jim lankford why don't you go negotiate this he does in good faith gets a pretty

again the most secure border deal that we've ever seen not saying it's perfect and then they not only Leave him out to dry. It's one thing to not vote for it and to say, look, look, you tried your best, but it wasn't good enough. We can't sign it. That's not what they're saying. They're saying this guy shouldn't be in the Senate anymore. He should be tarred and feathered. How dare he even think this is a deal? Why would anyone, any Republican go negotiate any legislation ever, ever again on any topic? And this just furthers the like broken Congress where if you actually come to fix problems, come to compromise and make legislation, go somewhere else. You're going to retire. because there's no room for you in Congress anymore. So, Mike, I'm really optimistic about the future of the house. Yeah, this is a real pick-me-up to start this podcast. So we're not going to fix the border, and Congress is going to be rubble. Exactly, and there will be absolutely no trust within the House of Congress. Look, I totally agree with you.

I think this is a lesson that for the time being, the person in the Republican Senate conference who is tapped to negotiate some big legislation like they're the fool. They're the one who is getting saddled with a no-win job. And Lankford, you get the sense, both from say John McCormick's reporting, talking with him, and just as general, the way that Lankford

has been talking about this in the days since the deal was released and imploded, he seems to have a kind of devil-may-care attitude about it. Like, he's kind of speaking out a little bit, being like, look, I left it all on the table. What's your problem to his colleagues in the Senate and the House? Look, to the first part of your statement, Sarah, I do think there is so much of the problem for Republicans on Capitol Hill

it's not the entire problem, but a big part of the problem is they don't understand the other side, the incentives that might be driving Democrats. They have like an idea of what the Democrats are really up to in Congress, and it generally inflates the Democrats' position and sort of political will and all these things. They think that sort of Democrats are all powerful, and this is a, this is sort of of trickery and mind games in order to convince Republicans to go along with their great big elitist plan. But I think the reality is so much closer to what you said, which is that immigration has Democrats and Joe Biden kind of over a barrel here. They look weak. They need

to have some kind of compromise here because they also want Ukraine funding and this other foreign aid. And Republicans act as if they're in a better, they're in a better position and that Democrats are, you know, sort of, if they can only, if they can only push back harder, if Republicans can only hold the line just a little bit longer, then they can really get what they want. And what they don't realize is like, is the actual reality, Democrats have control of the Senate, they have the White House. They're also in kind of a bind. This is the moment to compromise. And they don't seem to be understanding the reality of the situation. They're sort of living in the narrative, the simulacrum that they're hearing back from people in conservative media. I saw this last night

on Fox. I believe it was Laura Ingram said something like, don't let, and I know we're talking about the bill here, but the failed impeachment of Mayorkas, the DHS secretary. It failed this week as well, which was sort of a one-two punch for Republicans in the House. And Laura Ingram said something to the effect of, and I can't find exactly what she said. She said, don't let this failure, you know, let you think that Republicans are losing. Republicans are winning. The truth is they're not winning. And in fact, they're letting. And in fact, they're letting victory slipped through their fingers for reasons that, for reasons. But Mike, can I, can I, I mean, in your tough assessment of, of Republican maneuvering,

I wonder if you're being too generous because your underlying assumption is that Republicans want to solve the problem. I don't think, there's very little evidence at this point that that is true. The reason that Republicans don't want this compromise is because they believe are more important that the putative leader of their party, Donald Trump, believes that this is advantageous for them. They do realize that Democrats are in a spot on immigration right now with Democratic mayors, Democratic legislators attacking a Democratic president because of the situation on the border and the inflow of migrants. Republicans are just saying we want the issue, which is the Sarah Isker assessment of the problem from the beginning. Okay, so here's my even darker, darker take after my two dark takes to Mike. My dark take to you, Steve, everything Mike said, right?

Like, this is Republicans grasping defeat from the jaws of victory. You know who's going to get blamed for it? Joe Biden and the Democrats, because no one actually pays attention to internal Hillary. negotiations. And so while I think that the Democrats now are mistaken, they're like, look, it was a win-win for them. Either they get a border deal under Joe Biden and he gets to say he, you know, he fixed the border, or they get to blame Republicans for walking away from the negotiation table. They are sorely mistaken about that. Nobody is paying attention. It's a pox on both houses. And when you ask people, they're going to go with their sort of gut knowledge of the two parties,

which is Democrats are weak on the border. Therefore, if the border is insecure, which is it is, it must be Democrats' fault. And there is nothing the Democrats can do about it, especially not with Joe Biden as their, you know, bully pulpit in chief who, you know, for instance, said he talked to Midderand last week. Yeah. And Helmut Cole, uh, yesterday, apparently said that he, yesterday said that he spoke, spoke to Helmut Cole. So I think you might be right, Sarah. Um, and, and this explains in part why, in addition to sort of Republican senators just losing their nerve and cowtowing to Donald Trump. I think this explains to a certain degree why they did what they did.

The one question I have, and I agree with you that people aren't going to pay the kind of attention to the back and forth on Capitol Hill that Democrats seem to hope they will, I'd say that the one thing that complicates matters a little bit is that, you know, usually when you have, a party and mass, do something for political reasons. You know, in this case, scuttle the kinds of reforms, even though they weren't exactly the kinds of reforms that Republicans might have prescribed, they are, you know, sort of by degree,

the kinds of reforms that Republicans have been talking about for a long time. So they propose this. They try to link border security to, you know, Ukraine funding, all of these other issues. issues, that happens, and then they sort of scuttle their own best efforts in an argument that it's not quite good enough. When something like that happens, it can be sort of embarrassing on its own, but you don't usually have the party doing it, acknowledge that they're doing it for political purposes. And what makes this different, maybe, I'm not sure it's different,

is that Republicans have been quite open about the fact that they're doing this for political purpose. Donald Trump said Republicans should not do this because I want the issue in effect. There was a Senate lunch, I think it was January 23rd. Mitch McConnell went into the Senate lunch and said, in effect, the political dynamics have changed here. Donald Trump doesn't want us to do this. We're not going to do this. Ted Cruz in the same Senate lunch, widely reported, said, we can't do this because we need to help the House majority of Republicans remain a majority. We don't to do this for political reasons to Mike Johnson. Again and again and again, you've had Republicans in public quite transparently say, we are doing this for political reasons. Now, you have mixed

in there some people saying, ah, we need more time to read the bills. Most of those people who said we need more time to read the bills didn't take the time to read the bills. They opposed it from the outset. But they at least made a claim that I'm sympathetic with that members of Congress should have time to read the bills. They would, they would layer in substantive challenges on occasion. But in effect, I think the message that comes out of the Republican Party over the past two weeks is we want the issue. We want the politics. The politics are better for us. So while I agree that, you know, absent all of this, the politics were probably better for Republicans, announcing that you think that this issue, which Republicans have made the focus, I mean,

arguably the number one issue for Republicans over the last eight years, you have a chance to, say, cut daily immigrant crossings in half. And you decide against doing that for the politics of it. Democrats might be able to make some hay with that. John, I want to give you the last word here. Yeah, you know, this might be naive that I'm still so interested in the policy debate, but I just am deeply frustrated that there was never a committee hearing where this would all be, this would all come out. It got very clear to what extent there were legitimate policy disagreements, to what extent it was political, you know, in an adversarial setting where you have experts. I've spent hours, you know, trying to talk to people on the other side, you know, people like Mark McCorion, who's a very, very strongly against this bill, you know, delving talking to people who argue, well, you know, the president actually has a sweeping authority, section 212F in the Immigration of Nationality Act, says he can remove any class of migrants, you know, that he sees fit for national security reasons. Now, the courts in 2018 are the, not the Supreme Court, but the lower courts have said, no, there's actually other parts of the INA.

Sarah, you can correct me on the law here. And the, you know, the Corcorian types, they say, well, actually, we think that once this got back after the Supreme Court, they would, you know, say that actually, you know, this power is really sweeping. And that Joe Biden screwed up by remaining in Mexico. Obviously, that's a negotiation with a foreign country. You know, whether Mexico would actually agree to keep people at these numbers is really remains to be seen. But again, there's so much frustration because there is an interesting policy debate that no one really wants to have. You know, if they wanted to have this, they would have had it over the course of several weeks in public rather than just, you know, pull the trigger, kill it, show that it's dead this week. So anyway.

Can I say something real quick on that? I mean, this is to me as the best argument the sort of opponents of this deal have, which is this is a perfect example of the way leadership in the Republican Senate likes to do. everything behind closed doors and then present it and say, come on. Now, come on, Republicans in the Senate. We've got to vote for this. I can sympathize with that. The problem is that I don't believe that the loudest voices who espouse that view actually believe it. I don't think that if there were an open debate that they would actually engage in it in good faith. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But that to me is the problem. It's why it's so frustrating for people like John who are interested in this. And I have to say that it seems that whether or not the politics

of this work out for, you know, better for Republicans or not, I do think we have responsibility to call out exactly what we've just been describing, which is that the Republicans are explicitly going, saying this is, this is political, this is why we're doing this. It does seem that in the current era, Republicans embrace kind of Machiavellian politics on the things that don't matter, on the things that are like, that are like, we win or we've owned the libs, or like, we have a majority. And on the things that do matter, the actual policies that they run on, and I know this sounds naive and sort of egg-hedy. But like, that's where like the, the ugly, dirty, you know,

gross stuff of politics should be happening to actually get something. And that's the point at which Republicans sort of throw up their hands and say, we don't want to do any of this. That's where they sort of get their principles. It's that, sorry, I know you said give the John the last word. That's my last word on this. Can I have one more last word? No, wait. Can I, can I, can I, can I, Can I have the last word now, too? No, John, you can have the last word, but let me just make a point. So let's be clear. It's not that I think Democrats have behaved admirably in this situation either.

I mean, these are the same Democrats who for three years told us there was no crisis and suddenly said, how dare you stop this legislation that solves this crisis that we said 20 minutes ago didn't exist? I mean, bad faith all around. Democrats deserve to be condemned for this. I think you can point to specific Biden policies that exacerbated the problems that he inherited. All of that is true. I don't think there's any question about that, and Democrats deserve to be condemned for that. But if you look at what the way that Republicans have handled this, and you go to the argument that John said, you know, Mark Krikorian and others are making, and I'm not speaking specifically to Krikorian's argument here, but sort of broadly that Joe Biden has these authorities.

He could be doing these things. he's not doing them, it's worth pointing out that there's now sort of murmurings out of the White House that Biden is going to take a stronger executive hand to implement some of these things. So there's a point to be made there. But at the same time, you know who said Congress has to be the body that drives immigration reform in order for it to be lasting? Donald J. Trump made that argument. So, of course, if you can strengthen the hand of the president to solve,

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was beat out by none of the above, sparking what I think is the best slogan of any political campaign ever, nobody beats Nikki. Okay, so let me try to give a quick explanation of this. Nevada, as a state, has, by law, requires presidential primaries for the parties. Any party that wants to hold a presidential election has to have these primaries. And that was on Tuesday. The state Republican Party in Nevada changed their rules and said we wanted to have a caucus and we wanted to have a sort of a little, it's not quite like the Iowa caucuses, but the sort of small meetings across the state to reward our delegates for the Republican National Convention. This was against state law, essentially. I don't think they're about to round up

the state chairman of Nevada, but it's sort of, again, the law in Nevada required this primary. That was the contest that Nikki Haley was on the ballot for, along with some other people who were no longer in the race like Mike Pence and Tim Scott. But the Republican Party of Nevada is holding this on 30. We're recording this on Thursday. It's happening today, this caucus that actually rewards the delegates required some insane amount of money. What is it like $50,000 or like 500,000? I don't even know what it is. Fact check me on that.

Some large amount of money from the campaigns in order to qualify for the caucuses. The caucuses were set up to give Donald Trump a victory. Nikki Haley did not shell out the money. She wasn't on the ballot for the caucuses. She's still lost in the primary. We shouldn't really compete in it, but a little bit of an embarrassment. And now we have the caucuses, in which we expect Donald Trump to win handily. But Nikki Haley's still out there, and she's still bringing in a lot of money from donors.

And she's still making a case, and frankly, a different case than the one she was making before these primaries really got underway. Have we written off her effort too soon just because it probably won't result in the eventual nomination in 2024? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think she has a very difficult and nearly impossible task in front of her. And even if there were an act of God that took Donald Trump out of the rest of the nominating process, I think it's likely that you'd see sort of his supporters and Maga World generally rewrite the rules of the Republican nominating process to prevent Nikki Haley from being the nominee. We've already seen them take steps to try to do that. I'm confident that they, would try to do that again, I think we can say without fear of contradiction at this point that they're not the strongest adherence of rules if it means eliminating their problems. Yeah, I mean, look, John and Mike have both at different times written, I think pretty persuasive reported pieces on why Nikki Haley is doing what she's doing still. She has claimed that she's wants to stay through her home state primary in South Carolina, that she wants to stay through

Super Tuesday. It does seem like she's enjoying herself. I mean, I think that's one of the arguments that you've heard from from Haley's team and Haley supporters is she's having a good time. She's sort of found her footing. She's enjoying her broad critique of Donald Trump. And it certainly is resonating with a chunk of the party. It's not likely to be a majority of the party. Um, and, uh, it's not likely to lead to her nomination, certainly, but she seems to be having fun, fun making it. Um, she does look like she's having a good time. Yeah, more than, more than, more than Chris Christie did when he, he had this sort of a similar role in a, in a sort of a tougher, angrier way. Nikki seems to be, seems to be liking this. And I know that

John, in your piece, that was one of the things you said is she's actually having a good time. This is sort of fun for her. Sometimes I think there's a tendency in our business to look at sort of the outcomes and reason back from the outcomes and say, man, she's not going to win. What is she doing? And this doesn't seem to be setting her up for 2028. I mean, if you were going to run for 2020, run in 2020, taking on the sort of Republican base in the way that she seems to be doing doesn't seem to be the way to do it unless you

are making the calculation that Donald Trump will lose. in 2024 lose embarrassingly and that other Republicans, conservatives will go back to being advocates of small government and principles and what have you. John, last word to you. I think Steve's really on to something here,

which is if you're a politician, I don't think people understand. Politicians are human beings. Can we fact check that actually? Yeah, but they're not quite the same as like normal human beings. Like there's a reason they went into this line of work. They love people. They're all extroverts. like more than even normal extroverts.

They're extra extroverts. They really, really get their energy from people. And so running for president is grueling. The hours, the staying in crappy hotels across the country, the wake-ups at 4 a.m. to do morning TV hits. And then, you know, you've got to drive at the end of the night, and it's 1 a.m. by the time you get to the next crappy hotel. That part's grueling.

But they love all the people and the events and the movies. and the constantness of it. So, you know, is Nikki out there having fun? Yeah, definitely. I think she's a real person. She's a real extroverts. You know, she's not a lizard person. She's having a lot of fun.

And I think, you know, I mean, why is she doing it? Yeah, I think she has nothing to lose. I mean, she, you know, like you said, she's going out there. She's building up a base admirers and supporters for whatever she wants to do, even if it's not in politics, to come next. In my first piece, I read a couple weeks ago, I did examine the possibility, you know, hey, is she actually making herself more attractive as a VP pick for Trump? And I know that there's all sorts of reason that he wouldn't do it. He wants a defense lawyer.

But just yesterday, a Marquette University Law School poll, the gold standard of Wisconsin, showed Trump 49, Biden 49 in Wisconsin, and the same pollster shows Haley 57 Biden 41. I mean, she is, she is appealing to a really big slice of, you know, the suburban, you know, college educated, independent, you know, moderate Republicans. You know, whether she, I think it is not much less likely the possibility that she would ever be VP. It sort of became moot after I wrote my article when she was asked about the E. Jean Carroll case and finally said, oh, yeah, I totally trusted jury. And I don't think you can quite walk. You can walk back voodoo economics, as George H.W. Bush did with. Reagan, but saying, yeah, I trust the jury that the presidential nominee committed heinous

sexual abuse against more likely than not in a civil case. I think that's one thing you can't have your VP saying. But whatever it is, you know, she's enjoying herself. She's going to see it through. And being runner up, being number two, you know, if Rhonda Stance has finished at 45% New Hampshire, he sure as heck would have stuck it out, even though, you know, these people ran when they thought they had one in a thousand chance of being president. So why not stick it out when you've got one in a hundred chance that, I don't know, something happens at Trump with legally or his age, and you've got some delegates, you roll into the convention, you know, you've got some wind behind your sales.

So, so yeah, I think that there's just no reason to drop out. There's no downside for her. All right, let's move on to our next topic. Mike, you and I have been spending our free time, putting that in quotes, reporting on the collision of Donald Trump's legal problems and his political. future and Joe Biden's, for that matter. We're expecting, actually, the report from special counsel Rob Her on Joe Biden's mishandling of classified information. Really any hour now, today, tomorrow, Attorney General Merrick Garland saying the report has finished and he'll be transmitting it to Congress

soon. But this week, we had the D.C. Circuit, a unanimous three-judge panel, reject Donald Trump's claim that he was immune from prosecution by Jack Smith for election interference in the run up to January 6th. It's, you know, not surprising that that was the result. I think that though what people have missed, there was sort of this like gleefulness on the left of like, aha, he's not immune. Now he will go to trial tomorrow. And that ain't it, man. The D.C. Circuit actually had an interesting order that came out like minutes later that people, didn't pay a lot of attention to, or if they did, they thought it was also a good thing, but they're missing why the D.C. Circuit felt the need to put out this order. So the order said

our mandate will issue, meaning the actual effect of this opinion will go into effect Monday, February 12th, unless Donald Trump wants to ask the Supreme Court to stay his trial, basically, in which case we'll just hold off until the Supreme Court says one way or the other whether he's going to have a trial while he's appealing to the Supreme Court. However, if he seeks review by the rest of the judges on the D.C. Circuit, called en banc review, then the mandate issues immediately and Judge Chuck can set the trial immediately. And again, everyone's like, aha, see, they're preventing him from delaying this. Yeah, kind of. First of all, I'm not sure any of that flies. But more importantly, no, they're telling you how much delay there is left that he can pull now. Um, there's,

basically three things that a appellant, the person who lost their appeal, can do after losing at the circuit court. They can ask for the panel to rehear it. Why a panel would rehear it? Nobody knows. I think it's a really weird move that people do sometimes. They can ask for the whole court to rehear it. All the judges together, you know, 15 or so on the D.C. Circuit. And then after both of those are done, then they've got 90 days to ask the Supreme Court to hear it. And then after that, the Supreme Court can ask for the views of the other side. And then they think about whether they want to take it. I mean, months and months and months. So even if Donald Trump has to skip directly to the Supreme Court, he's still got months. So look, I don't see the chances that any of

Donald Trump's trials were going to trial before the election. I've said we're always below 50%. that number is creeping down precipitously this week. Yes, I will object sort of practically and say it does, I think it is possible that the New York criminal trial will, I mean, now there's sort of an open lane here for the next couple of months for Alvin Bragg's case, the hush money case, which is a criminal case, to move forward. So we could see a trial in New York,

which has long been seen as sort of politically and perhaps legally on the shakiest ground for getting Trump, for sort of bringing him to heal. I don't know. Look, I do not pretend to be a lawyer even on podcasts, but I'm a little more open than I think you are to the idea that we could still have this trial. I mean, it's a question that I have still, which is, at a certain point, are the courts going to tolerate from the Trump team, these continuous politically motivated efforts to slow things down? The problem here for me is that everybody's sort of politically compromised here. Jack Smith wants to get this, this DC election interference case off the ground before the election.

Donald Trump wants to delay it until past the election. You know, at a certain point, from a layman's perspective, the cards can't all be in Donald Trump's hands. You may differ on this era, but if Chuckkin is able to set a trial date, let's say, an early summer, that doesn't seem. entirely out of the realm of possibility. And why won't that happen? Why won't she be able to set a trial date in early summer? So it's mid-February now, and he gets the 90 days to go to the Supreme Court. So he runs those 90 days.

Then, and this is, by the way, this is assuming, to your point, Mike, that the Supreme Court does say that they're going to hold off the trial starting until he is able to appeal this to the Supreme Court. that makes sense, right? There is some chances Supreme Court could just say, like, nope, the trial can go on and we'll deal with your appeal whenever it happens or not, but might as have to try. And I think we have to consider that as a real possibility. Maybe you think that's unlikely, but I think it's in these, it's in the decision tree of what can happen. It's in the decision tree. I think it's very, very unlikely because, you know, it's very easy for all of us to see this as the political machinations around the election and he just wants to delay everything. But this is also the normal course for basically everyone who loses an appeal. Sometimes they're going to want

things to move really quickly, and sometimes they're going to want things to move really slowly based on their own interests. You know, especially for criminal defendants, if you're not in jail, you're pretty good with continuing to not be in jail. So wanting to delay things, not unusual. And so to treat Donald Trump differently is to treat him special, sometimes good, sometimes bad. So I think the Supreme Court absolutely will be considering how they would treat a normal person who, yeah, they want to run out the clock on their appeal because maybe they don't have to pay the $500 million judgment against them until the Supreme Court rules or whatever else. So that's just not unusual. That being said, it is unusual to get to go up to the Supreme Court before you've had your trial. And I think there's been some confusion about this because most criminal defendants, you have your trial and then you've got your appeal.

after you're convicted, you know, they shouldn't have used this evidence against me or the prosecutor did this or this wrong or this juror was biased, whatever that is. That happens after, right? So why is Donald Trump getting to go up beforehand? Doesn't that mean he's being treated special? The answer to that is no, but it's also not, it's a little hard to explain without sounding like a total egghead weirdo and going into the precedent of Midland Asphalt. Why stop now, Sarah? That's that always stops, Sarah. So can I jump in with a sort of a level-setting basic question as a stand-in for our readers who might not be, or listeners who might not be following every twist and turn of all this? Going back to a point that Mike that you made.

So Sarah suggests that this is likely to be delayed, you know, that some of this really could get pushed out to the point where, you know, we don't see these things even before the election. There's been a recent polling that suggests most voters, including most Republicans, are not paying careful attention to this. Do not, did not even know about the details of these cases. And Mike, as you said, this seems to potentially create an open path for the Alvin Bragg case, the weakest, I think, on the merits, the most political on appearances to sort of live in the spotlight, to move forward and live in the spotlight. spotlight. One of the arguments that we've heard, and I think it's true about the indictments and the galvanizing effect that they had for Republican voters looking at Donald Trump, the voters who were paying attention to this, the activist based the Republican Party, is that because the Bragg case went first, and it was the weakest and the most political, they rallied to Donald Trump's

side and said, this is crazy. This shouldn't be happening. And Trump benefited tremendously from the fact that that was the first of these and that the more serious and substantive cases with respect to the fake electors, the classified documents, were then seen through the prism of this political triple bank shot case in New York. Is he getting lucky again? Well, yeah, I mean, he's, don't you know about the various voodoo rituals that he's done? He gets, they all go his way. It goes back to something that happened in the 70s. No, I Like, I see what you're saying. I've actually, I've been more skeptical than maybe anybody on the podcast has been about the counterfactual.

If they had indicted him on the documents case first, that then Republican primary voters would have taken the indictments and the criminal, potential criminality of Donald Trump more seriously. The Bragg indictment just happened to be sort of the most politically motivated, but I kind of don't buy it. It seems like Republican primary voters were primed to want to take Donald Trump's side and to believe that any criminal, any effort to bring him up on criminal charges was unfair and targeted and that they needed to rally around him. So I actually think, but I'll stipulate the point that the Bragg case did sort of do that for Republican. primary voters. I do wonder if this opening for the brag case and sort of laying it all out, it's kind of this gross stuff with payments to Stormy Daniels and whether they were hushed money and all this stuff, I do wonder if it's a good look for Donald Trump with a general election audience. That to me is the big difference. Republican primary voters live in a different world than general election voters do. And I wonder if the details of that case of hearing every time you hear about Donald Trump, let's say in the months of, you know, April and May,

when he's wrapping things up, if not already wrapped it all up for the Republican nomination, if everything we hear about him is about hush money to a porn star. You know, I'm not saying I know that that's how it will go that his numbers will drop precipitously in these general election polls. I'm just saying we don't know, and it hasn't really been tested. And so it does bring up some interesting political

questions about the effect of sort of opening this up for the most politically motivated, but kind of the most salacious of all of the trials. And obviously next week we'll have the hearing for Fannie Willis, the Georgia prosecutor. Speaking of Trump getting

lucky. Oh, I mean, that, that to me, when you say Trump getting lucky, he wasn't the only one getting lucky. Wow. Hey, wait. I'm here. This is not supposed to go off the rails when I'm here. Isn't that the joke? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I couldn't help. It's like I'm the, I'm the no fun whistle. I'm the scold and you guys can have fun when I'm gone. I get this. You know, I didn't listen to that podcast obviously when I wasn't there, but I get it. We can only use, I wrote the employee handbook and we can only use innuendo from the 1930s. That's that there's a closet I'm pretty sure. Mike should be well prepared

for that. He's a, he's a 70-year-old trapped in a 38-year-old's body. That's true. That's true. Fonnie Willis, the prosecutor in Georgia was accused by one of Trump's co-defendants, Mike Roman, of being in a relationship with one of these special counsels that she hired. And look, there's two things that that's going to turn on that Mike and I are watching for next week. Fonnie Willis has now filed. with the court under penalty of perjury that the relationship did not start before she hired him as a special counsel on that case. And two, that he is compensated the same as the other two special

councils that she hired. If either of those two things turn out to be false, not only is it a big problem for all of this case moving forward, it will be a huge professional problem for Fannie Willis, who will have lied to the court, Mike Roman's lawyer seems to say that they will have witnesses that will testify that both of those things were false, in fact, that the relationship started years ago and that he is being compensated differently

and more than the other two special counsels. So, Mike, I guess, you know, no one's going to really pay attention in the weeds of this, but they're definitely paying attention, I think, to the swirl to once again, like whether it's Michael Avanotti or Fonnie Willis or Alvin Bragg. the people who would go after Donald Trump are, you know, they're not just not pure as the driven

snow. They're like the greasy oil black sludge on the side as it turns out. And it makes Donald Trump look like the victim. Yeah, that's right. And this is really, this is an area where Donald Trump really has, keeps winning by having the worst enemies or from his perspective, the best enemies. It's, you know, I think there's a pay. path for Fannie Willis to even, even whatever this, this evidence suggests for her to essentially say, you can't prove that we were in a relationship because the two of us defined when we were in a relationship. I don't know. I mean, I'm saying, I'm saying there's a way she can lawyer her way out of this and stay on the case, because that's the question, right? Will she

be disqualified from prosecuting the case? In which, in which case, a whole new prosecutor has to be appointed. That's a long process. And they get a chance to look at the evidence in Fulton County again and decide whether to change anything in the prosecution. But even if she holds onto this, you know, this was seen generally as maybe a little ambitious to go this RICO route to sort of charge all these Trump people and Trump with racketeering on election interference. But the substance of it was seen as, yeah, there's substance here. I think that, no matter what happens to Fannie Willis, that goes away from this point forward.

And Trump wins again. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace, brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates

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services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right. Last up, not worth your time. I just want to be clear here. I wanted to talk about the first quasi-moon to get a name Zuzvi,

Venus's quasi-moon now officially named by a typo, basically. Its actual name was 20-02-V-E, and an artist put it on a map for children's like, you know, decal wallpaper, you know, behind the crib, and instead of

twos, thought it was zoos, and named it Zuzvi on the map, and that child's map happened to be another podcast, Latif Nasser from Radio Lab, and he was like, wait, there's a moon around Venus that I didn't know about. He contacts NASA. NASA's like, no, there's not. And they go on this wild hunt for what Zuzvi is, only to find out it was this typo. But it ends happily because now Zuzvi really does

have a name. I'm so excited. It's definitely worth your time. Steve, don't you agree? I mean, I love that Sarah said, I really wanted to do this thing and then spent two hours, two minutes It's doing this thing about the lunar cofeve. I guess that's what this thing is, right? So, no, you're not doing that for changing. First of all, I need to point out, and neither John nor Mike picked up on this, which I suppose speaks well of them. But moments after Sarah talked about only allowing 1930s innuendo, she said the Fannie Willis

case will turn on these two things. Oh, my, Steve. Yeah. Pretty bad. Look at that. Pretty bad. Nothing gets by me. So we are not going to talk about, uh, about Sarah's moon stuff.

Um, instead, we need to make fun of Sarah for, um, this is something that happened yesterday. I'm sure our, our most perceptive, uh, podcast listeners will note that we spent, I don't know, it probably wasn't half of the podcast, but, you know, well over a third of the podcast on things that might more appropriately fit on another podcast that I'm told the dispatch sponsors. This podcast is called advisory opinions. It's been, it's been taking place for a while now, I'm told. And it has some listeners, including some listeners who are, I profile people in the conservative legal world. The good news is I found out all about this podcast

because I read it in a New Yorker profile, which made it sound like it actually might be worth listening to. But there was a profile about this podcast, and our host is here, Sarah Isker, in The New Yorker. and it was, I have to say, an incredibly favorable profile for a center-right person in what is a pretty left-leaning publication. Sarah, what was your, we're going to put the profile in the show note. This New York piece makes it sound like you're sort of the Supreme Court whisperer.

And while I know about your contacts in the legal world, you are as plugged in as this profile makes you seem. It helps us understand what's going on and helps us do reporting on this. Is it the case that you're really running things at the Supreme Court as a casual reader might take away from the piece? You know I'm not running things at the Supreme Court? because it described me as a gadabout and I had to Google that. I had never heard that word before. I liked that. It was that that word jumped out at me.

Is that a common just riff on gadfly? What is a gadabout? A gadabout is, again, I'm reading to you now from what I found on Google, but someone who flits about a lot of places and a lot of circles. You don't deny that. Yeah. It's a cat about description, I think. You're a gut about.

You're a gut about. knees. I've never seen you flit, but I mean, you are in lots of circles. I'm a flitter, Steve. Yeah, I flit all the time. No, it was really fun. So, I mean, this is like, what was cool about this to me is that the reporter is a longtime listener. He's listened to every episode of the podcast. His sister's a lawyer. And so he got into it so he could have these conversations with his sister. And so to have sort of one of our listeners and be like, oh, I'm going to write a profile about this so that other people know about this podcast. For me, it was actually cooler than just having like some reporter who heard about it and like wanted to write some profile. I think that's why

a certain love of the pod comes across is because he was a podcast listener first and an AO fan first and then decided to write the profile. So I'm incredibly grateful to Kay. He spent like six months working on this piece and, you know, I, it's awkward. I feel really weird when people say nice things about me and I will tell you like I'm sure this is the funny thing about podcasts I guess is I can't see everyone listening and so I feel like I can just actually say things that I would never say if I could see people's faces but I'll tell you my like actual reaction yesterday was weird and I don't know like dark but it just feels very strange it you're not like yeah cool you're like I don't know this is like really weird

Scott was like checking on me. He's like, I don't understand like you're acting like something really bad happened today. But I'm super grateful because I feel like he captured the joie de vivre of the gadabout life. He did. I think he did a good job from what I'm told, from what I'm told the podcast. John, I'm like, did you guys know about this podcast? Have you ever listened to this before? You know, I feel like my podcast player, like it stumbled on.

on it at some point and I like was driving in the car and I couldn't change anything. It might have been recommended for you because you listen to the dispatch podcast, right? I mean, makes sense. Right. Possibly. Possibly. No, I it's I in all seriousness and and it is it is a great podcast. It was very clear that, uh, the author is a listener just from reading it. Um, and, and, and had that as you said, Sarah, love for it. I mean, uh, I, um, I, um, I, um, I, I find this particular writer. Of course, what I want to do is now direct our attention to the guy who wrote the article,

not the subject of the article, of course. Yeah, no. Kay's incredible. He normally writes about, I mean, he writes about music. Writes about music. Like his profile of George Strait is the other Texan that he's written about. So it's like me and George Strait. Yeah, it's like the two of you.

In fact, I was going back and I emailed him about that George Strait profile, whenever that was like eight years ago, just to tell him how much I'd love. loved it. And not to make this all about me, but he wrote back to say that he was a reader of mine back when I was at the Weekly Standard. And so I feel like for a sort of for a lefty rag like the New Yorker, which I love the New Yorker, but it's a, you know, it's a left-wing kind of opinion journal. He seems to be, he seems to be conservative, curious, interested in what the people on the center right have to say. So he's, uh, he's, he's, he's great. And go read that George straight profile by him, by the way. It's, it's so, it's so good. We'll put it in the show

notes too. Wait, Mike, I have an important question. This is serious because the joke about Steve not listening to the podcast is funny because it's true. Correct. Correct. Steve does not listen to the podcast. You just sort of said that you did and I'm actually very curious because, like, I'm going to call you out right now. Do you actually listen to the podcast? I'm not a regular listener. And, and, And but on, because here's the thing, I cannot, I cannot understand when you guys dig in to what's happening in a, you know, in a state, you know, court, appellate court for some case, like, that I can't, I can't get into it. But on the big stuff, whenever there's just, like, whenever there's a Supreme Court, a big Supreme Court case, like, A.O. was the first place I go. I remember sitting, I think it was sitting on a beach when Dobbs came down. And the first place I went to was to hear you and David talking about it.

I definitely listened to it when the Dobbs League happened because I wanted to see what you guys, what tea leaves you could read and all of that stuff. It's a great show. So that's what I think of that. John, have you ever listened to it? At the beginning of this podcast, I mentioned A.O. I said, if anybody wants a really in-depth discussion of the policies actually at stake with asylum policy, I would say go to the, what would be the January 30th episode. I thought that was great.

And that is the kind of, it's just deeply frustrating that that kind of in-depth discussion was not actually held in the greatest deliberative body that you have to go to. This, you know, not even the flagship podcast. This obscure niche podcast. Yes. It's the new greatest deliberative body. Let's call AEO the new greatest deliberative body. Well, let me protest. Let me end by saying it is not true.

Sir, I just have to fact check you on this because unlike whatever that other podcast is, we believe in truth and facts here on the dispatch podcast. It's not accurate to say that I don't listen to advisory opinions. I have listened to advisory opinions. on multiple occasions. I know you listened to one episode because I got in trouble. Like you were like,

on multiple occasions. Yeah, well, actually, it's sort of an interesting, I mean, this is probably way too in the weeds and people won't be that interested in it. But, you know, it's funny as I was reading that profile yesterday, I was thinking, man, am I glad? I didn't push Sarah and David

to do the podcast I wanted them to do, honestly, right? I mean, my podcast was much more sort of like, can you take these complicated legal issues from Supreme Court on down and explain them first and foremost as your first job to non-legal listeners? And, you know, I would say in a way that's sort of been typical of the way that you've handled me from the beginning, Sarah, you kind of nodded in my direction. and then just did your own thing anyway. And while I do think, all jokes aside, I do think one of the things that advisory opinions does well is it does often stop and say, okay, for non-lawyers here, this is what this means.

And that is helpful. But you've also, I mean, you call it legal nerdery. Do you know we say it that way? Because a lot of lawyers actually also don't remember that stuff. But we try to be nice to them and say we're doing it for the non-lawyers. lawyers, but in fact, we're doing it for the lawyers who just, like, do other. Okay, so this might actually be interesting to our listeners. So this, in four and a half years of doing the dispatch, this is sort of one of the key insights

of the entire business, of the entire enterprise, is we do that with the morning dispatch. We do that with a lot of the pieces that we write. We introduce these explanatory elements. We often tell people, take an extra sentence or two and explain the context here. And, you know, we do it in dispatch politics newsletter. do it elsewhere. And the number of people in Washington who work in these areas who say one of the reasons I like what you all do so much is because you take the time to explain this. I get that feedback regularly. I got it at a dinner the other night. And it's the most gratifying feedback we get

about everything we do. But I think you're right, Sarah. You know, it is just helpful to take that time to explain it. But having said that, you and David took the podcast in a direction that wasn't the the thing that I sort of urged you to do. And it really has worked. So kudos to you. I do think the profile captured the spirit of advisory opinions, at least the episode I listened to. And I think it's, I'm proud that it's one of the four best podcasts we put out here at the dispatch.

And with that, thank you all so much for listening to this podcast. But yeah, no, definitely go listen to A-O, ditch this one. this one's the worst um no thank you all so much for listening and we'll have so much to talk about next week because it i don't know it feels like we're in this season of news every day um it the hits just keep on coming so more next week chow You know,