The Dispatch Podcast - MAGA vs. NATO | Roundtable

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah break down the GOP’s divisions over Russia and the debate between interventionism versus isolationism. The Agenda: -Takeover of the MAGA youth -Realignment in parties -Replacing George Santos -Hur report and advising Biden -Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV -Super Bowl kayfabes Show Notes: -Stephen Hayes: Rand Paul, Russian Stooge -Kevin Williamson: The Full Duranty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-Dash Canada. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger and it's Jota Goldberg and Steve Hayes today.

Feels like the gang's back together. Steve, can we just start with Russia, Ukraine, and the GOP? Can you fill us in on where we are, on the funding bill, and also the vibes? Yeah, I mean, we've seen, I think what we've seen over the past two weeks is really the, the culmination of this sort of enduring and growing divide in the Republican Party on foreign policy. broadly, but on Russia more specifically. And what strikes me as particularly interesting, and I don't think is getting the attention that it probably ought to, is so much of what we're seeing with the kind of younger, trumpier parts of the Republican Party leaning in a more pro-Russia direction starts and ends

with Donald Trump. You know, he was, whatever you want to say about the Mueller report, and I I think it's been, it's been, it was poorly covered at the time. It's been poorly covered since. You know, Donald Trump was clearly friendlier to Vladimir Putin than any Republican had been friendly to any Russian leader in recent memory. He, his party has come to echo that in many respects. There's a big difference, and we can get into this on the specific. of the funding bills, but between older Republicans, Republicans who have been in place,

and I think have a voting record on issues related to Russia and U.S. national security and the younger Republicans, particularly in the Senate, the younger Republicans are much trumpier, much more skeptical of Ukraine funding, much more skeptical of U.S. assistance to allies in general. and the older Republicans are I think much more sort of babies of the Cold War

but we saw all this come to ahead on this vote recently with respect to additional funding for Ukraine and it was quite a spectacle we talked a little bit last week about sort of the

very bizarre Republican dances around this funding at first day said we have to have, we have to include border funding if we're going to talk about funding of these overseas efforts, then that there was this push to bring them all together. And then Republicans said, we can't have that largely after Donald Trump said, I mean, very clearly, I don't want a solution. I don't want improvement to what's happening with respect to the border because I want

to run on the chaos that we're seeing. at the border. So Republicans, I think, largely gave him his wish and then separated these overseas funding packages with the border, from the border funding packages. What was particularly interesting is if you look at some of the Republicans who have been traditionally hakish or might have been expected to be supportive of Ukraine, because they were at one point supportive of Ukraine, like Lindsey Graham, who traveled over there and gave speeches thumping his chest about how important it was to support Ukraine and take on Vladimir Putin, like Marco Rubio, who's the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and had been a hawk before his nationalist populist Trumpy turn shortly after the 2016 election where he warned about Trump with the nuclear codes. And you've begun to see a shift, I think. There have always been some principled non-interventionists in the Republican Party.

I would have put Mike Lee in that category before. But you're now seeing, I think, in this media environment where it's important to create villains and everything is excessive. And attempt to replace Vladimir Putin as the villain in this geopolitical story with, Voldemir Zelensky as the villain, and these crazy conspiracy theories that have sprung up about Ukraine and, you know, the U.S. money going to fund Ukrainian oligarchs, what have you. It's a complicated story. Jonah, I guess here's my problem. I am interventionist.

I think the world is a safer place when America plays the role of the superpower because of the entire history of the world on peace through strength. And certainly the history of the last 70 years, as we've seen civilian deaths in conflict zones, you know, drop, et cetera. Like, it's actually been a good time for planet Earth and war, meaning it's a bad time for war, whatever. But if you don't believe that, I mean, this is sort of the definition of populism. It's isolationism. It's inward looking. It's people who believe that we have too many problems at home. And therefore, as much as we'd like to, and as much as it might even be in our sort of long-term interest, we can't help other people.

We're not interested in helping other people. So, you know, we need to secure our border. We need to help people whose jobs are disappearing because of AI, et cetera, et cetera. And so sending money to Ukraine should be so far down the priority list. I don't know. Like, isn't that their position? And isn't that a position? It's a position, sure.

A viable, a viable sort of coherent position. Yeah, look, I think at a level of abstraction, there's a lot of, there's a lot to defend in that position. The problem I have going in pretty much every direction is that the facts supplied by the most passionate and ardent proponents of that position are lies and falsehoods and distortions or just based on ignorance. And if you had a really good case to make along those lines, you wouldn't need to make stuff up. And yet, when you look at the things that people say about Ukraine, when you look at the things they say about NATO, before you get into whether or not they come from a legitimate position, you have to start from the fact of asking, are they true? And I constantly see everywhere. I mean, like, you have Tucker Carlson. And I know we're sort of agonizing about, you know, how much to bring up Tucker Carlson.

but like Tucker Carlson goes to a friggin Stalin created subway system that was intended for propaganda purposes 70 years ago and then goes to a pretty crappy looking supermarket and says look how much better Russia is than the United States. Russia is poorer than the state of Mississippi. Russia has lower life expected

and Mississippi is our poorest state, right? You get this stuff about, you know, that Ukraine's troops are all, you know, conscripted at gunpoint and none of them want to fight. You get people talking about Putin being a man of peace and all of these kinds of things. You get all these fabrications about Russian history. If the case for the isolationist or non-interventionist thing was so strong, you wouldn't need to make up all this stuff.

And so I think a lot of it is sort of what Steve was getting at is this narrative formation that gives people permission to say, no, no, we're actually supporting the really the true good guys in all of this. when you look at the case that people make about NATO, they say, well, we can't go defend NATO and can't do all that stuff. But the only time Article 5 has ever been invoked was in defense of us after 9-11.

You don't have to be a metternick or a Kissinger or von Klauswitz to understand that countries with allies have more power geopolitically and militarily than countries without allies. And when people, you know, Trump, probably probably with Trump is he only has two paradigms in which he talks about how NATO works. One is, is that it's sort of like

the Mara Lago Country Club and the other countries are in arrears in their dues, which is complete nonsense, or that it's like the mafia and it's a protection racket and that you need to be making your payments to the Sopranos if you want our protection. And that's not how the thing works. Yes, we pay, we spend more in military than our NATO allies do, but it's not into some kitty. It's not in some general fund. It's on our national defense. And the people who say they're against the way NATO works, they seem to not understand that, like,

we would still be spending pretty much that amount of money on our national defense if NATO didn't exist. There's an argument, there's a counterfactual to be made that if we didn't have NATO, we'd have to spend more money because we would have to be providing a lot of the things that our NATO allies provide in our military alliance. And so it's, I get the idea,

and there's a very old American, an idea, let's take care of people at home first, all that kind of stuff, and there's legitimacy to all of that, but almost always it's a false choice. You look at some of these people saying that we're taking food off of Americans' tables by proposing to give aid to Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan, and it's just nonsense. That's not how economics works, not how foreign aid works. And lastly, and just to make a point, these are the same people who believe passionately in industrial policy. Most of the money we're spending in Ukraine, and aid stays in the United States, actually stays in Trump states, in Trump districts,

because we're sending weapons, not money. And so again, every time you look at the specific charges that bolster this defensible, plausible, big case, the facts just aren't there for, and the arguments aren't there for it. Jonah, if you had written all that down and been reading from a script, it couldn't have been more persuasive to me. All right, thanks for coming. It felt like you came loaded for bear on that one. On the one hand, we don't like to spend a lot of time talking about Tucker Carlson's latest musings because they're often so incoherent and I think come from a place of bad faith. Unfortunately, now when Tucker speaks, he often speaks for a good segment of, you know, the Republican Party or what was the Republican Party at one point, including Donald Trump. And the kinds of things that he has been saying lately are, you know, as Jonah points out,

nobody's taking the food off the table of American kids. At one point, Tucker had a rant this past week. Again, I think it was from Moscow. Tucker had this sort of silly rant in an interview that he gave. I guess this was, he went from one authoritarian country to another authoritarian country to criticize the United States, the freest country on the globe still, and said that he has a right to despise people who favor Ukrainian funding because, and there are several leaps of logic here, he has four draft age children, and he implied, there's a draft coming.

like there's no draft there's no talk about a draft there's no real talk about u.s troops on the ground in ukraine all of this just made up he's just inventing this stuff it has no basis in truth there's no basis in fact he's not actually he hasn't discovered anything he hasn't done any investigating he's just making it up to whip people into a frenzy i would say gullible followers of Tucker Carlson into a frenzy and get them to be more accepting of the kind of bullshit arguments that we're hearing from people like Mike Lee at this point. And these are not, as I said before, these are not sort of the principled arguments of a long-time non-interventionist.

And Mike Lee has that. That's who he is. That's who he was. He often made, in my view, the most principled arguments that could be made against deeper U.S. entanglements in foreign affairs, particularly as it related to our funding to foreign aid, to our military aid to allies, what have you. That's not what's happening now. He's making up, they're making up stories about Zelensky. There are certainly problems with the way the Ukrainians have run the war. I mean, you know, Ukrainians fired their top

defense official within the past couple of weeks. have been real stories, substantive stories, about corruption in the money that we've set there. We should absolutely be diligent about that and scrutinize where our money's going for. That's not what these guys are doing. They're making sort of old school arguments that are more reflective of the Ron Paul Rand Paul conspiracy isolationism. I should point out, I mean, just as a historical footnote here. This has been happening for a while. Rand Paul went to Russia in 2018 and came back and gave an interview to his own father.

I think on his dad's show, it was called The Liberty Report, ironically. And Rand Paul, in this discussion with his father, crazy sort of Walter Durante spin on how great Russia is, how open it is to freedom, that they really want dialogue with the West, they want to meet, they're open to dialogue, on and on and on, boasted about how the Libertarian Party of Russia had been able to hold rallies in Russia, making it out to be this sort of, you know, a place for political dialogue and open discussion for setting aside the fact that Vladimir Putin jails people who oppose his policies. He routinely throws journalists in prison for no reason. We've seen this kind of spin from the isolationist crank wing of the Republican Party. It just seems to be

heightened at this moment. So my last question on this is just on the Democratic side. Doesn't it feel like we've sort of had a flip-a-roo, like since when are Democrats for overseas wars? Didn't I spend 20 years hearing from them about how that's not what they wanted? I get the question, and there's definitely been a

flipperoo, right? I mean, like the whole, you know, where does Mitt Romney go to get his debate win back, you know, on the 1980s called they want their foreign policy back thing from Obama. At the same time,

it's just worth pointing out. It's like, again, no one's talking about America getting into a foreign war, right? I mean, this is, this is, this is sort of, I get the framing, but like the, the Democrats have always liked multilateralism better than the Republicans have, including me. And my line for years about my problem with Democratic foreign policy has been they'd rather be wrong in a big group than right alone. But what's weird about Republican foreign policy now is they'd rather be wrong alone. And this just gets back to my, my

original point, which is that if you're going to make a case against NATO, which is the most successful military alliance and probably world history, certainly in modern history, you shouldn't have to make up stuff, right? And when Tucker and all these people talk about, you know, how DeSantis used to talk about Nikki Haley saying that she wants to send American kids to go fight in Ukraine, if you have to make up your opponent's position, it can't be that compelling an argument. And I am aware of nobody on the help Ukraine side from Zelensky to Biden to Nikki Haley to anybody at AEI, you know, the supposedly, you know, the incubator of neocond of foreign policy, nobody talks about actually sending American troops to Ukraine. And yet that's the

straw man that the other side really wants to fight with. And the Democrats are just sort of like pushed into the right position because of their negative partisanship about the Republican stupid position. That's what I find kind of fascinating about it because it's a cycle, right? Like you start with this small shift in the electorate as the two parties realign because of Donald Trump, which again, it's not really because of Donald Trump, in my view, it's because of the 2008 financial crisis and because of all these other things that lead to Donald Trump that then lead to this, you know, moving political realignment between the two parties. But then because of negative polarization, everything accelerates that realignment. So this is another example of

how that realignment gets accelerated, in my view, along educational divides, right? Where Democrats end up representing increasingly, and again, this is like somewhat, the phrasing I think sounds misleading, even it's totally accurate. Increasingly richer, whiter, more educated, parts of the American electorate as the Republican Party becomes more racially diverse, less wealthy, and less well-educated as just general statements on the trend lines of that realignment. And this seems to fit so squarely within it, which is why, again, I think if the aliens only visited in 2005 and then 2024, they'd be pretty confused about how quickly this happened. I think you're right. And look, if you look back and pick 2005, I mean,

Republicans and conservatives were criticized for seeing everything as a threat, right? Everything was a threat. And we need to bolster our defenses at home, abroad. We needed to extend our power. We needed to shape the geopolitical landscape to the extent that we could. And, you know, we had at one point a long discussion of a little long after effects of the Iraq war. This is definitely part of them, right? I mean, this is people, I think, have grown wary of further overseas commitments,

even if they don't involve U.S. boots on the ground. There's this sense that, and, you know, I think leaving Afghanistan to revert back to Taliban rule and to see the things that we're seeing there, the continuing instability in Iraq, I think people look at that and say, we tried to shape what was happening in those two areas where we did have boots on the ground and it didn't work. Now, I think that's an incomplete and not entirely accurate view. We did, I think, do a fair amount of good with our commitments in those areas, but there have been tremendous costs. And I think it's, what's strange is it's made younger Republican lawmakers and the Republicans, Republican, the changing Republican electorate that you described, Sarah, more skeptical of anything and

everything. They just say, screw it. We should stay home. We should focus on our border, not their border. And it's sort of ready made for the kind of demagoguery that we're seeing from from Donald Trump and his troops. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

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And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. All right, let's move on. There was a special election to replace George Santos in New York. George Santos was a Republican, as you may remember,

but it was a pretty flippy, floppy seat. And it went to Democrats. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House in a private meeting, it's reported with Republicans, made the case that Democrats way outspent Republicans in the race, and it wasn't, you know,

winning it in the first place was the mirage, so to speak. Donald Trump said the reason the Republican lost was because she tried to, quote, unquote, straddle the fence and wasn't MAGA enough. Joan, I guess I'll start with you. Is this relevant at all? Like, the special elections, this special election, you know, there's specific candidates.

It's incredibly low turnout. It's in New York, even if it's sort of a swingy-ish district. One way or the other. Or am I supposed to read into this that Donald Trump is still a huge drag on Republican chances down ballot that Donald Trump, for whatever reason, is really appealing at the top of the ballot for some people. But when you get down to it, 2018, 2020, 2020,

there's just endless races that Republicans could have, should have won that they don't. Yeah, this is a tough one for me. Because I think, first of all, I was on a boat in the Caribbean when all of this happened. So I had to play catch up. Such a humble brag. Sorry to rub that in.

Yeah. Wanted to get that in there. I just want to be clear, everyone. There's like a picture of Jonah. Do you know when like they rescue dolphins and they have to keep the dolphins skin moist or else the dolphins will die because these are sea-based mammals? There's a picture of Jonah that he sent us. And because he was such a jerk, I'm going to use the word jerk, in sending us this photo as we're suffering, there's like random snow on a morning here in D.C.'s, schools delayed. since he sent us that picture to troll us

I'm going to troll him back but publicly in front of thousands of people the picture was of Jonah in one of those dolphin holding swoops and he's been lowered There's a hammock chair but yeah I can take your point

He's been lowered into the water with his cigar so that his skin may stay moist as they rescue this sea-based mammal It was almost like a sling like the first thing that came into my head was free Jonah no but that's the funny thing is that's the right caption it's free Jonah

this is like what Jonah when given maximum freedom would be doing is like getting the benefits of being in the water without any of the work sitting in a chair drinking a whiskey and smoking a cigar looking at the sunset it was really quite lovely and I make no apologies for it Look, I'm just happy they rescued you. The rehabilitation seems like it went well. I was about to try and speak in dolphin sounds, but I didn't, I thought people might swerve into a light pole if they're listening to this on the car. So anyway, it's relevant and I think in a few ways. First of all, as everyone here, I think will agree, Sarah's probably got the most experience with this from the comms and political world.

Lots of stupid things that are irrelevant on the merits, become de facto relevant because they become talking points and constituent parts of the conventional wisdom. True enough. And this gives whether the facts on the ground are match up with the arguments Democrats want to make is an analytical question that's worth probing, but it's also just worth noting that this gives them an example

to talk about about how the issue climate or the political climate's better for, Biden than it might seem. And that's relevant in its own gaze. Now, whether that's, that claim is actually persuasive on the merits, I think it is marginally. I think one of the things, you know, I wrote a column about this a couple of weeks ago. Lots of us have been talking about this about how the old metric of, or the old predictive power of president, incumbent presidential approval is, um, there might be reason to be more skeptical about it. in this climate than ever before, at least in our lifetimes, for a whole bunch of different reasons.

One of them is that when you have a race between essentially two incumbents, the argument about a referendum on the on the account, the change versus state the chorus argument loses a lot of its power because people actually know what the, what the previous president's presidency might look like. Another is that, particularly on abortion, abortion as for single issue voters or as a motivating issue for voters, not donors, but voters, was for most of our lifetimes a benefit for Republicans. And now it's a benefit for Democrats. And so you have people turning out who are going to vote on abortion regardless of what they feel about the incumbent president. And so the issue climate that motivates, particularly the core of Biden's

coalition, I think was on display in this Long Island district, where highly educated, you know, disproportionately sort of, you know, engaged voters turned out in large numbers to vote for the Democrat. It also, and again, this is where the conventional wisdom and the merits get murky. It sent a signal to Democrats that you could run on immigration as a crisis and enforcing the border in a way that was sort of a triangulation for Democrats. But the hard immigration is everything approach that the Republican took was

clearly didn't work very well and I think that that's probably a healthy message for Democrats to receive and a scary one for Republicans to get because Republicans want to run purely basically on immigration and if it doesn't have the salience in that

district the way it did for Santos you know what two years ago that'll say something whether that's true on the ground because there's apparently like a scandal effect, like whenever you throw out a congressman because of a scandal, a lot of voters are just motivated to punish the party that gave him that scandal in the first place. How much of that is involved? I don't know. The last thing that I think is relevant is Trump went back to his cockamamie. The reason why Republicans lose is when they don't embrace me more

fully. And the idea that a candidate should have been even more MAGA and more tied at the hip to Donald Trump in a district that Joe Biden, you know, basically won by eight points, just seems remarkably stupid to me. But that's the talking point that MaguWorld wants to enforce for policing their own side is just to say that, you know, the only way to run for president, run for office in this country is to be all in behind Donald Trump. Oh, no, by the way, I'm going to make my daughter-in-law the co-chair of the RNC if you don't, if that message doesn't come through loudly enough. Steve, agree, disagree, does it matter? Is it tea leaves or is it, I don't know, a soup?

No, that's right. I agree. I agree with most of what Jonah said there. Just a quick footnote on this party of one, which happens to be the headline that we put on Nick Cotogio's phenomenal piece about New York 3, this race, its meaning, and what it likely portends for the rest of this year. We'll put that in the show notes. Before I get there, though, I mean, it really is the case that, you know, Maga World wants pure MAGA loyalty and, and a full embrace of everything Donald Trump. And this is true of sort of the basic politics of the moment where everybody has to hug Donald Trump or they are kicked to the curb. It's also true on policy to the extent that MAGA World ventures into policy. Joni Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa military veteran, who's been a supporter of Ukraine, when she voted for additional Ukraine funding, Donald Trump Jr., sent a tweet out, suggesting that she had invited a primary challenge from Maga Matt Whitaker, who was served for a time in the Department of Justice, right, as the Attorney General

He was also chief of staff for a while. You know, threatening a primary because she wasn't there. Yeah, I mean, I'm tempted here to just read all of Nick's piece because it was so good. It's a single best thing that's been written about this. So please go and read it. But he makes, I think, picking up on Jonah's last point, really important argument about immigration in particular. This comes after this weird Republican dance. on immigration, where they said border matters more than anything.

We absolutely have to do this. It's the number one issue for Republicans. Anything we can do to stem the flow of migrants in the country, we want to do. Biden administration isn't paying any attention to this, have you. And then they have some tools in this legislation that would obviously allow the Biden administration to stem the flow of migrants into the country. and they oppose it and blow up their own, their own work. I think that suggests either a level of dysfunction or a level of bad faith that isn't lost on the folks who aren't paying particularly close attention to day and day out

politics here. And Nick makes that point. I think what the Democratic candidate did in this race is he sort of ran in the middle on immigration. He hit Republicans by making sort of hawkish arguments that, hey, they voted against these measures that would have allowed us to get in front of this to actually make some changes to help improve the situation at the border and shame on them for having done so. It's a hard charge for Republicans to respond to because some of these Republicans literally said, we want the issue so Donald Trump can run on it. in nine months, including Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump actually said those things.

So it's a hard argument for Republicans to run. On the other hand, he also challenged Democrats and said, hey, this is a problem for Democrats. We don't want this inflow. Democrats have been too permissive. We are dealing with a migrant crisis in New York City, what have you, and kind of tried to have it both ways on immigration. there's a good case to be made that, particularly in these swing districts or districts that voted for Biden in 2020, that's a pretty good argument for Democrats to make.

And I wouldn't be surprised if we see it as something of the playbook for Democrats for the next nine, ten months. All right. Last up, because of the timing of when we tape this podcast, we actually didn't get to talk about the Her report last week. This is the 388 pages that was released from the Department of Justice from special counsel Rob Her, who had been investigating whether President Joe Biden willfully retain national security information. Before we launch into this one, it's worth saying, like I said, in advisory opinions, Rob is a great friend. I worked with them very, very closely at the Department of Justice. We stay in touch.

We're buddies. What I did not say on advisory opinions, because it hadn't happened yet. after I taped advisory opinions, Rob called me and discussed, you know, the possibility that he'll be testifying before Congress and asked whether or could I potentially help him with that. We kind of talked about it. Didn't, you know, nothing definitive. And then three hours later, a reporter called and had it as a news story. So it's out there that Rob is, quote, in discussions with me about helping him prep for his congressional hearing. I mean, it's the most like this town story ever that five people care about. But here's my question to you guys. And Jonah, I'll start with you. Does this actually change anyone's mind? Because what I'm seeing is Democrats sticking with Biden, and what I'm seeing is Republicans saying Biden doesn't have the mental acuity to be president, et cetera.

I was hearing that before. So did this move anyone? Is this persuasive? Other people, you know, I hear like this is a game changer. There's going to be a turning point. Steve thinks he's like winning high. stakes over this. Does it matter or not?

This is a little bit like my point about the Long Island special election is that whether it matters on the merits, it becomes an, it goes to the top of the list of talking points for people who say that Trump is, Biden is not mentally competent to be president, you know, anymore. And so it definitely becomes part of the conversation. It becomes a stand in for that argument for a why. until the next one comes along, you know, until, you know, he walks into a closet after a press conference and doesn't come out or something. But the coverage of the Her report, and you got

into some of this on AO, has been really such a Rorschach test where everybody gets something wrong that reinforces their priors. What's new is that it turns out that even Biden got something wrong that reinforced his priors. NBC is reporting that this whole outrage, you know, which Biden made a big deal about in that press conference, about him not knowing, not being able to answer when his, when Bo died, it turns out that her never asked that question, nor did any of his colleagues. It turns out that Biden brought up Bo and then couldn't remember when he died. Now, I've been prepared for a while now, and I've been wanting to talk about this somewhere. I figured I'd do it on the Solo Remnant or something.

I've been prepared to defend Biden on the merits of that. People ask me when my mom died, my dad died, my brother died. I struggled it to give you the year. Doesn't mean these events were not important in my life. In fact, there's something about those events is so timeless to you that it kind of feels like a triviality to talk about the date. And I'm not saying my memory is good, but I've always had trouble with dates anyway. And so, like, but being an old guy and not getting that kind of stuff right, I'm willing

to defend. What I'm not willing to defend is claiming that her viciously asked this question in order to embarrass the president and then made a big deal about it when that did not in fact happen. And you'd think that the aides, particularly people who are in the, the lawyers who were in the deposition in the interview, would have, you know, tried to make that point so he didn't go out on TV to do that. Beyond that, I also think her, and I have no relationship with her, You know, couldn't pick him out of a lineup, probably. But there's a point even Andy McCarthy, you know, who I shouldn't say even Andy McCarthy, but my friend Annie McCarthy at National Review defends her on this.

It wasn't his decision to release this stuff. He was required by law to write a report explaining why he wasn't going to bring charges or why he was going to bring or why charges should be brought, right? It's in the statute. He had to explain his actual reasoning. It would be really outrageous if he made up his reasons rather than gave his real reasons. They're plausible reasons on the surface. And then Merrick Garland was stuck with an impossible decision, but it was his decision. Because if you didn't release the report, people would freak out

and say, how dare you not release the report. And they do release the report. And instead of blaming him for it, they blame her for it. And so I don't know if it actually changed the thing. The only place where I think it's actually almost definitely going to be significant is it's murky enough and complicated enough. It gives Trump some. something to say when he's defending himself on the classified document stuff that will be persuasive to a large number of people and not just MAGA people. And that was the strongest case, is the strongest case against Donald Trump legally as well. And there's things in that report that the Biden team cited, including the precedent to Ronald

Reagan, who kept his, you know, kept classified documents basically himself. the Department of Justice knew about it, the National Archives knew about it, and they didn't do anything about that, meaning they kind of blessed it. And Reagan, in fact, was able to keep those diaries, notebooks with classified information

until his death in 2004. So, you know, it's not, it's the vibes, and it's also, like, literally Biden's defense is one that Trump will now be able to use as well. On the Biden story that Biden was incorrect about whether her asked him

about Beau's death. I mean, this might be the first time in American history, Steve, that a president's going to try to convince the American people that he intentionally lied to them and didn't just forget the thing that he was forgetting about. Yeah. I mean, that's just inexcusable. If you're preparing the president to go give a primetime press conference, don't you review the transcript? But don't you look at this to make sure that the central claim that he's making is in fact true? It's like a level of, of incompetence from the White House that is, I think, truly shocking. So I think people are missing the very obvious import of this. I think it could matter in the Trump classified documents

case. It certainly helps Trump make his case publicly. But the biggest reason it matters is because Joe Biden is old. It's the biggest argument. It's the thing that people are most concerned about with respect to Joe Biden. It's the kind of thing that the voters who are likely to decide the 2024 presidential election, who are not the sort of activist base of either party will care a lot about. It's the kind of thing that's reflected in polling of Democrats who two-thirds of whom say, we're worried about the fact that this guy is so freaking old. It's the kind of thing that underscores the clips that Republicans put out every single day after nearly every single appearance that Joe Biden makes where he screws something up.

It's the kind of thing that gives backing to the Republicans who point to Joe Biden mixing up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt in his defense of his ability to not mix things up. I think it's likely to be a central, maybe a decisive issue in this election. when you have a deep and detailed report based on hours and hours of interviews with the President of the United States who can't remember this stuff because he's so old, it's a problem. And the people who are saying it's not a problem, which is most of the Democratic talking points right now are saying it's not a problem.

These people who are concerned about it are imagining things. You have Democrats and journalists who are saying, this is crazy. Biden is just fine. There's no issue here. none of this is problematic. That is absolute nonsense. And I think it's one of these moments where it's a good sort of test case of who you should take seriously from this point on. If you have somebody telling you that the Biden age thing doesn't matter at this point, they're not being straight with you. And frankly, in terms of the governance of the United States, it's irresponsible

for them to be claiming that this doesn't matter or that Joe Biden has all those faculties or what have you. And the spin that we're seeing from Democratic partisans and I think some of the legacy media organizations on Biden's behalf is pretty disgrace. So a couple things. One, I think that the Her report itself does not change any voters' minds, but it lays the foundation for what's going to happen next, which is potentially the release of the

transcript. And I think that that could be a pivotal moment in the election. For those who are curious, though, I'm really up in the air on like when or how this transcript can get released because remember there's classified information that they're discussing during this interview and the conversations with the ghost writer for instance back in 2017 by definition Biden was discussing classified information with the ghostwriter which is why that was one of the things rob per was investigating so a few things have to happen even when congress subpoenas one or both of those uh one they've got to do an declassification review by all these intelligence agencies who have any interest

in the classified information. Intelligence agencies are not fast. They're not efficient. Two, after that, then it would go to the White House for an executive privilege review. And that's going to be really politically fascinating to me because if the IC, let's say,

moves at lightning speed and does it in one week, that would be just lightning speed. And it goes to the White House. Executive privilege review infamously takes forever as everyone argues over what should be privileged, whether it is privileged, et cetera.

That will be seen, though, as such a strategic delay by the White House, first of all, it could look really bad for them if they're the ones holding it up. But also, they don't want to delay this. If it's going to come out, better it come out tomorrow than in June, for instance. So, yeah,

that will be a very interesting moving forward issue for the White House as we watch this unfold. Yeah, the transcripts could really matter, in part because you would have yet another wave of stories that put in black and white Biden's problems. And it won't be filtered through Rob Her. So everyone can attack Rob Her. He was a Trump appointee and yada, yada,

like you're not going to be able to filter. It's just going to be the transcript. Well, and it goes beyond, you know, as you've discussed on A.O. And, you know, as hers defenders have made this point on his behalf, It's not just that Biden was saying, I don't recall. It was that he was clueless on all of these specifics and in a way that I think will look very bad in black and white. Then there's the question of potential congressional testimony.

And if her is called to testify, as Republicans seem very eager to have him do, there will be video of him making these cases of Republicans reading the language of Joe Biden not being able to answer. are very basic questions that one might be able to answer if you had control of your, your faculties. I mean, I think this is, it all underscores the biggest point, which is the major concern that voters have about Joe Biden, including Democratic voters. And the more of this isn't, we already knew this was going to be an issue. I mean, look at that there's two days of discussion around Joe Biden's decision to skip the softball Super Bowl interview.

There's speculation that he won't participate. in debates, which will, you know, when people start really tuning into the presidential election in post-Labor Day America, the two months before the election, that's the time when we're talking about potentially having presidential debates. If Joe Biden is skipping those debates because his team isn't confident that he can answer questions without stumbling or forgetting or making big mistakes, and you have 10 months of backing about how old the guy is and how he can't remember this stuff, it's a huge problem. And again, I think anybody, the Democratic partisans who are pretending it's not a problem is just flat irresponsible given the stakes of this

election. And the media trying to minimize the problem, both for political reasons and substantive reasons. Like, if I can just say, let's take the least important aspect of this, which is his gaffe mixing up the president of Egypt and Mexico. You have Democratic partisanship. That doesn't even matter. come on, who cares about that? Well, I'll tell you who cares about that. Presidents of Egypt and Mexico care about that. If you're in a meeting with them and you call them by the wrong name, that's going to be a problem. If you're the diplomats in the embassies in each of these countries trying to make the case that the President of the United States is deeply familiar with the issues that are important to Egyptians and we can conduct diplomacy on that basis, that's going to matter. Of course all this stuff

matters. And that's just one little throwaway line from Joe Biden. There are real questions. about whether the guy can do the job as president of the United States. That's the central question here. Can I just be grifter, Sarah, for a second? I don't understand the Democratic spin of trying to basically gaslight people into saying, you know, he's not old. He doesn't forget things. He's sharp as attack because you're, like, the one thing you never want to do in sort of political

comms world is row directly upstream. You can't convince people of something they simply do not believe to be true. and that's exactly what the sort of democratic partisans are trying to do right now, and so it won't work. In fact, it can backfire. So what I don't understand is why they're not saying, yeah, dudes old, still better than Donald Trump. I mean, yeah, Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken are running the country. Still better than Donald Trump. Like, why not make the case that this is a binary choice and move on with it rather than convince people of something that they,

they just aren't going to buy. So I have thoughts about this because it's a complicated question. The point I was going to make, just to add on to Steve's, is just simply that his screw up of the names matters in another way. He was out in front of the American people to demonstrate that these are vicious lies that he's not up to speed and he screwed it up then, right? It'd be, you know, it's sort of like, I am not drunk and then, you know, you soil yourself. Like, you can't, when you are protesting a specific charge and then you demonstrate that the charge is true in your protest, it has bigger impact on people.

All right. More broadly, I totally get what you're saying, sir, about the don't, you know, paddle straight upstream or wherever you put it, because that makes total intuitive sense to me is you want to give people permission to sort of zigzag against the current, right? and you give him a little toehold kind of thing. The big contrary example of that in the last decade is Donald Trump. Because that's exactly what Donald Trump has done for the last eight years, is he's taken the worst charges, the most damaging charges against himself, and flat out said the opposite. And it's worked for him.

And I kind of wonder whether or not that's not infectious. Except we've seen that it doesn't work for, anyone else. It's never worked for another candidate. That's true. That's true. The only other exception I would have to this, and again, I think it's a very good question. The only other pushback I'd have on it is I think we tend to notice that people saying he's not old stuff more because it's so insulting to our intelligence. But there are a lot of Democrats who say, look, he's old. We concede that. It's just like, that's not interesting to talk about. It's. It's It's like, it's the people who say.

Publication bias. Yeah. The people who say, you know, you know, there is in fact no leopard eating his face. When you can see the leopard eating the guy's face. It's like, how can you be saying that? And that sort of fascinates us. And we're like, we want to talk about that. And it also seems more pervasive than it really is because it just stands out so much.

But again, I think it's a good question. I don't really get it. But when I talk to Democrats, when I do a lot of CNN hits, you know, there are Kate Eddingfield and those kinds of people. They say, yeah, he's old, you know, he's up there. Corrine Jean-Pierre did once say, we have trouble keeping up with him. And that was so absurd. It haunted her for a very long time. But I don't think the White House says that that much anymore. But think about the argument that there may, like the good argument, that you guys have both put forward the case that the good argument here is to just acknowledge that he's really, really old,

but the other guy is so bad that it's less problematic. And I agree with you on your substantive description of that being the better argument than he's way too old to do the job. But think about that argument. That is a horrible argument.

But that's the argument we had in 2016, a version of it. Both of these guys are bad. My guy's less bad. Right. But that's still a really, really bad argument. And I think the problem Democrats face, the problem with the Kate Beddingfield

argument is, today is likely Joe Biden's best day on the campaign for the rest of the campaign, right? He's not getting better. His memory's not getting sharper. And the fact that they don't want to put him out, the fact that they are afraid to give him an interview, even in an interview setting that's typically filled with softball questions, should terrify Democrats who are pinning all of their hopes on this guy. And again, in this context, I'm only talking about the politics of it. Again, there's something deeply, deeply disturbing in making the case that this guy who can't remember these important things or can't make a coherent argument or stumbles all the time is running the country actually choosing policy, even if he delegates a lot

of it to people like Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. The problem is they keep making these arguments, the Corrine Jean-Pierre arguments that, boy, he's so filled with them in vigor that it's hard for us to keep up. And then he kills their argument. Remember when he took that trip to Vietnam and it came amidst an earlier moment of democratic concern, public democratic concern about this, he goes on this overseas trip. And the argument from everybody associated with White House, everybody who's supporting Joe Biden is he is so fit he's traveling around the world he's not even getting sleep look at what he can do he could probably beat you in a mile race if you if you challenge him on it and then he goes to vietnam and all he has to do is walk 20 yards to the john

mccain memorial and lay a wreath or whatever he did and he stumbled and it didn't go well and and he killed their argument that they had spent days crafting. I mean, this was certainly part of White House stagecraft was look at the guy. He's traveling around the world. How can they say he's not capable? It's a ridiculous argument

that the more they make it now, the more likely it is that it backfires on them for the next 10 months. Yeah, so just to get back to my point about, I basically agree with all that. And this is why 70% the American people don't want this choice. This is why we can't have nice things, right? I mean, so I agree with that.

but it's an interesting contrast and I'm not doing a what about a zim's thing I'm saying this is a both sides of the thing don Trump is going around bragging that he managed to clear the hurdle of a like 12 question test that tests whether or not

you need to be committed against your will essentially you know and he's making it sound and he's telling people it was really really hard to pass a basic dementia test. Person, person, woman, man, camera, TV.

And because 10 minutes after he was asked to name a giraffe, he thinks he's qualified to be president of the United States that he could say giraffe again. And this is

the utter embarrassment of our political system at this point, is that these are the choices. And I'll just throw in the fact, the third party candidate with the best chance of getting, you know, double digits, is running as a, as the youthful change agent, and he's 70 friggin years old. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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way. I mean, that's the most loaded question. Sarah, well, let me, the WWE is staged. You realize that? Yeah. But like for a long time, people, they didn't tell people that, right? It didn't take much to know it. Right. So, Sarah, let me ask you that. Let me put, let me put the question to you this way. In a non-conspiracy kind of way, do you think the United States put a man on the moon? See, but you know what, Jonah? I've actually gone and read all of the different like you know proof points of why we didn't put a man on the moon and I am convinced by the arguments that in fact we did so yeah I looked into it and I'm convinced okay so you want us to steal man the case that the NFL is real no I want you to give me your opinion like do you think that we will find out in 10 years that it is nudged to certain outcomes no uh on the playing field no and I am the least expert in football of the three of us here but as a sociological matter. My understanding of football players is that compared to the general population, they are very competitive people. And the idea that you're going to tell these people

who spent their entire lives trying to get to the NFL, all they care about is their legacy as players, that they have to participate in some sort of point-shave. Jewish fumble generating space-based laser thing whatever it is for the benefit of a candidate they're probably not going to vote for

is very implausible and the ones who refuse to do it aren't going to tell anybody that they were asked. This is always my problem with 9-11 truthorism stuff is that the number of people who would have to be in on the conspiracy and the number of people who weren't in on it

but knew about it would still keep their Alice shot it, makes it a cartoon proposition very, very quick. And that's so different than the WWE, where you're actually talking about relatively, like, very few people, really, compared to the NFL. I mean, but the WWE is, like, it's a put-on, right? Like, everybody's in on it. It's more, it's more like a live play than it is like an athletic event, right? I mean, everybody's playing their parts.

They rehearse it in advance. I mean, this is, it's a thing, and the outcomes are predetermined, and they set up narratives to drive viewership and interest. I mean, it's all faith. Okay, but I'm not a WWE person, but like we didn't know that in the 80s, right? No, I mean, I think we pretty much did. I was a WWE person, and we pretty much did.

I mean, I was, you know, I was a King Kong Bundy Stan. I was an Andre giant guy. I loved Rowdy, Roddy Piper, hated Randy the Macho Man Savage. But we all... And you knew that you were watching a novel of... I mean, we liked to pretend that it was real because it, you know, you wanted to live the stories. It was a male soap opera. There were, yeah, there were villains and there were heroes and it allowed you to sort of get lost in that as a 12, 12 year old boy.

And when we acted it out in our front yard. There is this thing in wrestling called KFade, which is like, it's kind of like trying to get to that sweet spot where it seems so real that there might be elements of reality injected into it, kind of. thing. But more importantly, I'm the only person here who actually shook Andre the Giant's hand. So I was on a sixth grade field trip to Boston. Whoa. It was like a Ken doll or G.I. Joe doll putting his hand inside a major league catcher's bluff. It was just amazing. I mean, I love that you compare yourself that you're the, that you're the can doll in that, in that scenario. It's pretty great. Pretty great. Or G.I. Joe. I'll take either. young, he was a little doll. He was so

cute. Not like the free Jonah picture on the ship. So one free Jonah. Free Jonah. One other response to this. I don't know. I don't think the NFL is orchestrated. There's no puppet master. I don't think

Roger Goodell is pulling strings and say we really want the chiefs to win because it will make Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey's storyline better and we'll get more fan. I don't think any of it's. But I do think with the prevalence of gambling and the fact that gambling is now a part of everything having to do with professional sports and the people who bring us professional sports, more gambling originated scandals are inevitable. And that part is not. It's not a big conspiracy, but it'll be little conspiracies.

And we'll see. I remember there was Tim Donaghy, who was the NFL referee. who was discovered to have been part of a gambling and game fixing or point manipulating scandal back in 2007 in the NBA, I think we're likely to see some of that in a sport where, you know, a side judge can spot a football in a different way, sometimes giving the offensive team a yard, sometimes taking the offensive team a yard away without really any I mean, the teams can challenge it, but they don't often do it. And they often do get the spots wrong. I think that feels to me inevitable.

I think we're likely to see more of those in the coming years. And with that, thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next week on The Dispatch Podcast. You know,