The Dispatch Podcast - MAGA's 'Personal Libertarianism’ | Interview: Jane Coaston

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Jamie Weinstein is joined by Jane Coaston—New York Times contributing opinion writer and previous host of The Argument—to share her expectations for the second Trump term and how she covers the conservative movement. The Agenda: —January 6 —Trump's relationship with voters —Done With Never Trump —"Personal libertarianism" —Manifest destiny and military intervention —Evolution of Trump's Allies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. And thank you to Kevin Williamson for sitting in for me last week. I just got over the flu. Still getting over it a little bit, you can hear the lingering cough I have, but I feel much better. My guest today is someone who I think is one of the most original thinkers in politics. And that says a lot because there's not that many original thinkers in political commentary. And that is Jane Koston. She is now host of of What a Day on Crooked Media. She formerly hosted a podcast for The New York Times, was a writer for Vox, where she covered the right of center. And I think she covered the right of center better than pretty much anybody else, really understood it.

Because that's the world she came from on college. She was the editor of a right of center paper. I think she probably identified as libertarian at the time. I don't know what she identifies is now, maybe liberal or libertarian somewhere there. But her take on politics is always original, always interesting. Don't always agree, but I think you're going to find her thoughts fascinating and edify. So without further ado, I give you Jane Koston.

Jane Koston, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you. Well, it's great to see you. I think we're both in L.A. these days. We are. We are. It's a beautiful day where I hope no more fires happen. Yes, me as well. I want to begin, because I think you have one of the more interesting takes, basically on politics, and you understand the right maybe as well or better than anybody. But I want to begin just on election day, the outcome. Were you surprised in any way of how it turned out? It's complicated because I think I cannot be, and I try to say this all the time, that like, I am not a 100. percent objective observer of reality. I can't be. It's impossible to be. And it actually kind of drives me insane when other people who comment on politics try to do the thing where it's like,

we're, you know, sideline reporters in an NFL game. Like, people clearly have an idea of how they think something's going to happen or what they think something's going to happen. So I will say I was somewhat surprised. My husband did a lot of voter outreach in Arizona for the Harris campaign. And I know that like, you know, I knew a bunch of people who got involved. And I think that that that was something that was so interesting about the race is that I'm sure Jamie you and I both used to live in D.C. And I wonder if you had the same reaction when you saw what the numbers were looking like in Northern Virginia. That's when I was like, oh, she's done. Like that was it. Because like if you lose, I mean, she did not lose Northern Virginia for the record. But when you,

it's that tight. Because if I recall in 2020 and I mean, under Obama, you know, Democrats won Northern Virginia by like Assad level numbers, like something like obscene, a number that you just, that's not what happened this time. But I think I was surprised. But by the win or the scale of the win? Not by the win, not by the win. Because I think that if you would have told me Trump wins in June, I would have been like, yeah, that makes total sense because Joe Biden is 3,000 years old. I think the scale, which I think the scale initially got overstated. And I think that you keep seeing that with people being like, he has a mandate, he has a mandate.

I'm like, he has a mandate because he's decided he does. But I was surprised, especially just by seeing, when you look county by county, state by state, by just basically everyone moving to the right. But on the presidential level, I think that's the thing that's been interesting. And I'm not sure what that will result in politically, but you see states where people were like,

I voted for Trump and I voted to protect abortion rights and I voted to raise the minimum wage. And I was like, the American people, you'll never figure them out. But I think so I was surprised by, I think, more so the scale than I was by the actual results, but I'm still kind of surprised. Did you think, I mean, there was a group of people in politics who thought that after January 6th, Trump was gone forever.

Did you think that he had a chance in politics after January 6th? I did because people, you can't just say he has no more chance. You have to ensure that he has no more chance. So, Jane, you're saying calling him the former guy doesn't put him actually as the former guy for ever. It turns out that just referring to him as he who shall not be named doesn't really do anything, especially because you could see the obfuscating starting pretty much immediately. I mean, it was actually extremely funny to me that people were like, it was both a peaceful protest, also it was Antifa. And I was like, so Antifa did a peaceful protest. I what an

exciting piece of information for everyone involved. So I was not surprised by that because no one wanted to take the effort and to go about ensuring that Trump would no longer have a place in our politics. Like, no one wanted to do the actual work. People wanted to, like, sign editorials. But I think that especially after you saw that how many people were still trying to run like him, and I think that that was indicative to me of how much he has settled into, especially the American right, is that even the people, people wanted to vote for, to replace him, all tried to sound like bizarre versions of him. Most importantly, Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who became basically like,

oh, but what if Trump was smart and capable? But, you know, and it's like, you know, this is, you're doing the new Coke thing. Like, why would you want that when you can have the original? So I think that was a moment for me where I recognized that, like, he was not going to leave our politics and unless someone made him and no one wanted to make him. That's an interesting point. Other than Mitch McConnell, who, if he decided that he was going to be. going to vote for impeachment and brought people around or conviction on the impeachment maybe

could have changed the trajectory of Trump's ability to run. What other work could people have done? Because it did seem like people were trying to marginalize. Everyone since 2016, who's run against him, has this plan. And other than the narrow win in 2020 for Joe Biden, it has failed almost completely every time. I'm going to say something that is going to make a separate. Several people very annoyed, but it's true. They could have done what the Democratic Party did in the view of leftists to Bernie Sanders. Like, there is a whole version of Democratic Party politics in which, and I do not potentially, I do not ascribe to this belief of how this all happened, in which the Democratic Party's

powerful elite sidelines Bernie Sanders, and that's why we're all here today. Now, I don't think that's actually what happened. I think what happened is that South Carolina voters did the thing where they were like, we think that we understand how other Democrats vote, and so we support Joe Biden. But there are ways to sideline people, and there are ways and way, like, there are a host of Republicans who could have, you know, made efforts to sideline Trump, but they didn't because their base doesn't want them to. And when I say base- Let me ask you about that.

You think that in 2023, 24, they could have done that. Maybe. By that time, we had at that point, if my mental memory of my calendar is correct, we had at that point the head of the RNC was someone who stopped using her last name because it made Trump sad. So maybe you've been a little late by that point. But I think that there, you know, the Republican Party, and I think that this is an argument, it's interesting because there's an argument.

And I think my former colleague, Matt Iglesias, makes this point sometimes that, like, there was an era of strong political parties. You know, there was an era in which the Republican Party could just be like, we're simply not doing that. And, you know, you would just never hear from this person ever again. Or they become a libertarian, which, you know, same thing. I don't mean the Democratic Party is successful, but I mean structurally, if, you know, you want to run, you need to do so with the support of Democratic Party elites. to do so with the support of a top-down version of what the Democratic Party looks like. The Republican Party currently, at this point, is extraordinarily weak. And that's why it's been subsumed by Trump and Trump's family.

And so I think that part of this is a party. Yes, the Republican Party. Part of this is a party issue and also part of this is, as I've written many times, I think that the Republican Party, so-called elites, and I kind of hate using that term, but I mean the people who, like, run think tanks and think about this stuff. They again and again and again think that they know what people are voting for and they don't. Like, there are the people who were absolutely convinced that Trump was going to lose pro-life

voters because of his kind of waffling on abortion, and it turns out they don't care. Even if they did care, they were like, well, you know, maybe he's waffling for this reason or something like that. And so I think that there's just been a misreading of what people were voting. voting on and a weakening of the Republican Party structures. Now, I want to be clear here, I don't think that that weakening, even though I very much just like Trump, I don't think that weakening is necessarily bad. I think that the Democratic Party's sclateric policies, scleteric norms are bad for Democrats.

I think it makes it harder for younger Democrats to get involved. I mean, we've seen that repeatedly, you know, there's, you know, when the Democratic Party was like, instead of having Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez around this committee, we're going to have a guy who's 74 and fighting esophageal cancer, which good luck to Representative Jerry Conley. I hope cancer treatment goes well, but like, come on. And so I think that it's not to say that these, you know, having a strong party is always good and always works in the way that I want it to.

I just mean that it's a different structure. And it meant that they're pretty much after 2020, the Republican Party had been so remade by Trump that the only thing anyone could think to do was just to find another Trump who wasn't Trump. Can you speak more? Because I think this is such a good point and one that I tried to echo a lot. And it's still, as you said, so little understood.

You said, every time you get, oh, Steve Bannon left the White House, Trump's going to be in real trouble. The people really are backing Bannon. Oh, Ann Coulter doesn't support him. Oh, Trump switched on H-1B visas that he's going to lose the base. Is what you're saying, what the, the people who voted for Trump care about is not what the base or not the base, but the elites think they care about or the Steve Bannon's the world care about. It's what Trump says he cares

about. And what Trump says he cares about is what they support. Exactly. And I think that that's the challenge we have here. When I'm talking about the base, I am referring to a small select group of Trump's voters because Trump got a lot of support from a lot of different people, people who had never voted for him before, people who did the Obama Times to Clinton, Biden, then they voted for Trump. I am not talking about those people. When I say base, I mean the people who are like, who go to rallies, who go to a lot of rallies. And I think that so many people don't understand that a lot of those people did not have the same quid pro quo relationship with him that many other people do, that many people do with politicians writ large, that, you know, you do this thing.

I think that I talked to Madaglacius again, I keep bringing him up because he has this idea of deliverism. And the Biden campaign and the Biden administration ran on the idea that if you just did things people said they wanted, people would vote for you, which seems so logical. Like it seems like, yes, I will, you know, show up on a picket line and then members of unions will support me. I will say that I'm going to do this and I will do this and then you will support me. And that's not how this works anymore because the people who wanted those things got mad because it didn't come in the way that they expected it to. And the people who didn't want those things got mad because they didn't want those things. And a lot of those wins, a lot of people just didn't know

about. And I think that the thing with Trump is that he is almost like the anti-deliverist candidate. Like the number of Republicans I've spoken to who are really hopeful that he just doesn't do all this stuff. Like that there's this version of Trump. And I've never seen this with the politician before, where there's a version of Trump where they're like, maybe this will be the person who does all of this stuff I want and they put all the stuff on him. And you have actual Trump who's like, I'm not going to do any of that. I have no interest in any of of that. And they're like, but I like my version. And so it's fascinating to see this relationship between so many people and an actual person who's been actually president before. For example,

I keep thinking about, I kind of have this running list of things he promised during the campaign because he did what he did last time, which is he did like, if you're running for sixth grade president and you're like, we're going to have ice cream every single day. And it's like, it worked again, and I'm still baffled by that, but like things like free IVF, is there anyone in two years who voted for Trump who was going to be like marching on the White House because IVF isn't free? I would guess not. Like, it's a very different relationship to have to a politician in which there is no, why would you want to hold him accountable? Why would you be upset at anything that he did? It is such a personality-based campaign. And it's also a.

one that is so based on the reactions that he gives other people. And so it's fascinating because there's, you know, you see how people are reacting to his decision to pull security detail from Mike Pompeo, who as far as I know, never did any, like, he didn't do anything to Trump as in my memory. I mean, like, unless he ran it, he did run, he did try to consider running against him and then said a few things on Fox about how certain things he did was disqualifying. So there was a moment he did change from praise. Right, right, which is for anyone else, you'd be like, okay, but for Trump, apparently, no, we can't do that.

But it's interesting just to see how the relationship between Trump and the people who support him most is one-sided in a very different way, where it's like Trump can do pretty much anything he wants and even things that like if trump came out today on the day of march for life and it was like i'm pro choice there would be a host of people being like okay yes i also am sounds great and it's just it's interesting to see how the deliverist model doesn't work at all for trump because a lot of people voted for him with the belief that he just wouldn't do the things he said he wanted to do and he will do all of this other stuff that he has no interest in whatsoever. So I think that that's something, you know, I'm still, I'm still figuring him out. I think

everybody kind of is. It's, it's been wild. I've gotten into, um, they put all of law and order, like going back to 1991 on Hulu, which has been great for me. But it's funny because there'll be an episode from 1992 and there's some random guy being asked something. There was like, oh, you know, he had debts even the Donald couldn't cover. And it's like, we've never had someone who has existed in our culture just sitting there for like 40 years. years. He's just always around. And I think that that's something. Well, Jane, can you speak to that for a second? I mean, whatever you think of him, it is somewhat a remarkable American tale that this guy has been known for 40 or 50 years. And he's been known in this very specific

way as just kind of like cartoon rich guy, which is funny because like, you know, as people keep repeating over and over and over again, he's like been in massive amounts of debt and like what, what does rich guy actually even mean? But it's just, it's very interesting to me to think about how this person exists in our culture for so much longer than he has existed as a political figure, which I think really does play into if he doesn't deliver on what he says he's going to do or if he's, his policies wind up hurting the people who voted for him. It almost doesn't matter because he exists as a celebrity more so than a political figure where like you vote for him because he said he's going to do stuff and then he didn't do the stuff and now you're mad. I agree. Let me ask you, I'm sure you saw the Brett Stevens column, I'm off, never Trump. I resonated with me.

I don't know, for some, I know people criticize it. But there was one line in particular that I think got to the heart of the matter. And, you know, he says among many reasons, or maybe the most important, he voted for Vice President Harris was January 6th. And, you know, at some point, we live in an elect, you know, a Democratic Republic and people vote on these things. And they clearly voted. They don't really care that much about it.

January 6th in November. My question to you is, are you surprised that people don't care, or does time make people forget? And how will history remember January 6th now that the person who was responsible for helping to create January 6th was reelected? I don't want to speak to the history thing because we don't know. We just don't know. We do not know what is going to happen.

We don't know. You know, there's a version of the world in which COVID never happened. in March 2020, and Trump is re-elected in November of 2020, which is not what happened. I do think I will never forget January 6th. I lived in D.C., right in Navy Yard, which is next to the Capitol at the time, at a certain point when you see the Coast Guard, there are a bunch of people who live on the Anacostia. I'm like, houseboats, like, nice old couples. And when you see the Coast Guard board those vessels and make

those people leave because they are so worried about people bringing guns in from Virginia or from Maryland, like, you don't forget that kind of thing. So I think that January 6th, it's interesting because people simultaneously, and I think that it's indicative to me of how people know that it's bad when people are like, no, no, no, it wasn't that bad. But also, it was the FBI. Everybody, you know, and I'm like, so the brilliant FBI and Antifa all made you do this. So I won't speak for how history will remember this because I think we keep doing this thing where we're like, oh, history will not judge this kindly. And I'm like, you know, a lot of people, we, you know, you think how, you know, a lot of people at the time you think will be remembered well and they aren't.

And people think that they will be remembered poorly and they aren't. And so I think that I don't know how history will remember it, but I know how I remember it. I know that I, I think think the biggest thing for me as someone who spent has spent a lot of time thinking about criminal justice reform and not to not to just get into things that grind my gears is a lot of people suddenly very interested in the conditions at DC's jail and in a pretrial detention and then they immediately you know they get pardons and then they're immediately like we got to arrest the jurors who put us in prison and it just is like what you're saying is that people that had probably never tweeted or even written or written or spoken about conditions in jails or

people unfairly being prosecuted suddenly became only talking about what's going on in jails. Exactly, exactly, except what's going on in one jail. And I think that that got, that really got to me as someone who I did a lot of work in 2018 and 2020 and still do, thinking about and talking about criminal justice reform, thinking about police reform. And it was such a moment of the thing, I think I hate a lot of things, but I hate hypocrisy a lot. And the degree to which people are like, no, no, no, when I beat up cops, it's okay. I was reading the comments on a national review article, which you don't read comments, but I do because I think it's helpful. But I was just struck by how people being like,

well, you know, they never arrested anyone in Portland. And then that you people would be like, here's a list of all the people arrested and sent it's a hard time for what took place in Portland in 2020 and they're like, well, it's different. And it's just, I think that that was something about the result of January 6 that just really got to me was the degree to which so many things that I'd seen people talking about in conservative circles were so, you know, there's that thing where people are like, oh, you know, you don't know what time it is. People say that on the new right all the time. Like, oh, you don't know what time it is. You know, we used to, could have been nice before, but now you don't know what time it is. And it's always said by

someone who is like a staffer at a think tank who probably like owns multiple blazers. And it's just like this idea that we're in this wartime setting in which laws don't matter and morals don't matter. And I think that that was really striking for me, the degree to which hypocrisy is okay because we're in a wartime setting. And that like, you know, it's kind of like the same way people in the far left talk about like, oh, it's late stage capitalism. And I'm never, I'm always like, when was early stage capitalism? And it's like, people want to give themselves permission to be their worst selves or to indulge their vices because it's wartime or it's late stage capitalism or the rules don't apply. And I'm like, no, the rules only apply when you make

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What do you think the overlap is between people who opposed Trump's criminal justice reform and other criminal justice reform and those who wanted all the January 6 people free? I mean, who wanted draconian laws for other offenders and wanted nothing from the team. Yeah, no, it's a, it's, you know, For my friends, everything, for my opponents, the law.

And I think that there are a host of people who think that way. I also think that there are people for whom, and you see this all the time. And I call it personal libertarianism. It's the same way people are like, people get very upset if they themselves are questions by police or stopped by police or even face arrest. But they're totally fine with other people getting stopped. It's the same thing I wrote about this years ago. the same thing of people being like what when i turn left illegally on a red light i had good reason i need to get somewhere this light takes too long everybody knows this intersection sucks but if

somebody else does it they're like uh immediate jail and i think that personal libertarianism is like kind of a a cultural scourge on how we do things together if we believe that the only you know we don't need to be recipients of the law, other people do, because they're just worse or their reasons aren't as good. And so I think that that's something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of how to talk about law and justice and how to talk about January 6th, because it's this entire idea that, like, people of my political stripe should be able to break laws. And you see this with people, it kind of reminds me, I mean, it's interesting to see arguments getting reflected back to one another and they're just bad each time.

I have this longstanding online fight with prison abolitionists because there are a host of things where if you just ask them these questions, they're like, well, that just won't happen. Like, what about violent criminals? Well, they just won't be violent criminals anymore. And there is a degree of that kind of wishcasting. And you see this on the right where it's a host of people who are firmly believing that, you know, well, we've already had two people.

people who were involved in January 6, who were given pardons, one was just arrested on gun crimes and the other is in prison for child molestation. And it's like the idea here seems to be that good people like myself would never do anything wrong and clearly are being railroaded and bad people who are not like myself must receive the full brunt of whatever the law looks like in my imagined world. And so I think a lot about how so much of this, is about that kind of personal libertarianism that is so extraordinarily selfish and cannot be made to expand outwards.

I was thinking about this. There was a case, I believe in, it's a New Mexico, the death of Tony Tempa, who was a schizophrenic man who was killed by police on video and they sat on him and laughed at him. And I remember that there were a host of people

who were like, you know, black people don't talk about this. And, you know, Black Lives Matter marched for Tony Temple. This did happen. We can all confirm it. But the dude. degree to which people could not look outside, even to someone who was white, and could not look outside of themselves to see that police violence is wrong, and police violence impacts everyone.

You know, the people, New Mexico actually has incredibly high police brutality numbers, and a lot of those people who endure police brutality are Native Americans. And people were unable to look outside of themselves, but then you see January 6th, And you have people who are trying to mace cops. And they're like, why are they in prison? And so it's just like, it's baffling to me. I mean, it's not baffling. I believe, not to get into a religious conversation,

but I do believe in the concept of sin. And I believe that there are many people who think that they, their sins aren't sins because they want to do them. But I think that that was something after January 6th and the obfuscation of what happened, especially because there were people who kept, you know, clearly the people who have now been pardoned, many of them are like, I would go, I want to go do it again. I want revenge.

And I think that really worries me, but also this entire idea of how people, how law enforcement, how law is treated seems to be really on a, well, if I like them, then it's okay basis. Looking to the Trump administration, I want to get into here now in a second, but can you imagine, What would you imagine to be, in your mind, is the best case scenario of Trump 2.0? Jamie, I'm going to give you two responses because there's like what my head wants and then there's like what my spleen wants. What my head wants is good things. What my head wants is I want the economy to be good and I want people to keep their jobs

and I want people to be happy. I want us to not go to war with Iran. I want us to not go to war with China. I don't want to go to war with Panama. I don't want to go to war with pretty much anybody. um i want good things to happen i want stability and i want boredom now i'm aware i am not going to get boredom but i think that you know i keep trying to say that one of the things that i've been trying to do and talking about on my show is just like trump loves attention and he will do he does the i you know

will be looking at this very closely thing and i'm like just remember usually that means nothing So, like, just, just like until something gets signed and then it, you know, goes through the court system, like, just... Well, I'll get back to you in two weeks. Come, come back. I'll get back to you in two weeks. I think we're still, I think we're still do a health care plan. I think we've been to a health care plan for, like, nine years, something like that. So I think that, that, you know, I want good things for the American people.

Now, what my spleen wants is, what's that quote, you know, or I'll paraphrase, but, you know, the American people voted for it and they'll get it good and hard. And so there is a part of me, and I think Bill Crystal has said this of like, you know, if people voted for 25% tariffs on Mexican goods, fine. Let's see what they think about that. And like, it's been very funny also to see a host of people, so-called, you know, free marketeers or something like that, basically being like, do you really need avocados in the winter? And I'm like, when did you become my mother? Like, when did you just become like, you know,

the cross between Jimmy Carter and my mother being like, just put on a sweater. You don't need avocados. It's fine. So I think that I want the American people, the spleen, the spleen part, which I'm counting all of this is my spleen. I want the American people to see that like they actually don't want this stuff. They don't want this stuff and they don't want,

even if they think they do, they don't. like they're not going to get free IVF and they're not going to get cheap eggs. Do you remember how that was a big deal? Do you remember people just kept talking about groceries and Trump did and then after the election, he's like, well, actually, it's very hard to bring down prices. It's very hard to bring things. I think my his line was, it's very hard to bring things down when they're up. And I was like, too true, Mr. President, too true.

But I think that there's a part of me that is just like, if you wanted this and you thought it would result in good things for you, even if you voted for it because you thought it was going to make other people mad. I want you to see that, like, it actually would be bad. It actually would be very bad for us to go into a recession. It would be very bad to empower people who are among the worst of us, especially because something I keep noticing is how much people on the right, like the, you know, especially online, like, are physically incapable of being happy.

like they are physically like someone says something that they don't like like they have won the white house they have won the house they have won the senate they control the supreme court and yet they're like this lady preacher said things we don't like and we're very upset and it's like you have especially in the media market you have a media market that exists on anger you have a media market that is so much about like we are you know you have to keep finding things to be mad about. It has to be like, why aren't Eminem sexy anymore? Or like, we're very upset about this ad for Jaguar or something like that. And it just is like, you have a media market that is just driven by unhappiness and reasons to be unhappy. And I think that there are a host of people who

think that Trump winning will get them something that politics cannot give them. And so I'll revise my point. I do not want this country to suffer economic pain. For one thing, I work in media. Like, you know, the podcast industry is not, you know, not rock solid at all times. But I do want people to understand of all stripes that politics cannot deliver any, like, it can't make you happy. There was a substack I saw recently that was like, you know, if, you know, Trump cannot make women like you. Trump cannot make women respect you. Trump cannot make women respect you. Trump cannot make all of these people who think you're annoying, not think you're annoying anymore.

Only Andrew Tate can do that. Exactly, exactly, with, you know, his weird, homoerotic, whatever, all that is. But yeah, I think that there's, I want people to look for solace, not in politics, and especially because Trump loves that people think of him as, like, God emperor.

It goes back to my earlier point where there's no sense of like, oh, he has to do something for us. There's no deliverism. It's just like, worship. And so I want, I want good things for the American people, and I also want the American people to learn a lesson of some sort. And I'm aware that I'm probably not going to get any of this. I think I probably try to be more optimistic in what could happen. The way I voted for the vice president is that I thought Trump had better upside from my personal political perspective and the catastrophic downside.

And that downside risk made me not vote for him, among other things. But as we're going into this week as inauguration, we're five days in, I was trying to kind of feeling optimistic. I was going to get maybe the positive version, which to me was some of the economic things you mentioned, some of the maybe foreign policy stuff. Maybe we disagree a little bit on the foreign policy stuff with some revenge mixed in there because you can't get rid of that. This seems to be the priorities based on the first week. And I'd like to see if this is how you see it and what it means. immigration, crypto, vengeance, and manifest destiny. These seems to be the things that have, what does that mean?

Is that how you see it? And what does that pretend? I agree with you. I also think that it's interesting because, again, so much of the stuff people wanted out of Trump is stuff Trump did not promise to do at all. Like when people, like, there were numerous, you know, editorials and National Review being like, don't do the vengeance thing. And I'm like, he's been talking about it.

vengeance the whole time. Like it's being, you know, it's like having a cat and being very surprised that they have to use a litter box. Like, come on. That's kind of comes with the territory. How far does it go? I mean, that's, that's the question, right? Does it stop at taking away security from Fauci and Bolton? Or does he ask the IRS to, you know, look? Oh, I would guess he will. I would guess he will. And then the right will be like, well, you know, the IRS was very mean to anti-abortion groups. So it's totally fine. And we had Andrew McCarthy on, and he said there's nothing that prevents, he supports Trump, prevents Trump from saying, like, my priority list for the DOJ is Anthony Fauci, Mark Millie,

and then, you know, whatever else under that. Yeah, absolutely. So I see that as being a priority. It's the manifest destiny thing that's been particularly interesting to me because I believe there was some phrase, some America first phrase that kept being used, where I kept being like, you know, Charles Lindberg was wrong the first time about that. But the people who are suddenly like, yeah, we should go to war with Panama. It's like an invade Greenland.

What I'm actually concerned about is a, the idea and, you know, we, I talked about it on the show yesterday. So one of the executive orders is considering cartels to be terrorist organizations. He was talked out of doing so in 2019. Barack Obama contemplated doing the same thing as president himself. But part of the issue there and something that's been driving me a little bit in is that would mean, you know, one of the things that when you're talking about a terrorist organization, I do not deny that the cartels have wreaked absolute horrifying havoc and violence, like disappearing Mexican student teachers and just murdering them all and leaving

them in a ditch. Like, the cartels are very bad. I know that. But what I've seen of people being, like, treating, fighting the cartels the same way you would treat fighting the Taliban. Now, one, fighting the Taliban didn't go great for us. Like, it wasn't. okay and then it went horribly wrong. Also, Afghanistan is a far different place than Mexico. Because part of the issue of why they didn't do it in 2019 is because the Mexican government was like, this implies that there are wide stretches of Mexico that are not under state authority, which the Mexican government says is untrue. That was not the case in Afghanistan. Like there was, you know, that was not the case in a host of other areas in which we have,

you know, Boko Haram or something like that, when you have these groups, they tend to operate in areas in which they can operate as a state themselves. Mexico says that's not what's happening here. And so you have a host of people, including members of Congress and others who basically want to use the military in Mexico to go out to the cartels, which has happened before. You know, this is not new. We've seen this in Colombia and Nicaragua before in the 80s. But I am very concerned about the idea of, you know, Trump deciding we're going to send drone strikes into Mexico and what does, you know, the, I think a lot of people don't understand how interwoven the U.S. Mexico relationship really is. Not so much in trade, but in people. Like, if you go to Mexico City and you're in like a neighborhood like Koya Khan or something like that, everybody's American. Like, there are a ton of a ton of.

American, whether they're expats, whether they're just living there temporarily, there are a ton of Americans across Mexico City and large stretches of America, or large stretches of Mexico. And so I'm concerned for their safety. I'm also concerned for what happens when you try to start a regional war with an actor with the power and finances of a state that operates outside of the state. And you're basically like, okay, Mexican government, stand aside while we send troops in while we send the military in to do what? Like, what would constitute success? Because again, the cartels are driven by Americans purchasing drugs. So you haven't really done anything to the main motivation of the cartels, which is get drugs to the United States for

Americans to use. And so I'm worried on that front about what that could look like, where you have essentially a land war in a neighboring country over cartels whose entire reason for being is to bring drugs into the United States that Americans use and have continued to use. Like, we've seen the resurgence of the popularity of cocaine, for example. Cocaine is a drug that requires massive processing facilities, which exist across, you know, a number of places in Mexico, a lot of, you know, South America. And so I think that the manifest destiny thing really worries me, one, because of the possibility of going to a land war with Mexico, but also because I think that a lot of the people who were talking about how they supported Trump because he spoke out against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were full shit at a level that I am just astounded by. You know, I think Michael Brendan Doherty, who writes for National Review, with whom I've, you know, I've been very friendly with him for a long time, but he's like, you know, why not send the military into Greenland?

you know, that's what America's about, manifest destiny. And I'm like, one, no one was, like, I'm aware that William Seward suggested this like a century and a half again. But like the degree to which the manifest destiny idea, one, invites the possibility of actual wars and actual conflict, which, again, would be sending military forces to fight an opponent that does not care and does not play by any sort of general rules of warfare. Like, you know, go read up about the Kali cartel or something like that or some of those early cartels before we get to Sinaloa, which is incredibly powerful and brings in billions of dollars. But also this idea that like, oh, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan were misadventures. But this time are efforts to, you know, bring democracy or go to war or something that will be totally different because Trump's in charge. It just is, it's baffling to me. So that, that really worries me.

Well, here's my question. to you about this in a way. I mean, honestly, wasn't thinking about the Panama situation until Trump brought it up, didn't think about the Greenland situation until Trump brought up. Individually, I can see the merits

of trying to control those areas, probably best through backroom dealing instead of embarrassing people up front and forcing them into it. My question to you is, is there a point, and maybe there's not? Maybe America is just so strong economically and militarily, and there's nowhere else to go for people

just to want to tie us, you know, tie themselves to us, and they ultimately concede. But is there a point if you pick fights and threaten tariffs with all of your allies at some point they start banding together against you? I think that that is very likely. I think that this idea that like you can keep picking fights forever,

like this idea that like everyone will just kind of back down eventually and everyone will just do what we want because we keep threatening them, especially if you recognize, and this is important, If you recognize that the threat isn't real, like, if, you know, you basically, the threat only works if people think you're going to use the big stick you're carrying. And if you aren't, or if it's clear that you don't want to, you don't actually want to put 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, then what good is, what good is any of this? Like, the threat has to be followed by follow through for any of this to actually work. So I think that that is something in which America's allies, especially because I think that so much of this, again,

one, it's based on this idea that we can do everything. Like, it's interesting how so much of this is based on this idea that like we can separate ourselves from the world in a way that has not been true since like 1840. And the idea that like, you know, this is going to be so good for American businesses and so good for American manufacturers. And you think about, like,

American manufacturers need goods from other countries. Like, we're not talking about, like, car manufacturers. We're talking about, like, the people who make steel. And you need those other parts, those other entities from other countries. And so I think, like, when tariffs themselves become kind of this culture war cudgel, in which opposition to tariffs means that you don't love the American worker, and it becomes a means of valorizing an American workforce that doesn't look the way people talk about it doing so.

Like, it's interesting how people think of, like, American steel manufacturing in this way that it's about like hard hats in the early 1970s, when that's not what the industry looks like anymore. And it's not like, you know, this isn't what it looks like. And so I think that the challenge is that American allies have probably figured out at this point that Trump is full of shit. Like, that's just, and also that he is. Are you sure, though?

I mean, I think that he might have gotten the deal in Gaza because they were genuinely worried that something would happen. I mean, I don't know. I also will be interested to see what that looks like moving forward, especially. Isn't it all you have to do is one, I mean, act once, and then you think that you might, the killing of Qasem Soleimani put in the idea that Trump is willing to do. certain things if you step over the line. Therefore, which one is he going to enforce?

As a side note, it's been very funny to see Tulsi Gabbard go from like, that was evil to being like, it's fine. It's totally fine. I have no problems with that whatsoever. I think so to some extent, but I also think the degree to which he has proven himself to be highly manipulated, easy to manipulate. You've seen that with him basically being like, we would love it if the Saudis invested in the United States and, you know, a host of other issues in which so much of it is about dealmaking. And the challenge of dealmaking is that there has, there is a point in American politics and in international politics where there are no more deals. There is nothing that you can do that would make the other entities stop doing whatever is you want them to

stop doing. So then what? Especially now that we have a host of these people who have all decided that actually going to war super cool and easy and that everyone will love it as you know now that we've gotten DEI out it'll all go so great and it just it's it's concerning it's deeply concerning well you mentioned telsa gabbert i'm actually interested because you followed very closely the types of people so that uh kind of helped trump in 2016 and 224 i see a little bit of a difference for both positive and negative and correct me if you see this completely wrong. I mean, when he gets elected in 2016, I think they overinflated his power, but you get all these profiles of Richard Spencer, you get the alt-right. You get something softer, but still

maybe more problematic with Steve Bannon in the White House. This time, it seems, you get less of that crowd. You get more of like the fringe Republican congressman who's now a yesman, who's now powerful, but wouldn't have been under another administration in the tech world. Can you just compare and contrast what you see around Trump the first time versus the second. Well, I think that because Trump came in in 2016, 2017, and it was a surprise to what seemingly everyone, including him, I have long argued that he loves becoming president, but being president actually kind of sucks in some ways. It's tiring, and a lot of it's very boring, and people are mad at you all the time. But I think he came in and he had the support of outsiders, whatever that might look like

to you, especially because he positioned himself as a person who existed outside of politics. And it's interesting because he still does this. He still does this thing of observing politics as it happens, like he's watching it on TV. For example, when he declassified or said he was going to declassify information about the assassinations of R.F.K. Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., his remark was like, oh, a lot of people have been waiting this for a long time. And I'm like, Like, he's saying, like, someone just told him for this for the very first time, and he's just reacting like he's watching it on television.

It's Tucker and Stodger Stone calling them asking all the time for this to be declassified. Exactly, exactly. And so I think that the difference here is that now you have all of these tech companies, and you keep saying, like, everyone's being so nice to me. And you have all these people who are willing, who have now, one, I think the important thing is, they all know he's a lame duck president. like that's kind of a weird unspoken thing like i know people keep talking about how he could run for a third time and i'm like i don't he can't and also he can't like even if you just decide that he could

he can't but also just believing that with the support of billionaires billionaires can do whatever they want and so i think that that's actually something that's been interesting and will be interesting to watch is part of the the bannon thing the bannon thing has been which it's funny how Steve Bannon working for Goldman Sachs gets kind of ignored because he gets to pretend as if he's like a sion of the working class. And I'm like, I don't care how many shirts you're wearing. You're still a guy who worked at Goldman Sachs and participated in a grift, like the We Build the Wall thing, the reason why he was in jail in the first place in part. I still think he has state laws that he's still being prosecuted.

Yes, yes. It reminds me he got arrested by the United States Postal Service, which sounds stupid, but it's actually incredibly terrifying. Like, do not mess with Postal Service police. They are the angrious people. And I think I misspoke that he wasn't in, he was in jail because he refused a subpoena. He's still being prosecuted for the, we build the wall drift. But anyway, I think he was pardoned on the federal level by Trump before he left office, but he's still a subject to prosecution in New York. Right. Yes. So I think that part of that battle is, I think, Bannon and other people who want that populist aesthetic, recognizing that this time Trump is surrounded by the richest people in the world, and all the richest people in the world are telling him that he's awesome and great and that he can do whatever he wants.

And it turns out that what he wants to do is basically just lower taxes and do some culture war stuff. And so I think that that's going to be a big difference is that it's not even really play acting as populism anymore. Even if you, like, even whatever version of populism you use, like, I think that populism has been wielded so often. going back to like William Jennings Bryant and thinking about how it's going to be wielded under this term, it seems to be more about a more about language than it is about actual actions, especially. And I think that that's something that you see. That's something you see with, you know, how Bannon's reacting to him. I joked somewhere that like Bannon versus Musk is the most let them fight moment I've had in a long time in politics. Like Bannon being like,

why are we letting this racist white South African be in charge of everything? And I'm like, do you think, I mean, do you see Elon that way? Do you see him, do you, I mean, I personally haven't seen him as racist, but do you, do you view Elon as right? Have you, have you seen him tweet? Like the degree, if you are a white nationalist and you tweet, he will be like, oh, so interesting. So like, the degree to which he is, he is either racist or he is the most gullible person who's ever lived in the history of time. Could he also be the busiest? He should be tweeting 100 times a day.

And then also spending a lot of time playing Diablo too. It's fairly clear that the man either needs to sleep and doesn't do it. But like the way in which Elon has made his business, I mean, let's keep in mind that the reason why he went to Auschwitz in the first place, the reason why he did that was because someone tweeted about how like, I'm not going to listen to Jews talk about anything when they've ruined Western democracy. and Elon responds, you have spoken the actual truth. And then understandably, people get mad, and then he goes to Auschwitz, which somehow that, like, the order of operations there keeps getting forgotten. I vaguely, was there, I mean, this is to give, like, total benefit of the doubt. Were there, like, two sentences, and he claimed that he was, like, he didn't read the second one he was supporting.

I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I just think, like, his degree to which, like, all of his, I mean, his support for AFD in Germany, the way in which he keeps talking about Tommy Robinson, and in the UK, like, he's not a huge fan of ethnic minorities. It's just pretty clear to me. But I think also for Bannon, it's been interesting because Bannon's entire ideology is based on a thing that has not ever actually happened. Like this idea of, oh, we just stop all immigration to the United States.

And then every, like, people keep using the words of late representative Barbara Jordan, who is an African-American representative in the 80s and talking about immigration and how it undercuts African-American jobs. And, you know, Bernie Sanders took that argument also. And all of them are basing this on the idea of something that has literally never happened. Like the idea of doing essentially the Chinese Exclusion Act, but in a multiracial democracy in which African Americans can vote. Like, it is, it's interesting to me because so much of this is based on the idea on an if then hypothesis. that if we curtail immigration writ large,

that will benefit American citizens who will all be doing all of these jobs that businesses have been telling us for years American citizens don't want to do. And I understand the idea of undercutting wages and a host of other things, but it seems based on fantasy. And then you have billionaires behind Musk

who recognize that Trump will basically leave them be and not make them do anything ever again. if they just talk about how there isn't enough masculinity in our politics and get rid of DEI stuff at their workplace. So I think, like, it's very different because I think that people have figured out that Trump is not very scary and is very easy to manipulate. I don't mean that his actions cannot cause a great deal of fear and consternation and terrible things to happen. And you're seeing, like, you know, ICE trying to show up at grade schools today. Chicago and so I think like it's not to say that but it is to say that like if you just make the right mouth noises at him he will do whatever you want and just like leave you be and so I think that

that is something like the outsiderness has gone like you do not need to Google who sang at his inauguration like celebrities are more like it's just the I think that that a lot of people have just figured out that actually he's just a bullshitter. And I think that that's going to be very different. And I think it's going to be, it also requires everyone involved to act differently. It means that I am very tired of hearing from Democrats who are convinced that, you know, you can work with Trump on all of these things that he said he wanted to do because that implies that he actually wants to do any of them, like the way in which he talks about health care for everyone or for IVF or anything like that. Again, like, he's pushing and he doesn't want to do any of it.

And so I think that that's, but again, it's going to be very different when you have, the outsiders are gone. Like, he doesn't really need Steve Bannon anymore. Steve Bannon can say whatever he wants. But Elon's the one who's probably going to have an office in the White House and Steve Bannon doesn't. And so I think that that's the insider outsider thing is going to be very different. And it also is interesting because I'm curious if the kind of mesonic cult of personality that came up, you know, QAnon and a host of things that came around him the first time, I wonder where that goes because it implies, since he won in a way that was, you know, he won. with so many different demographics and raising those numbers. Like, I wonder if that changes how people view him, whether he just becomes just kind of like your, like,

bog standard Republican president to a lot of people. I don't know. I do know that he is not going to make America healthy or hot or do anything. One of the, I want to you to speak with this, and correct me if I'm wrong. I think you had the best explanation of why Charlottesville was bad, the statement. And a lot of the tech people, they say the red pill moment is when they went back.

and looked at what he said in Charlottesville. If I remember this correct, you at a tweet storm maybe many years ago about who this was advertised to and the type of advertisement and the type of people abroad, will you counter whatever, you know, what's the counter argument to these tech people saying they are red-pilled and Trump didn't really say anything that was outrageous with Charlottes? Well, if you go back to how Unite the Right was advertised, it was advertised is a white nationalist event. I just, I want to ask, and I remember he was at the Federalist at the time, no longer. I believe he, I mean, I can't remember which outlet he is, but he's like, you know, I'm a conservative

who lives in Charlottesville. I wasn't invited to unite the right. It was a host of white nationalist organizations. It was a host of white power groups. You know, it was David Duke. they didn't invite National Review Editor Rich Lowry. And so the idea of there being the, you know, fine people on both sides, again, is in reference to both the people protesting Unite the Right and people who attended Unite the Right, of which there were no fine people. Because they only would have known about it through, they weren't inviting fine people who might agree with this tax. No, they were not inviting the good people who made. Maybe we're had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, this was an event that was advertised by posters showing someone using a sledgehammer on a star of David. And I think that the other thing that got me was the idea of like, you know, Trump said after Charlottesville was like, no, you know, I watched the night before they were protesting very quietly.

And the night before, Unite the Right is that Tiki Torch rally where they're chanting Jews will not replace us. And so I'm like, where are the fine people there? And that's not very quite like they, that's who they were. That's where Nick Fuentes was. And so I think that that's something of which, again, people wanted to hear something else. And I think that that's been the thing that's been interesting. The same thing with January 6th of how people wanted there to be this other story and they just invented one. They didn't want this to be what happened.

So they decided it wasn't. And I think that that was something that was really interesting because you had a host of people who, I mean, the funny thing is for the people who actually participated in Unite the Right, unite the right ruined their lives. You know, the former head of the traditional workers party, Matthew Heimbach, then went and got arrested because he was having an affair with this press person's wife or something. Like people, you know, it basically ruined whatever career any of these people had. But then there were a host of people who were observers who just decided they were going to

re, like redo this history of what took place. And so I think that that's been something, again, it was very educational to see how people will just decide they want a different story and create one. If you had Trump on your podcast, what are the types of questions you'd want to ask? Is there any question in particular that you would want to know and think that you would get an actual answer to? I would want to know that is, ooh, that's a good question. like what do I what do I want to know and what would he answer we actually answer questions

about um I would want to know and just repeatedly keep asking the executive order about lowering prices I don't know if you saw that it's very funny to me because basically he was like you know we are going to deliver price reductions and it literally is a like Michael Scott we declare bankruptcy moment um so I'd be like okay you know how are you going to to do that? What are you going to do to enforce price productions on groceries? Because grocery prices actually have kept rising. Separate from eggs, which that's bird flu, which has actually been a huge problem for me, a person who consumes enough protein to probably kill me at some point and eats a lot of eggs. We've seen price prices on cereal and chocolate and coffee, which all have

different issues, having to do with bad weather, but stuff people use. And so we've seen price prices on cereal and chocolate and coffee, which all have different issues having to do with bad weather but you know stuff people use and so i would just ask you know what are you going to do about grocery prices what are you going to do about grocery prices because i think that one of the things about trump is that he does the weave thing and i would you know just be like so what are you going to do about right grocery prices i would also want to ask like it seems like so much of what he does is so based on questions of perception so for example example, after the Las Vegas mass shooting, he decided that we were going to ban bump stocks. And I remember ATF at the time was like, I don't think we can do that. And the Supreme Court

said, no, you can't because gun owners of America went to the Supreme Court because the NRA was too busy, too. And so I would just be, you know, I would be fascinated. I don't know how he would answer this, but I'd be so interested to know, like, how do you want to be perceived and how do you think you are perceived because again how other people have been able to manipulate him is by complimenting him and telling him that he is as they as he wishes to be perceived but you see on you know when something terrible happens you see how he wants people to perceive him in this way as being helpful and that he isn't so i i think that those be my two ones i don't know what i answer i'd get on either of them, but I'd be interested to know.

Jane Koston, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.