The Dispatch Podcast - No Ragrets

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

Former Fox News Decision Desk team member Chris Stirewalt joins Sarah, Steve and Jonah to chat about GOP leadership members' struggle to police their own. Stick around for a chat about Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda, Stirewalt’s take on why “the way America is getting its news is not working for America,” and … lima beans! And also for a very special announcement. Show Notes: -“How Kevin McCarthy fought off a party revolt” by Melanie Zanona in Politico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a very special episode of our special Friday Dispatch Podcasts. I'm your host, Sarah Isgher, and I am joined today by Steve Hayes. But I am also joined today by Jonah Goldberg. And we have brought guest Chris Steyerwalt. Chris, as many of you already know, was the political editor at the Fox News Channel. And as of recently, is not the political editor at the Fox News Channel. Believe it or not, we're not even going to talk about that because there's so much fun stuff to talk about with Chris in terms of, you know, politics, news of the day. So we're going to do

that today. And it's just going to be a lot of fun. Let's dive right in. Chris, normally I, you know, I'm super nice to the new guy, to the guest on our show and, you know, have a nice long lead in, really give them an opportunity, like, right over the plate to just knock it out of the park. But, um, I don't go a different way this time. Yeah, I don't feel that way toward you at all. I mean, calling you a guest, as you just heard was like kind of hard for me.

It like tripped over my tongue. So, um, instead, yesterday was like, it was like, it was. It was a busy news day. Okay. What did you focus on for your day? And what do you make of it now? And did you focus on the right thing? Well, my focus was on trying to get a job and also picking up my car.

And I really love. So there's a challenge for people. So I was a working reporter or editor for, I don't know, 30 years or since 1997. seven since I got out of college. And when you go on vacation... Not a working mathematician, apparently. Right. These are details, Steve.

These are just... 74 years now. Back in the Harding administration when I first started reporting. Look, for all of these years, you suffer from like Politico syndrome where you're like, oh, what's the latest?

Who won the afternoon? This person did whatever. And it is, I'm sure you guys know, all know from the experience when you take a vacation, a good thing happened. You don't want it to go too far, but a good thing happens when you start consuming news like a human instead of a freak. And you're like, the things come into clear relief. And the takeaway from yesterday to shorthand it from what I was able to pick up sitting outside of a service station waiting for my serpentine belt to be replaced was that Liz Cheney through Marjorie Taylor Green out of a window at the top of the Capitol out into the law that that Matt Gates and the general

effort to own the establishment was a farcical failure and that Mitch, that as it turns out, Mitch McConnell and Liz Cheney stack up a lot better in the Kumete death match than Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gates. Interesting. Jonah, I felt like yesterday was a reporter Roershock test. The vote was 145 to 61 with one present. First of all, do all of you agree with me that the one present is Liz Cheney? Let's put it this way. Dear God, I hope so.

Because if it's not Liz Cheney and it's someone too, afraid to take the risk of coming down on one side or the other in a secret ballot. Yeah. Yeah. That was the, yeah. But we, hasn't been reported. Has it been confirmed one way or the other? It hasn't.

But I thought it was like, I thought it was a special, like a window into who Liz Cheney is that she wanted to make damn sure that if that vote was close, that she would, like she wanted to be out if it was close. Basically, she did not want to be the tie-breaking vote, which I was like,

Bad ass, lady. So, okay, so here's the, the Roershock test. 145 to 61. Describe those numbers to me. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it, what, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't 200 to 5. Yeah.

So I think you're right. It is a, it is a bit of a Rorschach test. you know, I mean, some people, put it this way, some people see the pony and some people see the manure, right? And, um, which are you, Jonah? I ask, already knowing. I, I'm someone who, I see 61 votes taking the side essentially of, uh, the insurrection and all the rest and against Cheney. I see the manure there, right? That's, that's way too big a pile as far as I'm concerned. Um, But I do think it raises a really fascinating, there are two points to make. One about the, as Chris was alluding to, the de-fenestration of MTG.

I think the, as some listeners of my podcast know or even of this August podcast now, I'm kind of obsessed with the Matt Gates, Madison-Cawthorn model of public service, which says owning the libs and doing stupid things on late night cable television is by definition how you govern. That's what a congressman goes to Washington to do is basically take the center square and some freaking game show. And so if you think that's true, and I do, and I can talk a chapter and verse, it shouldn't surprise us that Matt Gates is actually a really bad vote counter and whip,

Right? I mean, like, Liz Cheney worked the phones, talk to a bunch of people, and they were like, geez, this is, this sucks, you know. But I, you know, if it's a secret ballot, I'm on your side. She, like, realized she had the votes and called everyone's bluff and said this is BS. And it turns out the Gates is, if you're full of BS on so many other fronts, why wouldn't you be full of BS on this one? So I think that's interesting. On the other hand, what does it say about the modern GOP that you would get such a different, tally if it hadn't been a secret vote. And I think that's a real Rorschach test. There are people out there who want to set fire to Edmund Burke's address to the electors of Bristol who said he owes his constituents, not just their representation, but his judgment. Then they say, no, no, no, you're supposed to do whatever, you know, the sort of the The federalist crowd argues that congressmen are just simply supposed to reflect whatever

white-hot passions are taking over in their districts at the moment and do nothing else. And that's one view of governing. And the House is always supposed to be a little bit more like that than the Senate anyway. But another view says, my God, how cheap do these people hold their consciences that they're only willing to give them voice in a secret ballot? And I think it's something that you get almost in a literary way when you're writing of the future obit of the GOP, say this shows you where the dysfunction is. Steve?

Yeah, I mean, on the Matt Gates point, he picked this fight, right? He brought this fight. He and Jim Jordan. They said immediately after Liz Cheney's announcement of her impeachment vote and then the actual impeachment vote, she can't be part of House leadership, even though. know, she said it was a vote of conscience and a vote of principle. They rallied the House Freedom Caucus, who had been giving marching orders to Kevin McCarthy for the better part of the last two years.

There were predictions a week or two ago that they had as many as 120 people ready to vote, to oust her from leadership. Matt Gates said, I believe, the day of the vote, that they had the votes, he was worried about some shenanigans from, quote, the establishment. He picked this fight, and he was thoroughly and utterly humiliated. I agree with Jonah that, you know, you shouldn't have come in with particularly high expectations for Matt Gates if you've paid attention to anything that he's done over the past couple of years. and it is amusing and was totally predictable

that the day after he was so thoroughly humiliated, he has picked a new maid for television fight, going after Jerry Nadler for not allowing the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance before every single judiciary committee hearing. And this is his new cause. And he's going to go on and Fox will have him on. it is it is such a transparently bullshit thing to do and i say this is somebody who believes in reciting the pledge taught my kids early you're soft on the pledge you know the pledge it's it's

typical matt gates ploy but anyway the time we spent it on matt gates is probably too much time already on the liz cheney question i mean i think that's right you know sarah you call it bad ass i think that's what this was i mean she basically decided she was going to stand down her own conference. And, you know, it's interesting. You've had Trump's sycophants sort of going after her and suggesting that she really didn't understand how bad the politics were,

and therefore she's not very bright. The reality is, of course, precisely the opposite. She knew exactly what the politics were. She knew this was bad. She was well aware that 70% of Wyoming voters cast ballots for Donald Trump in the past election, the highest percentage in the entire country. She knew what was right, and she decided to do the right thing anyway. And I think we've gotten to the point where that kind of, I think genuine political courage is so rare that people

don't actually recognize it for what it is sometimes. But, you know, the House Freedom Caucus types had said she's going to be afraid to have a vote and they're going to try to maneuver out of having a vote. And there was, there were plenty of ways to have done that. And instead, what she did was stood up and gave an eight-minute speech in which she not only explained and defended her vote to impeach President Trump, she went further. She gave stern warnings about the future of the Republican Party if it embraces Q and on if it embraces the sort of extremist rhetoric that we've seen from people like Matt Gates if it embraces a cult of personality around one person

and basically said that's what I believe if you don't want me because that's what I believe then okay and she called for a vote she said I want to vote I think she comes out of this you know considerably stronger ironically I mean at least in in Washington politics she comes out of this considerably stronger, you know, I think she's got work to do in Wyoming, to be sure. I think a lot of her constituents are angry. The House Freedom Caucus and others come out of it weaker. I think

Kevin McCarthy comes out of it probably neutral, although there's a Politico story this morning where he's taking credit for, quote, saving Liz Janie. He didn't, I want to be clear, those were not his words. That's the way the article characterized it, but it's plain that he was an eager co-operator on the article. I want to pick up on what Steve says here just for a second. Does everybody agree that Kevin McCarthy comes out of this sort of not weaker, not stronger, but just surviving? I think that's how you said it, Steve.

I think he comes out of this looking really bad, having forced his caucus to vote on this thing, and some of those people are going to want payback. He also comes out of this being. So McConnell, when McConnell pulled the. rip cord on green. And he said, it's interesting. McConnell built a bridge for Republicans to cross to acquit Trump in the Senate. But the toll on the bridge was denouncing QAnon. And I know the degree to which that Ben Sasse piece and the Atlantic circulated on Q&on and the choice of the Republicans. I talked to the senators who were like, read it, love it, getting the tattoo. Because on the one

hand for people who believe that the president should or the former president should be convicted, it's a bummer because he's not going to get convicted. On the other hand, it's McConnell setting the ask at the right, he is responding to market pressures, that if what he can get out of the deal is everybody to say that Joe Biden won the election, then he has done material good for the Republican party. Then being able to personify the problem in Marjorie Taylor Green, and Kevin McCarthy, he screwed up when he kept her when she was running, right? That was the first mistake. And now the idea that somehow she's learned,

because his message about her was basically, and her that she regrets now is she's learned her, no, she's not able to actually say those words. She's sorry and she's learned her lesson and she'll be good from now on. And that just, the problem with Gates, The problem with the Freedom Caucus, they need a new name, but the problem with the Freedom Caucus, with this nationalist caucus is, it is never enough because they're a bunch of Jacobins.

And when they're done defenestrating you, it's somebody else's turn. And that circle always turns on its end. It gets smaller and small. If you live in a world where Justin Amash and from Kentucky, Tom Massey, where it's like, these guys aren't really conservative, then you have, you may have lost your way in that. the woods. A real quick follow-up. Is it a tramp stamp or a neck tattoo? Or is it sleeves? I think it's sleeves. It's a sad. I can see like, you know, uh, James Langford with a, with a Atlantic, fast article sleeve. I can see it. That feels very D.C. honestly. I'm surprised we don't see more of it. That's right. So just because I don't know when I'm going to have an opportunity to bring this up again. The movie, The Internship with Robert De Niro. No, no, no, no. know with um oh gosh Vince Vaughn Monica Lewinsky no that's I don't I don't know what you're Googling Steve but uh you know with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson there's uh Will Ferrell

has a brief uh sort of cameo in it where he runs a mattress store and Owen Wilson works for him and Will Ferrell's chewing him out and, and he's saying, you see this? And he's got this massive neck tattoo all in Aramaic. And he says, you know what this says? You know what this says when you translate it into English? It says, make reasonable decisions. Okay, so since we're telling stories, and we can go off topic. I met a guy in a bar at Dewey Beach. I like where you're going already. No mistakes were ever made them. With some friends, with some friends. How old were you? It was middle of the afternoon. How old are you in this story? I'm pretty old at this point. Old enough to know better. Sounds like this is like within the

within the past five years. This young man had been drinking quite a bit. One of his friends introduced himself, he was a loyal Fox News viewer and recognized me in the restaurant. And this guy with his inebriated friend came up to me and the guy had a tattoo across the front of his chest that said Carpe Diem.

And I said, seize the day, man. sees the day and he just looks at me with this blank stare. He thought it was like, that's what Carpe Diem means. He had no idea. It's possible that he was just too drunk, but I think it's entirely possible that he

had no idea that Carpe Diem that's so great. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, Scott and I over here quite often, quote, the movie with Jason Sudecass and Jennifer Anniston where like they're drug dealers that go to Mexico but pretending to be a you know nuclear family and their fake teenage daughter meets the dude with the tattoo that says it's supposed to say no regrets but it is misspelled yeah and so we've all

the time run around the house you know especially for instance this morning where we are you know waist deep in baby poop and it just the smell permeates the walls and we'll just say no regrets. Do you have one of those, do you have one of the R2D2 diaper things where you put it in the airlock and then you turn the handle and put it in there? Diper genie. Yeah, yeah. Divergenie is like one of the most important products of the last 5,000 years. For sure. Do you have that?

I have an Ubi Baby, which was like sort of like the alternative to the diaper genie, and it has a little like airlock thing and all of that. We have a separate, so it's gone through so many iterations now. So the Ubi Baby I have limited to only pee-filled diapers, it's great for that. If you have a poop-filled diaper, your job is to move it outside the room, place it on the ground, and text your partner to come get the diaper, move it down to the garage into a separate specific, not our regular big bin trash can that you roll out to the side, a specific small poop trash can that is in the garage. And so, yes, my garage does smell like poop. You sound like you're training the interns at Strom Thurmond's shop for his last couple years in office. I want that back, Jonah.

Please unsay that. I really need you to unsay that. I apologize. You, you, Sarah, are, this is, your time in the Justice Department, I think, is reflected in your evidence handling approach to a boom boom. And I think that's good. I picture gloves. People are coming in. There's tape.

Move it out here. Yes, no, there's a very specific model that must be followed. The problem is it works in the winter when the garage is cold because then you're basically putting the diaper on ice. I don't know what's going to happen, how this will function in a hot cooking poop diaper garage. So Steve is making boss face, by the way, I do officially have ragrets for taking us down this road.

All right, all right, all right. So on Kevin McCarthy, I think that it, there is a way to say in your caucus, you elected me to lead, let me lead. Like, you can read those words. If you were a Hollywood actor and your director said, give me a few readings of that. There is a strong way to read that in a Russell Crow voice, I think. There is a weak way to read that, a whiny, petulant way to read that line. And I think that as we're talking about Kevin McCarthy

and how he comes out of all this, it's where along that spectrum, that line was delivered. And I got to say, he's always been in the shadow of Mitch McConnell when it comes to being a political leader of the Republicans and he's never stepped up to it. Not once has he like, have we said like, wow,

I think that Mitch McConnell maybe got this a little wrong and that Kevin McCarthy is the one who figured out politically how best to maneuver this. But as Jonah points out, there is a constituent model and there is a leadership model, right? So every six years, Mitch McConnell has to go through the thing in Kentucky where they say, we're going to spend $100 million in B2. Because people in Kentucky genuinely don't like Mitch McConnell because he doesn't give them what they want, right? He is not, you know, if you look at Rand Paul, the journey that Rand Paul's taken in Kentucky,

He's popular in Kentucky. Once upon a time, Rand Paul was less popular in Kentucky than Mitch McConnell was. But Rand Paul got jiggy and was like, whatever the mood of the moment is, he will go meet it, whereas McConnell frequently serves up Lima Beans. And that gives, that makes him weak to be dashled, right, in the sense that one year could be the year, right? It's a bad Republican year and you're going to knock off the leader. But it keeps him strong in Washington. does the opposite. So nobody's going to Bakersfield to knock off Kevin McCarthy because they will be too busy listening to awesome honking tonk music. But McCarthy doesn't worry about that part. His constituency model, though, is his members. And look at we got, we gain seats. So the McCarthy narrative coming into this Congress was everybody said we were going to lose seats. We actually gain seats, I am doing it and saying to the member, like, look at what I'm doing for you as he's trying to make that his constituency. The problem is what he discerned as the cause of his success was being soft on kookiedom, right? And expanding the tent in only one direction, only expanding the tent

towards the nationalists and not highlighting the achievements that they have among mainstream conservatives and Republicans. That doesn't work once you get inside the house because it just doesn't carry over the way that he thought it would. So first of all, lima beans are awesome with Kerrygold butter and Cavenders. I mean, honestly, very few things are better. So put in smoke salt and you will love me forever. You add smoke salt to your lima beans.

Really? It's going to change the game. All right. Do you use Cavendors? Try Cavendors. Cavendors is outstanding. That sounds like a lotion. Oh, Greek seasoning.

No, Greek seasoning. It's incredible. Really good on popcorn. All right. When I was at my most morning. sick in this pregnancy. The only thing I could really eat was lima beans. And I went to go visit my parents for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. And I was just too sick to eat anything good. And so I asked for lima beans, I think for the meal before Thanksgiving. And I'm not joking.

My mother, my mother's not the cook in her house. So that's important. But she brings out a bowl of six lima beans that she has taken from the freezer. And, just like left out so their room temperature six formerly frozen lima beans and i was like what kind of dixonian punishment and had you put cavenders on them they would have been really really so let me go back to jonah's point and and and i think you all make a reasonable point jonah's original question is is the right one you know is it the case that kevin mccarthy comes out of this sort of neutral, or did he really screw it up? I don't think, I mean, other than this political piece where, which I think he's the

hero of his own narrative, he doesn't come out looking great. I take your point that he failed, that he didn't do well. I guess I thought he had screwed this up for so long now that there was not only the possibility, but maybe even the likelihood, he would botch it further, which would have been, you know, not actually getting Liz Cheney's back, not, you know, he gave a speech, apparently saying we need to keep the team together. We can tolerate differences. You know, he had moved from January 6th to the last to last week. He had moved from saying he supports her to saying he supports her and criticizing the heck out of her to misrepresenting what he knew

about her intentions to vote for impeachment to going and cuddling with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The likelihood of him screwing this up further was, I think, high. When I say that he came out of it neutral, I mean, he didn't do all those bad things. Yeah, but my point is, okay, fine, he was running with scissors and he only made. managed to stab himself on the thigh, right? But my point is, you're going to have a lot of, there are still Republicans in the House who want,

who are from, who need suburban votes, right? I mean, they're not all Western Pennsylvania. And by forcing- They have suburbs in Western Pennsylvania, Jonah Goldberg. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what I'm saying. So, like, the idea that somehow not, solving this before you got to the point where you forced these guys to basically cut an attack

ad against them? I mean, first of all, you're gambling that this woman doesn't say something crazier or doesn't embarrass you further over the next two years, which is a huge gamble. I mean, the monkey from the cocaine study seems calm right now. What do we have to worry about? And second of all, you're gambling that the way the January 6th siege is perceived by the public will not get worse over two years, which I think is another gamble. So two years from now, in 2022, you've got these guys who can't point to their vote on Liz Cheney because that was secret. Right. And their opponents can point to their public vote to protect Marjorie Taylor Green right after the siege. And in our memories in 18 months, the time between this thing that happened right now and the siege, particularly after impeachment, it's all going to be really collapsed.

Oh, completely agree. And just to be very clear, I was evaluating him on the Liz Cheney stuff alone. If we're talking about the Marjorie Taylor Green question or the whole last 48 hours, dismal failure. I just think they're linked. I think they're linked things. He chose this path of Cheney with the Marjorie Taylor Green. I think they are. I just thought we were talking about Liz Cheney, but I can see where in the trip to Dewey and the poop and all of this, we got a little about the specific topic I thought I was talking about. Completely agree, by the way, on the Marjorie Taylor Green thing. I mean, the problem for Republicans is they don't want Democrats to do this. And their argument is, look, you can't have the majority party kicking the minority parties members. off of specific committees as punishment because it sets this terrible precedent and this will happen forever thus. I actually am sympathetic to that argument. I think they're probably right. And there's a, there's, I think, a pretty good process argument to be made there. But I think that the problem for

Republicans is, then the challenge is you've got to police your own. Then you've got to say, you know, what? We don't have, we don't want crazy people in our club, you know? And, and they didn't, they haven't said that. She's in the club. I see the, the, uh, the, uh, great parallel construction between this and the impeachment and conviction. Yeah, it sets a precedent if you impeach for the first time that you impeach a former president, that it will set a precedent that future former presidents may also be impeached. It's already happened, so blah. But the other thing is, at a certain point, Congress has to stand up for itself as a nonpartisan entity, right?

At a certain point, you can't have Marjorie Taylor Green or people who traffic in these kinds of conspiracy theories and maybe being manipulated by people she doesn't know and all of this stuff in positions of responsibility. So I do agree that there's a bad precedent that would be set to say that there would be ideological punishments, that if you were aligned a certain way, that the whole house could strip you of your powers, and that would be a bad precedent. but a worse precedent in a lot of ways is to have a Congress that has no vehicle, no means when you have only one half of a functioning party that has no means to police itself, that's a worst precedent. I don't know, guys. So she was sworn in to Congress on January 3rd. Are any of the statements that she has said since January 3rd,

the reason she was stripped of her committee membership. Not that I know him. And so in the speech that she gave, she said,

you know, all this stuff I said before I became a congresswoman, I no longer believe. She sort of said that. I'm not saying it was the strongest thing ever.

But I think, I think it's a big problem because I think from this point forward, when if Republicans ever take back the majority, you have members in the Democratic Party

who have for instance said anti-Semitic things while in office and they have then apologized for those things but if that's in some cases in some cases but if that's no longer the standards saying like I didn't mean that thing I said I didn't understand quite the ramifications

of what I was saying so when the Republican say remove Ilhan Omar yep right when the Republicans say we should strip Ilhan Omar it will i'm less concerned about precedent than a lot of people are because i tend to think that we're always making them new and that the political practicality of it will always be determinative if there is the political will to strip ilhan omar and this starts that is a cycle that will continue as the economist joke goes and trend will continue until it can't and then that cycle will burn

itself out and 30 years from no nobody will remember that it did i have given the fact that the Republicans are not able to handle their business, right? Basically, we have a problem. But my point is the Republicans, I think that we're holding, believe me, like far be it for me to defend the Republicans at this point. But they should have given her the chance, the entire caucus I'm talking about. They should have given her the chance to say something crazy while she was in office. And I think the Republicans having a closed-door meeting where she said,

look, I don't believe that stuff anymore, give me a second chance. And they said, okay, we're going to give you a second chance because you haven't said anything since January 3rd, since you were sworn in as a member of this body and a member of our caucus, we're going to give you that chance. And the Democrats said, nope, we're not giving you that chance. I think that's the bad precedent. I don't think that Republicans, I don't think we know whether Republicans were willing to police their own because with Steve King, when he said the white supremacist, you know, white supremacy, why is that a problem? They did strip him of his committee ship because he said it while in office. And I just, I think that is a distinction worth making.

I think that Democrats were too quick on this one to want to have a what amounted to an almost entirely partisan vote when they could have waited, believe me, she's going to hang herself by her own partard. Give it like another 72 hours. And in the meantime, and I made this rant, you guys know, In the meantime, she's raising incredible sums of money off of it. And so, and this gets, by the way, before I let any of you talk, I'm not going to. The sweep, my newsletter, I think the title this week is just going to be, duh, D-U-H,

because I read this incredible piece, I mean, just incredible journalism on what the Democrats' 2022 strategy is to mitigate what would normally be midterm losses from the president of part of the, from the party of the president who has just been elected. Okay, I'm going to blow you guys mind with their strategy. You ready? This is, this is why political strategists get paid the big bucks. It's twofold. One, the party, I'm quoting now, the party led by Biden looks to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. Two, they will attempt to link vulnerable Republicans to some of the most extreme members and their party, hoping to fan the flames of conflict highlighted by far-right members like

Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert. Whoa, what a strategy. But don't you think if they did that, they would be successful? Like, if they could achieve both of those goals, don't you think it would work? That's my point. Like, of course that's their strategy. Like, duh, that is the obvious strategy. And there was this quote from Sean Patrick Maloney, who is a Democratic representative, who's the chair of the DCCC, quote, this has been building for a long time. It's like a performance enhancing drug that they got some shady benefits from for a while. And now it's killing them, but they're addicted to it. I mean, that's basically going to be the Democratic theme song is you can't police your own. I actually think they undermined that this week. I think they would have been better off saying, look, we have to let the Republican

Republicans police their own. Republicans, police your own, police your own, police your own. Why not, from a political standpoint, if you're trying to mitigate your 22 losses or even pick up some seats, put it on the Republicans. Let them continue failing if you're confident that's what's going to happen. And frankly, I'm pretty confident. Well, for one thing, I think they succeeded by making Republicans actually take the vote. Now you have Republicans 200 or so of them who are on records, you know, there are, as I said, as I said, I think there's a policy argument for Republicans doing what they're doing. I worry about precedent. That is not how it's going to be told in Democratic campaign ads. They are going to say, so and so from this

nice suburban district voted in favor of Marjorie Taylor Green. Here's what she said. Against a backdrop of January 6th footage, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's going to be the end. That's going to be the ad. Chris, anything you would do to tweak the Democrat strategy? Biden is playing. He's trying to hit a gap shot, right? He is trying to, what do they call it, a dying quail right over the shortstop's head into shallow left field. What he is trying to do, it's funny that, as unfortunately doesn't happen very often, what's good for the country and what's good for the party in power is the same thing. And the same thing is if the coronavirus is brought to heal and the economy, and we have jobs numbers today that are encouraging for Biden, not that he is the cause of them, but that he will benefit from. from the trend and that if this is sort of a pass-fail test,

when we get into, if a year from now, Americans say things have improved dramatically in the past year, whether it was Biden or not, then he will get a lot of credit for it and it will be received as a good thing. And it's pretty straightforward. But in order to pull it off, he's got to outrun his left flank.

This impeachment, as much as everybody talks about how Biden doesn't want the impeachment, it's a distraction. This impeachment helps Biden because the longer the Democrats are made to, are allowed to focus on the bad orange man. If they can do that, then they aren't going to be focused on Joe Biden and what they're angry at him about and whatever else. Trump makes a good foil for him, but the clock is running. If Biden can't come up with a deal with Congress to get this done and get vaccines pumped out and get this spending package through, he will find himself betwixt and

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Rates may vary. Jonah, how does Ben Sass fit into all of this? He, the Republican Party of Nebraska, has moved to censure him for the second time. Except Ben Sass is in a pretty different position than he was. a few years ago. Yeah. So if no one's, if you haven't watched the full video,

and I trust me, after 6 p.m., once the cocktails start going, I do not like do a lot of, let me see what this senator's video address to the Nebraska Central Committee says. That's not like how I relax at night,

but it is some good viewing. And the Central Committee of Nebraska, what I like to call the prairie common turn is looking to censure Ben Sass for being pro for being open to impeachment

or something along those lines and Sass just drops the hammer on them making the point that you know I mean this is this is why Sass is sometimes my spirit animal you know I have my disagreement with him every now and then but when he's in this mode it's very difficult for me not to

sort of like say oh yeah this is why he's my guy um you're going to get this podcast rated uh but no uh no it's not a broke back mountain thing they have no mountains in nebraska uh but uh he makes the point very articulately and very uh sardonically that he's not the one who changed it's the nebraska republican party that is changing it is the republican party that has become a cult of personality thing it's a Republican Party, which is willing to at least be confused for a pro-conspiracy theory party that has changed. And SAS is like, I welcome, you know, there's that, there's that thing that was going

around from Rett Meyer from the, from Futurama, where the guy says, I welcome your booze for I have seen what you cheer. And that's basically. the tone of it and it's fantastic and um and and sass if he is sincere um plans not run for senate again he just got reelected so he has got some some breathing room um i suspect he's like because he's a senator he's thinking about running for president i have no inside information about that but just one assumes and he is definitely opening up this lane as like the young politics sort of at Romney Lane.

Romney's too old to run for president again. Oh, you know. He does have clean living on his side. But that man will look like he's 50 when he's 150. But he's saying, you know, rally to me. I'm not going in for this garbage. And it's welcome, whether it's the right politics forum and all that, it's just too soon to tell.

But I took great. enjoyment and satisfaction. And just can I just say, isn't it kind of the point of this whole conversation? There's a point? Is yes, and it's diaper genies are superior to police tape and a hazmat team, the guy from the hurt locker carrying a poopy diaper out to your carport. But the point is that there are times that call for political skills that are constituent facing. And then there are times that call for leadership when you say, you know, if people

were good at predicting the future, we wouldn't be in this jackpot. And sometimes you just have to do it. The convenient part of doing what you think is right is that you just do it that way and you let it fall. Now, that's not to say that you can't make calculations and executing and all that stuff. But it's like Liz Cheney versus Marjorie Taylor Green, Ben Sass versus McCarthy whichever way you want to frame it. The Fox Decision Desk versus the White House. I mean, you can come up with a lot.

Wow. We're there. Sometimes you just have to do what you think is right. You know the 70s song, Arizona. Arizona. There's a people who like can remember AM radio. There's a, there's a song. You'll hear it and then you'll recall it.

Bill Salmon had that on blast on the Fox News decision desk as people were freaking out. So I'm there. I'm with you. I'm feeling that. But I just thought I'd throw it out there. Get back to your point.

No, no, no. It's all kind of the same point, which is the reason that Republicans screw up very often is they forget that principle and both parties do this. But the problem of the Republicans are experiencing is, principle is unpopular and you have to do it anyway, right? It's not popular. It's very often not popular to do the right thing. It's very often not popular. And you will very often suffer a short term, at least a short term consequence for doing the right thing. But that's the whole point of the right thing is you just have to do it and see what happens. And I think when you look at SAS's video, you got a guy who's like, cool. In West Virginia, we would say that he had a case of the efforts. We wouldn't say FETs. And that's kind of a nice thing. thing. What did cool hand Luke say? Sometimes nothing's a real cool hand. Or as we said in the mission statement of the dispatch, be bold and great forces will come to your aid. There you go. Amen.

Chris said that he became a journalist in 1997. All of the references he has made, and I didn't get to comment on when he said, I don't even quite remember the context, when you said that someone was getting jicky with it, all of your references appear to end in 1997. Oh, come on. That is part of my CV is pop culture maven right on top of exactly. That's my role here. That's right. Dead references, we've got a triptych dropping bombs on you. Yeah.

Okay. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Last sort of topic because Steve is forcing me to do it is foreign policy. Steve, here come to the lima beans. Joe Biden's foreign policy. Here come the lima beans.

Steve, add some seasoning to our lima beans. Joe Biden's foreign policy is never going to get a ton of attention, at least in the next six months, not with the coronavirus pandemic, not as the two political parties continue to act like petulant toddlers. What about Biden's foreign policy should we even care about at this point? Well, I mean, look, he gave a speech at the State Department sort of laying out his view, his approach to the world. And nobody should be surprised that this former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favors diplomacy over just about anything else. He favors diplomacy over standoffishness.

He favors diplomacy over war. He favors diplomacy, it seems like, for its own sake, many times. It'll be interesting to watch this unfold. He, on the one hand, you know, I think he sort of, with his swearing in, it put the United States back in on a more favorable footing with many, not all, many of our longtime allies. They were happy to have somebody to have a conversation with, to potentially work together with. I think Trump's foreign policy, there are parts of Trump's foreign policy I agreed with, many parts of Trump's foreign policy I disagreed with. But the one thing that was, I think, foolish in the extreme was just the needless antagonism. I mean, I get it if you want to rethink our membership in some of these international bodies. It's probably overdue, honestly. I think taking a tough line with an institution, a corrupt, rotten institution like the United Nations, there's a lot of merit to that. It's the way that Trump did it and didn't, didn't try to bring along allies, didn't try to produce any reform, there was virtually no persuasion as part of Donald Trump's foreign policy anywhere.

I think Joe Biden wants to get the United States back to persuasion as a central part of our foreign policy. I am confident, even just based on some of the things that he ran through in this speech, that I'm going to disagree with a lot of what he wants to do. But there was something oddly reassuring that he was going to have these conversations, that there was sort of a steady hand at the wheel, as opposed to the kind of ad hoc, herky, jerky foreign policy that we saw from Donald Trump for most of his presidency. Stairwalt, do we care?

Well, I do. the foreign policy doesn't drive voters until it really drives voters, right? People, the much of foreign news falls into the category of things that Americans look at and say, yet another reason why I'm glad I don't live in X. And that is fine and good. But when it gets down to, Biden surely knows that it will be events that affect him more than he affects events on foreign policy, that it will be what he, we don't know what the crises he's going to have to deal with and what he'll make out of them. We know Biden, his track record in the Senate on policy was iffy. We don't exactly know what his foreign policy really is. We can try to divine from his

position on Afghanistan and other things that he and Trump, if you can sort of suss out a Trump foreign policy, maybe Biden isn't actually as far away from it as some would think in terms of a small footprint with high lethality and all of that stuff. I think for Biden, the challenge is going to be that the stuff that he wants to do is not going to be popular. Things that he's in right now, it's just benign neglect from Democrats. The challenge will be if he does get into something or find something. His actual allies on foreign policy may be more on the Republicans, or there may be, he may have more trouble with his party than he does with Republicans if he decides that he has to do something, right? If troops have to move, if actions have to be taken, he may find

himself in an interesting position. Jonah, last word, do you? Yeah, so I did not get a chance to watch his speech yesterday I had pressing matters to attend to, but from the clips that I've seen and from Steve's characterization of it, it does feel like we are back to bad within normal parameters kind of stuff, which is kind of nice in some ways.

At the same time, the overriding ethos of the sort of mainstream democratic foreign policy establishment has always been, to me, easily summarized as

it's better to be wrong in a big group than to be right alone. And all of this multilateralism stuff is fine. As long as, and this is a very John Boltony point, but multilateralism and allies are all great and important. And I honestly and truly do believe that. But once you forget that they are means rather than ends, you get yourself into some trouble. And Biden definitely comes from the means are the ends, kind of school of foreign policy.

And I think what's worse is that people like John Kerry, who I am perfectly happy sticking to my position that he is a human toothache, is he is, he comes from this, you know, as we saw with this thing about flying. private to go get your environmental award. He is a living, unwitting, unsuspecting troll of a whole vast swath of conservatives who love to talk about this kind of hypocrisy. And this kind of hypocrisy is, I think, overblown as something to talk about, but it's legit. I mean, this stuff, and he just infuriates people in ways that I think you're going to have a lot of that kind of stuff coming out of the Biden administration. that they're in the same way that fish don't know they're wet, they don't know how badly this crap plays outside of their own sort of social and

political circles. And Biden takes his cues from a lot of these people. So I think there are going to be some foreign policy screw ups that really play out as culture war things more than actual foreign policy debates. I dug into the John Kerry thing because the headline was so silly that, and I like sort of proving these headlines wrong. like there's something in me that feels good to sort of do my own little fact checks.

And because the headline is, you know, John Kerry flies private jet to get climate award, quote, it's the only option for people like me. I was like, okay, well, clearly that's out of context. So I went read the full quote. And the full quote, after taking a private jet to Iceland to receive a climate award, and then he's asked by an Icelandic reporter,

isn't that a little hypocritical? You took a private jet here and burned, you know, X amount of fossil fuels. And he said, Well, that's the only option for people like me who need to travel the globe fighting climate change. Oh, that's not better. That's actually, that for the first time was just an accurate ellipses. Like, you don't need really the rest of that.

This guy's political instincts may be suspect. I don't know. This John Kerry, I'm not sure whether he's got his finger on the pulse. Okay. Last, last topic here is that, First of all, Jonah was quoting, said he was quoting Futurama when in fact he was quoting Rick and Morty and you know we are very, very fact-specific on this podcast. We do not let things like that slide.

You should apologize. I do apologize. I shall, I shall, I mean, I require this of the people who work for me. I will this afternoon cut off the tip of my pinky yakuza style to atone for letting everyone down. I apologize. Good. But also, Jonah.

In order to make, I mean, you better, but also all of us, you have a bit of dispatch news. Oh, yeah. I thought it would be kind of fun to mention here that young Mr. Stairwold here is not just simply a guest on today's episode, but he is going to be a contributing editor of the dispatch going forward. we're very excited to have him and what his responsibilities will be we have it kind of worked out but you'll be hearing from him more

you'll be seeing his byline more and there'll be some interpretive dance but that may just be at the Christmas party but we're delighted to have you aboard Chris and Steve we will have a dispatch live coming up for members where Chris will be joining us

we will announce the date here shortly. It will be a member's only dispatch live but let me back up what Jonas said. Excited to have Chris really happy to have them on board. Happy to have them contributing to

the sweep, writing big, thoughtful pieces and small reported items and everything in between. I'm guessing we'll get some of his I don't know what you'd call them exactly, folksy.

Like, they're Dan Ratherisms, but better. Oh, cornedone. Yeah, cornbone. Cornbone is definitely fine. Well, Chris, before you join a dispatch live for our members, we need to know what type of beverages you're going to be bringing to the table. Well, for this, I've had three different kinds of beverages, coffee, sparkling water, and still water just to get through this podcast.

So there's an open bar on the Dispatch Live thing. So you'll have to mention a ball. Oh, I see. Okay, okay, okay. All right. Well, I'll have to. Within reason, let me, within reason, everybody. People make me sick, you bastards.

I do my tequila shots right beforehand and then just sip while on. I like the idea of just a drunken airing of grievances. I think that's, I think that's the way to go. Not really on brand. I am. I am. Welcome. I am privileged to get to work with you guys.

I am grateful for the opportunity. And really, not most of all, because most of all is my gratitude is personal, but I am really grateful for the work that I get to be part of because here's what I've learned, especially of late, is what we're doing, what America, the way America is getting its news isn't working for America. And it may be working for individual outlets, and people may be figuring out a way to do it.

So as a person who is both patriotically inclined, but also market-oriented, right? I'm an American before I'm a capitalist, but the two have to live in harmony for things to work. So I'm particularly pleased and proud to help whatever I can do, whatever small means I can do to help the dispatch succeed, because I think that the mission is important beyond just this, I think, showing that there's a better way to be and that it can produce less motivated reasoning, that it can produce more balanced kind of coverage, more thoughtful kind of coverage. And it's important to me that that succeed. And I'm also, of course, great admirers in both years. And it's great to be with friends. So the one drawback here is that, well, they're

Many drawbacks, but a lot of that. Many, many, men. Personal, we don't need to get into. But the, you know, when we started this thing, we had a nice parody between Midwest and East Coast. Okay. And as we have grown, it got for a while, it was very clear that Steve was working,

sort of the deep state. Salt, yes, salting, winning, Wisconsin-Its, more and more Midwesterners, and it was getting out of hand. And then it just seems like, the the isger french starwalt sort of southerner no no no no no no is moving in and like you know where are the pseudo intellectual demi Jews from the upper west side of manhattan that I ordered

yeah as always as always underrepresented in the media you never it's a strikeout everywhere you go but let me say that I am not a southern I am from West Virginia. West Virginia is not in the South. I don't even, I will let David French speak for himself, but I would not think of him as a Southerner. Parts of Tennessee, when you get to Memphis, that's the South. But he has Alabama roots. Okay, well, then that's fine. Though Huntsville, so Appalachia is, as Kevin Williamson in the big white ghetto, you go, you can go really from Western New York to Memphis. And you can really stay in Appalachia pretty much. much the whole way. Certainly Pittsburgh to Memphis in that hockey-shaped stick. I am not a

southerner. And West Virginia so much is not a southern state that it seceded from a secession. That's like, that's a double hillbilly blank you. And so I have much admiration for the South, but I am a hillbilly first, not a redneck. And I would argue that Texas is not a southern state. We are our own thing. We do not associate or affiliate with others. It's like you guys have never seen the New Yorker cover. Like, all of it is just stuff out there until you get, you know. But, all right. Well, anyway, we are legitimately excited about Chris joining the team, and he's going to do

other exciting things, which we'll, which he'll tell you all about as they unfold. But we are chugging along here at the dispatch trying to do great and glorious things. And we think Chris will be a great help in that. You're here. hurry up and wrap so that Steve can reprimand us all for this podcast. That's true. It was a little off the rails. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie. It was also my first appearance on the Friday dispatch. That's the problem. That is part of the problem. And there are a lot of problems. I'm breaking another barrier against

anti-Semitism here. I mean, I just half, demi. All right. You know what? We're going to forego the wrap up. Bye, guys. See you next week. I'm going to be able to be. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply.

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