The Dispatch Podcast - 'Mostly Peaceful'

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

On the campaign trail and throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has painted himself as a law and order candidate. We’re now three years into Donald Trump’s America and waves of violence and racial unrest are sweeping across America, most recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Do the riots and looting in Kenosha benefit Trump electorally? It’s hard to say whether the rioters and Antifa supporters—who are burning down small businesses and hitting innocent bystanders with concrete water bottles—are supporting Biden’s campaign or even voting at all. But if everyone thinks that the left is a monolithic movement—as alleged by Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump—that’s a bad look for the Biden campaign. “If you can get successfully tagged as the party of people who are setting fire to Korean grocery stores,” Jonah warns, “You’ve got a huge problem.” Listen to today’s episode for some thoughts on the way our preferred media outlets warp our worldview, ongoing Senate races nationwide, and an update on election meddling from foreign actors as we approach November 3. Show Notes: -“Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting” chyron on CNN and last month’s statement from NCSC Director William Evanina on foreign election interference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to The Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and our staff writer, Andrew Eger. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, Gabby. The topics for today. We've got some good ones. Trump and Biden set to visit Wisconsin. Does the media narrative matter? Update on our Senate races for 2020 and the Intel briefings on election interference. Let's dive right in. Steve, it's your lucky week. We start off with your home state. Yeah. My, my, my, uh, Question is pretty straightforward. Does what's happening in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and beyond work to the political benefit of Donald Trump or no? It's certainly the case that Donald Trump and his supporters and advisors believe that the chaos that we've seen in pockets in these various cities and the perception that it's growing or could be growing is a boon to their campaign. comment from Kellyanne Conway on Fox News, saying in effect, when there's chaos, voters are going to look

for President Trump to end it, and that helps President Trump. I've talked to other Trump advisors who have said much the same thing and think that at least internally they believe that they're seeing a change in support, not just a change in narrative. My question is pretty simple. In July of 2016, Donald Trump sent a tweet in which he said, this election is going to be out about law and order and safety versus chaos and crime. That was four years ago. And here he is making essentially the same promise. Doesn't he get dinged for presiding over the kind of unrest that we've seen, Jonah? It's strange how he does, he does get, I mean, I'm sort of in a weird sort of, sort of twilight zoney place where I don't quite get how some of the political narratives out there are, are working in certain ways, both for Biden and for Trump and against Biden and against Trump.

There's so much cross-current stuff going on right now that, like, Like, for example, if you just said on paper, Joe Biden is bad because he signed this draconian crime bill. And he pushed this draconian crime bill in 1990s. And he was too tough on crime, particularly on African Americans. But also, he is a pawn of B.L.N. It just doesn't really make sense to me on paper. But it turns out it's actually working, it seems to be working. it seems to be working pretty well

as a political argument I think that there's this as you sort of suggest there's a very strange otherworldly feel to the idea that as you put it in a time of chaos people will look to Donald Trump

to calm the chaos when it feels like for the last three and a half years he's been driving the chaos and so it's it's it seems to me that an enormous number of people are coming to conclusions first

and then reverse engineering their arguments to fit their conclusions or retroactively cherry-picking facts. The number of people who, even after Biden's big speech, who still say that Biden hasn't condemned violence is really kind of amazing to me. And they can get away with saying it, And I think part of the problem is that there are so few media outlets that actually speak

across the different silos that you don't get pushback or skepticism internally in these various silos. And so I don't know. I mean, I think honestly that the political argument for Trump that that the Democrats are too soft on violence and mayhem and looting and all of these kinds of things has, worked pretty well for Trump. I don't think it's as worked as well as Democrats fear and Republicans think, given that the first taste of polling that's come out doesn't suggest any huge moves, but I'll defer to Sarah on all that. Yeah, I mean, Sarah, that's a good question. If you talk to

people who were with the president and advised the president who watched what happened yesterday in Kenosha when the president visited, you know, they will say the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin were lined with Trump supporters, enthusiastic, eager Trump supporters, you know, maybe several hundred, maybe into the thousands. This is a democratic area. Trump won Kenosha County by 255 votes in 2016. These are exactly the kinds of voters. Donald Trump will need to win in November to win broadly, to win the Electoral College, particularly to win Wisconsin. What has the showing us about any of this? Are they right to think that this is helpful?

So I'm going to go back to the song that I've been singing now, the song of my people for the last several weeks, which is the question shouldn't be on either side whether so-and-so is moving voters generally. Because there are no undecided voters when we talk about these voters on two axes, who they're voting for and whether they're voting. The who they're voting for is done.

It's just not going to move very much. But we're heading into Labor Day, and so you're going to see polls tighten as people, quote unquote, come home. And that's really more on the whether they'll vote access than anything else. And so the question on whether Kenosha or chaos, et cetera, help Trump, isn't moving voters generically.

It's, is it bringing Republicans, wobbly Republicans back into the fold. Not is it convincing Democrats or Democrat leaners or, again, even this theory of undecided or persuadable voters? But is it bringing Republicans back into the fold? And I think that there is some evidence, plenty of some evidence, if that makes sense, that sure, yeah.

Now, there's other things happening. The Republican convention happened. We're heading into Labor Day where people start paying attention. So you were going to see them come home anyway, and it's very hard to separate out whether this is accelerating them coming home, nearly impossible right now because all of those things were happening at once. The way that we're going to be able to tell that is because, in general, convention bumps should go away, even inter-party.

So we actually won't really know if the chaos stuff matters until we see whether it endures and then can sort of say that the convention part should have gone away. somehow these numbers are staying. Now, some other numbers that are worth talking about. Americans' view of race relations is the most negative it's ever been since Gallup started asking the question. That actually probably helps Biden consolidate the wobbly Democrats. So that's sort of bringing people home on the other side. Now, this question I thought was actually sort of unhelpful because I don't think it gets to the point. But when asked about their top priority for the country, only 8% of Americans currently list crime. 30% say the economy or jobs.

16 say it's health care, for instance. But I'm not sure that when we talk about Kenosha, people are necessarily equating that with quote unquote crime. So I see some people using that number. I don't think that that's a particularly good polling question to look at what we're talking about. Voters' views of Black Lives Matter has dropped by nine points since June. That's That is almost all due to the Republican side. So again, you're seeing these Republican voters come home. They were, you know, out there flirting with the world over the summer. And convention, Labor Day, all these things, including, I think,

the Connocheon narrative to some extent is bringing them home. But when you ask voters who they trust more to handle public safety, 47 to 39, Biden. So, Andrew, is what we're seeing sort of just the flipping of the narrative because people were bored with the old narrative? So people have just decided this has to be Trump's moment. Or is it more that and a combination of what Sarah says, you know, it was a Republican convention? Trump's accomplishments were highlighted. His leadership is being touted in a time of at least perceived chaos and unrest, a law and order, you know, somebody who just says law and order repeatedly can have some appeal to those potentially disaffected Republicans?

Well, I definitely think that there's something to what Sarah's saying about this being a particularly appealing narrative to a certain class of wobbly Republican, where you see this sort of thing, and this is then a pitch of Trump's all along. that, you know, maybe you don't really like his style or all of the insane fights that he picks or even think he's a very good guy personally. But when it comes to, like, things that you actually think are going to impact your particular quality of life, that this is the argument that they're making, that, you know, it's always a, this was another theme of the convention, sort of, you know, they're coming for you. And only Trump, you know, being president

and not a Democrat is, is what's preventing you. from having your life, you know, invaded in any number of different ways. Of the numbers that you just mentioned, Sarah, the one that I am most interested in getting to the bottom of a little bit is what you said about Black Lives Matter specifically, taking a hit in terms of support, because one messaging effort that I think has been really effective from Republicans, whether or not you think it's fair. I think it's done the job it's set out to do, which is to tie Black Lives Matter as a movement to these broader left-wing causes. I mean, which is why you hear President Trump and people sort of in Trump world

hitting over and over and over again the fact that, you know, Black Lives Matter isn't just about racial equality. It's about Marxism or it's about, you know, defending the police. or it's about abolishing the police. And they have, the reason it's an effective attack is because, you know, it's not an incredible stretch because the primary sort of nonprofit organizations that are, you know, called like the Black Lives Matter Foundation, a lot of their policy plans, you know, include things like abolishing the police or, you know, support for the Democratic Socialists of America or these sorts of things.

So what I'm curious about is whether the effectiveness of that messaging has just soured Republicans over the last couple months on the phrase, on, you know, the specific political movement, Black Lives Matter, and there are still some residual movement on how people are actually thinking about racial issues that is not reflected as much in that specific polling question, but which maybe has changed since spring, or whether we've just sort of settled back, like you say, settled back into basically the way everybody was thinking about these things before the George Floyd event and what seemed like a moment of a sort of watershed change, maybe turning out to be just a blip after all.

I mean, that's the question, right? And I think when we look at what was going on in June around the protests that were specifically related to George Floyd, and then it stretched out over the summer. And for, you know, the media narrative, which I hate using, but let's use it for a second, the media narrative got more dispersed over the summer. And then you have Jacob Blake happening, you know, right at the tail end of the Democratic Convention right before the Republican Convention. And again, I think that it just combines a lot of things happening at once.

And of course, and we haven't talked about this, but you have the shooting in Portland, and you have the shooting in Kenosha from the protesters themselves against other protesters. And in some ways, I think that that is the August narrative, if you will. If June was a narrative about Black Lives Matter, August is a narrative about one side, literally taking the life of the other side in a protest, and whether that is the fault of the one side, the other side, whichever side you happen to be on, and those two, the police for not keeping protesters apart. I mean, you think back to Charlottesville, something that everyone thought was just this, you know, kindling. And part of what folks were saying then is,

of course, you don't let protesters encounter protesters anywhere near one another. And yet over and over again in Portland and in Kenosha, part of the problem was that they were not organized enough to be able to keep them all separate. And then you see, you know, the murder, charges in Kenosha and what I assume will be murder charges in Portland as well. So just to pull back the camera just slightly, I guess the thing that I'm sort of, I just sort of calling sort of touching on this, but that I keep thinking about is I think historically parties, at least the, if you say the party, including the broader intellectual movement to which they are attached. So conservatism for Republicans, progressivism, broadly understood for liberals

or for Democrats do better when they actually have arguments amongst themselves. I think this is one of the great enduring strengths of conservatism is that we had ongoing debates between libertarians and conservatives, between social conservatives and sort of cosmopolitan conservative, all sorts of up and down left and right kind of arguments. And it made arguments that everybody's arguments better. It invigorated the GOP. It made it what Pat Moynihan said was the party of ideas. And I think Democrats do better when they do something along those lines as well. And the problem is that Democrats have a much harder time historically, sort of their Achilles heel, is drawing bright lines with the people to their left. There is something, I think, particularly

conducive in in left-wing politics about the popular front idea that you know there are no enemies to our left kind of thing and the few times where this is kind of where they were people have actually engaged in saying yeah these people aren't with us it's usually redound it to the benefit of the party um uh you know the the most heroic version of this is americans for democratic action in the 19 late 40s early 50s where they basically said you freaking comment get the hell out of the party. And there was a real chance that a sort of stalking horse communist cell could have taken over the Democratic Party back then. And people like Arthur Schlesinger and others put a stop to it. A more cynical version is Bill Clinton in the 1990s,

who basically ran against the base of his own party to prove that he was a different kind of Democratic Party and win over sort of moderates and centrists and all the rest. It is insane to me for Biden to wait as long as he had, I think his recent statements are good, but to seem like you have to be nudged into saying rioting and looting or bad is just to me, just idiotic politics. And the idea that somehow Trump gets to say, see, I made him do it as bad as just political malpractice. And there's this added part where if everybody thinks the left is this monolithic thing. I mean, you have Tucker and other people on Fox News going around basically calling Antifa and BLM street protesters Biden voters. That's a bad look for the Democratic Party.

I mean, there's that video of the white woman in Adams Morgan, this hipster neighborhood in D.C. that I lived in for 10 years, being accosted by a bunch of other white left-winger and this idea that somehow the woman who says, hey, you guys are going too far, isn't more representative of your typical Democrat than the little Maoists in face masks is kind of ludicrous. And the Democratic Party desperately needs,

and Biden in particular desperately needs to make that signaling and that messaging much more clear because if you can get successfully tagged as the party of people who are setting fire to Korean grocery stores, you got just got a huge problem. Even if you're just tagged with being sympathetic to it, you got a huge problem.

And I think this was one of the few times where the Biden campaigns sort of rope-a-dope front porch strategy thing hurt it. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you saw a pretty dramatic shift in the language from Trump and Trump supporters. I'd say in the past week where there may have been some, like bank shot subtlety trying to associate Joe Biden with the rioters and the looters to now

they're just literally calling them Joe Biden voters. I suspect that many of the rioters and looters are not Joe Biden voters. Many of them are probably not voters at all. If they were voters, I would guess they'd be more likely to be Bernie voters than anything. The ropes fear voters. Right, right. But look, I think it's, Certainly the case that Biden waited too long to make an on-camera emphatic statement the way that he did. I mean, it is the case contrary to claims from Trump campaign folks and Trump supporters that Biden did put out statements condemning the rioting and the looting early. I mean, as far back as the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. But it's different.

It's different to put out a paper statement. It's different to put out a statement from your press secretary. than it is to even put out a video statement or give a speech. And he finally gave a speech. He's been criticized in part for naming the right-wing groups committing violence and not naming the left-wing groups as he gave sort of a broad condemnation of violence on all sides. But I think that was long overdue.

And I had a conversation with a law enforcement officer over the weekend. who was probably, I'd say he's, you know, center-right type, mostly aligned with Trump's policies, doesn't love Trump, doesn't love the behavior, and was probably a getable Joe Biden vote. And I think he was struck by the fact that it took Biden so long. There wasn't an early statement from Democrats and from Biden that there are good police officers,

that there are good law enforcement officers, and that's the kind of thing that seems to me would have been a layup for Biden to come out and emphasize early and he just didn't I think for the reasons

Jonah that you suggest. I don't think it is possible to have a sister-soldia moment in 2020 because of exactly what Jonah said that the media environments are so fractured in order to have a sister-soldia moment we all have to be getting our news

from the same place. how you reach the people who are on the other side to say, hey, look, I'm condemning my own team. You people on the other side will find that attractive. But what if that is not your audience ever? Because it can't be. I mean, to perhaps what we're saying, I don't think anyone on the right side saw Joe Biden's speech.

And for that matter, I don't think that many people saw anything the president did around Kenosha that wasn't through whatever media they're filtering through, which was therefore fairly partisan. With that, Jonah, do you want to move on to your topic, which is media frames in general? Sure, that picks up on, that connects with it pretty well. So, but in response to just what you just said, I think you're basically entirely right.

The only way I could see an exception to that is if it is particularly at a debate where everybody's going to be watching. Yep. If there is seen as a spontaneous, authentic, expression of exasperation or something where it doesn't seem wildly staged and all the rest, that's entirely, that's the only place I can think of where a sister soldier-esque moment could happen. But let me even push back on that, because the people watching the debates,

sort of similar to the people watching the conventions, are high information voters who already presumably have their minds made up. And so what the low information, perhaps more wobbly voters will see from the debates or not the debates themselves, but coverage of the debates, which will be through their media lenses. I generally agree with that too, but I'll push back on that, just to say that my understanding from talking to people who've been doing focus groups and stuff, there's this weird, historically abnormal claim from people saying they want to see the debates and that they think

that they want to see for themselves, basically, whether Biden, you know, needs to be institutionalized or, as Donald Trump might put it, realizes that he's alive. And so there may be more sort of fence sitters watching, but I generally agree with you. Okay. So anyway, my, my larger beef with the media these days, and I really try to avoid doing media criticism, even though it was my bread and butter for like almost 20 years. And it's not because I don't think the mainstream media is biased. It obviously is. I just find it to be sort of the lowest form of journalism. And that's why certain people who do it do it so much. That said, particularly CNN, you know, where I've got friends over there, but there, you know, the best distillation of the criticism that the media is reluctant

to report things that are inconvenient for the narrative that they want, is this video package that had fiery but mostly peaceful protests on CNN the other day, which is, I think not since fake but accurate during the Dan Rather story, has there been a better sort of encapsulation of the problem, you know, except for the, you know, the small outbreaks, of cannibalistic zombies. Everything's going fine in Cleveland. It's just a weird sort of message.

And so, while I think Donald Trump deserves all the criticism he gets for saying that Portland is a blaze, it's not a blaze, right? I mean, it's like there's this defined small area downtown. The media, the way it reports on this stuff seems to me is, particularly CNN, but also MSNBC and New York Times and all the rest, is they say on the one here, hand, mostly peaceful protesters, or Trump is exaggerating or Trump is lying about all this unrest. And then they show pictures of stores on fire, right? They show pictures of street clashes that hearken back to like Berlin in the early 30s between red shirts and brown shirts. I mean,

it looks completely contradictory. And to say, well, you know, like you had some CNN reporter the other day tweeting out, here I am. Here's the view from Portland where I'm eating a burrito out side, see the shows there's nothing wrong. Somebody on Twitter said, well, here's this view of Beirut, which doesn't show a giant hole where a massive fertilizer explosion killed all these people. So, of course, nothing bad happens and there's nothing to worry about ammonium nitrate explosions in Beirut, right? I mean, and so I think that part of the problem is that when the media does this, it becomes so instantly falsifiable for the average viewer that they dismiss the rest of it. And meanwhile, the Democrats in the Biden campaign, they watch this stuff.

They think this is still the unvarnished, legitimate, objective news. And they don't realize that they need to push back on the messaging that comes from the media. And so you end up getting vastly more people going to Facebook to read Ben Shapiro and right-wing sources on Facebook than going to the mainstream outlets. And it's kind of invisible to the Democratic campaign and to the Democrats. And so I guess the question is, sort of going back to Sarah's point, has the horse just simply left the barn

and it is now impossible to think of the mainstream media as this as it was at least striving to be for most of our lives, this thing that was accessible to everybody and rather it is just simply part of the House of Mirrors, and the only people who don't know that it is considered part of the

opinion journalism are the actual media outlets themselves that believe their own fictions. You know, what is the role left for the mainstream media and being able to persuade people who don't all already agree with it? Andrew? You're going to throw that to me? That was the most complicated sounding question I've ever heard in my entire life. It's like in back to school. You just have to say four.

Personally, and this is partially my own personal bias because I have never been in a household that had a cable package. And so coming to like CNN and MSNBC and Fox as sort of an adult in the news industry was like a brave new world thing for me. And I've always just sort of recoiled from the style of the thing. I do think it's hard to talk about these questions in terms of the media as though it's one sort of monolithic entity. I mean, I think that the particular foibles of a place like CNN and the particular foibles of a place like the New York Times are going to be different just because of the medium. I mean, you aren't going to run into the same, just sort of baldly self-refuting sorts of things in the pages of the New York Times as. as with, you know, the Chiron troubles that you're talking about with the protests on CNN, just, again, just because of the medium of the thing where the clash is the narrative,

the, you know, the argument that's being told or the story that's being told, versus the completely incongruous visual that you're getting at exactly the same time, which is just, I mean, the one you bring up the mostly peaceful protests in front of just a, burning, burning building, you know, floor to ceiling of the shot in flames is more evocative probably than anything that you're going to get out of print or online media. But I mean, I do, I take the point. I would say, you know, perhaps as sort of devil's advocate here, the fact that you get a really incongruous shot like that is, is in a way, you could at least make the argument that that shows that they are attempting to balance, you know, a couple of

relatively incongruous narratives here in a way that that does justice to both because they're not ignoring the, ignoring the writing. It's not just that they happen to set up this shot, you know, in front of a, in front of a warehouse, and then they go to camera and immediately the warehouse bursts in flames. And they're like, oh, no, our narrative about the peaceful protests is, is really harmed here. I mean, I think the thing that they're trying to react against is these, yes, primarily left-wing concerns that in an environment where there are both peaceful protests and riots going on, that obviously the media tendency is going to be to lean toward the more sensational thing that's happening because that's what people want to read about and that's

what moves papers and that's, you know, that's the news. I mean, the news is the, is the wild stuff that's happening. And so, um, you, you have these concerns from, you know, marchers or whoever that, uh, that there's this whole big movement going on, but that the only thing that, that media really cares about is, is when the sun goes down and, and, uh, people start throwing bricks. Um, and so you can, you can see why, why, um, why they try even while they're covering the brick throwing and stuff to be like, now just so we're, just so you guys are all aware, this isn't all that was happening here, you know, earlier, there was a march and everything. And they, you, they, they, they, they, they tie themselves into the

nots, for what I would say is, is at least an understandable reason, but which is, comes across. I mean, it's sort of just a no-in situation. Yeah, no, I agree that. And I apologize for dropping a multivariate, dangling, participle, bizarre question on you. But I always forget that I'm supposed to end these things in the form of a question. Well, you got my rambling sort of dissembling answer as a result. It worked. The only thing I sort of part, but so I guess if I was, going to focus the question more and I'll throw out to Sarah and Steve on this, but part of the problem is, is that when you watch these things, and to a lesser extent, when you

read them, and I agree with you, print is always going to be better than video, you get the clear, it is impossible to escape the impression that the mainstream media is, to one extent or another, rooting for Democrats. Because whenever the facts on the ground are conducive to the Democratic narrative. There is none of that sort of, on the other hand, skepticism that you get when the facts are conducive to Republicans. Instead, it's flood the zone. So when there's a cop shooting that is outrageous, or at least appears to be outrageous, the immediate response is to go, this is a systemic problem. This is, you know, and then maybe in the 10th paragraph, oh, and by the way, there's some statistics that suggest maybe it's not. And the point here is,

not to prove that the media is biased, because I think that is like proving, you know, the horse is dead after you've been kicking it for 10 hours. But is that I actually think it not only hurts the media for obvious reasons, I think it actually hurts Democrats because when normal people internalize for, I think, entirely sound reasons that the media is just simply carrying water for the Democrats, it gives them permission to believe an entirely contrary narrative because, you know, we now know that they're not trying to tell the truth in a straightforward way and that they want the Democrats to win. And so even when the media is 100% right on the facts, it gives people the permission

structure to just say, well, we know that they're biased. And I think that's a, that's one of the reasons why I think our politics are just so different. So yeah, so, so enthusiastic head nodding from me on everything that you said, Jonah. Look, this is, first of all, this is yet another situation in which life imitates the naked gun, right? I mean, there's that, the CNN picture that you described, I immediately thought of the moment where the, I think it was like a missile crashes into the fireworks warehouse in the naked gun.

And Leslie Nielsen is trying to get people away. And he says, nothing to see here. Please disperse. Please. That's what the CNN. picture was right now mostly peaceful protesters in the background there's this there's a massive fire look i i think the point about not overgeneralizing in the criticism of the media is is a good one and an important one so let me be very specific there was on uh august 25th a

bunch of reporting about the latest developments in connocia um that day the associated press put out a you'll see Associated Press put out a style guidance. And look, the Associated Press is followed by newsrooms across the country. Associated Press style sort of dictates the style of newsrooms across the country. And the AP made a point to say it's imprecise and sometimes inaccurate, and I'm paraphrasing here, to use the term officer-involved shooting because it strips agency away from the people who did the shooting. and you should strive to be much more accurate. The police shot Jacob Blake.

And I think it was good advice generally. On the other hand, that same day, there's a big New York Times story, led the website, I believe, for a little while, about peaceful marches in protest of a police shooting that gave way two fires. Like people didn't set the fires. Like what do you mean?

They didn't give way to fires. The fires didn't just suddenly start. This wasn't spontaneous combustion. People lit the fires. Who lit the fires? Why did they do it? To what end? What were the consequences of the fires?

And the fact that there is, I think the media approach so much of this stuff with sort of white hat, black hat, and I don't mean that in racial terms, but good guy, bad guy reporting, distorts reality. in that way. And it doesn't take, you don't have to be a journalism scholar or even somebody who is looking for this kind of bias to have it shout out at you. And there's a reason, I've said this

before, there's a reason that conservatives have been so skeptical of the mainstream media for so along. The skepticism of the mainstream media didn't start with Donald Trump. Now, he's played it to his tremendous advantage. He's exacerbated that skepticism. He's turned what was healthy skepticism, I think, into deep cynicism. And when he calls journalists the enemy of the American people, he goes way, way too far. But there's a reason that, as Jonah would say, normal people, news consumers who just want to know what's going on, started to be more skeptical and approached a lot of news stories that they were getting from the mainstream media with, I think, a lot of skepticism. So here's my problem with this narrative on narrative, the meta. In every other capacity,

conservatives talk about market forces and that like, well, that's what the market's supporting, and that's what people want. And there's like no real understanding or acknowledgement, I guess, that our news media is not state run. Even PBS, even NPR, respond to the forces of advertisement and viewership, listenership, readership, et cetera. And so, unfortunately, that has resulted in this very fractured media environment. But this idea sort of to the point of like the fires didn't come from nowhere,

the idea of various media corporations having their own style, biases, et cetera, that just like came out of nowhere isn't accurate either. Nobody said that. Who said that? I didn't say that it came out of nowhere. Certainly. I agree with the entire. No, no, no, no.

I'm not saying that you did. What I'm saying is that there's this feeling as if the media, quote, unquote, or even talking about specific outlets are supposed to have, like, it's bad for them because it's, you know, viewers don't trust it anymore. But clearly that's not the case

because the New York Times is skyrocketing right now and making tons of money. And, you know, I don't see any of the cable stations going off the air anytime soon. So they're doing what's in their interest and it's working for them.

And that's why it's so fractured, actually. It's like, we have the explanation for the for the consequences and the reasoning and everything else. And it's that some people and a smaller portion of those people like what they're getting from those outlets. And the people who don't like it go to different outlets. And then those outlets get bigger. And so that's maybe why the like media narrative for me is getting less interesting over time because it's, there's not some like, well, the media should be X because it's state run and they should be the purveyors of truth alone.

there is this market force happening of where people want to get their news and how they want to get their news. Yeah, look, I'm not sure that's entirely fair or right. Because, first of all, I'm pretty sure I'm right on this. More journalists have lost their job, or more people in media have lost their jobs over the last 10 years than coal miners.

I mean, they're enormous, the media is sort of in free fall in terms of traditional, newspapers and you know and and and and and and the newspaper industry in itself has been in steady decline for 40 years 50 years and um and some of the forces yes although i think that more proves my point that that's as people are moving into this fractured media environment that you're having a shift and a recap like a reallocation of those resources yeah no no i i think that's fine i mean i think i agree with that but and but there are you know the exogenous forces of what's

happened with, you know, basically first Craigslist and then Facebook and Google destroying the classified ad model, which sustained newspapers and made them cash generators for decades, is a market force. But when CNN does this stuff, and part of the problem is, I'm perfectly willing to as describe market forces as playing an important role here. But very few of the actors who get this stuff wrong are doing it if they're responding to market forces.

They're responding to cultural forces. They're responding to their own status class ambitions. You know, maybe Jim Acosta, some of the stuff

that he does is because he wants to get rich. But my hunch is it's more that he wants to be the sort of Joan of Arc of the resistance type more than anything else.

Ousey, I think that's where we're going to disagree is because I think that is actually exactly the argument on the other side. And I think it's wrong. I think that, yeah, sure, you can point to tiny individual actors and say they're doing it because they believe it. But why were they given that platform in the first place? Why weren't they shown the door?

And why does Jim Acosta work at CNN and not Fox News? Because that fits with CNN's model right now and not Fox News is model. And look, and the model that they have is that in an environment of Balkanized media, and I think we agree on this, is that the goal isn't to speak to people outside of your niche. to have a sticky niche of one, two, three percent of the market segment. That said, there's a vast amount of, like, public choice theory and all of these kinds of, you know, studies that show that firms, not just media firms, but firms in general. I mean, this is something that Milton Freeman was ranting about for 50 years, make decisions that are not market-based that have to do with status and class

and social acceptability and social desirability. And I would argue that much in the same way that Hollywood has many, many, many times made dumb economic decisions based upon preconceived ideological notions, that the mainstream media, much like academia, makes all sorts of dumb decisions based upon the fact that they are trying to please a very small subset of our culture rather than their actual market or their potential market. If I could just butt in with one other point about the fragmentation here, because I think it's interesting, we were just talking about, you know, could the Biden campaign have like a sister soldier moment and sort of recapture people outside of their own sort of media information silo? And I think you could wonder the same sort of thing about the media in general. I mean, to what extent is this cake of fragmentation baked? because when you talk about, you know, how people get information about other media outlets

that are not in their own information silos, the way that if you are a Fox viewer or a Daily Caller reader or Daily Wire reader, one of these like conservative media or you listen to Rush, the way that you come into contact with content that's on CNN or on MSNBC or what have you is through those CNN segments or screenshots or whatever that your particular media outlets find most outrageous or find most, you know, silly or whatever, you know, insofar as CNN is saying silly or ridiculous or self-defeating things, the more that happens, the more access to CNN content those people get because that's what filters through. And insofar as, you know, any given left-leaning outlet or any given right-leaning outlet is being, you know, more measured or more fair or more careful on a given day, that just doesn't get, you know, there's no reason for the opposite media silo to pick that up.

And so it just passes by. And it works both ways. I mean, you see the most insane Tucker Carlson clip in a given week will skyrocket around. around left-leaning media. And if you don't watch Tucker Carlson, that's just who Tucker Carlson is for those people. And so it's hard to see how, you know, it's easy to talk about how media can and should do better. But it's harder, I think, to talk about how even doing better would represent a pathway back away from the fragmentation

because the fragmentation is self-perpetuating in this way. Yeah, that's a good point. I do think, and I agree, probably agree, with Sarah, more than I disagree on the question of this being a response to market forces. I think Jonah's cultural point is a good one, but I do think that some of this is a response to market forces and different people filling different places in the market. I do, I guess I have some confidence in this may be sort of born of my own naivete and hopeless optimism, or hopeful optimism, endless optimism, that,

there will be market corrections here. Because I think if you have news outlets that are theoretically dedicated to delivering people the truth and they don't do that, then they erode their own market positioning, if that makes sense. So if you have a news outlet that's constantly feeding people bad information after bad information. And at some point, it's obvious that the information that these news consumers have received is not accurate, is bad. They'll turn away from those news outlets. Now, that requires them sort of touching base with reality in a way that I can suggest that they won't. But look, part of

what we're all doing here, part of what the dispatch exists to do, is based on the strong belief. and I think there's lots of evidence behind it, that there's a pretty good market opportunity for people who want fact-based news and commentary from people who aren't pretending to be something they're not. The New York problem with the New York Times isn't that all of their reporters are left-wing ideologues who peddle bad information.

The New York Times employs some of the best reporters in the world on various beats. I think the problem with the New York Times is that some of the reporters who appear whose stories appear on the front page are these ideological crusaders. And they're responding to editors who in many cases are ideological crusaders.

And to me, that diminishes the overall credibility of the institution. But it doesn't mean that there aren't really good reporters doing really good work at a place like the New York Times. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Gabby Insurance. We're all looking for ways to save money, especially now.

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make this a, you know, marker for later and ask each of you which Senate race you think is the bellwether. But let me run through where things stand right now. So Democrats in the Senate already really at this point think they have a high chance of take. taking back the Senate and are talking about filibuster reform, making them actual talking filibusters or making more types of bills immune from filibusters, like fundamental constitutional issues is one of the things being tossed around, creating a bipartisan amendment process, but getting rid of the filibuster altogether, for instance, or there's just getting rid of the filibuster altogether. So what will it take to do that? Assuming that we have two

Democratic held seats that are up for grabs that Republicans could take. That's Alabama and Michigan. Michigan's looking, you know, it's definitely in the mix, but looking like Democrats will keep it. Alabama, looking like Republicans will take that back. So in that case, Democrats will need four seats. And here are the states that are in the mix right now for those four. Alaska, in the polls that I've seen, the Republican, Sullivan, is up in most of them. But one recent one has them tied. Arizona, every poll at this point is showing Kelly up over McSally. Colorado, Hick and Looper double digits over Gardner in most of the polls.

Georgia. Now remember we have two seats up in Georgia. You have Assoff versus Purdue. That's just a straight toss up. Every poll shows that within the margin of error that I've seen. You also have the Loeffler seat. And now that one will actually be a special election on November 3rd. and if no one gets over 50%,

then it's a January 5th runoff. So that one we're not going to know for a long time, probably. Iowa, Ernst v. Greenfield, way toss-up now. That has moved into toss-up hardcore. Maine, Gideon v. Collins. Gideon, the Democrat,

is up in every poll that I've seen, but it's tight, but it's close. Montana has now moved into this category. Danes versus Bullock. Daines is up, but it's close-ish. I mean, this is Montana. So for that to be close, it's kind of weird. And in North Carolina, Cunningham versus Tillis,

Cunningham, up pretty big in every poll. So we'll make this quick, because I think Andrew's topic is pretty fun today. Jonah, what's the race that you think will be the fourth seat, so to speak? Well, you know, I would have said two months ago, the Cory Gardner race, because Gardner needs to outperform Trump significantly in a really divided purple state, but it sounds, it feels like he's going to lose that anyway. I think the, the, I don't know, I'm not going to predict who I think is going to win or lose, but I think

the significant race in a lot of way, most significant loss for the GOP about what it would say about the GOP and about our politics in general would be Purdue-Aossop, because ASOF, you know, who has been derided as, you know, the pajama boy candidate of the Democratic Party to beat David Purdue a sort of solid Southern conservative about the, you know, who represents the GOP's southern ascendancy and all the rest, for the pajama boy to beat Purdue would be such a thunder clap for conservative politics and signal that Georgia, at the very least, is no longer a reliably Republican state, which would shock a lot of people. I mean, that's a very good answer. Steve? What's your fourth seat?

I think that's a good answer, too. I mean, I've been looking at Montana, the Danes Bullock race. I mean, if that should be a place in a year where Republicans, where rural Republicans are thought to be strong, are thought to be sort of the base of the party where there shouldn't be much question about who would win Montana, and there are questions about who will win Montana. There's not great polling, there's not great public polling.

There's an Emerson poll that had Danes up by a handful. I think there's a PPP poll for a while back that had Governor Bullock, the Democrat, up. But you talk to pollsters on both sides of the aisle, and they will tell you that the race is tight, really, really tight. And I think if Republicans were to lose that, even with a popular governor as the Democrat, that would be sort of a similar kind of wake-up call. Andrew, four-seat. So I don't know whether I can venture a guess as to which of these states I'm really seeing as a bellwether, because I'm just really bad at strategically gaming those sorts of things out.

But the race that I am maybe particularly interested in watching over the next few months is the Iowa race, because Joni Ernst is interesting, the incumbent Republican senator. She's in an interesting position where she's in one of these, in one of these relatively close elections in a state that is historically relatively red, has flirted bluer and bluer and went for, has gone for Democrats in a couple of presidential elections. Obviously, they've had Republican senators just forever. Chuck Grassley is one of the longest serving. I don't know. He might be the longest serving. I can't venture to guess. He's been in the Senate forever. Now, Ernst is obviously much, much newer. And she is, I noticed last week at the, at the RNC, or whenever that was,

She was one of the only, I think the only vulnerable Republican senator to have a prime time speaking slot. And she was very much not trying to sort of walk any tightrope or thread any needle. It was a pro-Trump speech. It was of a piece with everything else that we had at the RNC, which is, you know, we're looking at two possible futures. And it's, you know, it's the pro-American, pro-freedom. pro-prosperity Trump ticket and it's the, you know, liberal coastal elite radical left Biden-Harris ticket. And it's, you know, she's very much leaning into that, into that national narrative when you could make the argument that in this race, she could be opting to pursue a more specialized strategy because, you know, obviously Iowa, there are a number of, a number of different things that that that uh that that you know special dynamics that race like agriculture like um you know i don't know i'm i'm sort of just rambling i'm interested in the i'm interested in the i'm interested in the iowa race okay you're all wrong it was a trick question the answer is uh four

seats are already gone and so there's really only a discussion over the fifth seat and the four seats that are gone are arizona colorado main and north carolina the democrats have already taken the senate that is my mcglofflin group answer to all of you All right, Andrew. Introduce your last topic. Okay, yeah, yeah. So from all of this sort of going around about these abstractions to some crunchy stuff, I want to talk a little bit about election interference and whether that's happening

and whether anybody cares. Because one thing that we've seen over the past couple of months is that the national counterintelligence and security center director, Bill Avenina, has been releasing these periodic reports, basically saying, like, you know, not to freak anybody out, but China and Iran and Russia kind of want to interfere in our elections. And obviously, the particular fear is Russia, which has specifically attempted to hit our elections before, is trying to hit our elections again. we already know in specific ways, including, you know, rabble-rousing on social media and all of these things. And then Evanina has also suggested that both China and Iran are interested

in getting involved in that sort of thing. It's less clear now whether China has, is actually developing anything close to the sort of disinformation campaign that Russia has already deployed. But what we are seeing is, you know, China, trying to throw, throwing around their weight more in these international settings. So it's, you know, it's a concern. These are real concerns. But to the degree that it is penetrating politically into, you know, our actual discourse or whatever, unfortunately, it seems as though it's less being taken as, you know, oh, no, there's these like real foreign adversaries of ours who are trying to. you know, get their sticky little hands in our electoral process. It's less that and it's more sort of partisan mud throwing about, ah, Russia wants you to win. Well, China wants you to win. And so we see, you know, we've seen for years now a lot of this, you know, resistance type rhetoric about Donald Trump being, you know, a Russian double agent or something like that and that being why

Putin and Russia really like him and want him to, wanted him to be president, want him to remain president. And now we're sort of seeing the flip side of that in Republican messaging over the last month or so as well, because you now have, have, being a real talking point of Trump and his allies being that, that Biden is really weak on China. And that that's why, that's why the intel community assesses that the Chinese Communist Party would, would all things considered rather have Biden in office. Trump's called, started calling him Beijing, Biden, you know, that sort of thing. And so the question is, you know, whether this will only be just sort of one more thing that gets thrown on the sort of partisan torture wheel of the round

and round attacks, or whether this is something that ostensibly ought to be a relatively bipartisan issue of ensuring that our elections are pretty airtight and that nobody can can interfere on behalf of either party from a foreign lands. Steve? Yeah, this is an appalling decision. The DNI should not refuse to offer oral briefings to members of Congress on these threats as it relates to election security. The people who were in those briefings said that the briefings were among the best they've

ever gotten as members of Congress. This is true of Republicans and Democrats. they had country, leading country briefers from each one gave it sort of no nonsense. Here's what happened briefing. Obviously, it's true that Democrats went out and leaked, selectively leaked part of what was briefed. That happens all the time. It shouldn't happen. Democrats deserve to be condemned by it.

But the idea that leaks of Intel product that go to Capitol Hill is something new, is insane. And that's the way that this is being portrayed. What I guess bothered me even more than the end of the oral briefings are still going to provide written briefings. The DNI is still going to provide written briefings to members of Congress, which again makes you wonder, are written briefings less leakable? Of course, you can leak written briefings just as you could leak oral briefings so that the argument doesn't really hold up. What bothers me more... Wait, can I ask a question about that really quickly?

Which is, yes, I agree that's like a weird way to, for them to have phrased it, because obviously writing can leak and talking can leak. But I guess what we've seen is that the verbal briefings leaking is also undisprovable, meaning they're like, well, so-and-so said that China was doing whatever. And then we can't ever know what was actually said in the room, whereas with the written briefings, they can actually say, like, here's

what was written and this person is mischaracterizing what was actually said. I guess your point, if it's classified, then you can't do either of those. Right. But we've seen, look, we've seen the Trump administration to a degree that I think is really troubling be willing to declassify information to make

political points. So you could be, I mean, you're being even more cynical than I am in in this respect. But I agree. It's just a bad decision. The part beyond that that really bothered me is in the subsequent interview that John Reckleff, and I think John Reckleff is a smart guy.

Democrats and media critics like to rip him as being, you know, dumb or naive or whatever. I don't believe that at all. I think he's actually a smart guy. He then went on and gave an interview to Maria Bartramo on Fox News. in which he said, I mean, he said a lot of things, but sort of some total of what he said was, yeah, look, China's the bigger problem here. Russia, we don't really have to worry about Russia that much. And, you know, he said, I'm not saying Russia's not a threat,

but really the big threat is China. So by understanding on this, and we've discussed this here before, from talking to lots of officials who are sort of neck deep in the, intelligence on this is that China, without a doubt, has much greater capabilities than Russia does. China could do more damage. Their willingness to act is what's in question. And the assessment that the intel community has given was that China is unlikely to do the kinds of things that would be completely disruptive to the November 3rd election. Some people may take comfort in that and say, well, boy, if they can do it, we shouldn't

rest easy because we think they won't do it. We've been wrong making some such subjective judgments in the past. And I think they've got a point when they say that. But Russia wants to be aggressive. We've seen Russia be aggressive in the past. What Russia did in 2016, the people who, like to downplay Russia's attempts to meddle in the 2016 election, like to focus on the couple hundred thousand dollars that Russia spent on Facebook ads and say, gosh, you know, the Trump

campaign spends ten times that. That's really not that much. We don't need to worry about it. But if you read the report that came out of the Senate a couple weeks ago on these questions, the extent of Russia's efforts to undermine a fair and free election process in the United States, it's sort of hard to overstate. It was a big deal, and it mattered, particularly when you look at the role that WikiLeaks played or attempted to play. We know that Russia wants to do the same thing because Russia is now trying to do the same thing. They're actively trying to intervene today.

You had reports of small Facebook and Twitter accounts, having been taken down with ties to Russia's intelligence use, the GRU. This is an ongoing problem. We haven't seen the last of it. We've got two months where we know the airwaves and the social media world and in every possible way will be filled with Russians trying to affect the election, trying to sow discord, trying to pit American. against American. The proper response from the U.S. intelligence community right now is to make as much of that to public as possible. We should call them on what they're doing so long as we don't, we can do so without compromising in particular methods, but also sources. We should be calling them on it at every possible turn and publicizing what they're doing so that people understand what's

happening. The decision not to do that and to downplay Russia as a threat, I think really can only be seen as a political decision, and that's unfortunate. And when you have things like Ratcliffe saying, I have the quote from the Fox hit that you mentioned here, I mean, what he said is, I can't get into a whole lot of details other than to say that China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is using. And when you compare that to the specific language in the Avenina report, it's, first of all, it's true. It's true that China, in terms of terms of scale, just in terms of trying to influence U.S. policy specifically, what they're doing

is far bigger and more sophisticated than what Russia is doing. But I think that what you see in language like that from Ratcliffe is basically conflating and blending two different stories. Because obviously, it's, you know, countries all over the world are always, you know, trying to influence U.S. policy in different ways. And China is doing this, you know, more than anybody in terms of, you know, lobbying and trying to lean on elected people and, you know, all sorts of things, influencing international institutions. What's different, the specific thing that Russia is doing that so far we don't have influence that China is doing is this specific stuff that you're talking about of trying to, you know,

specifically get into the elections, which is, you know, should feel like an extraordinary act of, active sort of dirty tricks because they're trying to not just lean on corrupt politicians or what have you, but actually, you know, pit Americans against one another at sort of every level. And so I think that, you know, we got to keep those things separate as well. So I agree with what you're saying. Yeah. So just very quickly, I think that's the right thing. Which is just simply that, you know, the best evidence is that Russia meddled in 2016 initially just to screw with democracy in the Western alliances, which is what they've been doing throughout Europe. It wasn't for, necessarily for Hillary or against Trump or for Trump or any of that

kind of stuff. It was just simply because like Bugs Bunny with the two French chefs, he was just trying to sow discord. And that's what Russia has been had a strategy for a very long time because it doesn't think the existing international order benefits it and it wants to see it divided. China benefits from the international order and therefore wants to see it sustain in part so that it can do the stuff you're alluding to, which is bilk us of IP and send its grad students here to get educated and maybe even steal more IP. And the other part of it is that China actually has a deep-seated, I would say, and I take a backseat to no one in my China bashing, sincere opposition to like really overt meddling in other countries' internal affairs.

in the way that meddling with elections would seem very obvious. And so you just have to look at it as sort of like it's not in China's interest to be caught screwing with our elections because it still doesn't want it to be barred from stealing all of our stuff. And the different foreign policy and national security interests of the two states explain the distinction between them better than like anything else. And it's just in the Trump administration's interest to conflate that because they want to make our existential enemy China, not Russia, because making it Russia is a bad narrative

for them and making it China is a good thing. All right. Last question for the group. We are headed to Labor Day. What is the best American holiday? I'll go first because I don't want anyone to steal it. Indisputably, without refutation, Thanksgiving. That is correct. Who has an incorrect opinion? Who could dispute that Thanksgiving is the king of the U.S. holidays? I mean, how do you guys overlook Arbor Day? Steve, you can't even name when Arbor Day is. Can you even get the month of Arbor Day? June 14th.

No, that's Flag Day. Yeah. I will say, I will say there's a brief window in every person's life where Halloween is a superior holiday to Thanksgiving. It closes pretty quickly, but I think it should be acknowledged that until you're maybe six. And it comes back. You have six-year-olds. When you have little kids, it's a fantastic. I guess I really do disagree on substance.

I think that Independence Day is a better American holiday, both because of what it has us remember, but also because, I mean, the cookout, I think, you know, a good cookout, cookout food, if it's done right, is better than Thanksgiving dinner. Whoa. For sure. What's an Independence Day dessert? Name one. You don't need to have a special Independence Day dessert, but if you have...

It's a worst holiday. If you have great... No, that's only if you're soft and a sweet tooth. I care about the substance of the meal. The dessert is an afterthought. I mean, you know, with July 4th, I mean, drinking beer is a big part of the holiday. Nobody drinks beer on Thanksgiving. No, I mean, you...

Do you think of Thanksgiving as a big beer drinking holiday? I don't. Thanksgiving Day football? Yeah, football. There's a lot of beer being drunk. That's true. Can't confirm. Is it because you're from a cold place for Thanksgiving?

And so you're inside versus Fourth of July, you're outside? Because coming from Houston, Thanksgiving's still pretty outdoorsy. No, I don't think so. And look, I mean, my mom first and my wife now make incredible Thanksgiving dinners. So I'm not, I mean, there's little chance that they're actually going to be listening. They're not even listening to this podcast. So I'm pretty safe, but just in case, let me state for the record

that they make incredible Thanksgiving meals, and that's what I've grown up accustomed to. But no, there's nothing like a 4th of July. You go to a parade. We usually go to a parade sort of out in rural Maryland that's like an old school throwback, Fourth of July parade. You grill burgers, you drink beer, you're outside with friends. Maybe you get into a swimming pool.

It's like the all-American perfect holiday where everybody can get together. And, you know, you could take, it doesn't have to be on a Thursday, which is another big plus for July 4th. All right, listeners. Curious what you guys think, definitely respond to these guys on Twitter, Jonah versus Steve on Thanksgiving versus 4th of July. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again next week. I'm going to be able to be.