The Dispatch Podcast - Mask Mandates and McCarthy's Lie

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

It was a busy week. The Justice Department is appealing a federal judge’s decision to strike down the CDC’s travel mask mandate. The Biden administration is standing by its plan to end Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy, despite pushback from Democrats. Texas and Florida have governors making their own questionable decisions. Netflix and CNN feel the full effects of the streaming wars. Plus, what did Kevin McCarthy say?   Show Notes: -David and Sarah’s deep dive into the mask mandate decision -Sarah’s immigration conversation with Ali Noorani -Uphill: “Kevin McCarthy’s January 6 Lie” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, joined by David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Declan Garvey, our editor extraordinaire of the Morning Dispatch. Plenty to talk about today, the Biden administration, taking up some interesting positions. Then we have Republican governors also taking some interesting positions. We'll end with the streaming wars. And, of course, our new segment, the thing we didn't, wasn't worth your time. Let's start right in. David, the Biden administration this week had two interesting decisions. The first, Title 42. This is the public health title that the CDC has used to bar basically asylum seekers from coming in the United States from the southern border in particular.

The White House announcing that they were going to stop using Title 42 to stop asylum seekers, moderate Democrats sponsoring bills in the Senate to force the Biden administration to have a plan to deal with the presumed influx. of immigrants, you know, at 14,000 a day, according to Department of Homeland Security Intelligence could be coming in when Title 42 is rescinded. In the meantime, the administration seeming unmoved by the pleas from vulnerable and moderate Democrats. Then we had a federal judge in Florida strike down the federal transportation mask mandate on planes, trains, and I guess, well, some automobiles. And the administration taking its time, but in the administration, taking its time, but in the end, filing a notice of appeal to put that mask mandate back in place. David, is this the opposite of what Obama data guru David Shore called popularism?

Yeah, it is the opposite of it. And, you know, the interesting thing is there's ways to do what the Biden administration wants to do, but that take care of public concern. So, for example, Title 42, it's a public health measure. originally designed to be an immigration enforcement measure. And if you have an immigration enforcement issue, you can say, look, Title 42 is a public health measure. It's not an immigration enforcement measure. Here is our immigration enforcement plan that we're going to use to help control the border in the absence of Title 42. So that's one way to do that.

And then on, look, I get the argument. There's a legal argument that says, look, what the, what the judge did in the mask mandate case was artificially constrain and constrict the CDC's authority. And we're going to appeal to preserve the authority of the CDC. We're not appealing to reinstate the mask mandate. And so there's a way to handle this, I think, that takes care of some of the biose. administration's concerns and the public's concerns at the same time. But the Biden administration, and I wrote about this this week, really seems to be pushing far beyond where the public wants it to be.

I mean, when the public voted for normalcy, broadly speaking in 2020, it wasn't just for a president who didn't tweet so much. They were voting for more normal politics and more mainstream politics, at least in my view. And time and time again, that is not what this administration is delivering. Jonah? Yeah, I'm in large agreement with David. I have not, not only have I not read the full, what, 58 page opinion. 59.

59. I haven't even finished the advisory opinions podcast on it. I did start it, though. And I'm inclined to think that this was a tough, tough call one way or the other. I think you could have argued, the judge could have argued it either way, ruled either way, and it would have been defensible. But that said, the salient point is that the mass mandate's gone, right? And I actually don't, and politically, the Biden administration has gotten itself in the worst of all possible worlds where it's gotten no credit from its base for keeping the mask mandate or having the mask mandate and no credit from everybody else for it being gotten rid of. And then given an opportunity to actually get at least on the right side of the issue with this decision, it decided, no, we're going to get on the wrong side of this issue.

And it's very weird to me. It's, I've been writing about it a lot, too. It's, it's, it's, it's, I, I, I increasingly think that these guys have just lost their political feel for where the center of gravity is in American politics. And they take their cues from places that they shouldn't on the, on the, on the, the interesting thing about the title 42 thing. And I'm not confusing these two things the way the president of the United States did recently. is, to me, you know, Milton Friedman said there's nothing so permanent as a temporary program. It is amazing to me how often essentially emergency or temporary measures, which can get through the bureaucracy quicker than legislation or even normal rulemaking,

end up becoming a permanent substitute for actual legislation and normal rulemaking. And so I think there's a perfectly legitimate reason to repeal Title 42. But the policy that it, the policy function that was performing at the border needs to be replaced with something else. And that's why the Democrats are freaking out is because they recognize this is just a terrible issue. And more broadly, I just think on issue after issue, the Biden administration wants to talk about the problems it wants to have rather than the problems it actually has. And it's talking about things that don't have to do with inflation, that don't have to do with the border crisis. And it seems to think, and Barack Obama getting back into this thing,

thinking all the Democrats' problems have to do with messaging and disinformation rather than the fact, you know, that the real problem is that the dogs won't eat the dog food. And they refuse to come up with a dog food that the dogs want to eat. And so it's all becoming sort of wrapped up in this sort of just general disconnect of the Biden administration with them. the country is. Declan, you know, you can say that the Biden administration doesn't understand the politics, is sort of deaf to the politics, but they're getting, at least according to reports, calls from these Democrats all the time explaining why immigration is going to be a top issue in their district or in their state in the fall and that rescinding Title 42, even if

it's sort of like the gas issue. It's such an easy talking point. say that Joe Biden got rid of the thing that was preventing people from coming into the country regardless of the fact that there's a lot more nuance to it. Of course, the White House pushing back and saying this will actually help them enforce border issues because right now you simply expel people. There's like a three for one deal from the cartels. You just go back in. So a lot of repeat offenders and there's not much they can do. Whereas if someone is expelled without Title 42 and then tries to reenter, they can be prosecuted and put in jail for that. But of course, the pushback to that is, yeah, but only 10% or so of the people who come across

the border get expelled right away. They just don't know how to say the magic words saying their incredible fear of returning to their home country due to political or other persecution. And second, that, you know, this presumes that the Biden administration would prosecute people for illegal reentry, something that they have been somewhat hesitant to do in the past. So you have sort of a mixed reality in terms of the actual policy. No policy statements coming from the White House in terms of what they are actually going to do if there is a true wave of people trying to come across the border. And then you've got plenty of members from their own party saying, let me explain to you the politics of this. In case you're missing it, in case you have too many people on the far left, here's what it looks like in Arizona, West Virginia.

Nevada, Montana, etc. Why is the White House not interested in doing more to show that they care about these issues that Democrats themselves do seem to care about? It's a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with the position that national Democrats kind of back themselves into over the course of the four years of the Trump administration where, you know, know that there were certainly legitimate abuses and kind of the implementation of some pretty stringent and cruel policies at the border under the Trump administration. But that got

tangled up with kind of a almost a position where any border enforcement is cruel and any border enforcement is something that needs to be pushed back against. And that kind of seeping into the Democratic electorate over the years has put the Biden administration in this box where, you know, when either earlier this year or late last year, when border patrol agents were, you know, quote unquote, rounding up Haitian migrants that were found at the border and sending them back, that was blown up into a Trump level. kids and cages scandal in the media and the administration bought a lot of that. And so I think they're hearing from the loudest voices. I mean, this is a problem on both sides that dictates

98% of how our politics operates, but they're hearing from a very loud, small percent of the country that is very passionate about an issue and the people that are actually affected by the issue who have expertise on the issue are being drowned out. And it's just kind of an interesting disconnect where on the mask mandate, for example, the pandemic is still real enough and big enough of an issue that that needs to be extended another 15 days, another 15 days, another 15 days, but on the border where Title 42 is originally a pandemic measure, that is no longer a concern, and that's why that should be repealed. And so I think you kind of end up in the situation where it's a very small percent of the Democratic base who is pushing them

on this, and they really just don't want to offend those people. All right. Well, then let's move to the other side of the aisle. Republican governors, including Greg Abbott in Texas, have tried to do their own policy of sorts on, including some of these issues. So Greg Abbott stopping a lot of the commercial trucks from moving across the border, implementing second inspection, saying that he's looking for smuggled humans. And there was an enormous cost to that. billions lost out of the U.S. economy and the Texas economy just in those few days of a shutdown. He then reached an agreement with four of the Mexican state governors to do more of those inspections on their side. Then there's the voluntarily, if illegal aliens want to go on a bus to the capital, Greg Abbott's paying for buses to D.C.

You know, there's a question to be had of how much of this is real policy versus stunt politics. And then you look over to Florida and you've got Ron DeSantis with this latest Disney stuff. And David, I'm just curious, are these outlier Republican governors? Is it real policy stances? Is it political stunt stances? What are we supposed to feel about this? Well, I mean, some of it has some effect in the real world. I mean, the Abbott trucking policy had some, by some estimates, a multi-billion dollar effect in the real world.

Some of it's not going to have so much of an effect. I mean, we've seen DeSantis and Abbott signed social media moderation legislation that was immediately enjoined, including by one husband of the pod. And now we have this latest effort to strip a special tax status from Disney, which would surprise. me under current law if it wasn't also enjoined before it took effect, but that if it does take effect would have some real substantial effects in Florida communities, but not necessarily hurting Disney as much as maybe hurting the tax bills of some regular Floridian. So, you know, what you do have here is, I think, a dynamic where you've got a race between a few governors to be the lead culture warrior.

And Abbott is one of them. He circles the wagons, say, more around immigration issues. DeSantis is circling the wagons more around the more classical culture war issues. And DeSantis in particular is doing so in a way that really departs, and I mean really departs from more traditional Republican views of free speech and economic freedom. He is wielding state power in the way that the post-liberals want. He is he is steamrolling past free speech doctrines. He is steamrolling past conceptions of economic freedom.

And that's not to say for a minute, you know, is that I like Walt Disney Corporation's activism. I don't like the Walt Disney Corporation's activism. But you know what? It's a free country. And I've been spending 20 plus years of my career. No, no, Sarah. so many more than that, almost 30 years of my career, arguing for free speech rights of Americans. And, you know, and that includes free speech for me and for thee, even when

thee is wrong, as I believe that Disney is. And so steamrolling these principles here to become lead culture warrior, you know, to me is, is a further distressing evidence of the devolution of the right. And in this point, I'm going to plug Jonah's remnant podcast. He had two great, great episodes with Matthew Contonetti on his book The Right. And we're kind of seeing in some ways how what's old is new again, truth be told. Jonah, is this all about 2024 or is it something else? I think it's like 80%, 82.4% about 2024. And I got to say, I think both stunts,

help these guys nationally, but probably not as much in their states. You know, I mean, David and mine's mutual friend Charlie Cook of National Review was making, has made a pretty good case that this Disney thing was

gratuitous and not necessary because the DeSantis won. He got the parents' rights bill passed, and this is sort of, you know, vindictive. And I think Charlie's right about that. At the same time, you know, when DeSantis did the social media law, what about a year ago, Disney had a carve out in that thing. And what's interesting to me is that the conventional wisdom in Florida for a million years is that Dazney is the 800-pounder gorilla that needs to be. need special consideration. There was a reason why DeSantis gave it a carve-out, and that carve-out was a real carve-out. This sort of semi-autonomous zone isn't the same thing as a carve-out. It's a little different. And what's interesting to me is that whatever the political

considerations were that made DeSantis give it a carve-out on the social media stuff, but actually frontally assault it now, some of them may have changed, but Disney still has a lot of sway in that state. And it's not obvious to me the way this is going to play out. We're going to raise the property taxes of a bunch of people in Orange County and Ossela County and maybe lose some jobs that this will be helpful for his reelection chances in the state. At the same time, he's raised so much money already that you can see it from space. And so it may not matter. And similarly, like the Abbott thing, the Texas Secretary of Agriculture ripped Abbott a new one on this border thing, saying how, you know, my favorite part of his criticism was since the buses to D.C. were only if you wanted to go, he's like, you're destroying businesses in Texas while you're giving free bus rides to illegal immigrants to D.C. you know and um but i think in the sort of trollier than now uh national conversation i think

these things are probably going to work for both of them desantis more so because punching you know woke capitalism and woke corporations in the eye and being a fighter will work to his advantage and it works to his advantage in the in the the the the the phony war that we have right now between Trump and DeSantis, where DeSantis is carving out this role as a Trumpian fighter who actually gets results. And so I think it positions them really well for 2024. Declan, I feel like this is not mirror image on each side. So Joe Biden not doing the political bidding of moderate Democrats who are asking him to

is not at all the equivalent of popular. Republican governors sort of engaging in these culture-of-war-esque fights rather than what used to be the case, which is governor sort of leading the way on new policies. I mean, the obvious example is Romneycare in Massachusetts, where he's like, I will try a new way to fix health care in my state. Why aren't we seeing the same thing from Democratic governors, I guess, on the one hand? And what does this mean about the two parties and their bases and the lack of equivalency in some point between the Republican base and the Democratic base? Yeah.

I mean, I think the major difference between, you know, Biden and these governors is that Biden is as president and kind of dealing with a situation that is broadly unpopular in the country, he's reactive. He doesn't get to pick what he's responding to on any given day. It's inflation. It's the border. It's these other issues. And it's he's taking a much more defensive posture. With the Republican governors, you know, one, they don't, Republicans don't control the White House. And so it's a lot of just, we would be better. We get to criticize what's going on the status quo without necessarily providing detailed examples of how they would do that. But they also get to pick and choose where they engage and be more proactive on that side.

And kind of to that point, I mean, I think this is a classic example of Yuval Levin's point about using institutions and using roles as platforms as opposed to kind of sticking to the roles and responsibilities that you're assigned. With DeSantis, it's not just Disney World and it's not just the border with Abbott. You know, DeSantis in the past couple weeks

has weighed in on directing the Florida Attorney General to investigate Twitter's board of directors about rejecting a sale to Elon Musk. I think both him and Abbott have did something similar about GoFundMe freezing assets for the Canadian trucker protesters. In what world is that the responsibility of the governor of Florida to be engaged on those issues, but it's the issues that will get him on Fox News and the issues that will build his fundraising base. And so Jonah said 82.4% having to do with 2024. I think it's actually closer

to like 93.7. It's just a really, you know, these governors get to find whatever issue is currently animating the base the most. A month ago, it was the Canadian trucker protests. Last week it was Elon Musk. This week it's Disney. And find whichever, you know, use their platform that they have to kind of back into a way to get them on Fox News and to send fundraising list to emails. And it's kind of a indictment, I think, of some of right-wing media that, you know, they will be able to get their message out there about how I am suing GoFundMe. I am suing the board of directors of Twitter. I am going after Disney.

They're not going to hear about three weeks later this long. lawsuit was dismissed. This social media bill was enjoined. You know, it's kind of you get out there on the issue. You get to identify yourself with pushing back on these excesses. And then it just kind of goes away when the entire thing was turned out to be for show. And so you kind of just get to do this performative aspect without having to actually do anything concrete. 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

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Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ETHO. dot com slash dispatch application times may vary rates may vary last topic netflix stock taking a huge dive huge dive and cnn plus announcing that they are shuttering services april 30th next week um i think there's a lot to be said that's different about the two but david let's start with what's similar about the two. You know, I think what's similar about the two is that we now have so many streaming options that it's just simply getting out of control. And the idea that you're going to add one or keep them all is becoming increasingly untenable.

And so Netflix is facing massive competition from, for example, Disney Plus that has you know, has a monopoly on some of the best intellectual property in the whole universe. Universe indeed, I'll note that word. Multiverse. And, yes, expanding into the multiverse, especially this summer. And so you've got this issue where there's just an incredible glut of competition. And you know what, Sarah, what kind of makes me wonder is, do you remember back in the day, days, the old days, like 2020 or 2019, where there was this thing called like cable TV

where you could get all of them for one price. And I just wonder if we're going to start circling back again instead of having to pay independently for all of the various streams of information if we're going to move back to a little bit of aggregation perhaps because just the combination of my streaming subscriptions, my various substact subscriptions, and my various other publications, there was no way I was adding CNN Plus to the menu. There was just no way.

Okay, so as the media environment has fractured, maybe let's say five years ago, it breaks into a million pieces where everyone has their own media website. Then you see the decline of local news, I mean, the bottom fall out of that. The next big thing to me is the rise of newsletters, substack and journalists taking what social media had given them

in terms of being able to build their own brand. And instead of just using that as leverage of which outlet to go with, nope, just go on their own. And we've seen some journalists make a fine living doing that. And then there was the next frontier, all of these streaming services being offered by the, you know, grandfathered companies that can put in the money to build out what they thought would be the next frontier. And boom. I mean, CNN Plus said they were going to put in a billion dollars.

They've already put in several hundred million. Now, I think some of this is the merger that they're going through and the discovery, just saying that they are not interested in this product. But some of it also has to be like reality in terms of what is the next. for video content news in a way that they hadn't really been affected as much the way that print traditional print news had been affected Jonah yeah I mean so many ways to go at this and first of all I think by David's point about Disney Plus's quality of its content is one of the key points a lot of the content on Netflix is bad and just it's just not good And plus, their model...

Does it matter that a lot of the content is also left of center? I think matters less than people think. To me, a lot of the woke stuff that's on Netflix, it's funny, I just had this conversation with a friend of mine who was like, is it really true that there's a lot of woke stuff on Netflix? Because I don't see it. And I think it's sort of, that sort of gets to the point is that you have to look for it. And so what it is is it's kind of like a B-to-B play where they, you know, they give the

Obama's a thing and they give, you know, these... They placate these activist groups to say, you know, eat us last. And technically their shows are on Netflix, but I don't see them promoted that much. It allows those people to then go. Like I was a television producer in the PBS world, like during the Pleistocene era. And so I've seen some of the, this model has existed for a very long time. There's a TV show that David might remember that Sarah might know. It's still on the air, which is astounding to me, called To the Comptus.

contrary, and it's an all-women pundit show. It has been on for like 25 years, maybe longer, and it was PBS's sort of play of placating feminist groups by putting them all on one show where they all get to be TV stars and no one watches it, and it checks a box. And I think a lot of the stuff that it's on Netflix that serves a similar purpose. The real problem with Netflix is that their model says that if they do have a show that somebody wants to watch, They can sign up for one month and then quit after they've watched it. And they've been so generous. I mean, look, let's peel the curtain back a little bit on the goings-on in the dispatch world.

I still have problems with my Apple TV here at home because one, Declan Garvey, when he was house-sitting, plugged in his password information, and I can't get it off. And so... What recommendations are you getting, Jonah? I don't want to do that to you here in public. And so, and on the CNN Plus thing, I don't know that it's obvious that CNN Plus couldn't have worked in some way. But it's very much like substack. It's very much like, look, I mean, again, in internet years, I'm Methuselah. I've seen it all.

And, like, the problem with subs, the thing about Substack, and they are our partners and they are host the dispatch and they're nice people and all that. But the people who are successful on Substack are the bloggers from, you know, are mostly the bloggers from 15 years ago. If you have a well-developed audience that is loyal to you, let people like Matt Iglesias, Andrew Sullivan, this guy, this guy, David French, some might say me, you can get people to come with you. to a certain extent. Maybe not as many as you like, maybe not as many as you deserve, but you can get people to come with you. Those are the top performing types on substack. Those are the top performing types of shows in streaming. Quality content dries almost everything. And the problem is it's very difficult to get quality content noticed. There are lots of platforms you can have quality content on, but the quality content isn't enough to fill people's

viewing desires. So there's a lot of crappy stuff. And I think the crappy stuff overpowers the quality stuff at Netflix for the time being. Maybe they'll bring on stuff that'll change that. At the end of the day, the problem with CNN Plus was they were basically selling for people who watch CNN all day long, hey, here's some nooks

and crannies in your life where you can cram in some more CNN. And I just don't think there's a market for that. Okay, before we go to Declan, David, I have one follow-up question for you. Netflix tumble here. How much do the anti-Chapell people who called for boycotts of Netflix and wanted to hurt Netflix,

how much can they claim credit? How much will they claim credit? Is this totally not relevant to what's happening at Netflix? Or will it scare future companies like this that when people say, take that content down or we will hurt your business, that it could hurt your business in a year? Yeah, I don't know, is there any evidence

that the loss of subscriptions is related to the Chappelle content? I mean, there's a lot of evidence that the Chappelle content was quite popular amongst Netflix viewers. How much evidence is there that the tailing off of Netflix subscriptions? And Netflix had been plateauing for some time is related to Chappelle. That's just information I don't know. It's certainly information that Netflix will be extremely keen to find out. I don't know that there's data for that, by the way, but I will say like this idea that if your company becomes controversial, it almost doesn't matter why, because then people are like, It just gives you a negative hit, a negative connotation when people see it, regardless

even sometimes if they agree with you or not. But I wonder if it's more, they lost Friends, right? So Friends was one of their mainstays. Yeah. They lost all the Marvel content that they had. So that was, again, some of their really popular stuff. I think it gets more just kind of gets. But Bridgeton.

It just, do they still have Bridgetton? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. That's their thing. The algorithm does not feed me, Bridgerton. Which is sort of surprising, honestly. I can't believe you haven't mentioned they have Last Kingdom.

I was going to say, if you're watching Last Kingdom excessively, it's not necessarily tagging you for 18th century romances or whatever. But they have some good content, but some of their premier titles have been really delayed the next season of Stranger Things. I think it gets much more sort of basic than that than the Chappelle stuff. But is it cake? Declan, a criticism that I've heard of the Netflix model is that in terms of Netflix own incentive, it is to create a popular show to bring people into Netflix, but then there's

no particular need to continue that popular show because they think that by and large, once they get people in the funnel, they're less likely to cancel. And so a criticism that I've heard of Netflix is that, in fact, you know, one or two seasons and they're good, rather than putting more money in as actors, for instance, ask for increasing amounts as seasons go on. A, do you think that criticism is fair? And B, is this a problem with the model? Or is this a problem with the diversification of options?

So there was an interesting study a couple of years ago that sought to figure out why Trader Joe's was so successful. what they came to is actually that having less choice was preferable to a lot of these consumers, that you go to the store and you see there are two different types of tomato sauce instead of 60, and it just makes your life a little bit easier. You don't have to think about that. I think that's a lot of what's happening here with Netflix. So David didn't want to do the calculation. I actually did to set up my budget a couple months ago, and it's like $78 dollars a month on streaming services and media accounts. So not great, but I don't spend much time on Netflix because I think it is that reason that it's, there is definitely good stuff

in there. There's, you know, Sarah, you mentioned the Chappelle stuff. That's one of the reason I haven't canceled my subscription. He still has, I think, a couple more specials that he's contracted to do for them. But there's just so much junk. And, you know, I think that it, you go to Disney Plus, you go to HBO Max. There's just a higher expected baseline of what you can find there. It's just much, it just seems to be more thoughtful and deliberate than the kind of things that they're putting on there. And so, you know, it's also just, I think, an example of, you know, it gets a glossier sheen and is, talked about more because it's a tech company but you know businesses make bad decisions and

kind of hurt themselves all the time they've been doing it for centuries i mean they're this is a company where they have it's something like uh you know they they have probably a hundred million more subscribers than actually show up in their numbers and in their bank accounts because everybody shares passwords they're going to crack down on that uh you know that i use my parents' Netflix account, so I will have to pony up or not. Maybe I won't. But they're also, you know, it came out this week that they're spending $30 million an episode on Stranger Things. And that's, it's one of their biggest shows. I guess it makes sense to double down. But if you're talking about losing money and it comes after you're spending $30 million

an episode on one show when you offer, you know, hundreds of different options, maybe they need to reconsider some of, some of their budgeting. And so, you know, I think that there is a path forward for the company, but they just have to, you know, everything right now for the past, and this is a lot of the tech companies, a lot of the venture capital backed companies, everything is just more. Give everybody more of everything and just dump more money in, build more programming, and people will stick around. And I think we're seeing that with media companies and substack and with Netflix and some of these other subscription companies that people actually would like a little bit more editorial judgment and these companies

to make more choices for them and focus on a few things doing well rather than a million things poorly. Well, I am very excited for our last segment here, not worth your time, our new segment where we talk about the thing that we all agreed wasn't worth talking about. And this week, I don't think it'll come as a surprise to listeners that the topic is Kevin McCarthy's big lie. So to fill you in on what's gone on, a news story came out saying that Kevin McCarthy had said that he would talk to President Trump and encourage him to resign.

Kevin McCarthy comes out and says that that is false. His spokesperson said that he had never said that he would call on President Trump. Trump to resign and that this was, you know, the liberal news and yada, yada, yada. And then an audio recording comes out of Kevin McCarthy saying that he would call the president and encourage him to resign. Direct contradiction. Not a lot of wiggle room there. The question is, does it matter? And so I don't think it was worth our time to do a whole segment on this until we decide whether it matters, whether it matters right now, whether it matters a year from now when Kevin McCarthy is potentially probably up for the speakership. And I think

no. Jonah. Yes, I, so I was not part of the conversation that put this in the not worth your time category. I would have argued against it, I think, because I think, first of all, it's schadenfreudeastic. You know, put aside all the other political considerations. It is just fun to see, you know, as I put it on Twitter last night, the great scandal of Kevin McCarthy privately saying the right and moral thing and being exposed for it. But I do think it matters. We've had this conversation before. I think there's a very good chance that Kevin McCarthy is either never speaker. And I thought this a month ago, I've talked about it on here before, I think there's a very good chance he's either never speaker or he's not speaker for long because Donald Trump.

um will betray him and say he wants a more serviceable guy which you know is invites a lot of jokes more serviceable than Kevin McCarthy but um it's so it kind of depends on the margins that the republicans get after the midterms but if a whole bunch of freedom caucus people say betrayer betrayer you wanted them to resign for you know trying to save american democracy blah blah blah blah, blah, he could not be speaker. And I think just the gloriousness of him being deprived, like Moses being refused entrance into the promised land, because in a moment of weakness, he was tempted to do the right thing is just so glorious and interesting.

And I also, I mean, I'm kind of curious in your take on this era, it seems like just such, like the idea that you don't hold out the possibility that such a tape exists when you, you know the allegation is true, that you give yourself no wiggle room in your denials, seems to just sort of like pretty bad political malpractice. So I think it's an interesting topic. All right. Our controversial not worth your time topic, David, this isn't going to accomplish what the Jonas of the world, what the Rachel Maddows of the world want. It's not like if you take down Kevin McCarthy, you then get Speaker Cheney. You get Speaker Jim Jordan. Or Scalise. Or Scalise. Right.

Yeah, I have to say I'm not super intrigued by the machinations at the top of the House of GOP caucus because I think that in many fundamentally important ways, they're kind of interchangeable because they're all beholden to the very angry base. And so whether it's Jim Jordan, Scalise, I would prefer of the three. I mean, I would prefer of the three, but, you know, it's a difference in degree, not in kind. But, you know, the one thing I did find that I did want to highlight about this McCarthy tape is it's an extreme version of something that we've been talking about for six years, which is how many times have you had a conversation with somebody on the hill who, off the record, in private conversations, is lacerating Donald Trump? lacerating Trump. And then as soon as the camera light goes on,

as soon as they're on a podcast, as soon as they're on a radio interview, it is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And that was just an interesting window into that reality. So here, as I said, it's an extreme version because he's saying,

I'm going to call and ask him to resign. No sign of that pretty soon after that conversation. And instead, Liz Cheney is thrown overboard, not Donald Trump. But I just saw that, And I thought, hey, hello, America, this has been the reality for six years.

You're just now hearing an audio recording of it. Declan, I wonder. So, A, I don't think this matters because I'm not sure to affect McCarthy at all. B, if it does affect McCarthy, again, it's not that you've changed the leadership of the House GOP in any meaningful way. You'll get someone who is very, very similar to McCarthy, maybe further to the right in whatever now the right-left spectrum is. Three, I think we're more likely to spend time on how the New York Times says now

that they have lots of audio of House GOP leadership conversations and where the leak came from, which of course will take the focus off Kevin McCarthy anyway. You know, is it a staff person who secretly recorded it and leaked it? Is it another member? It sounded like a group call. Of course, a ton of attention will be. on Liz Cheney and whether she did it. And, you know, did Kevin McCarthy forget he said this?

And then we don't have a statement yet from McCarthy or his team. Footnote, based on my own experience working in communication for quite a while before I did this job. I got to say, as a spokesperson, woof, big woof. So I had a rule, which I will now share with you all, even though it's something you don't really want out there when you're doing it, because you don't want people to notice the difference. But if I could not personally verify something as true, I would always phrase it as Speaker McCarthy says he never did X, versus Speaker McCarthy never did X.

You have to massage it to make sure it doesn't sound like you're punting, but you never want your credibility to be destroyed, not even by a nefarious boss, but by a boss who just like didn't, remember that thing one time and you're out there saying something is fact or not. So Declan, why do you think this story is not worth our time? As we go into hour two. I would not say it's not worth our time in the sense that I do think that it actually will likely hurt McCarthy next year when Republicans take the House and he's trying to be Speaker, which has been his lifelong goal. The problem with McCarthy is that he, as a leader, has tried to please everyone

and ends up pleasing no one. And this is a very, I can say this, this is a very Irish thing. It's a very Irish Catholic thing that you don't want to disappoint anybody. And so you end up just telling everybody what they want to hear. And you can't do that all the time. And so when you're building a case in a year from now as to whether McCarthy will be elected speaker, half the, not, most of the caucus can look at, you know, pick out examples of ways that he's not Trumpy enough. It's this tape leaking. It's, um, it's, uh, him, you know, condemning Madison Cawthorne and, uh, Marjorie Taylor Green, even though it took him, you know, eight months to do so. Um, it's kind of not, uh, um,

you know, pushing some of the impeachment stuff as much as he should have, quote unquote. And then on the flip side, the more moderate members will be able to point to plenty of reasons why he's far to MAGA and in bed with the Marjorie Taylor Greens and Madison Hawthorns. And so I think that he will actually have a decent amount of trouble ginning up enough support in early 2023 to the elected speaker. But I think what the recording itself shows is that there are people gunning for him. And, you know, I think my mind first jumped to that it would have been Liz Cheney recording it and leaking this audio. Her spokesperson put out a very similarly categorical denial this morning saying that she did not record or leak the tape, end quote, does not know how the reporters got it. But now we just need a tape of Liz Cheney saying that she leaked the tape that McCarthy says he didn't say. Yeah, exactly.

But I mean, if Liz Cheney has proven herself to be somewhat more credible than Kevin McCarthy over the past couple of years. So, you know, who else was on that call? Steve Scalise was on that call. And he wants to be speaker to- Cubano, Jonah. Exactly. So, you know, I think. think that there's 0% chance that the former president, Donald J. Trump, does not weigh in on this

at some point in the next 24 hours. I think there's a 0% chance that it does not come up again in early 2023 when the speaker vote is happening. So in that sense, I think it does matter. But yes, in the broader sense, it's either Kevin McCarthy or a Kevin McCarthyite who's going to be able to gin up enough support. And we could be looking back in two years being like, gee, remember when Republicans were led by Kevin McCarthy? Those

were the days. Because you know, what comes after him we may not like as much as we might think. I just, I want to as a point of personal privilege, respond to your slander about putting me and Rachel Maddow on the same agenda.

I'm not wanting Kevin McCarthy is speaker? I don't think that's a controversial take. No, you also said that like that you said you look, first all, the sentence that what the Jonah Goldbergs and Rachel Maddows of the world want should never be uttered in any circumstances. And second of all, uh, I never thought like this would lead to Liz Cheney being speaker. No, that wasn't what I said you thought it would lead to. I said that's what you want. Yeah, but I don't, but like wants, I mean, I also want, you know, to, to, to win powerball. I mean, And it's not factoring into, you know, why I think this. And if I said Jonah Goldberg and Rachel Matta both want to win Powerball, I would still have said something factually accurate.

Yes, but you've made it sound like if we were part of the same set, which we are not. I mean, all carbon-based life wants to continue its existence. That is not a meaningful category of or distinction. Anyway, all I'm saying is that I have no rooting interest in this. beyond the fact that I think it is enjoyable to watch Kevin McCarthy actually face a true political crisis for it being revealed that he did, that he was inclined to do the right thing. And I think that is interesting and worthwhile to know. Well, I just want to state for the record that with the exception of Jonah, who was ever so

slightly tardy to our green room conversation, the rest of you agreed that this would go into not worth your time. So everyone would be like, no, no, I obviously think it's worth your time. Steve, I want you to know who the traders are. Hey, hey, hey, hey, if we're going to air dirty laundry here, you screwed me entirely last week on the whole Elon Musk isn't worth our time after you had just done like a five-hour struggle session about it on advisory opinions. Remember what I just said about Irish Catholics wanting to please everybody? Yeah, it extends to journalists as well. Look, I just want to be clear. Steve Hayes is going to listen to this and he's going to get cranky at me and I am not going to take this alone. David and Declan, you're going to stand

next to me when the firing squad is there. I mean, but then the larger issue is the now the open grudge between Jonah and Sarah because we can't forget a couple of weeks ago, Sarah memorably set Jonah up in a masculine, what was it, a culture masculinity question? And then when Jonah called her on it she fell down and hit her head on the desk. Yeah, the two of you kept laughing. No, we were concerned.

Only, no, only Scott Lincolme was like, hey, guys, is she okay? And you two were just uproariously. I had my headphones on still. I could hear you not caring. Only Scott cared about me. It's all, it's all in the book of books. I know all.

So thank you, listeners. And we'll see what you think of our new segment, not worth your time where in fact many people pretend that it's very much time on that segment than the other three. Possibly. Possibly. Yeah. So I think this will continue to be a controversial segment at the end of the podcast. We'll see. Well, I'm sure that our members will weigh in on the comments of whether they think it was worth their time or not. And with that, we will talk to you again next week.

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