The Dispatch Podcast - Liz Cheney Defeated in Wyoming, Ukraine Fights On

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Rep. Liz Cheney lost her re-election bid to her Trump-backed primary challenger in the Wyoming Republican primary on Tuesday. Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss the result, and share their thoughts as the primary season wraps up. Plus: What’s the latest from Ukraine? Our hosts discuss the state of the conflict.   Show Notes: -The Dispatch: Liz Cheney: ‘There Is Actually Precedent for ... Vice Presidents to Testify’ -The Dispatch: Choosing to Lose -The Sweep: Warning Signs for the GOP’s Senate Hopes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes all the way from Jackson, Wyoming. Plenty to talk about as the Republican primaries wrap for this midterm season, and we head into the real part of the midterm elections in just a few days with Labor Day. We'll also talk about the latest events happening in Ukraine. We haven't talked about it recently, and we really have plenty to catch up on. Let's dive right in. Steve, why don't you give us the overview of some of your reporting from Jackson these last, what, have you been there three, four days? Yeah, I got here Sunday, and we're recording this on Thursday. Yeah, it's been an eventful, a minuteful few days. The end of the Liz Cheney campaign for Congress and Liz Cheney's career in Congress, at least for now, came on Tuesday in a pretty resounding loss to Harriet Hageman, the Trump-picked former Cheney supporter who campaigned as a loyal Trump voter, loyal MAGA accolite, and campaigned pretty successfully here.

Now, it has to be said, that wasn't a tall order. Wyoming is the Trumpiest state in the country. Donald Trump here with nearly 70% of the vote in 2020. So Harriet Hagman didn't have to do much. It was interesting, I think, so one of the big takeaways for me in watching what was happening here on the ground and what was happening in the ads was the extent to which this really was a proxy fight between Donald Trump and Liz Cheney. Harriet Hageman's bumper stickers, at least the ones that I saw that were most prominent,

were red bumper stickers with white lettering. And in big lettering, it said, defeat Cheney. And then in very small lettering, it said, you know, Harriet Hageman for Congress. So her campaign was effectively against Liz Cheney. I'd say Hageman spent more time talking about local issues. Cheney did some of that as well. but Cheney's focus clearly was on Donald Trump, and she was unapologetic about the fact that she was running against him, that she thinks he's a threat to the republic.

Her final ad, the closing argument, as it were, was an ad that she broadcast that featured her father, Vice President Dick Cheney, really teeing off on Donald Trump, calling him a coward, saying he was a threat to the republic, greatest threat to the republic in 246 years, I think the elder Cheney said. So this really was a proxy fight between Liz Cheney and Donald Trump. That's the fight that Liz Cheney chose to wage here. And I think it speaks to the fact that she understood pretty clearly that she wasn't going to win once she took the impeachment vote.

So hearing Republicans talk about Liz Cheney's defeat, there's a few strains that come out. But one of the most popular ones is it's not her vote on impeachment. It's sort of the singular focus on the January 6th commission, on only talking about Donald Trump, on making sort of her raison de trey, defeating Donald Trump at all times, which Republicans have found counterproductive. Wyoming's, what are they? People who live in Wyoming felt neglected, said she wasn't there. You know, she was at the January 6th committee, a hearing, instead of back for. one of sort of the big Wyoming political events and that this was like a constituent services thing

as much as it was an impeachment vote thing. I actually think there's arguments on both sides of this. David, you are shaking your head. Like the kids say, SMDH. Yeah, WTF. So I think, look, if the margin were three points, four points. We could have this conversation.

But the margin, I don't know, last time I checked was 700 points. I mean, it was a really big margin. I mean, a giant margin. And if she had been, and let's just do a counterfactual, if she had been every bit as much single, every bit as single-mindedly focused

on the January 6th committee, as she is now, but from the opposite side. In other words, dedicating her time to relentlessly taking on the January 6th committee, she probably wouldn't even have a serious primary challenger, much less wouldn't lose this particular election. So the question was, did she or did she not oppose Donald Trump? The rest is details. I mean, this idea that she lost by 30, 40 points or whatever it actually ends up being because, you know, her staff wasn't answering constituent mail and she didn't go to some sort of political shindig in Wyoming is absurd. I mean, it's just totally, completely divorced from reality.

And the sooner we can take that talking point and put it to bed, the better, because that's just nuts. If, again, if it was three points, if it was four points, if it was just that close, and she missed a shindig or two back home in Wyoming. Let's have that conversation. But that's not what's going on. And nobody, nobody really believes that's what's going on. I mean, come on.

Jonah, you have the comparison between Peter Meyer, who lost his seat in Michigan and Liz Cheney. Now, Peter Meyer, to David's point, only lost his seat by roughly four points. But he sort of followed the path that I think Republicans say they want Liz Cheney to have followed. He took the vote in impeachment, but then didn't really talk about it from that point forward. After he lost his election, he endorsed the primary challenger who beat him. And yet, I don't think anyone seriously thinks there's a future for Peter Meyer

within the Republican Party and elected office at least. Can I just jump in? Yeah. Just as an aside, I don't think he endorsed Gibbs. He went to like a union event and he introduced him, but he didn't endorse him. Unless something changed or I missed it. That hair is thin and feels a little split at its ends, but I will grant you that distinction. I think it's a pretty significant distinction. They think it's a significant distinction.

Indeed, I'm sure they do. Between endorsing and not endorsing, yeah, I think it's a distinction. Between literally saying I endorse this person and showing up at a, quote, unity rally where Republicans unify around the nominee and you're the guy who introduces the nominee that we're rallying around. Yeah, I think it matters if you withhold your endorsement

and you don't say I'm endorsing this guy for this seat. I think that matters. I mean, I think he can make an argument that he went to a party, a Republican Party rally because he's a Republican, and that's what you do if you're Republican. It seems noteworthy to me that he didn't. choose to actually make the

the explicit endorsement. So look, I hate it when mom and dad fight, but unfortunately that's not this situation. No, I'm more on, I'm in the middle of the between the two of you as I think about this, because on the one hand, I don't think it is a,

and we don't have to spend too much time on Meyer, but I don't, I think it is, more of the same kind of thing that Sarah was talking about that a lot of pro-Trump people claim they want from GOP people, of being clever, of having the, making these subtle distinctions that you think you can hide behind. And at the end of the day, they don't actually do anything for you. And so I do think that in Peter Meyer's mind, the decline to actually endorse is a big deal. But you know what it reminds me of? Ted Cruz declining to endorse Donald Trump in 2016. It's exactly the same thing. Ted thought he was making a big distinction.

Super clever, and he ended up, and it ended up pissing off everybody. Both, yes, everyone. And so... I would just like to note that Team Carly did not show up to the 2016 convention. I am a thousand percent behind David on this. I think the idea that somehow... I think literally every single argument that people use about the real reason why they're voting against they vote they're against cheney or the real reason

they're mad at cheney is x y or z is all it's it's it's it's all post hoc rationalization it's like the ever-changing stories from the trump people about the classified documents at mara lago they're just throwing things at the wall to see what will stick to what will get them through a three-minute hit on fox news or on cnn and uh it doesn't and it may be and they're i'm sure there are cases where people have convinced themselves that the real reason they're mad at Liz Cheney is she's dropped the ball on constituent services. I just think it's BS, but lots of people believe their own BS. Okay. So now her speech that night, she references Abraham Lincoln. There were a lot of eye rolls from Republicans kind of across the spectrum that I spoke with. And then the next morning,

She did some media in which she certainly dipped her toe in the presidential waters, including with you, Steve. Do you want to just walk us through a little bit of what your piece said on that? Yeah, she gave an interview to Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show, where she was asked about her presidential plans or sort of what's next. She didn't, I mean, if you watched the interview, she didn't, I think she tried not to answer the question. She preferred not to answer the question, but said she wanted to be actively involved in, in, you know, continuing this fight and continuing to take the argument to Donald Trump, the one line that she had in her interview with Savannah Guthrie that, that I pressed her on because it sort of stuck out at me was that she wanted to put together a coalition of

Democrats, Republicans, and independents, which doesn't sound, if you're thinking about running for president, and she said that she was, didn't sound to me like the kind of thing that you would do if you were going to run as a Republican. She's not very popular in the Republican Party right now, and she is pretty popular with Democrats and Independence. So I asked her about that. I think she kind of went out of her way to tamp that down, said, look, I'm not really even thinking about this at this point in those terms.

Like, I know I want to be active. I know I want to be making the fight, but I'm not doing actual planning for a presidential run. And having talked to her advisors here over the last few days, and Republicans nationally. I don't get the sense that there's a ton of planning going on. I think she probably said what she said

to keep her options open, but I don't get the sense that they're making plans and doing a lot of fundraising right now for a bid or that some kind of announcement is imminent. David, you and I have talked about sort of the ripeness

for a third party in America right now and also what makes a successful third party, which are very, very different and not always compatible things. Obviously, Liz Cheney running within a Republican primary, I see no particular point to that. Even if she wants to stop Donald Trump from getting the nomination, I see no point for her running in a Republican primary. Her running as an independent, I understand that right now Democrats are praising Liz Cheney. but largely, again, when I talk to sort of Democratic operatives,

they are praising her very, very specifically for whacking Republicans and Donald Trump. Donald Trump, obviously, is the thing she's getting the most attention for, but she's also saying things like Republicans need to stand up to him, they're letting their party go, all of these things that Democrats are like, yes, applauding. But, you know, it was interesting, the head of Bernie Sanders kind of outside group was very honest. She was like, I love what Liz Cheney's doing. I love that she's beating up on Republicans. But let's be clear, she voted with Donald Trump 92% of the time when she was in office.

She voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. This is someone who says she cares about, you know, the 2020 election not being stolen, but then she doesn't do anything to actually help on the issues we care about. So no, I wouldn't support Liz Cheney running for president. That's insane. Now, again, that's to be very clear. This is Bernie Sanders person, Evette Simpson, sort of on the far left in a lot of ways. But as many people have pointed out,

What was it? Donald Trump managed to get Democrats to say nice things about Mitt Romney, the Cheney, the Cheney, the Bushes, like all of these people. And their point is, yeah, because they don't actually mean it. They don't actually like these people. They didn't like them before. They don't like them now. It's all just sort of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So is there a path to this independent run? Independent run I'm most skeptical about because I think an independent run, you know, in my lifetime, there was one independent run that really caught fire, and that was Ross Pro. And Ross Pro, what did Ross Pro have? He was larger than life, although not in physical stature.

He was larger than life in personality. He had extraordinary resources to commit to the fight. And at that moment, the timing was right. And so I've long thought of a sort of a third-party run as a vehicle for a person who is not going to emerge straight from the ranks of the partisans, as more as somebody's coming from outside of those ranks. So having a little bit of experience at looking at the polling of third party runs, one of the things that was most striking to me going back to 2016 was there was a lot of sort of latent appetite for a third party. a lot of people are going to express some general misgivings and general willingness to look at somebody

else. But who is that somebody else? If you're really drilling down on it, it was not a partisan, a person who is coming from a partisan background. That was not the profile. Somebody coming from completely outside. And so one of the things I'm wary of, and look, Sarah, I'm of complete agreement that a Liz Cheney and the Republican primary is unthinkable right now of prevailing on August 19th, 2022. But there's an awful lot of pre-losing going on. In other words, that there's an awful lot of people just scorning and scoffing at the idea of person X, Y, or Z having any chance of taking on and taking down Donald Trump. And the one thing I absolutely know for certain is you lose everything, well, you don't lose.

You can't win a race you don't run. It's not possible to win a race you don't run. So the question is, is somebody going to step up and say, I'm going to take on Donald Trump? I'm taking on Donald Trump. Or is everybody going to go ahead and pre-lose? And that's my question going forward. And, you know, it seems increasingly clear to me that Mike Pence is carving out. kind of lane that we didn't see Mike Pence carving out. He's not in the Cheney lane specifically,

but he's getting Cheney adjacent. I don't know that I agree with that, but I take your point. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're saying I'm not defunding the FBI, that's absurd. If you're saying I might testify to the January 6th committee, if you're saying we don't steal elections, this wasn't a stolen election. You're in this Republican world, where's that putting you? Again, not Cheney, but in the neighborhood. So I'm against pre-losing the challenge to Donald Trump. I have to put on my operative hat very quickly just to talk about why more people don't run as independents when they know their long shots in either party.

And it's two words, ballot access. And I won't spend too long on this except to say that it is very, very hard in just sort of the logistical sense and incredibly tens of millions of dollars expensive to get on the ballot in states without the party apparatus because most states say if you're the nominee of X party or Y party, the Republicans or Democrats, you can automatically or, you know, with a $25,000 check, get on the ballot. But if you're not the nominee of those two parties, it's like have five signatures from someone named Bob, a thousand signatures from Eddie's. I mean, it's like really very, very specific and annoying. So there's just that challenge. And very few people have been able to

overcome that? I think, Sarah, that's an important point. It's worth tempering expectations and enthusiasm for third part of your independent bits for exactly that reason. I mean, you've had lots of discussions of them in recent years, and most of them haven't really taken off at all, and primarily for that reason. It should be said, there have been some reports from first, I think, Puck News and then there was some reporting in a Politico piece yesterday that Nancy Jacobson of no labels is trying to put together an effort to get ballot access for third parties for independent bid and apparently has lined up quite a bit of money to do that remains to be seen how successful that will be. I guess I'm sort of where David is on this. It seems to me,

even if I accept your your caveats about the difficulty, the challenges here, and those are real, nobody should understate them. It's also the case that we're in this time where we're seeing so much in our politics that's unexpected. We've talked before about this moment of volatility. We haven't seen anything like this recently. And, you know, the same kinds of conversations that we're having now, which seem to, you know, make straight-line projections on what's going to happen in two years or what can't happen in two years are the kinds of things that we heard from people, including people like me, ruling out a Donald Trump victory in 2016, right? I mean, I was absolutely certain there was no chance this guy would ever take off. I thought there would be an

outsider. Oh, you said 2016. I just want to be clear, you're not trying to get out of our bet around 2024. No, definitely not. I like the bet. I'll double it if you want. But we can actually bet anything, but yeah, let's double our not-existent. Well, you have a steak dinner, steak dinner. Two steak dinners now, Steve and I are having dinner for the next three months.

If I may join this conversation. Only if you must. So first of all, I wrote about the third party thing a couple weeks ago. I hate writing about third parties because you always have to say the same thing over and over again. But I think the thing that has been left out of this conversation, first of all, I agree with you entirely about the ballot access thing. The one place where bipartisanship in this country is thriving is on the duopoly of the two-party system to keep it from being anything other than a two-party system with Republicans and Democrats. And election lawyers work seamlessly with one another, putting all their ideological differences aside to have a strangle hold on power.

but I think the thing that sort of left out of this conversation is forget third parties for a second because I think you already buy into a certain game theory logic when you talk about a third party in a country that is a first-past-the-post election system. Where do new parties come from? And new parties come from issues. The Republican Party was born as an abolitionist party. It was slavery was a big issue and the wigs were all over the place and they couldn't deal with it. And so the Republican Party came out of basically nowhere because people were driven by the

issues. My problem with this forward party thing is that it's a marketing slogan pretending to be an issue-driven party, or at least that's how it comes across. If you read their little manifesto that they put out a couple weeks ago, this is the thing that Christy Tonne Woodman and Andrew Yang or spearheading. And it's got a lot of good people on it. And I probably agree with a lot of them about the problems with America, but it's, they're like, we're not, we're forming a party because we don't like the other two parties, and we're not asking anybody to change their minds on it, to change their positions on any, on any issues. They can come and join our party as Republicans, as Democrats, as independents, as liberals, as conservatives, as whatever.

And who's in the Bible, the Laudetians, David, who are neither hot nor cold, old, and they're lukewarm and everything. Like, the forward party doesn't take a position on anything, and that's not going to get people to sort of come out and vote and abandon their parties and abandon their various philosophical positions. Andrew Yang was on CNN earlier this week. I don't know if you guys saw this, and he was asked by, I think it was Jim Acosta or somebody, So what's the forward party's position on abortion?

And he said, we don't have a left-wing position or a right-wing position. We have a forward position or something to that effect. And, you know, this is very much like Kang or Kodos and the Simpsons saying, forward, not backward, upward, not downward, and always twirling, twirling towards freedom, right? You need a position on something for a party to have. to draw people in and just simply saying, I don't like the screaming on cable news, which a lot of people agree with,

but it's not why they stuff envelopes and it's not why they show up. You know, parties, new parties need real issues that cause people to drop their old positions. And I just don't see how that's going to happen anytime soon. I don't want to speak for every speechwriter who works in politics in America, who's roughly my age.

But whenever I'm staring at a blank page, I will tell you that's exactly what I write. And always torrilling, torsling, torrid right now. And it really helps break that blank page, tyranny. So I'm crying a little bit right now for tears of laughter and joy. Thank you, Jonah. That's what I'm here for. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss,

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What did we learn, Steve? What do you feel like your big takeaways from 2022 Republican Party, the direction it's going in, the policies it stands for, the realignment between the Republicans and the Democrats, wherever direction you want to go?

Biggest lessons for Steve Hayes. Yeah, I mean, I think we're getting mixed signals. Certainly the base of the Republican Party seems even more even trumpier than it was a year ago, than it was two years ago, than it was five years ago. The stupid cliche that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, like, that's been proven true, I think. And the extent to which people were just willing to shrug off what he did trying to steal an election and the violence he stoked on January 6th. And the things that he's continuing to do every day remains.

surprising to me. I think all that stuff really matters and most Republican base voters don't think all that stuff really matters. So on the one hand, I think the core, the base of the Republican Party is trumpier than it was before. I do think, though, that the rest of the party, the people who probably wouldn't be counted as the base, the people who were reluctant Trump voters in 2016 and 2020, are increasingly growing tired of it all. They're exhausted by the fight. They're sick of the drama. You're seeing this in polling the New York Times, Siena poll that we've mentioned on here before. I think it was a Winnipec poll that suggested the same thing. And Trump's lost support in a pretty dramatic fashion from independence. There's a Marquette University Law poll

that had Trump with horrible numbers among independence. So I think there's a, there's a lot to look at as relates to the Republican Party and Trump, where things are pointing in different directions. Last point on the Senate candidates, there have been a lot of Trumpy Republican Senate candidates, populists, quasi-populists, neopopopopulists, whatever we want to call them, who are bad candidates. And I think they will jeopardize the Republicans' ability to take the Senate because candidates will end up mattering, and the candidates that appealed to that base, the core of the Republican party, many of them Trump endorsed candidates in a primary will not have much general election appeal. And I think that could cost Republicans anywhere from two to five seats.

Jonah, please tell us why Steve is wrong and pass the crudite, if you will. So I, look, if you asked me six weeks ago, I would have said Trump's hold on the party is shrinking. And I would have said it. I know this because I wrote it several times. And I think it was true if you looked at the data at the time. And you could have told the story about his shrinking control over the party. I think there's a little recency bias in some of the stuff Steve is saying because the last six weeks have gone very well for Trump, including the Mar-a-Lago search. And the last few runs of primaries have gone very well for Trump or Trumpian forces.

So it could be that I was wrong six weeks ago with my recency bias back then. It's impossible to know right now for sure. I think Steve is absolutely right about the Senate stuff. I personally think that the Republicans won't take the Senate because of the Trumpian influence in picking really bad Senate candidates. At the very least, Republicans will lose seats that they otherwise would have one, if they hadn't put whack jobs, nutters, and phrygozoids on the ballot. I'm sorry if using all the technical political science terms.

But, Jonah, let me ask you a question. So my whole thing on this event, there's no question that Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party is still incredibly strong. Whether it's ascendant or descendant, I'm not sure it matters when you're over 50%. It's strong. That's within the Republican primary voting electorate. Does it matter whether those candidates get over the finish line? line in November in terms of Trump's hold on the party, i.e., do you actually need office holders

or is winning these primaries going to simply be enough to keep the current office holders in line, to scare people out of the 2024 race? And so November doesn't really matter in some sense for the future of the Republican Party. Yeah, so I don't know for sure. And I'm sorry if there's weird background noise here, there's crazy wind blowing here in Maine and windows and doors keep blowing open. So on the one hand, I agree with you, that's the question, right? It's like, the problem is that it requires an establishment or a party leadership with sufficient power to learn lessons and make course corrections going forward, right? And if you look at either party, there's just very little of that going on.

I mean, yeah, Joe Biden got the nomination in 2020. but that wasn't the party leadership saying we have to rally around Joe Biden because he's the guy who can win. That was the voters grabbing all the Bernie bros and, you know, and Elizabeth Warren shock troops and saying, you guys are high. Stop talking about defund the police. We got to beat Donald Trump. Biden was saved by the fact that the Democratic Party is more conservative than the Democratic Party leadership is. I think there's a very similar thing going on with the Republican Party. The Republican Party is there is no establishment. There is no leadership.

There's no one telling Republicans, hey, maybe stop talking about the FBI being the Gestapo. There's no one saying anything other than if we lost it's because we weren't Trumpy enough. Literally, Matt Gates, it has an opponent who is to his Trumpy right in Florida, right? It's very similar to the old left-wing response that always says we never really tried socialism or we really never, you know, and in a rational world using what we might call earth logic, I think your point is exactly right, is that if a bunch of Republicans lose in the general election, the party would respond by saying, okay, we tried that. That's sort of what we did with Sharon Engel in the past. Let's learn our lesson. But who's learning our lessons?

Remember Donald Trump in 2018, when the Republican Party got shellacked, his theory, for why all of those Republicans who lost, lost, was that they didn't embrace Donald Trump more. Remember he gave that press conference? Did not embrace. Did not embrace. It's like if they'd only been Trump here, he would rather have total control over a rump GOP

than a majority party GOP where he's a major influence. And that dynamic just ruins any normal cost-benefit analysis in normal political terms. Oh, but see, what I find fascinating is it's totally rational. Because as you get rid of competitive districts, and even at the state level, get rid of competitive states by and large, the primary becomes the primary way in which you remove someone from office. That's where their primary fear is. So getting through the primary

becomes the rational focus of any of these people who are currently in office. Therefore, for current office holders, if you're only concerned about the primary, it doesn't actually matter what happens in the general election. To your point, sure, you're going to be in the minority. but you're still a congressman, and you know what they say about the guy who finishes last in med school? Steve, sorry, what were you going to say? No, I think that's a good point. I think both things are true at the same time, right? I think you guys are both exactly right. Phil Klein at National Review has a really interesting piece looking at how Republicans are reembracing Trump and how strange it is given that Republicans lost the House, lost the Senate, lost the White House, under Donald

Trump. And Klein writes, nobody was running as a proud supporter of Jimmy Carter in the 1982 midterms or as a George H.W. Bush Republican in 1994. It is fascinating to watch this happen. I think you're right, Sarah, that a lot of it owes to the fact that they want to win the primaries and Trump can help in there. And then they don't have a general election fear. The general election's already been decided, both through actual gerrymandering, sort of people moving gerrymandering, partisanship increasing, sort of the David French book that was just published. It's a great book, by the way, David. Well, thank you, Zara.

And can I add here, let's put some numbers in perspective about how minorities, how small a minority can sort of dominate a congressional district. So Tennessee just had redistricted its fifth district and had an election. And the winner of that election was a person, I think the best way to describe him is a Lauren Bobert, close to Marjorie Taylor Green level extremist, a guy named Andy Ogles. I don't want to go into all of what he said and done. You can Google him. But he wins, and he wins pretty decisively with 21,298 votes out of 57,000 cast and a multi-candidate primary. 21,298.

And he's going to run in a district where the last election, the winner of that district had 252,000 votes. Okay, so almost nobody doubts that he's going to win. Now, why is he going to win? Is he going to win? Because, man, I tell you what, 250,000 Tennesseans are all about his COVID hoaxism. No, he's the guy running with the R by his name in a heavily, what is now gerrymandered into, a disproportionately Republican district.

And so nobody doubts that he's going to win, and he's going to ultimately have won with, he's going to become a congressman in the final analysis because of 22,000 people. And the final analysis, it's going to be the 22,000. Out of roughly 790,000 that are in every congressional district. Out of 790,000. Now, part of this is, you know,

one of my messages to folks is there's a difference between sort of losing your party and just surrendering your party. And when you don't show up at all to vote in a primary and you just sort of decide, well, you know, I'll let other people decide who the Republican candidate is and then I'll vote for the Republican. You've surrendered it. You haven't lifted a finger to sort of fight for any kind of identity. And then you sit there and say, well, darn it, don't really love the way things are going. Well, you know, you had an opportunity. You had an opportunity. And this is something that I'm seeing in many places. And the Trumpism as a national phenomenon, as a national, which includes the independence that

Steve talked about, who have really decisively turned against Trump, is a narrowing phenomenon, but it's intensifying. It's narrowing and intensifying. And that really shows up in certain kinds of primaries. And that's what we've seen. 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. Turns and conditions apply.

Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y-Anex. Let's shift gears, talk about what is happening in Ukraine, the latest updates? Yeah, so this is really interesting because as the media attention, because media tension never really stays focused even on a war unless there are dramatic new developments in the war, media tension has really moved on from Ukraine for that natural reason and also for the nature of the conflict

that Ukraine's found itself embroiled in, which is a conflict of very incremental gains day by day or incremental losses day by day with horrific shelling, horrific carnage. But no new, new. other than today there was more horrific shelling and more horrific carnage. But something has shifted. And I got to say, you know, I've been really hesitant to sort of say this because I just kept waiting for more data and waiting for more data. But the high Mars, the delivery of the high Mars missile system to Ukraine really seems to have made more of a difference than I thought

it would make. The Ukrainians have combined the missile system with, pinpoint targeting intelligence to absolutely eviscerate Russian logistics, and they have engaged in military strikes that have isolated Russian forces in Kersan. And so there's an actual opportunity now for Ukraine to make some limited gains. It seems to be at this point the consensus is the Russian attack has largely stalled out. The casualty figure are staggering, 75, 80,000 total killed and wounded is what the, is what the Pentagon is estimating, which is just a stunning number. We don't have a reliable estimate for Ukrainian losses, but they're going to be comparable. It seems to have stalled out. It seems that there's

an opportunity for at least a Ukrainian battlefield victory in Kurson. And, you know, I'll take all of this with a grain of salt, because as the media has moved on, you're just seeing less analysis of the fighting. But I'm starting to wonder if we're reaching the point of, is this where the lines are now? And what now? Have we reached sort of the limit of the Russian advance unless the Russians really doubled down,

mobilized fully the way they haven't mobilized? Or is this, have we reached that point? And that's, to me, the key question. Steve? Yeah, I would say, I think that David's right that that's the key question. I'm not sure we have an answer yet, and I'm not sure we'll have an answer soon. If you look at what's happening in the Crimean Peninsula in particular, you're hearing from senior Russian defense officials who say that they've taken to

sort of more creative special forces activities, sabotaging ammo depots, causing problems for Russians kind of behind enemy lines. This is something that's relatively, new, but they're doing it in part, they say, because they don't have the weapons that the West has promised to provide them. And there is still, and this has been basically a problem with the Ukrainian effort from the beginning, this lag in the time that they are promised weapons from the West, the time that these commitments are made. And of course, the logistical challenges of getting them there. And that is still a problem. And if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if you If it's the case that this is a war of attrition or they've stopped these Russian advances

in certain places, that's all to the good. But we know that Russians have the capability, at least militarily, to dramatically escalate the fighting, and Ukrainians still do not. Jonah, in some ways Ukraine has fallen off the day-to-day radar of Americans here, but at the same time, you know, there are still signs in my neighborhood. People are still leaving things at the Ukrainian embassy in the United States. This has had a much longer shelf life than I think a lot of people expected in February March. And at the same time, we're at the one-year anniversary of Afghanistan, and the Biden administration, I think, is kind of struggling to define their

foreign policy writ large. What do you think the Biden administration will be remembered for with sort of those two as polls in some sense, Afghanistan on the one and Ukraine on the other? It was just so you know, I think it's like Wizard of Oz here, and I'm going to, my house is just going to land on a bunch of little people any minute now. The wind is going nuts. So I think it's entirely possible that the Biden administration in the history books will actually get better scores on foreign policy than I would have thought. with, again, with the caveat that you have to average in a massive F for Afghanistan. So it's very difficult to see how they can actually get an A.

But their handling of Ukraine has, for the most part, I think, been very good, given its Democratic administration, given all the givens. My suspicion is that even if I'm completely wrong about what the history books say, because there's still a lot of history yet to happen, it will do them almost no good politically. Like, no one, no one's going to be voting on foreign policy. The, I don't think the Democrats, the Democratic voters, if there's, if, if, if 5% of Democratic voters make foreign policy in a positive sense, a priority I would be shocked. They're generally the only thing that activates Democratic voters when it comes to foreign policy

is opposition to Republican foreign policy. Where I'm more concerned and where I think the real test for Biden in the next six months is going to be is that the stuff I've been reading suggests that Putin may, in fact, offer some sort of ceasefire. going into the winter. Because he really is at a standstill. It's amazing. I saw I was looking at a map today. The map from like a month or five weeks ago, and the map of today where Russian control is the same place. It's just a complete standstill. And so he may announce some sort of ceasefire trying to seem like he's the one who wants peace. He's the one who wants to help the Europeans going

into the winter with energy prices and energy supply. He's the one who wants to feed the world. and I think there's going to be a big chunk of the EU leadership that says let's take this deal, let's normalize Russia, let's normalize things, you know, inflation is killing us for domestic reasons, energy prices are killing us for domestic reasons. This is our chance, sort of like the Iran deal, to get Putin on the path to peace, right? And it's going to be all nonsense.

And I can totally see the Biden administration buying into it for political reasons. if it's not extremely careful. And I think that is going to be the major foreign policy challenge for the next six months because all Putin is trying to do is buy time to the spring where I think he would relaunch the offensive after replenishing his military stores and his bank accounts. Steve, I want to broaden this out a little bit because at the same time that you have so much Western focus on Ukraine and Russia, you have China focusing on Africa and some of the more developing economies in the world, investing heavily in frankly vilifying both, well, predominantly

America, but, you know, they're so focused on themselves and what's going on in these Western countries, food production through COVID because of Ukraine, not sending you food, is wrecking havoc on these countries. And China is here for you. They're controlling the media in a lot of these countries. I'm curious if you think the Biden administration should be doing more or if because there's no real domestic political appetite for foreign aid from American voters, our hands are a little tied, even if it means China moving forward on the propaganda side, although of course China's economy is having a few setbacks recently, notably. Yeah, I mean, there's no way for the United States to catch up at this point, basically.

I mean, China's been doing this. This is a long-term project. China's been doing this for a long time in developing countries, particularly with a focus on Africa. And they're able to go now and sort of cash in on these investments that they've made in many ways. Some of it in terms of propaganda, some of it in terms of actual returns. I think you're likely to see the Chinese getting, reminding people of these commitments they've made years earlier and seeking to sort of solidify their footing in a lot of these countries in a way that certainly is not in the interest of the United States. One big picture point on related to what Jonah was saying about the Biden administration is a really interesting and exhaustive look back from the Washington Post this week. on the Biden administration's decision-making on Ukraine and the early parts of the campaign.

And it's just a fascinating blow-by-blow account. The extent to which we knew exactly what the Russians were planning to do suggests that we had some unbelievably good intelligence and have pretty deeply penetrated Russians on the human intelligence side, something that we notably lacked before the invasion in Iran. But I think the reporting demonstrates the challenges that the Biden administration faced in keeping together a coalition of reluctant European partners and NATO allies, while at the same time trying to communicate the urgency of what the Russians were virtually certain to do. And I still think that the Biden administration can be criticized in a number of different ways for not acting with the urgency in public that they apparently had in private. But their argument, and this reporting gives it additional context, is that they needed to be slow and cautious to keep our European allies, NATO allies, along, and this reporting suggests that there were some reasons to believe that that was right. All right. Any last words on foreign policy? David, Jonah? You good? Happy?

Generally good. Generally good. Still keep an eye out on Taiwan. I think, again, this is something where a lot of attention receded from it as soon as Nancy Pelosi left. But the activity around Taiwan did not, the activity around Taiwan only ratcheted up Chinese military activity around Taiwan. So I'm still looking at that situation and very, very, very concerned by it. I've got a special not worth your time today for each of you. In North Carolina's 13th district, the Republican nominee is 26 years old. His name is Bo Hines. He was a football player at North Carolina State who transferred to Yale because he was interested in running for office. Young guy, when he was asked on the John Frederick show, this is a well-known conservative

radio show on the East Coast, mostly the Virginia, North Carolina area, asked whether what he thought sort of of Republicans saying the search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home made the United States look like a Banana Republic. Here was his response. I think that's an insult to Banana Republicans across the country. I mean, at least the manager of Banana Republic, unlike our president, knows where he is and why he's there and what he's doing. So obviously, Mr. Hines thinks that the, you know, Banana Republic phrase refers to the store and not the other way around. And to me, like, okay, it's, you know, is what it is, um, in terms of being a congressman

who doesn't know what a Banana Republic refers to. It's concerning. But frankly, a 26 year old not knowing, I'm less shocked by, like intensive purpose, right? Intensive purposes, or however, people sort of misspell, missay, intense, and purposes. But, like, they can explain to you why intensive makes sense in the context and so many of those other malpropisms or whatever you want to call them. So my question to each of you is, what did he think the metaphor meant of a banana republic for the store of, like, you know, this is, it makes the United States look like a banana

Republic. Like, it makes the United States look like a retail store that sells chinos and buttons. Yeah, lots of slim, fitting clothes. I don't totally understand it. David, any thoughts? That's a great question, Sarah. I think he might not have understood the reference at all and been scrambling to compliment the Banana Republics versus the Biden administration. So, in other words, a store you generally encounter in the mall selling decent clothes, how dare you insult that by comparing it to the Biden administration? It's how I, you know, because he probably's had just fine experiences at Banana Republic. As have we all. Yeah.

Yeah, as we all have. So I feel like he was just rising to the defense of a store that he loves. I actually am curious why the Banana Republic's stores are named that, because frankly, I'm not sure in this day and age, it's not a little bit like naming your sports team something slightly problematic and also has nothing to do with what the store sells. I mean, banana republics are obviously a pejorative term and specifically refer to countries who export bananas,

obviously, so like these Caribbean countries when in fact there's plenty of banana republics that are not in the Caribbean, Lord knows. Jonah, do you have any thoughts on why the store got named that and why it's still named that? No, it's a good question. And just for the record, the phrase Banana Republic comes from a 1904 collection of essays by O. Henry. You are right.

And it was originally about Ecuador. I know this because I went and did a deep dive on this Banana Republic nonsense last week. No, but I'm waiting for Marjorie Taylor Green to announce that J. Crew is owned by the Mossad. because it's, you know, a crew of Jays, if you catch my meaning. No, I don't know. And I have to say I have some, like if it was a malapropism, that would be one thing. Because I am really bad about malapropisms. I still get grief from friends of mine from 25 years ago when I was a television producer

and someone suggested some politician for this Egg TV show I used to produce called Think Tank. and they suggested that Ed Koch come on, and I was like, Ed Koch, does he really have, you know, an academic pedicure? And I made it like 15 seconds into the conversation further before people will say, did you say pedicure? And I've been getting great from these guys ever since. Nails on the chalkboard. Steve, do you shop at Banana Republic often? I don't. As I recall, they have a lot of skinny jeans, and skinny jeans and slim fits don't really work for me anymore. As Andrew Breitbart used to say, you know, I'm in the Husky category.

Wikipedia, by the way, tells me that when the store opened in 1978 in Northern California, it was owned by a couple known for acquiring interesting clothing items that their travel-related jobs brought them into contact with. But by 1983, it was a couple. It was a couple known for acquiring interesting clothing items that their travel-related jobs brought them into contact with. But by 1983, it was acquired by Gap, and that was sort of the end of Banana Republic Safari-themed, hand-drawn catalogs as we know it. Pretty short-lived, actually, like five years. Still surprised that they've kept the name and won't be shocked if that name changes in the near future. All right. Thank you all so much for joining us.

This has been the Dispatch podcast. Rate us wherever you're listening to this. Or if you want to yell at us, hop on into that comment section. Become a member. Hate comments. Get read just as much as love comments. We appreciate you either way. Nope, my recording did not work. Trying again. You mean your backup would it work. That's what I meant. I didn't mean to man-splained to you? I just, oh, that was, that was a clear, clear mansplained.

I was, I wanted you to explain to the man what you meant. Oh, and Steve, do you have a heart out? I got to do the NBC taping at 9.15 my time. Before you do NBC, you might want to drag a comb through your hair. I know, well, I do need to, you know, do something. Now he's women-splaining to you. I look like Nick Nolte or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I can't hide.

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