The Dispatch Podcast - ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

On today’s podcast, our hosts discuss the Republican Party’s decision to censure two of its own members, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, over their involvement in the January 6 investigation. Plus, a growing list of states have lifted their mask mandates. What’s changed?   Show Notes: -TMD: “Republicans Choose Their Corners in the January 6 Brawl” -The Sweep: “Did McCain-Feingold Ruin America?” -National Journal: “Biden is blowing his COVID moment” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, David French. And this week, we are going to dive in to what in the world happened to the Republican Party over the weekend. Not that it's only the weekend, but it felt like this weekend was a little on fleak. Do we still say that?

And then we'll talk about states lifting their mask mandates. Democratic governors, has it been a change in science? or is it a change in politics? Let's dive right in. Steve, do you want to walk us through the weekend or shall I? Why don't you do the honors this time? Or Jonah did. He has a good column about it.

Ooh. Um, sure. Uh, once again, I'm, I fall victim to Steve Sloth and Gile. Um, we, and, uh, um, so yeah, so the Republican Party, Republican National Committee, uh, decided that it was largely driven by folks like, uh, Dave Bossie, who was a delegate, uh, that it was, it was vital, vital to censure, uh, Liz Cheney and Adam Kiddziger, and for their apostasy in working with the January 6th Committee. The publicly facing arguments for why this was necessary was to show that the Republican Party is unified and to highlight the fact that the January 6th Committee is a partisan endeavor. They didn't quite clear that hurdle.

Instead, the amazing thing was that, okay, so I think the censure thing was stupid, but there's a certain superficial, plausible logic to what they were trying to do. But then, like the dog from Looney Tunes who walks out into the field of garden rakes, they phrased the resolution in such a way that, so first of all, for days leading up to the meeting on the resolution, everyone's talking about January 6th, and their whole point of this thing was to keep people, was to make it so that people don't talk about January 6 anymore. And then, so they're talking about January 6th. And then they phrase this resolution in such a way that no one's actually talking about

the censure of Cheney and Kitzinger anymore because they so beclown themselves with this resolution by saying, just, what do you lawyers say? I'm going to have to bill you for that. No, what do you say, like within the four corners of the page or whatever? it just flatly says that January 6 was legitimate political discourse. That is like the fair SAT reading comprehension way to read it. And so all the Sunday shows, everybody's talking about that. And now every Republican, elected Republican in America,

was put in the situation of actually having to take a position on January 6 and talk about January 6 because of an enterprise that was designed, to make it so that the Republican Party would have a unified front about January 6th. It was a pot de de de dee of assinity and stupidity of the first order. And it was really something spectacular to behold. And so now we've seen the Republican Party bigwigs split over this. It's some of New York Times calling a food fight. Some are calling it sort of a civil war.

Mitch McConnell is basically taking the side of truth and saying that the January 6th is what it was. And it's just a glorious thing to behold. So, Steve, what are your big takeaways from this? I mean, assuming that you actually came here to work and participate in the conversation. David, what are your big takeaways? All right, all right. Wait, first, I have big takeaways. Go ahead, sir.

I want to read a couple parts of what Joan is referring to. We'll call these the Jonah footnotes. Here is the line from the resolution, whereas representatives Cheney and Kinsinger are participating in a Democratic-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both utilizing their past professional affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes, therefore be it resolved, etc. Also, I want to read what Mitch McConnell said. He called January 6th, quote, a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next and on the resolution said

traditionally, the view of the National Party Committee is that we support all members of our party regardless of their positions on some issues. Okay, those are my footnotes. Steve, though, look, the Republican National Committee, you know, there's 168 voting members of the Republican National Committee. These are not sort of political operatives. They're like, want to be congressmen usually or, you know, state reps, things like that.

There's three per state. And for those doing quick math in your head, there's also territories. That's how you get to 168. There's the state party chair person. And then there's like best boy and best girl, the, you know, one of each per person. state and territory. And they're the only people who get to vote on this. They draft these resolutions. They vote on these resolutions. And the role of the staff is to, you know, to use my sweeping metaphor, to furiously sweep the ice and try to get rid of the stuff that is really,

really bad. And in talking to RNC staff, what they said was like they were so furiously sweeping around the Cheney Kinzinger part of this that they really didn't notice the legitimate political discourse. But Steve, to me, the word legitimate, I immediately get flashbacks to 2012. I mean, it's exactly the same thing playing over again. And it's really funny that it's the same word to me. Because in 2012, Republicans didn't want to step on the abortion rake. And then you have Todd Aiken out there who's like, well, look, there's legitimate rapes. And then there's other stuff. And then every Republican can. had to discuss whether they think all rapes are legitimate and all sorts of other. And it arguably,

and not that arguably, by the way, cost Republicans two seats in the Senate in 2012. Missouri, it cost them for sure. Arguably, it cost them Indiana as well. And these weren't like close calls. These were two of the most winnable seats in the Senate. And so here we have the word legitimate again. and I just really that didn't raise any alarm bells anytime you're having to say something's legitimate like republicans should be like spidey spider alert yeah so there's a there's a lot to talk about there we'll start with the politics of this everybody expects that republicans will do well in 2022 certainly it's the case that that most voters you just saw joe biden's approval rating dip below 40% in the real clear politics average for the first time voters are concerned

about the economy, about inflation, about all sorts of other stuff that takes priority over this kind of insider back and forthing. But to Jonah's point, I mean, the level of incompetence here is breathtaking. And, you know, I believe that some R&C stats, were looking carefully at the language, I find it frankly hard to believe that they somehow just missed legitimate political discourse because they think it's legitimate political discourse. That's where the party is now. That's where the spin is now. They have tried to recast what happened on January 6th as either legitimate. Some of them saying, look, this is, this is legitimate. What do you expect people to do what an election is stolen? What have you? Or as the work

of nefarious government agents stoking this thing. Let me provide the RNC pushback on that just so you can respond to it, which is that the legitimate political discourse they're referring to is not what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, but that of the 168, six of those people got subpoenaed. And from the January 6th committee related to, you know, their, quote, legitimate political discourse, having nothing to do with what happened on January 6th at the Capitol. They weren't in D.C. They weren't at the Capitol. And so they're saying that's the sort of persecution that they're referring to. Think about that. Think about that, though.

That drives me crazy. Stop for a second. That's amazing. What they are saying is legitimate political discourse is the impaneling of fake electors to steal an election. That's what they're calling legitimate political discourse. This is one of those moments where I don't think we could quite say this, the spin that they're trying to, what they're trying to make us believe is worse than the actual first claim. I don't think it's worse, but it's bad because they're saying we put together these panels of fake electors to send them to Washington to try to, they would say, you know, or to use president's Trump, Trump's phrasing, overturn an election. It's fake. It's all fake. They were trying to steal an election. It's a soft coup. We can't

really dispute that anymore. That's what this was. And for the Republican National Committee to say that that's what they meant instead of trying to normalize or legitimize the sacking of the capital, what Mitch McConnell calls the violent insurrection, is so stupid I mean, it's like hard to, it's hard to even explain how stupid it is. It's that sort of manifestly stupid. We should get David in here, though. No, I'm really enjoying this conversation. Lazy sloth like Jonah.

I have to be honest. I'm just really enjoying this conversation. I mean, look, you know, I'm reminded of in 2020, lots of folks on the right, they saw Trump's vulnerabilities, and I remember them just chortling as they would highlight all of these sort of crazy stories from the Democrats, like so-and-so wants to completely defund the police. Oh, someone's canceled for opposing defund the police or that there is, you know, we're talking about birthing persons and things like that. And there was this refrain that a lot of folks on the right used in 2020, which was all the Democrats have to do is not be crazy. And they can't

do that. They can't do that. And I'm thinking about 2022, and smarter Republicans like Mitch McConnell are thinking, hey, guys, we kind of have this. Like, everything is breaking in our favor in any sort of normal political environment. Biden is way underwater. There's a lot of discontent that when Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way in which that was mishandled, alienated Americans, punctured the myth of competence. We have this. And we're doing what again? We're talking about what? We're talking about January 6th is legitimate political discourse. All we have to do is not be crazy. All we have to do is not be crazy. And it feels like if you're somebody like McConnell who's just been through the political wars and has seen possible Senate

majorities evaporate when Republican primary voters, for example, nominate somebody who's, quote, not a witch. And you're looking at this and you're saying, what are we doing here? And the question that I have, really, and the interesting thing is, and Sarah raised this in the sweep, because, and I think you should go, readers go read the sweep, if you say, if you say, let's not be crazy, do you get your head chopped off. Is it to the point where you have got to at least pay some lip service? You certainly can't use the I-word insurrection. And McConnell's not going to go kowtow to Tucker Carlson on Fox like Ted Cruz did. So McConnell's not going to do that. But is the primary electorate to such a space? And this, I would encourage you to read the sweep and Sarah's analysis of this

really comprehensive poll of Ohio Republican primary voters who are turning. on J.D. Vance, who has been furiously bear-hugging Donald Trump because Vance is not perceived as Trumpy enough. Are we at a point where in the primary electorate, the command and parts of the GOP's just don't do crazy stuff? Not only doesn't work, it gets your head chopped off within the larger Republican Party. That's my question. And I want to add to that question for Sarah on this just for a second. You have the most personal experience with like R&C world, like the actual human beings in corporeal space who do that.

It was my job to read these resolutions. Yeah. And before I get that, I told Steve about this and he didn't believe me. There's a line in the resolution that I really love where it says the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress has. have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism and then it adds a bunch of things. And one of the things they are doing deliberately is create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren. So like the accusation is kind of

like they're doing that on purpose. Like yes, we're stealing an American dream from our children and grandchildren. It's working everybody. But the question I have is sort of related to that is my recollection back the only time I ever dealt with R&C stuff was in the early 90s for reasons that are complicated to get into but my impression back then was they were there were hacks but they were a different kind of hack they were like they were afraid of the Christian right they were they were they were part of the country club captivity of the Republican Party the sort of mainstream Republicans, the Bushies, that kind of stuff with a little bit of the Reaganite, but like end of Reagan era Reaganite, which means that they'd all been sluiced through actual government positions, not like populists in the 1970s Reaganite.

And now it seems like the RNC is like the most icelandia of the most hardcore Trump types. And is the nature of the kind of, is it, put this way, is the, is the nature of the Republican National Committee actually reflective of the broader issue in the primaries that we're talking about? Or is it just that these are handpicked, you know, loyalists from Trump and they actually are not representative of what's actually happened to the GOP? So actually neither of those. the R&C members, I think you can think of as, first of all, they're grass tips people from their states. You know, in Texas, I think of the, you know, the Texas Republican Women Federation of Republican Women

is like the most powerful group in Texas because now I'm going to really date myself, but like they're the ones licking the stamps to put on your envelopes and you need them. And so the, like, leader of the Texas Federation Republican women would be someone who would be the state party chair, for instance. So that's one part of how you want to think about them. Grass tips of state Republican politics. As opposed to grassroots. Can you explain what grass tips are? Yeah. Yeah. So grassroots are like highly involved volunteers. Grass tips are the leaders of those volunteers. They were volunteers and now they

like command the volunteers type thing. So we call them grass tips. But also, there's a lag right Jonah you're even talking about how in the 90s they were Reagan people so in order to become a state party chairman you were in the grassroots and worked your way up to the top of the grass and that takes time so you're actually like a distant star reflecting what the party looked like five to 10 years ago in this case I actually think that's about right what you're actually seeing is the 2012-ish Tea Party Republican Party, I think being reflected largely in the 168, which has its own problems. There are some Trump people, but it's almost like the same way that the Tea Party people. Right? I mean, like... Yeah, yeah. The Tea Party became

the Trump people. But I think there's two interesting things here for me. One... The Republicans are favored to take back the House by a lot and probably take back the Senate, though it's a closer call. And if the Mitch McConnell's of the world, if the Mike Pence's of the world want to get their point out there that Trump was wrong, that this isn't the future of the party, they need to start resetting expectations so that when the Republican Party only takes 20 seats in the house, they can point to real data that shows that the Republican Party should have taken 40 seats in the house, but for Trump and his minions turning off voters. That's one thing. But the second thing is also, you know, David reminded me talking about that

Ohio primary. Yes, so many of these people seem to be a forade of Donald Trump. And maybe let me explain why, you know, Mike Pence goes out and gives a speech this past weekend. also saying something he'd been saying, but it got a lot more attention, I think, in light of the RNC resolution, that Trump was wrong, that there was nothing more un-American than the idea that one person

could change the outcome in an American election, et cetera. Trump then puts out a statement attacking Mike Pence, saying, no, Mike Pence is an idiot. And by the way, quote, the country's going to hell. I now feel like

I finally have my hands around enough data to say that all of these Republicans candidates and operatives are misreading this. For instance, we know that Trump's endorsement doesn't do a whole lot, but that Trump's attacks do hurt candidates. Well, why would that be if all these people are just like Trump is their leader and they're following Trump? The endorsement should mean as much as the negative, but it doesn't. And so here's my theory. What we have is also something that we're seeing internationally,

like rise of populist movements. So you have to find a reason that fits all of the data you have. The 2008 financial crisis was worldwide. And so you have disaffected, angry voters in all sorts of Western countries and even non-Western countries, for that matter. The causal era goes the other way.

Those voters picked Trump. Trump didn't pick those voters. Those voters are real. candidates who want to win election as a Republican right now need to bear in mind that that's a big chunk of their primary voters. But Donald Trump is actually somewhat irrelevant to that. There's a reason they booed him, for instance. There's a reason his endorsements don't really seem to matter. His attacks do matter. And that's because these people are angry. They're looking for enemies. And when Donald Trump says there's an enemy, they're like, great, more enemies.

They're pro having enemies. And so when you're, when again, when you're Michigan, McConnell, who I've said this before, I just think will be remembered as one of the most brilliant political strategists of, you know, American history probably. Mitch McConnell gets that. He has no problem attacking Donald Trump or pushing back on Donald Trump is probably a better way of putting it. And these candidates would be smart to think carefully about that. The 168 would be smart to think carefully about that. Stop thinking of Donald Trump is your audience. He's not. The primary voters are and that's a problem. But the causality, causal arrow, I think, points the exact opposite way, as too many of these people think. Well, let me just pick up on something you said there.

I mean, I agree with a lot of what you said. I think Mitch McConnell, I don't know that it's accurate to say that he's not afraid to pick a fight with Donald Trump or to have a fight with Donald Trump. Not afraid is probably right, but he doesn't, he's not looking to do it. Mitch McConnell would rather not be talking about Donald Trump, which is the irony of all of this is that, remember, they threw out Liz Cheney from the House Republican conference leadership because she was looking backwards. And we said at the time, she's not the only one looking back. Donald Trump is looking backwards. He's obsessed with this. And as long as he's the de facto leader of the Republican Party, he's going to make the party look backwards. And here we are, what, eight months

later, seven, eight months later, and look at what Donald Trump is doing. He's making everybody look backwards. Mitch McConnell would rather not be talking about this. Kevin McCarthy is literally running from reporters to avoid talking about this. And I think it's a huge problem. There's an upside, I think, a real upside coming, but I want to make one additional factual point about what happened. There's also, and this has been kind of widely overlooked, but it speaks to the extremism of some of the activists who are part of that 168 member RNC, the person leading this charge or the charge against Cheney is a guy named Frank Ethorn, who's the head of the Wyoming Republican Party. He's also a member of the oathkeepers. The same oathkeepers that

have been charged with seditious conspiracy related to charged with legitimate political discourse. Legitimate political discourse, which law enforcement, for whatever reason, sees as seditious conspiracy. Now, Ethorn himself hasn't been charged, but leaders of the oathkeepers have. He is a member of the oathkeepers, and he's also a member of the RNC. So he is pushing to purge Liz Cheney, to censure her that he would have been happier if they had thrown her out of the party altogether. But they did something, which goes a little bit further. They wrote a letter, signed a Rule 11 letter, which formally designates her opponent,

her Republican opponent, Harriet Hagamon, as the Republican nominee for her seat, basically saying, effectively saying votes don't matter. The primary doesn't matter. We are saying she's the nominee, Liz Cheney's out. It's ironic as they talk about, you know, stealing elections, as they talk, you know, make up claims about stealing elections on behalf of Donald Trump, they are, and defending fake electors to overturn a legitimate election, they are actually keeping, try and keep voters from having any effect in that primary in Wyoming. Last quick point.

What's really interesting to me is that we're seeing a crackup here in the Republican Party. I think it's been coming for a long time. We wondered when it would be more public. But so many of the people who have been saying behind the scenes sort of were done with Donald Trump, we don't want him anymore. This is, he's bad for us. He's bad for the party. But have held their tongues are now speaking out. And speaking out pretty bold ways.

I mean, you saw Mike Pence, who's, you know, complicated for 100 reasons, gave a speech in which he said Donald Trump was wrong, but also about his ability to overturn the election, but also crazy. But I mean, he went, he went beyond that. Like, that was not just a mistake. Like Donald Trump was mistaken. He was on point on that. Yes. He was aggressive and tough, but also saying Donald Trump's praise, which is a little. be a little disorienting.

But you've now seen, I mean, if you look at the senators who have spoken out about this, about the censure, I mean, it wasn't just Mitch McConnell. It's Lisa Murkowski, who might have been expected to. She voted for impeachment. Mitt Romney, he also voted for impeachment. But John Cornyn, a Republican leader, John Thune, basically spoke down about it. Shelly Moore Capital, also in leadership. Joni Ernst.

You've had Lindsey Graham had sort of a soft rebuke of Donald Trump on these things. I think you're seeing frustrations bubble up that have been there for a long time and people are finding their voice because they can see a scenario in which Donald Trump, by making this all about themselves and by pushing his fake election conspiracies, does to Republicans what in 2022, what he did to the two. Republican senators or would-be senators in Georgia in 2020? I just want to do a footnote on Rule 11 letters because, look, Steve, Rule 11 letters are incredibly common, and I want to explain what they are. That's when the three members from the RNC all sign a letter backing someone in the primary. Without Rule 11 letter, the RNC has to stay neutral when it comes to spending money, data and digital and stuff like that in a primary.

Super common. The thing that's a little uncommon, though, is that normally the Rule 11 letter is signed for the incumbent, and in fact, I cannot think of an example where a Rule 11 letter, Rule 11 letters for incumbents, incredibly common. Rule 11 letters in a contested primary, really uncommon, but they have happened before. Rule 11 letter where there's an incumbent in the race, and the Rule 11 letter is for the challenger, never heard of it. It's probably happened before, but I can't think of what. I just have two quick things. One, the more people who stand up so that it's not always all fire fixed on Mitt Romney or all fire fixed on Kinsinger and Cheney, when you're having to say, well, now I'm fixing my fire on Kinsinger, Cheney, Romney, McConnell, Thune, Pence, then you start to have some real momentum. So that's a point of rare hope that I've had here in the last few years. Number two, I think some folks are beginning to see that there is no limit to some of the

extremism. You know, so you had in 2020, you know, again, going back to all the Democrats had to do is not be crazy. And people were pulling their hair out that, wait a minute, are you guys excusing things like blocking highways? Are you guys excusing Chas in the middle of Seattle? And then now we have right-wing radio and the right-wing infotainment complex block those streets in Canada. I guess Chaz is fine in Ottawa as long as it's truckers doing it. I mean, it's, you know, and Tucker openly fantasizing about how trucker trucker blockades could cause people to risk starvation in the United States. And at some point, you begin to realize, even if you're somebody who's been on the sidelines, been on the sidelines, you're uncomfortable, you're uncomfortable. Where are the limits to the extremism here? Are there limits to this extremism?

And those folks who are finally, you know, some people are just saying, oh, okay, this isn't fading. This isn't going away. We can't just wait this thing out. We have to, we have to confront it. And the more people who are added to that less, the fewer targets you have to isolate and destroy. So I like the idea, David. I'm wildly optimistic. Yeah, I'm tempted.

It's rare that a Goldberg will tell a southerner, bless your heart. But it's a good counterpoint to the question I wanted to ask, which is what is the motivation for this, right? Because it seems to me just doing pure criminology, it always makes more sense for senators to be more sort of mainstream because they have electorates that have lots of persuadables and middle. the rotors and party switchers and all that kind of stuff that maybe House members don't have. So, like, you know, you got to care more about the suburbs, qua suburbs, if you were a senator from a fairly normal state. The other possibility, it seems to me, is that these guys know something about what's going to come out in the final report, and they want to get ahead of it. I don't know. But like the idea that all of a sudden, I mean, another possibility is that

Mitch McConnell has finally said, okay, he's declaring war on me. I got to declare war on him. And he's rallying his loyal senators to speak up. But like, it is, it's hard for me to believe that this was the moment where a lot of these guys said, you know, this far, but no farther. We'll draw the line here, as Patrick, as Captain Picard says. You know, and I, so it just seems to me there, maybe it's multi, you know, multifactorial and there are a bunch of different reasons for it. But the idea that, like, well, it was the Ottawa trucker convoy thing that finally got

Cornyn to find to Cicero afforded to, I just, I feel like there have to be some other explanations at work. Two weeks ago, Mitch McConnell said, to me, what was the most interesting break that I've seen? Like, I wouldn't call this the break. That interview he gave to CNN, it was Manu Raju two weeks ago. First of all, long-ranging interview, which is a little unlike McConnell. It's one thing for him to sort of say something in the hallway and another to have like all these little nuggets. But one of the things he said was that he acknowledged that they could lose some of these races depending on how the primary turned out. And he pointed to Missouri specifically. That is unusual for the Republican leader in the Senate to basically say like,

yeah, yeah, we could lose some of these races because there's wackadoodles who are leading in the primaries. I don't remember him ever saying something like that in the wake, for instance, of legitimate rape in 2012. So I think that McConnell very much wants to start setting that expectations game, because I think he knows it's a coin flip. You lose Missouri. You lose Ohio. There's no getting the Senate back for Republicans. And, you know, it's different, obviously, on the Democratic side, but there are Republican voters who will vote for the most electable person, even if it's not their first choice. We saw Joe. That's right. We saw, I mean, that's how Joe Biden won the primary, right? Right. They, it was a whole bunch of Democrats decided.

he was the most electable out of the crew. It's how Kerry won it in 2004, too. No one liked them. And so if Mitch McConnell, I don't think is like literally speaking to Missouri Republican primary voters, they're not paying attention to what Mitch McConnell says. But I think he wants the message out there

that no, we're not saying that we can win all these and we support all our Republican candidates. We need electable people in these races to actually win. Looking at you, Missouri, looking at you, Ohio. And so I think you're going to hear more and more. Mitch McConnell is just starting to pick up steam on this message. And sees himself potentially, you know, there's like three leaders of the Republican Party right now. Donald Trump,

Mike Pence, and Mitch McConnell. It's a weird, you want to talk about the cantina? Like, that's a weird threesome that you would not have picked five years ago. But each one of them is trying to pull the party in slightly different directions. Each sees themselves as the air to conservatism. And that's, to me, the fight going on right now. Steve, you live in Spain. How do you say enemy in Spanish? An amiga, I think. Maybe. I don't know. I was just like, instead of the three amegas. There's a wine enamega. You know, you can call them the three enemies. But anyway. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why

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Other announcements coming from New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware this week. What are those four states have in common, Jonah? I'm sorry to say that again. You blanked out there for a second again. sorry. And we're going to go to David. David, what do Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware have in common that would be relevant to this discussion? Because once I said Jonah's name, I realized that was going to get a non-relevant answer. Democratic governors. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So the question, David, is all of a sudden, right, we have four Democratic governors

coming out saying they're lifting school mask mandates in a matter of 48 hours. Did the science change? Did the politics change? Mostly the politics. Some of the, it's finally sunk in overall that the, that Omicron is not Delta, that zero COVID is not happening, that everybody who is wanting the vaccine has had access to the vaccine for a long time. It's just eventually there are And then also the politics. When all of those factors combine together, the politics changes as well. And so it's that old thing of, you know, I keep quoting Jonah. I can't remember where you first heard this, but like a company goes bankrupt slowly than suddenly. I think it's, I think Hemingway originally said it. Either Hemingway or Orwell. I can't remember. Anyway, there are a lot of things that happen slowly than suddenly. And this seems to me to be one of those things that it's just. been building and bubbling in the background that zero COVID is as a goal, for example,

on mask mandates is utterly unrealistic. We have vaccines. The therapeutics are becoming increasingly available. They're not as available as we'd like them to be. And that a lot of the, a lot of what's going on now is it's really impacted into the public that it's theater, that it doesn't really matter. And that's been about as well established on a number of fronts that as anything can be established in the uncertain environment of a pandemic. And so it's just slowly then suddenly, and when one does it, and then another does it, it achieves its own momentum. But the politics of it I think has fundamentally changed, but the politics has fundamentally changed in large part because a lot of the information has changed and finally sunk in. Jonah, there's moments in

politics that we, when we look back, we remember, you know, a picture or something else. And we're like, ah, that's what really turned the tide. And sometimes those memories are wrong. Like the picture either wasn't that well known at the time or it happened slightly. After the real turning point, the photo of Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, sitting cross-legged in front of a classroom of young elementary school students, they're all wearing masks. Their teachers are standing in the back wearing masks and she's smiling in the front without a mask. To me, feels like what we'll look back on and say turn the tide, even though living through it, I actually think that that picture came on the tail

of the tide turning, but it's like this perfect encapsulation of the politics really shifting in a lot of ways. I note, by the way, that most of the kids, if not all of the kids in that photo are wearing cloth masks, something we know, don't really do anything, especially on kids. And as, you know, the mom of a brisket, the idea of him being able to pick up any language from me, if he couldn't see my mouth, is crazy. Like, I have to, like, show him how my mouth moves for him to be able to even understand the difference between certain letters in English, right? They sound pretty similar if you're wearing a mask. And so to me, there is a change in the science and not just the politics because we have the study showing that the cloth masks don't

do really anything even on adults. The N95s do make a big difference for adults, but they're not made for children. I understand that there are some surgical masks that are the size for children, but they're not made for children. And so they don't work as well. Kids touch their face constantly. Kids are just, they're little like germ piles. And so the mass don't work as well on kids even if they should in theory. And then the other part of the science that I think has really changed is the thumb on the other scale, that the cost is real, that the language acquisition is real, that the emotional intelligence stuff that you're trying to pick up in school reading other people's facial

expressions, that loss is going to be real. And what's sad to me is that we don't have a lot of the data on the language loss and EQ stuff, but we will in 10 years, and it's going to be too late. Yeah, I mean, picking up on just one thing first, you know, you talked about how there are a sort of like surgical masks that work for kids. It is a little forgivable that it took a while to build up the stockpile those because there were so few child surgeons that we just didn't need that many masks. Duky-Houser basically, you know, cornered the market on them for a long time. A weird plot for a show.

Like, has anyone really thought about, like, if that were the show today? Like, what, a 13-year-old surgeon? I mean, doctor? No, thank you. Well, give a kid who's too young to drive a scalpel and let them cut people. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's funny you say that about the Stacey Abrams picture, because I have a very similar theory about a lot of books in history that we think ignited movements when, in fact, they came at the right time and came to,

symbolize the movement, even though the movement predated the book itself. And I think you're right about the Stacey Abrams thing. It will be credited with all sorts of things it doesn't deserve to be credited for, but it encapsulates something that includes like the Gavin Newsom maskless controversies going back two years. And it just sort of gets at the heart of the general feeling among a lot of people that the sort of the blob, for one of a more technical term, of public health officials, school officials, teachers, Democratic politicians.

And I'm hesitant to use the phrase because I know it's loaded the sexism, but the COVID Karens that some people use, just the sense that those people were now the irrational ones. You know, there was for a long time, rightly, the sort of anti-mask, anti-vaccine people were the target of most people, most normal scorn. But now it's the sort of hypochondriac industrial complex that just drives people kind of nuts. And there's just no science left to back it up. What is interesting to me is how much,

and I was talking to A.B. Stoddard about this on The Remnant earlier this week, you know, how I think, she disagrees with me, But I think part of the problem that the Biden administration has is that, you know, we talk about David Shore and the sort of capture by the sort of very online sort of MSNBC blue checkmark progressives who prevent Biden from doing what's in his own political self-interest, like having sister soldier moments or, you know, all that kind of stuff. The people who are still terrified, I mean, it comes across in polling data. the people most terrified of getting COVID are the people who are double-vaxed and boosted. And they have, they are, that sort of world route is wildly overrepresented in the halls of the Democratic, you know, of the White House and Democratic Party generally.

And so like they had these incredibly great job numbers last week. And they had, the Biden White House had, everybody for them to be terrible because they thought they're going to be terrible because of Omicron and turned out they were great and they can't cheerlead on it well enough because in part I think because to really lean into it is to say well that proves that Omicron really wasn't that disruptive to the economy that proves that COVID isn't that disruptive to the economy that means we can get back to normal and I think AB has a good point where she says look it's not so much they don't want to say that is that they just been burned like they got

burned by Delta, they got burned by Omicron, and they don't want to get out ahead of it again. But if they don't get out ahead of it and they let all these Democratic governors, you know, go, and then they're just following behind, they're not going to be able to take credit for anything because they're going to be seen as like the last holdouts for hypochondriac, you know, America. They are already being seen as the last holdouts. Our friend Josh Kroshauer has a great column today. We can put it in the show notes about how the Biden administration is late to this, how

Biden blew his COVID moment. You had Jen Saki defending the CDC guidelines to mask kids, even as you see one, and now the governor of New York is backing up. I mean, it is like this way, the governor of Illinois, I believe, said something this morning. It's one after another, after another after another. I mean, they were just waiting for somebody to go first. Now they're all following, as most politicians do. But they already did blow it.

She's out there defending the mask mandates in schools at a time when they're, wildly unpopular in the general populace. They're increasingly unpopular among Democratic governors and not terribly effective. And I think, look, I think you can point to the science on Omicron as changing and certainly what we're seeing with Omicron with the case levels dropping and, you know, things, I loathe to say returning to normal or getting, looking like a return to normal is not out of the question for the first time in a long time. But some of the science has been the same. I mean, if you get, if you look at the CDC data itself, the number of deaths to children, to kids, to people 18 and under, relative to the overall number of deaths, it is a tiny, tiny fraction, the latest data, which was good as of the February 2nd, total U.S. COVID deaths, 880,432.

total U.S. COVID deaths, people 18 and under 910. So just for a long time has been the case that the risk of serious illness and death for kids is minimal. Greater risk, I think New York Times columnist wrote greater risk of being hit by a car on the way to school or being in a car, serious car accident on the way to school than in getting sick and dying because you've contracted COVID at school. The question for a long time was, could kids transmit the virus to other people and make other people sick? And that was a serious issue, remains a serious issue, but maybe a less serious issue as we look at the course of Omicron. I think the numbers that we're seeing, the polling numbers that I've seen out of Canada around the truckers, and just by way of background for those

who aren't following this. The rule that everyone in Canada had to be vaccinated had an exception for truckers. That exception expired. So now you have a large number of truckers who have all driven to Ottawa, parked their trucks, aren't moving them. Some of the protests and demonstrations have been violent.

There's some disagreement over whether those are the truckers or just other people doing stuff. But regardless... I don't care about the numbers about the truckers. I care about what it says about sort of the nuance that people understand when it comes to some of these issues. The vast majority of Canadians are vaccinated. And the group of truckers, their net approval rating, so to speak, is underwater, negative 30%. But 40% agreed that Trudeau, the prime minister, shares the blame because of his condescending attitude toward Canadians. 44% said even though they are vaccinated themselves, they sympathize with the trucker's frustration. 54% said it's time to end pandemic restrictions. That's up 14% from just a couple weeks ago. Again, set aside like sort of the precision of those numbers. You'll know how I feel about issue polling. But to me, it shows that like even people who are vaccinated who don't want

truckers parking their trucks in Ottawa or blocking the border with the United States, and messing up supply chain stuff, they still understand the frustration. They're still frustrated with Trudeau being condescending. And I think you can translate that into Americanese very easily that if you try to read this as a one-dimensional fight, either you're vaccinated or you're not, your pro-pandemic restrictions or you're not,

the vast majority of people in my view are going to be in between those two things. Get the frustrations, even though they're vaccinated, want the pandemic restrictions to end, but are also okay with private businesses requiring vaccines. And the more politicians keep treating this as all of the people in my tribe all want the most extreme version of either X or Z. Like, you're missing it.

You're missing it. Well, in the Stacey Abrams thing, I want to dwell on that just for a minute, because I think this is something, we can't look at the Stacey Abrams thing in isolation from the Magic Johnson Instagram photo array. I don't know if you saw this with basically every major Democratic politicians, in a box with him without a mask on.

Then you have the French laundry. Then you have the, you have all of the, all of these in many of the most restrictive states in the union, these politicians, flouting their own regulations. I mean, London Breed, feeling the spirit. I mean, like this is months ago back at a indoor concerts. And you just, this happens again and again and again. Was it the L.A. mayor who said he held his breath in the photo with Johnson? I was holding my breath.

Oh, okay, so there's a holding breath exception to the mask mandate then, because I don't see that in the regulation. Also, that's stupid and no, you weren't. Yeah. So this doesn't, it's beyond hypocrisy at this point. It really goes to the trust Americans have in institutions and leaders. If you're a leader and you have the slightest ethic of leadership by example, like even a millimeter of an ethic of leadership by example,

I'm sorry, you're going to put on a mask. Because if your message to America is this is a de minimis infringement that can make a difference in people's health and people's health and you can't do it. You can't do the de minimis. What are you doing leading anything? What are you doing leading anything? No, it comes across as noblese, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And maybe I have a distorted view of this because, you know, when I served, the argument of leadership by example that you share the risks.

You lead from the front. This is something that's sort of core to the very notion of leadership in my view. And I can't even wear a mask. And then this constant sort of photo where you always see the politicians without the masks on and their staff lining the walls wearing the mask. And it's just gross. It's just absurd and it's gross. And I think it's really, it's beyond hypocrisy. It's torpedoing people's trust in institutions.

and leaders even more, and rightfully so. It really frustrated me on the Stacey Abrams apology. She apologized, you know, unreservedly in most respects. And then she said, but the reason I did it was because the kids were having trouble understanding me behind the mask. Well, wait, can I, can I, can I just, let me just add one data point there. First, before she apologized unreservedly, she went after Republicans and said, this is a dirty political hit, this is unfair, they've mischaracterized this, all of this.

And it was, she was full of it. That was not, that was not what it was. And so later, after getting a ton of grief, did she then apologize unreservedly? And by the way, the media coverage of this has been horrendous because for a couple days, including a piece, I believe in the Washington Post, there was the sort of widespread use of this now cliche Republicans pounce, Republicans sees. The story wasn't that Republicans were upset that Stacey Abrams was being a hypocrite. The story was that Stacey Abrams was being a hypocrite. And the fact that the media still cover this and don't get that this is a cliche of bad reporting is a bad reflection on the media and their understanding of reality. I mean, but the Stacey Abrams thing was worse than that because I, and if I'm wrong,

I will stand corrected. But my recollection, at least from what I'd saw, was that she actually accused people of being racist for making a big deal about this. And like, you know, I'm sure there are racists who don't like Stacey Abrams, but not liking Stacey Abrams or criticizing Stacey Abrams is not in and of itself evidence of racism. And, and I think, you know, you see similar stuff with the coverage of the truck convoy thing. I'm sure there are really terrible people somewhere in those crowds in Ottawa. But like from Trudeau down, they're trying to make it into a racist thing. These are these are by definition bigots. And that's why Trudeau mentions someone had a Nazi flag apparently and somebody had a Confederate flag. Confederate flags in Canada

is a really weird thing to me. You know, it's, you know, it's, anyway, I can get into it. But my only point is, is that, like, I think as with the critical race theory stuff, as we all have chewed over a million times, there are good arguments and bad arguments on all sides of all that kind of thing. But for the average voter, particularly the average Republican getable voter and Democrat, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, they don't compartmentalize these things like topics on a podcast. They're all in the stew. And so, like, when they hear the go-to response from a politician being criticized for violating rules that they have to obey in their kid's school being called racist for pointing out the hypocrisy, that ignites all sorts of other parts of people's brains than just sort of

this narrow issue about like COVID exhaustion. And I think the same thing, you know, the critical, the, the, the jihadists on the right against critical race theory benefited enormously from COVID because people were fed up with the way their schools were doing things in all sorts of ways. And the critical race theory was just one plug-in-play part of that larger frustration. And I think that gets to a lot of the bad branding for progressivism and liberalism is like we don't have to wear masks because we are these aristocrats who are doing things for your benefit and you should be grateful that we're telling you what you need to do. And oh, by the way, if you have a

problem with what we're doing, it's because you're a bad person. Can I quote it? Can I quote it? It is shameful that our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event for Georgia children as the impetus for a false political attack. And it is pitiful and predictable that our opponents continue to look for opportunities to distract from their failed records. when it comes to protecting public health during the pandemic. And then it goes on and attacks the opponents. So here's my beef with the Abrams thing. It's that when she did her apology, and she said, look, I just apologize.

But then she explained what she was apologizing for. I don't agree that that's like, so she said that she took off the mask because the kids couldn't understand her. Yep. Think about what you're saying there. Because the teachers have to wear masks. The kids all have to wear masks. These are young kids who are learning our language.

And then she said she is not in favor of getting rid of mask mandates in schools in Georgia and that she should have put the mask back on the second she was done talking to them. Yeah, on the hypocrisy side, that's true. But I think my beef isn't with the hypocrisy. It's with the, like, if they can't understand you with a mask, This is not that different than Zoom school. We know about learning loss in Zoom school. There are kids who are going to be able to overcome, you know,

their parents at home are doing extra work to talk to them, to read books to them, et cetera. And there are kids who aren't going to have that extra help at home. And you are exacerbating the educational gap in this country. And Eric Adams had an op-ed in the Washington Post today about how far behind boys are falling. You know what probably isn't going to help in the future? this couple years of boys

not being able to read lips in class, not understanding quite, like having to really concentrate to understand the book that the teacher's reading. I mean, let's just be honest, it's going to come more naturally to girls to focus on what the teacher's reading with a mask than it is to boys. And I think we're going to see even a

gender divide in some of this stuff. And the fact that Stacey Abrams didn't address any of those problems, again, she apologized to the hypocrisy point. I accept her apology, no problem. But that's not the part I care about anymore. The hypocrisy thing is what it is. Like they're all hypocrites. Fine. Nobody could live up to the like mandates that they've all put out there. So in some sense, the hypocrisy was inevitable. But

not acknowledging the cost. None of them are acknowledging what they cost these kids who had no say in it. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events, subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.com. All right.

Well, with that, David, you said on Twitter that you're not watching the Olympics at all. It made me sad. Yeah. It makes me sad because I love the Olympics. I have loved the Olympics since I was a kid. I mean, I grew up with the Olympics as sort of this proxy contest in the Cold War. Or the, you know, I know I'm the oldest dispatcher by mere months. But, you know, this was this, this was, you know, part of your young forming patriotism back in the day

was watching and loving the Olympics. I remember, you know, I've hung on them for childhood. And I just, I tried, I was going to go watch it. And again, I'm also somebody who I really don't. put political litmus tests on sports. Neal or don't kneel, I'm going to watch you play football. Put out a statement about politics or don't put out a statement about politics, I'm going to watch you coach or play basketball. But this is different to me. China is actually in the middle of a genocide right now. It is happening right now. And then to have this international pageant right in

this country at this time, it feels like the kind of thing that a future generation will look back at us and say, what on earth was broken in your brains as more emerges about the Uyghurs and what they've gone through and what they're going through and they will go through? What was broken in your brains, people of the world community, that you contributed to this. And so it's this kind of thing where it's almost like, I reach for the remote and my brain won't let me hit the on button because I cannot abide the fact that the People's Republic of China is hosting this. And, you know, look, I get it. Our athletes have trained their whole lives for this. I wish them well. I want them to win. But now that the decision is made to go and they're there, I want them

to win. But I just cannot watch it. This is a historical moment. We are, it's, we've gone so fast from never again, never again, never again, to now host the games, host the games. And I just, I can't bring myself to do it. Jonah, I want to see if I can goad you into saying something offensive. Let me try by saying something pretty controversial myself. So I, David and I talked about this. I supported Simone Biles shining a light on the yips, right, on sort of the mental side of being an elite athlete. and that there is a mental side to it. I'm all for that. And I thought the people like dunking on her

that what she needed to compete anyway and kill herself. Like I don't know what that was going to prove. However, it says something about our culture, I think, that a lot of our athletes are showcasing more of like the mental health side. So yesterday, one of our skiers missed one of the gates in the moguls. And she just, like, pulled off to the side and, for lack of a better term, had kind of, like, a meltdown and, like, wouldn't leave the snow. Look, I can't imagine, right?

Like, she was favored for gold and she missed a gate. This is not to say that, like, that wasn't justified in every respect or that I wouldn't have been in more of a puddle. I would have. But I just think back to, like, American culture. And to me, it's more of an example of how the culture has shifted and that this. idea, and again, now I'm leaving the Olympics for a second, but that the winner of any argument in American culture right now is the one who can don the greatest victim hat, I think that has seeped into sports and athletics in a way, or maybe it's just, sorry, it's overall

being reflected that same cultural point. You know, if the Brits were known for the stiff upper lip, which, by the way, is an expression that originated in the United States, not in England. That's our statement, our expression. Americans used to be, you know, John Wayne, tough, right? Like, men don't cry. And look, there were problems with all of that. But I just, I've watched the Olympics this time. And I'm like, okay, well, this is now an example of the current culture happening in the United

States. And I don't know that that's healthy either. No, I, look, I agree with you. On the stiff upper lip thing, I never really understood that because, Like, if you're about to cry, it's your lower lip that quivers, not your upper lip. But beyond that, we've seen that, look, we see this all over the place. And I think there are two different things going on. One is the sort of cult of victimization, right?

Is that everybody is, and this is a sort of part of the point of, you know, my last book, is that we teach people to feel grievance. We teach people that the only authentic claims are, when you're what you're entitled to is denied to you, right? So we don't teach people to be grateful for this country and all that it is given the world. We teach people to say that they're being ripped off, they're being exploited, they're entitled to more than they got. I think that's a huge problem. I think it is amazing to me the degree to which this is a bipartisan phenomenon. Everybody wants to be a victim. I mean, if you look at, you know, the way they talk about January 6th,

We're supposed to think that everybody is, it's unfair to these guys who were smearing their feces on the hall that people are making a big deal about it, right? Like, how dare you make such a fuss about saying you were going to hang the vice president of the United States? Why are you victimizing me? The schmuckery of it is just so astounding. But more broadly, like we saw this with the Obama administration in particular about the military. If you go back and you look at what, like Michelle Obama said at the Democratic Convention, They described U.S. troops as essentially sad sacks, victims, people with mental health problems. That's been a, you know, the, and I'm all in favor of treating PTSD seriously and throwing resources at it.

But the rhetoric is like, it makes it sound like everybody has PTSD. And everybody, everybody who served in the military is a victim. And you see it more and more in sports. So the victimology thing is the one part of it. The other part of it is, as organized religion recedes from public life, the language of therapeutic psychiatry becomes the new lingua franca of meaning in people's lives. And people talk about, instead of talking about their souls or their sin, they talk about their mental state and their anxiety. You know, there's this piece in the New York Times this week talking about how many people are freaking out about climate change and how

how they can't, like, they're going, they're seeking constant, intensive counseling because they think the world is going to be terrible. Like, one of these therapists tells this kid, tells this woman, what you need to tell your kids is, you know, or what you need to understand is that, even though, like, the apocalypse is coming, they'll still have some good days. You know, there's that kind of stuff. There's an apocalypticism that is, that is sort of a secular, sort of the world has fallen and it's all coming to an end thing that expresses itself in the language of therapeutics. And I think a lot of people, I mean, I see it with kids and, you know, my daughter's age. That's how they've been trained to talk, is they talk about their feelings

as if they're self-diagnosing all the time. And it's inevitable that it's going to spill out everywhere. Steve, I have one last Olympic thing for you. So I I have watched the Olympics. I think that should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about me. I have curling gear. You put so much money on it, right? I mean, you're just like, I have curling gear for every day, basically. And it has been such a treat to get to know the coach of our U.S. curling team and to get to text with him while he's at the Olympics. It is like, it is undoubtedly the coolest thing that will happen to me all year is like, you know, it's so neat. But I was watching figure skating in the team competition that already happened. And the first woman to complete a quad in competition was a 15-year-old

Russian skater who, of course, can't compete under the Russian flag. So is competing under rock ROC. She didn't just complete one quad. She completed several quads. She's going to complete even more in her individual skating. Steve, it's not so much a question as a, how is Russia still doing this? I mean, they doped their players. We have a 15-year-old ice skater completing quads. The what-the-what?

I'm angry. Validate my anger, Steve. Sarah, you have every right to be angry. Thank you. Feelings. I have nothing else to say about it. I'm mostly where David is on the Olympics. It's sort of, it's hard for me to turn it on.

I suppose there will probably be a time when I watch some hockey, but I haven't been watching much to this point. I do just want to go back, though, to the discussion about victims and the United States becoming a nation of victims. And I think I have in our nation of victims identified the ultimate victim. And it's our friend Charlie Sykes. Charlie, there's a new book out by, I want to make sure I get the name right, Vibik Ramoswamy, who wrote a book called Woke Inc.

He wrote a piece. He's a CEO of a company, wrote a piece for the dispatch a while back. And his new book is called Nation of Victims. charts coming out this fall, September of 2022. Charlie Sykes in 1993 wrote a book called A Nation of Victims. So this guy is using the same exact title that Charlie's using, which strikes me as deeply, yeah, used 20 years ago, strikes me as deeply unfair to Charles.

making him the ultimate victim in our nation of victims. Victims all the way down. Okay. I think Donald Trump's an ultimate victim. He says he's the ultimate victim. Right. Right. I mean, that sort of gets to the point, right? Donald Trump talks about how the world is victimizing him all and unfair to him all the time. And this is a billionaire who was president of the United States, right? It's just the language that the right and the left uses these days. And I'm mad that Putin keeps putting the Olympics as this number one thing for his country's pride

and then succeeding at it. By the way, Charlie's book A Nation of Victims in 1993 is fantastic. It's a great book. And the other thing is I want to put in a little pushback on the Nation of Victims' point. I do agree that amongst the world of political rhetoric, the victim and the constant sense of grievance

and this political subculture has really taken over. I'll also agree that we've seen a lot more openness and talking about mental health issues and things like that. But I don't want to overstate this. I mean, you know, one of the things, I remember serving in the military during the Obama era, and you'd hear on right-wing media,

like the military is hollowed out. It's just all about, nobody used the term wokeness then, but political correctness. It's going soft. It's all diversity training. And that was just, I mean, yeah, you'd see a few diversity powerpoints, but the military was still the military. I mean, I feel like we do have some issues here. But I think the reality is in key American cultures and key American institutions, we still have an enormous amount of strength and resilience.

And I'm seeing a lot of the stuff come back up in the Biden era that, oh, the military is woke now. It can't. Oh, really? what do you know about the F-22 readiness, the readiness of F-22 squadrons? What do you know about where the Third Cavalry Regiment is in its training cycles? You see a few PowerPoints and you see a few notable examples in the media and we draw a lot of these sweeping conclusions. It's not that there's nothing there to it.

Of course not. A lot of the big numbers, especially around deaths of despair, are shocking and sobering. But I think we overstate this sometimes, to be honest. I think we overstate it. I wasn't talking about the actual military. I was talking about the way people talk about the military, you know, and talk about vets. And look, and talk about, you know, law enforcement right now.

I mean, I can't tell you how many, like, straight news pieces I've seen on Fox recently that it's all about the, quote, unquote, war on law enforcement. And, like, I'm all, I'm on a thousand percent in. I'm talking about spikes in crime and why we need to deal with crime. And I have no problem with big, respectful funerals for cops. but there's no coordinated war, you know, on law enforcement, but that's, it's just the, the language of victimization is now, I think, soaked into so much of our political discourse. Yeah. Oh, I completely grant that. I completely grant that. What I'm trying to say is not that

the political culture you described isn't accurate to describe the political culture, but I think the political culture is not accurate necessarily to describing and reflecting the larger American culture and their larger reality. All right. I'm going to end with an overheard in D.C. Guy on the phone at Foggy Bottom Metro Stop, quote, the date went really well, but I think our countries might have competing geopolitical interests that would make something long-term difficult. That's the problem with dating Belgian women.

I can't imagine anyone. listening at this point. But if you are, apologies, but also thank you. We'll see you in the comments section. And it's possible that we stopped this podcast way before this and that you won't hear any of this. Bye. Lies. Lies. 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,

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