The Dispatch Podcast - Penceian Posture

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Jonah invites Chris Stirewalt and Mike Warren on to analyze the state of the GOP primary field, as Mike Pence and Chris Christie officially join the race. Stay for the jocularity and: -RNC nominee ��pledge” -Tim Scott vs. The View -House speakership fight -Stirewalt’s Shrimp Cocktail Crawl  -Who destroyed the Kherson dam? -Tucker Carlson’s anti-semitic Twitter show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Jonah Goldberg, and I'll be your host today. All the regulars are out except for me. And so like eating a burrito before sex, someone had a really bad idea of having me host this podcast. And so we're going to talk about the ever-expanding pool of GOP, presidential contenders. We're going to talk about drama on Capitol Hill

with the House Freedom Caucus and Kevin McCarthy and other things. And we're going to talk about the the atrocity in Ukraine with the destruction of a really important dam and perhaps the start of the counteroffensive and other things. Joining me today, I'm very excited about this.

I basically got my dream team together. We have brother Chris Stairwalt. Welcome. Good to be with you. And one, Michael Warren, who has, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, who is, grade on dispatch voices for podcasts. Hmm. By, uh, at a whole letter grade.

So, um, let's start with, uh, the, everyone in the pool. We got Mike Pence announced this week. He did the town hall. We got Chris Christie announced this week. He hasn't done a town hall yet, although his announcement thing was more like, you know, Clarence Darrow's summation in the scopes trial. And that Bergam guy,

which I think is his official name on the bumper stickers, has jumped into the pool. And I think I might be missing somebody, but we're now up to what, 10-11? Chris, what do you make of it all? Well, first, it's good to be here in one of the, part of the mighty fleet trailing behind the flagship podcast of the Remnant. This is good. So this isn't what I, so let me evade your question thusly.

It's not what I think. It's what I think of what other people think. And it is meta. Much consternation from. the same people who are always wrong because we're always wrong when it comes to presidential primary races who say, oh, it's too many people. It's too many people. And Trump agrees with the premise. It's too many people. It's too many people. And I've said it to you before. I'll say it again. It doesn't matter how many people get in. It matters how many people get out.

There can be 25 people running. There could be, it doesn't matter how many people are running. It matters if by the end of the year, I think Chris Sununu and his interview talking about why he wasn't going to run said it pretty well. I might give people a little more time than he gave them, but basically said by Christmas, by the end of the year, if you don't have a viable path to the nomination, you need to be out of the race. And I think for Republicans, that's the truth. If you think that you might have a shot at being president, if you are, let's say, a billionaire software company developer from North Dakota who nobody's ever heard of, you think you want to run run doesn't do any harm and in fact i think it helps republicans because they need to have the feeling of a real primary they need to have the feeling of kicking it around having the discussion getting it going creating a little energy around it

so michael um feel free to respond to that as you like but also um um i think the most interesting entrant into the race in some ways is chris christie um I don't like everybody keeps saying. I mean, everybody, the whole MSNBC crowd, which loves that he's getting in, but they always have to preface it with it. He has no chance of winning. And I just, I feel like enough of us were burned with the Trump can't win stuff that there should be a moratorium on that to a certain extent.

But what's interesting to me about Christie getting in is he's the first one to truly frontally go after Donald Trump. by name, in complete sentences, will not, you know, without avoiding certain topics, right? I mean, Nikki Haley does it, but she doesn't put the name Trump in the same sentence with the criticism, and there's a lot of sort of, so far until yesterday with Pence and Christy the day before, there's been a lot of sub-tweeting in the GOP caucus, our GOP campaign. And what's interesting to me about what Christie's going to do is, I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to make everybody hate him.

but what I'm interested in is whether or not it moves the Overton window for the campaign generally does it make it easier for other candidates to criticize Trump or do they read the room about people booing Christie and rush to Trump's defense and criticize Christy for, you know, shooting inside the tent? And I don't know the answer to that, but I'm wondering what you think. Well, but doesn't it start here?

And let me preface with saying, for people who say there's too many people in, I mean, we're still at half about of the number of candidates that were in in 2016 on the Republican side. So it's a relatively small field if you take the small sample size of the past couple of cycles. But I think the very fact, and I've talked to some people about this, the very fact that there is a primary field with Donald Trump in the race suggests that there is going, we're going. going to see more of what Chris Christie is doing and now Mike Pence is doing. Like, even give Ronda Santas some credit. He is going after Donald Trump, maybe in ways that dispatch readers might not want him to, but they're all seemed to be focusing on, except for Nikki Haley, really, on the prize,

which is you've got to go through Trump. So Christy kind of opens the door, makes it makes it possible, but just the fact that people are challenging Trump, which is what they're doing. If you're running as a Republican for the presidential nomination, you're challenging Donald Trump. Now, some of them maybe are running to become vice president, but in fact, that's what you are doing. And that's pretty remarkable given Trump's apparent hold on the party. So I guess I'll be watching what Christie does, what Pence does. And how that influences how other people are making the case, not just on the trail, but ultimately, let's look ahead to Milwaukee, August 23rd. What is that going to look like?

Is everybody ganging up? Is Chris Christie going to resist the temptation to beat up on Ron DeSantis? Because it's going to be there and he's going to want to do it. Why would he resist? Maybe, I don't know. Maybe he wouldn't resist. Maybe he won't resist beating up on DeSantis. But he seems to have a goal of taking on Trump alone, you know, Trump solely.

So will he do that? Will he sort of keep his eye on the prize? I don't know. I just think it's it is less determined than ever before about what happens for the next couple of months. And who ultimately raises the money, gets the sort of momentum, and who doesn't, who decides maybe it's not worth it. I do think it's different than it was in 2016 for a bunch of reasons. I think meatball has a lot of reasons not to attack Chris Christie. I think Ronnie D. should not be attacking Chris Christie.

But I think if I was advising Chris Christie, I'd say, swing freely, brother. Go out there and, you know, be triumphed the insult comic candidate if you want to. because, look, the, I think what Mike Pence said in his announcement was more significant than what Chris Christie said. Mike Pence said that a person, that a person who does what Donald Trump did should never be president, right? He should never be president. He said it was not fit for office. Yep. That's it.

He said that a person who seeks to undermine the Constitution should never be president. and a person who basically asked what Trump asked Pence to do should never be president again. And Mike Pence is a long shot, according to the polls now, and he is of a group with, I guess you still have to say Haley, but certainly Tim Scott and Christy of long shots. But what Pence has done is, number one, say that magic word, the never, right?

he was asked subsequently in an interview about whether that would he sign the pledge and he said oh I'll you know I'll sign it and I like Christie's response by the way to the pledge he said I'll treat the pledge with as much respect as Donald Trump did in 2016 so but for Pence that that putting that line in the sand is pretty significant and it will emboldened others the the thing for Pence for the Republicans there's going to be this tumultuous period between now and, let's say, Thanksgiving. Debates will start in August. It will get going. It will get weirder. It will get uglier. More people will probably get in. And then if your Pence, what you want is, this is the same thing that Glenn Yonkin is

thinking about with November, is that there will be a flight to quality that DeSantis will turn into a jeb-sized suckhole. He's got the, he's got Jeffro running his super, Super PAC, which we saw how well he did for Ted Cruz. We saw how well that worked for Ted Cruz. And if Ron DeSantis collapses, there will be a flight to quality, and Pence is trying to set himself up as former Governor of Indiana, former Congressman, former Vice President, here I am.

So I do have one question about this. Like, I thought Pence's speech was good. I didn't see all of the town hall. but on this point about the pledge, right? I thought Christy's answer was as Kobayashi-Maru as you can get, right? It was because everyone else has been sort of stuck in this bind of being asked to obey the rules, to have integrity, to make a promise and keep it in a field where they're trying to run against the guy

who will do none of those things. and has no record of doing those things. And so it's sort of this really unfair thing. It's like, you know, do you promise to be as circumspect as, do you promise to be more circumspect than the escape monkey from the cocaine study? And so the thing is Pence's answer on that was bad. It was just bad. And I don't understand it because, like, Pence has got real pros working for him.

Pence has been around the block a few times. Why would you not murder board the five most obvious questions you would get asked when you decide to announce for president? You know, they say, okay, we're going to say he's unfit for office and he should never be president. Anyone who declares a war on the Constitution has no business being president. And then someone's going to ask me, will you endorse him if he wins? What should I say, everybody? And the answer he gave was like, well, I always supported the Republican nominee and blah, blah, So your consistency in supporting Republican presidents

is greater than your belief that being at war with the Constitution makes you unqualified to be president of the United States and all that. I just thought it was very strange to me that it was a bad, to me it was a bad sign that Pence had not come up with some version of like the Christie answer. You can't be a little bit pregnant and Donald Trump can't be a little bit unfit for office, right? And if you've said never, then never is supposed to mean never. And I can understand the thinking behind Pence's misstep, which is, well, we don't want to alienate people because we want to be able to put the party back together at the end. So we don't want to say that.

And that's probably like the beauty of this period of the campaign, nobody knows what works. So you might as well do what you want to do. It doesn't matter because nobody knows what's going to work. in the end. So you grip it and rip it and be yourself. You can't lie to a kid or a dog. You can't fool a kid or a dog and you can't fool a primary voter either. So you might as well just be who you are. And if they like it, you're going to win. If they don't like it, they're not going to win. So I think that was an over, I think Pence overcooked that one. Well, it is in some ways an answer that reflects who Pence is, which is he's a party man. He's a traditional, traditionalist in terms of

I mean, his critique of Trump was sort of this guy is out of bounds with what, you know, I mean, listen to what he said. I mean, it was not true when he said that Donald Trump promised to be a conservative president in 2016, and that's what we did. And now he's not making that promise. But there's a sort of, there's a sort of contractual element to the way Pence, you know, Pence is talking about these things, and he's, it just, it, it, it falls flat when you've just made that kind of moral case against the guy and then say, yeah, but, but if, but if he's the nominee, I mean, you know, I guess the other part of this is the, is this stupid RNC deal. You can't get on the debate stage unless you agree to sign it.

You can't make your case, uh, to beat Trump if you can't get on the stage, you know, so it's really unfair, as you say, Jonah. But Pence has got to do better than that. How about the 40,000 small donors for bad debate rules? I forget the name of the guy who is giving away Tucker, free Tucker T-shirts to people who will give him a dollar. He's going to spend 20 bucks for every dollar that he raises so that he can get $40,000, $1 contributions to get on the stage.

the fact that the Republican National Committee does not understand what the rest of the political world now knows about small dollar donations, which were super cool in 2008 when people were using their AOL, when they were donating their $5 doesn't mean anything now. It's a, you know, getting people to give online contributions doesn't mean anything. And I will further complain, I will herump further to say, this is why you let the networks pick their own criteria. This was a discussion I had with the Fox people.

When I was at Fox, we talked to the RNC about, you don't want that heat. We'll take the heat, right? Let us do, let us run our TV show, and you can either sanction it or not sanction it, but don't get into this part. And trying the idea, the obsession, among Republican National Committee members

with the debate process and trying to control the debate process has been a, it's been a fixation for the members of the RNC for a long time and they have, I think, led themselves astray because what they don't have yet is a real debate schedule because they've got too much,

they've got too much in the broth. Chris, by what authority does the RNC even claim to be the arbiter of debate? I mean, is there, this may be a stupid question, but why do they have so much power when we know that the RNC has been, you know, waiting for years in terms of power? One of the great ways in which the English language

tortures people who want to learn it is the word sanction. So the Republican National Committee can sanction a debate and the way that they sanction a debate is that they will sanction anybody who participates in a unsanctioned debate. So you lose

delegates. So they say in advance, okay, you can't what the, the real potency isn't on the debate requirements. The real potency is this is what we'll do to you if you participate in an event that falls outside of our boundaries. And that goes up to and including multiple, having multiple candidates on the stage at the same time. Because remember, for the party, this is a massive fundraising tool, right? They get to sell tickets. They get their involvement in this. is a great way for them to raise money for the party. It's a great way for them to raise visibility. So they're trying to do too many things at once.

But the truth of the matter, and I think Tim Scott proved this concept when he was on the view this week and had this difficult exchange with one of the hosts and then knocked it out of the park. Hostel, going into hostile or adversarial media environments is good. It's a good thing. This is something that DeSantis hasn't figured out.

It is a good thing to face hostile questions and come through it. Donald Trump, if anyone can tell you, debates can be won. It can be done. And I will always remember not to be in the Wayback Machine. I'll always remember how Newt Gingrich created his campaign, which was in South Carolina being just awful to Juan Williams. Just awful to Juan Williams. Juan asked him a question about Gingrich's plan to have children work

in their schools, mopping the floors and something like that. And Juan would took a deep offense to this and asked him about it. And Newt just went yard. He just went crazy. And the hall exploded. People got really excited about it. And that was the, that was what launched Gingrich. So the Republicans trying to avoid difficult questions is silly.

You can't just put Hugh Hewitt up there and have him coo gently at them for the whole time and figure that you're going to get a good outcome. Well, also, like, I mean, we have to move on to topics, but like, I agree with you entirely. Also, the great thing about doing the view and that kind of stuff is that it goes viral, right, right? I mean, like, your own side will amp it. No, you know, doing Steve Bannon show or Eric Bowling show doesn't go viral. It's narrowcasting. And, but, you know, maybe this is damning with faint praise.

But Hugh Hewitt constitutes aggressive interviewing on a big swans of the sort of radio room podcast with Steve Bannon. Yes, that's right. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your

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Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo fall experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. I've been through the, I've been on a roller coaster with all of, with Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans. I think I was right when I predicted, and I'm trying not to make predictions anymore,

but on this podcast I predicted, I think he wins the speakership, but then the shock clock is on for how long he holds on to the speakership. In the last, for the last two months, I kind of like, well, no, maybe he's going to hang in there for a while. He's certainly done better than I had, and a lot of other people had anticipated. I do think that one of the reasons why he's been a better,

he's been more effective at the job as he's the first Republican speaker what in our lifetimes that actually wanted to be the speaker of the house rather than a stalking horse president or something or you know he likes his cop he likes dealing with the act's actually doing the actual job

anyway we now get the feeling that though the knives are actually going to come out for Kevin McCarthy once again the House Freedom Caucus is everyone else has moved on from the debt ceiling fight except for the House Freedom Caucus. They are still talking about it

the way the Russians talk about World War II and it will just never go away. Fun fact, when I moved to, when I went to college in Baltimore, you know how like, and so like, you know, the Russians always having stuff on TV about World War II and it's always in their memory.

That was the way local Baltimore news channels talked about the cults leaving Baltimore. Like, and fair. four nights or like I wasn't a big football guy I know the video of the trucks leaving the cult headquarters thing and leaving town one of the great betrayals was on constantly

years after it happened one of the great betrayals did they do like a two minutes hate you know of the Ursa family like they just like screamed at them and it was and now we will punch this guy in effigy I mean it was like it was just it was everywhere but anyway this is why we don't have me host this thing. Okay, so Mike Warren

bring some adult supervision into this and tell us what you think is actually going on with the House Freedom Caucus, with the House GOP, Kevin McCarthy, Scalese, Jews, whatever. Leaving that last one aside, maybe for later in the podcast. The, I mean,

look, the specifics of this in some way don't really matter what it is that right now the House Freedom Caucus or really like, you know, just like hardliners within the caucus are raising and raising a stink about, you know, throwing up roadblocks and hurdles for leadership. Because if it's not this, which this all, like, I feel like I'm wasting time even getting

into the details. It's essentially a procedural vote that the House leadership lost on Tuesday because conservatives were upset about a different vote. If it wasn't going to be this, it was going to be something else. Because that's the nature of this very small majority that Kevin McCarthy has. It's the nature of the deal or the deals that McCarthy made in order to become speaker, which gave away a lot of the store. Now, you talk to people, and I talk to people who are experts on sort of how the House conference is operating,

who say convincingly that by letting in, by letting the insane people run the asylum a bit, giving them a little agency, that that actually gives them buy-in and they have reason to play ball with leadership, to actually get along and get something done. And that has been true. I mean, you can see that in the debt ceiling agreement, that everybody was surprised to see not only Kevin McCarthy get, but then sort of have the upper hand. over the White House in those negotiations. But what has always been looming in the background

is the fact that the majority is so narrow that even those people you brought in, there are still some hardliner, some House Freedom Caucus guys who don't have the buy-in. Maybe they're not the chairman or the subcommittee chairman of the particular, committee in question at the moment. And they have all the incentive to throw a wrench in everything

because there's power when you can get just a few congressmen on the Republican side to get together. And that's what we are seeing. Now, maybe McCarthy gets out of this current, you know, we saw this earlier this week where the House Freedom Caucus basically was on the brink of agreeing to, throw out a motion to vacate the chair, which is essentially a way to oust a speaker. And then they step back from the break.

And then within a few hours, you had this failure of this vote on the floor, this rule vote, and now McCarthy's back in trouble again. And now you have even, you know, Punch Bowl News has this interview with Steve Scalise, the number two, the House Majority Leader, who is seen as the guy, who could rise if McCarthy falls and Scalise is throwing in some drama into all of this drama by saying, you know, essentially, ah, McCarthy's got a problem with these conservatives. He's got to figure it out. The McCarthy people say no, it was Scalise who screwed it up on the floor. It's all a mess and it's all drama because it's just, it's on a knife's edge.

And every time you think the House Republicans have nipped this problem in the bud, it comes back around and at some point there will be a limit and it's not even really McCarthy's fault is somewhat of his fault but he you know it's it will not end well the question is when will it end Chris should Steve Scalise wear a bane mask so that you know Scalise rises the fire begins I saw what his uh the his I don't know whether there was pack or whatever spent at the Capitol Grill. And it would be, it was like $130,000 they spent at the Capitol Grill. So it would be a weird look for the CG, but, you know, whatever.

Best Shrim Cocktail on Pennsylvania Avenue, by far. Get it with the crab cake sauce instead of the cocktail. You know, Best Shrimp Cocktail on Pennsylvania Avenue is not exactly. That's not nothing. It's not nothing. I mean, it's like, you know, Best October Fest in Orlando. It's something. Best oysters in South Dakota.

Oh, my gosh. You people do not eat with the correct gluttony. You're not paying the correct attention to... I will have... Jota, I'll take you guys on a shrimp cocktail tour. Sign me up. The steak houses. We'll go from the Palm to Joe's to the Capitol Grill.

It'll be great. Actually, you know, that would be a great premium thing for dispatch subscribers. Is the annual Chris Starwalt shrimp cocktail crawl. Yeah. We'll get a bus and we'll just take people for the experience, get the T-shirt. So the federal fiscal year expires at the end of September.

And this is about that. They need a continuing, we're operating on a quasi-continuing resolution or whatever we call it. We passed in January in the lame duck, right at the very end. and the fight to do that is going to be extraordinary, right? It was in both Biden and McCarthy's interest to kick the debt ceiling for a long time, right? They both wanted the breathing room because they don't want to have to deal with their insurgent members. Neither of them want to deal with their insurgent members on that question again, because it's just not a good place for brinksmanship.

We don't know what would happen, but if we ever pierced that, but it would not be good. And so they don't want to play that. And of course, for Biden, and I want to say before I become rankly cynical, the Biden and McCarthy both deserve credit for doing what they are supposed to do, right? They did their jobs and at some risk to themselves. They both had longer term interests that were involved, but it was they both did, they both operated the government how it's supposed to operate. in this little piece. But for McCarthy, the long summer and into the fall of Matt Gates leading the charge of the Freedom Caucus of the Freedom Caucus, I think it was 11 members who voted against the

rule, and they were voting against a rule to advance legislation that they wanted, right? It was banning, banning gastos and a couple of other things, and they were voting that down. And it was very telling, I forget which member it was, who said that it was personal animus, that he was doing it to punish McCarthy because he had a bill that he said... This was Andrew Clyde. This was Andrew Clyde of Georgia.

Andrew Clyde of Georgia had wanted legislation that would protect bumpstock kinds of stocks for pistols that McCarthy had said, yeah, we'll bring your bill forward. And when they told him, He said when they told him, there's some actual problems with the bill that we have to work out so we can't do it this time, that's when he said, okay, so I'll, I'll, I'll, I don't want to overstate it, but I talked to several current and former members to take a poll. This is the worst mutiny that they've ever seen in terms of not following the party line, because where you are supposed to vote against is when the Freedom Caucus did this before, it's happened before, but they went to Bainer. and said, we're not voting for the rule.

And so you can take it down if you want, or you can crash and burn on television, but we're not voting for it. They surprised the leadership with this, and the intent was to embarrass. And that tells you, because, as Mike points out, not a big, in terms of the course of the Republic, not a big deal,

but in terms of the enmity inside the conference, it's significant. And what they're going to do to McCarthy between now and the end of September is going to be pretty ugly. And it will be happening against the backdrop of a intensifying presidential candidacy. You notice, or nominating process, Trump said, you got to tell the Senate to default. You got a default. DeSantis came out and basically whipped against because it's not in their interest. Tim Scott voted against because that's not what the primary wants to, that's not,

that's not what Republican primary voters want to hear. So it's going to get, he may, you know, like Kevin McCarthy really surprised in getting the speakership and he, and he's surprised in getting the debt ceiling left pass. But the hard part is still to come. So we're going to do this, uh, uh, uh, my Glockland Group exit question style, um, unless you want to do it, gangham style, but that's, it doesn't really work on a podcast. I wouldn't even know how. I don't know what that means.

Gang, style. All right. So, now I've got the earworm in me. Zero to 10. This time next year is Kevin McCarthy still speaker of the house. I ask you, more Tottenham. I ask you, Chris Stairwold. 10 being metaphysical certainty, zero being no chance.

He's a dead man walking already. Wrong. Corn flakes with banana. And RIP, that show, I enjoyed doing it, and it was a good show. But I will say that Kevin McCarthy has a seven, simply because who else? Who you got, right? If Scalise is part of a mutiny, that Scalise is in a Pensian posture, in order, in order for him to be a viable candidate to replace McCarthy, he has to demonstrate to, the normies that he is a normie and not part of taking down McCarthy. And if he is seen as being

a traitor, Elise Stefonic will eat his liver and she will get through. But she doesn't enjoy the confidence of the normies. Patrick McHenry is trying to be a more mainstream figure than he was before and his bow ties are slamming. But I don't know. So you have to, it's not that they don't want McCarthy. Nobody really wanted McCarthy. It's that there isn't a viable alternative. Fun fact, Pensian posture is from the apocrypha of the Kama Sutra, but we can talk about that another time. I knew it sounded familiar. That's where you eat the burrito.

Yes, that's right. Michael Warren, I ask you, zero being zero chance, metaphysical impossibility, 10 being, it's a lock that Mike Pence will be still speaker this time next year. You mean Kevin McCarthy? Mike Pence being speaker, though. That's the twist.

That was the twist. The riders came up with a good one in that one. I'm sorry, that's the Jameson's talking. Kevin McCarthy. Speaker, no, yes, maybe. I give it a five, and I concur with Steyerwalt's analysis here, except that I think Scalese has a little more of a claim to it than maybe you give him Chris credit for Chris,

because he is thinking and maneuver. And he's much savvier, I think even the McCarthy, in sort of managing the relationships across the conference. And he has been angling for this, for a higher office within House leadership. He has played his cards mostly correctly, I would say. There were moments when he was going to challenge. McCarthy for leader when they were in the minority and he he ended up not doing it and even

sort of you know denied that he was even interested in it which i think was a good play on his part so um i do think it is a similar situation like with the defenestration of bainer where who is going to step up um and then you ended up with you know you know McCarthy flailing and and paul ryan sort of being having the job forced on to him um in this situation though, I think Scalese wants it. I think he could conceivably cobbled together a, you know, enough support for it within the conference. And you notice he kind of is keeping his distance from McCarthy on a lot of this.

Or, hey, I'm doing my own stuff as a majority of. I'm worried about the conference. I totally agree. I totally agree. But that's the hard, that's my point is that's the hard one. He has to, he can only have it. after McCarthy goes down and he has to support McCarthy as McCarthy is fighting. So he has to dance between alienating what Bainer used to call the chucklehead conference and alienating

the normies. And that's a tough one because if he fights too hard to save McCarthy, he loses the chuckleheads. And if he fights, if he doesn't fight strenuously enough, he loses the other guy. So he is certainly an able politician, but it'll be a tightrope. The, uh, your guys, understanding of what a lightning round is, needs work. Did you say lightning round? It's one of those slow bolts. I did say lightning around. It's one of those slow bolts that ripples across the area.

It's heat lighting. It's one of those big, long bolts. The correct answer is four. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning

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Well, they found a lane. Phenomenal launches into the air. Absolutely incredible Air Transat. Fly the seven-time world's best leisure airline champions, Air Transat. All right. Last and least prone to jocularity, alas, is the, technically we have to say alleged, right? Because we don't know for sure.

I am fairly convinced that the Russians did this for various reasons. But a fairly crucial dam in the country. The Cresson region was blown up. There are a lot of outlets that are using more passive language than even that. Lots of people calling it a disaster when I think Noah Rothman has it right. It's an atrocity. And there are reports that the counteroffensive is nigh, if not already underway, but it's just not playing out like a World War II movie.

And weirdly, as all of this is happening, You have Vivek Ramoswamy going all in on basically handing chunks of Ukraine to the Russians. This is his idea of statescraft as a way to entice Russia into a security cooperation agreement with the United States, which is – we're not going to spend a lot of time dissecting that. Good. And you had Kevin McCarthy saying basically more aid is on hold, and you have Tucker Carson coming out, I would argue just essentially propagandizing for Russia on his new Twitter show. It's a lot of moving parts.

Mike, why don't you start off? What do you make of all? Well, I don't have a lot to say about because I just frankly don't know enough about the movement of the counteroffensive and what this means. I can only trust what I read, which leads me to believe along with everything else that we know that this is a Russian effort. wrong about that. And this was, the destruction of this dam was a Russian operation. I could be wrong. I think it's not wrong to question that, that narrative. You got to ask questions and to act as if Ukraine is sort of, you know, look at what they do with, you know, with press credentials. They're, they are not a wide open Western-style democracy by any stretch of the imagination.

But it stands to reason that Russia benefits much more from the destruction of this dam than Ukraine does. But what I'm sort of more interested in from the domestic side of things is the way in which populists' conservatives are talking about this. You mentioned Vivek. You mentioned the hold on Ukraine aid. It was heartening to hear from other Republican presidential candidates much more forthright support. You heard it from Pence. You heard it from Christy. You've heard it from Nikki Haley, forthright support for Ukraine.

But the Tucker Carlson 10-minute Twitter show was so pro-Russian that the Russian propagandists in Russia seemed to be taking cues from it. that he's the sort of the guiding star now for how they talk about it on Russian TV, which I think is just... There was a Russian TV show that said Tucker was basically the only reliable source for information now, which is weird. I don't even know what to do with that.

But just combine that with Tucker's blatantly... and naked anti-Semitic appeals in his hatred of Vladimir Zelensky. And the way that he, I mean, the sort of rat-faced language, it is so disgusting. And it just reminds you that... You should probably stop for a second

and explain to listeners what you're referring to. I'm sorry. Most people haven't seen his Twitter show. That's a good point. And it's accus him of trafficking, anti-Semitic stuff as fair as it might be. They don't know what you're talking about. I'm getting ahead of myself because I'm so outraged about it.

Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show, it's called Tucker on Twitter, I think. He released episode one. It was a 10-minute, essentially a monologue like what he would do on his Fox show, in which he sort of explained a little bit at the end that he will be on Twitter doing this show, that he will be speaking the truth. these are his words and if there is any sort of censorship from Twitter that he will be leaving

but the bulk of it was essentially a criticism of them, those people in the establishment who won't let you question what happened with this Russian dam

essentially parroting Russian propaganda that this, it doesn't benefit Russia to to blow up the dam and close off the ability of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. It's clearly the Ukrainians who stand to benefit. And then he goes on a rant about Zelensky, claiming that he is insinuating.

He has some sort of like homosexual love affair with Lindsay Graham that's like obsessed with the killing of Russians. Again, calling Zelensky rat-faced, trafficking in all kinds of, the kind of things that, even at Fox, even sort of in a studio, there are people who are potentially going to say, maybe that goes a little too far. This is like Tucker unleashed, and it's so ugly and so disgusting. I just sort of have to register my disgust and complain about it. And the specific anti-Semitic part is because he talks about how Zelensky is Jewish and wants to kill as a war on Christians or something. Yeah, he's anti-Christian. I mean, look, the rat face thing is very much like straight out of like European, you know, 19th century, you know, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic propaganda stuff as well.

You know, this sort of the money aspect of it. He's a comedian turned oligarch. I mean, it's all there. The dog whistle is so loud that I can hear. it, not just the dogs. So, like, it, it's all, I think Tucker knows exactly what he's doing, and I just find it disgusting. Brother Steyerwald, we can continue the seminar on Tucker, or do you have other views on all

of this? I have not heard what Tucker said. Do you find it believable that it was inappropriate or offensive in some way? It is possible that he may have not followed the boundaries. of decorum in the conversation. And certainly if what Mike says, if that's how that went down, that would be a turn toward anti-Semitism

would be most discouraging. But I will say this. The clock is running on the Ukrainians, and they know it. So we know about the nationalist right in the United States being opposed to this war from the beginning. It has become a litmus test.

This is why Ron DeSantis, staggered around the issue multiple times and trying to correct and then overcorrecting. And the MAGA base equates support with Ukraine with same-sex attraction. There are certainly currents of anti-Semitism in it. It is a no-go zone for those folks. I will be very interested to see what Trump ends up having to say as this goes forward. Because right now Trump's answer is, I'll solve it in a day. You put me in 24 hours. It's over. How are you going to do it? Well, I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to do it because we don't talk about our strategy. This is a well-known Trump approach. But I think the demands on this from many of his core supporters are intense. And this is, in fact, an issue that there's a lot of reasons why the Democratic Party, particularly Joe Biden, is more likely than the Republican Party right now to win in the next general election.

and Ukraine is part of it, because it so sharply divides Republicans. There is an intense hatred of this endeavor by many, and some of them, it's rooted in a genuine sort of Ron Paul isolationist kind of energy, and then there are those darker places we talked about. But for many of them, this is a absolute bright line distinction, and they have decided that Ukraine is bad news. there's that component, but I don't know if you saw the piece in the New York Times this week talking about the Nazi symbols inside the Ukraine, the military, the patches, yeah, the patches

that are worn and this kind of stuff, the clock is running. And having talked about the counteroffensive for so long and prepared everyone for this and talked about it, I get the sense. Well, as a domestic political consideration, the tolerance for how long the, this can go on is, there's a limit. McCarthy knows it. Biden knows it. Everybody understands this. And the open-ended nature of this is not politically feasible in the long run for the United

States. There will have to be some sort of, there will have to be a negotiated end to this conflict at some point. And I pray that the Ukrainians are so successful in the coming months. that this matter concludes in a way that is most beneficial, most favorable to them. I don't know anything about how to fight a war. I don't know how it goes. But I think that the political realities in Europe and in the United States are such

that this isn't going to, it will not persist at these levels for another, what has this been, a year and a half. So it's not going to be another year and a half at these kinds of, what is it, $75 billion. It's not going to persist at this level. And so pray for Ukraine. So I'm going to use moderator's privilege and co-founder of the dispatches privilege and ran to here for a second. I agree with you. I don't think you close the loop on the point, though, which is that, yeah, there's a big chunk of the base right that hates helping Ukraine. But there's also a big chunk of Republicans that is really in favor of helping Ukraine, right?

That's the point. I usually think you didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what makes it so hard. Right. It's a wedge issue for Republicans, which is why it's a great issue for Democrats, right? Right.

So I agree with that. I do think it's worth pointing out, first of all, that if there's a Venn diagram with three circles, one is adamantly opposed, one is adamantly in favor, and then there's the shrug emoji in the middle where they just don't know. A lot of people in the shrug emoji are there

because they're wildly misinformed about this. I'm not saying that they're dumb. I'm not saying that they're bad citizens or anything like that. But if you're listening to Vivek and Marjor Taylor Green and you can go down a list of people about what the issues are here,

you're going to understandably come to what I think is the wrong position on all on. So that's point one. Point two, just to talk about the actual sort of foreign policy elements of this, I'm pretty disgusted. Again, I understand the reluctance they get out ahead of things. You know, the drone strike on Kremlin turned out that maybe it actually was the Ukrainians.

You don't want to, like, get burned. But the Russians we've known for over a year now, or about a year, mind that dam. Right? They put explosives in that dam. We knew that. They didn't deny that. Zelensky asked back in October for international monitors to, be on the dam to prevent something like this from happening.

So that right there suggests that Ukraine was worried this would happen. Russia was worried that they wouldn't be able to do it if they needed to. Russia has a long history of doing this kind of thing. But then there's the more important point is this is not using a weapon of mass destruction, but it's one click shy, right?

If this was, instead of inundating tens of thousands of homes, ruining villages, ruining crops, poisoning an ecosystem, killing all these animals, they killed, they drowned 300 animals in a zoo, if this had been done through low-grade radiation, everyone would recognize it for what it is. But because it's inundation with water, everyone's like, you know, it's a disaster, it's, you know, whatever. And the thing that disgusts me and worries me about this is that the Russians are watching the reaction to this.

And on the day that this happened, you know what the UN Twitter feed was dominated with? The need to celebrate international Russian language day. Yeah. And I'm not saying they didn't condemn this thing, but they condemned it as if it was an act of God. Right? Oh, this is very worrisome.

We need to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is Putin watching to see what he can get away with. and as some of the guys on the Telegraph podcast were making this point, Dom Nichols in particular, even if this was an accident, Russia owned the dam. They controlled the dam.

They were responsible for the dam. They wouldn't be responsible for them if they hadn't invaded the frigging country. So they own this even if it's an accident. And if the reaction from the world is muted on this, So there's no talk of kicking them out of their security council. There's no talk of, like, you know, new layers of weapons. The conclusion that Putin can reasonably draw is, okay, so let's turn up the gain on this a little bit.

Maybe we'll have a low-grade radiation leak from the Zaporussian nuclear power plant. That'll scare a lot of people, right? That'll get the, you know, and the sort of passive way a lot of people are reacting to this, I think, is really dangerous in terms of the sort of, the stealth. function sort of appeasement thing that got us here in the first place. If Obama had, you know, Obama's reaction, you can go down a long list of things, you got Trump stuff, you know, Putin spent 20 years taking little bites out of places without the West doing very much about it.

It is now, I think, highly probable, if not clear, that they committed a major new war crime And by doing this, it is against the Geneva Convention. And everyone is like, well, Russian's going to Russia. And I think it's a very dangerous way to look at that. It has knock on effects with how China looks at things. And I find it very disappointing, you know, maybe, again, maybe some people are keeping their powder dry, waiting for the declassification of intelligence

so they don't get out ahead of the story that's going to blow up on them. I get that impulse. but a little more outrage, and you can pepper it with phrases like, if true, would be better. Well, the moral equivalizing that is going on, I referenced with the Times story about the Nazi patches. And certainly, Mike, I take your point about press freedom seriously. But the concerns about the restrictions of the press in Ukraine, you know who else restricts the press during wars? the United States of America Ernie Pyle filed his copy through sensors

and to be embedded with the United States military you have to put on the uniform you got to go over there and you've got to agree to say what they say so there is my point is there's this moral equivalizing going on that has coming in on the left side too and so we have

this is the anxiety and the fatigue And you just scared the smoke out of me when you talked about, I hadn't thought about that about a leak, staging it as an accident. And just for Putin to continue to raise anxiety about this has to end, this has to end, because something really bad is going to happen here. Thanks for ruining my peace of mind, Jonah. That's what I hear, right? It's important to remember that I'm moderating this podcast as a way to send a signal to

everybody that I should never replace Sarah again. hence all the Kama Sutra and burrito jokes. Like, I am punishing my colleagues for putting me in this position. You want Jonah? Okay, let's give them Jonah. All right. I'm sorry, Mike, go ahead. Look, the only other thing to add to this is because we haven't talked about the Biden element, which is...

One of the weakest elements on the periodic table. Exactly. B.I, I think it is. That's the way to that. Long half-life, though. There you go. unstable, which is that while Democrats are, on the political side of things, while Democrats are sort of basically united on Ukraine except for maybe the far left,

I mean, Biden has not exactly been much of a leader on this, which I get the sense just from his own White House's statements and his own He doesn't actually want to be seen as being too much on the side of Ukraine in this. And I think that you compare it to say what the prime minister of the UK said yesterday, you know, called it a new low about this damn explosion. The United States response, official response is sort of like we're waiting. And I get that. I get why they're doing that.

I get why there might be strategic reasons for doing that. But if you want to talk about a sort of a wasted opportunity for Biden to kind of be much more out front in defending Ukraine here, I just think it's, I'm disappointed, obviously, in the Republicans who are sort of taking the Russian line here. but Biden doesn't want to be there either. And that is a concerning element to all of this as well, which is, you know, is there going to be very little domestic political support in the next six months for this? And how much does Biden bear the blame for that for not sort of more forthrightly defending American interests in Ukraine?

I don't think he believes there's much American interest. All right, so we never came up with a topic for Not Worth Your Time segment. What about the fire? We haven't said anything about Canada's. Oh, you mean Canada's aggression? Yeah, exactly. The naked Canadian aggression of their attack on the United States with smoke. So, I mean, how would you phrase that as a not worth your time question?

Well, Canada, not worth your time? Well, Canada not worth your time. Canada, not worth your time. My youngest man-child, who is through the administrations of hockey, has become a, for some reason, an intense enthusiast for Canada. And I'm not anti- or he's making me anti-Canada. I wasn't anti-Canada before, but when I think about... Native polarization hits the Starwalled household.

Exactly. When I think about 13th grade, when I think about the America's hat. I've become resentful. And the fire is really just intensifying that. So Canada, not worth your time. Can I say that Herschel Walker was not wrong that the bad air was coming from somewhere else. We just didn't know. We just didn't know that it was coming from inside the continent. You know, that's, that's, it wasn't coming from China. It was coming from Canada. South Park was right. Exactly. Blame Canada. They're not even a real country anyway. Yeah, Canada. Apparently it is worth our time. Like we should,

We should be manning the border at this point if they're sending over their smoke. They're not sending their best air. Frankly, frankly. But this is the summertime version of what the rest of America has to endure every winter when it snows in New York and Washington and people who live in Tempe, Arizona are like,

why are we still doing Blizzard coverage? And it's like, well, because the studios are here and we had a hard time getting to work. So my apologies to all of Americans who have had to listen to everyone in New York and Washington complain about it because it's weird and it's, I hate it. Well, as the husband of an Alaskan, I can tell you, like, you know, my wife's reaction to this was welcome to every summer in Alaska. Yes. My Jessica said the same thing and made her a homesick for California. Yeah, I mean, like Northern California, you just get smoke and stuff.

I will say, it's, you know, it's going to be a while. before Canada comes back up as a topic on this podcast, right? So get your wicks in now. I wrote a cover story for National Review titled Bomb Canada. And the cover was, and I always felt bad about this,

it was the Canadian mounted police in full uniform with the word wimps across the top. And I didn't like that because part of the argument on the article is that the Mounties were actually represented the good old Canada that Canada was ceasing to be.

But a couple points about this. One, less there are people out there who doubt that there is a firewall, a high wall between church and state in terms of the business side and the editorial side at National Review, that story

came out the week that we began what was supposed to be a multi-issue ad buy from the U.S.-Canadian Friendship Society. Oh, no. And no one on the editorial side told the business guys that this was coming. So, like, for those of you, like,

the vulgar Marxists out there who think, you know, advertisers buy all the content and all that kind of stuff, you know, it doesn't always work that way. Well, yeah, sorry about the ads, though. We were super excited to have them, but then, you know, when you said you were going to bomb us, I thought, hey, let's maybe,

let's maybe pass on that one for a while. Sorry. Sorry about that. Yeah, what's that all about? And second, and I feel actually kind of strongly about this, we all know that there are certain foods. We might have talked about this at one point, Chris. There are certain foods that are dominant in America,

but they don't have hegemony, right? So, like, New York-style pizza is close to hegemony, but like the New Haven guys and the Midwestern with the little squares and all that, there are competitors, you know,

they're a little, they're holdouts of, of, you know, of rebels that need to be crushed by New York style of people. Disagree, but go on.

And then there's, but the New York bagel has complete and total dominance. No one questions that, you know, you might be able to get good bagels in Chicago or L.A. or it's hard in D.C.

But the bagel that you get there is the New York bagel. And it is worth going to Montreal to have the Montreal bagel. Because I've looked deeply into this word, say word. And the Montreal bagel has just, it's like, it's like, you know, the Holon-Rosen's versus the Tudors, whatever, and they can all trace back their lineage to whatever.

The Montreal bagel came to North America the same time, has just as much right to claim that it is the true and authentic bagel in North America. Same kind of immigrants from Poland came. And the Montreal bagel is different than the New York bagel. It is more like a Bihali. Yes. And it's excellent.

I think it's really good. I'm a New York jingoist. I'm a bagel jingoist. But if I had been born and raised in Montreal, I could see saying, well, obviously this is the better bagel. The crowdhammer, the crowdhammer doctrine. Yes, that's right. That's right.

So that's worth pointing out. And then lastly, if you ever go to... So you've been to Montreal, Chris? I love Montreal. Montreal is fabulous. Have you noticed that the normal Judeo-Christian Western post-enlightment compass does not actually work in Montreal and that the south on city maps is not actually south? Oh, yes.

That's right. I forgot about that. And I've been lost doing it because it's oriented because the city's orientation is wrong. It's incorrect. Right. They consider one side of the river to be one thing. and the other side of the river, like one side is east and one side is west, but the river actually doesn't run that way.

And so it messes up the whole thing. And I think that's probably the real reason why this smoke is coming down, is it tore a hole in the fabric of reality, and the Stygian mist is coming up from below. And it is ruining everybody. I hope that it's ruining their poutine because they don't deserve it. They don't deserve to enjoy their poutine if this is what they're doing to us. And with that, I want to thank you guys.

Chris Darywald, Mike Warren, thank you for doing this. And we really do hope Sarah comes back soon. And please, Sarah, if you're listening. And we'll see you all next time. Turn it off. Turn it off. I was just going to say, we didn't get into smoked meat,

which is, Chris, you will correct me if I'm wrong. It's essentially the Canadian version of the astronomy. It's leaner. They serve it more judiciously. It's like, here are some delicate slices of our smoked meat

on a piece of bread, rather than like the Carnegie way, which is, It's more like a beef locks than a... Here's your life preserver, dive in. And I think it's good. You know, I mean, I like American normal Jewish pastrami better, but like you get your pastrami fish.

Pastrami is inferior to corned beef, and I hate to be the one to tell you, but it's too much. It interferes with the delicacy of corned beef, which is a perfect, perfect food, and pastrami is too much. It's gilding the lily. Oh, why do you hurt me this way?

Jona looks, let the goisha have his way. Like, just, I'm just saying, this is, this is how it is for me. I'm just, I'm living out loud. I mean, corned beef has its place, and it's usually the places when we ran on a salon of pastrami. It's too much, it's too much. You know, we're out of pastrami today.

I don't have the corned beef. I mean, like, that's, that's, like, literally. Corned beef is the robin to pastrami's back. Oh, my God. No, no, no, no, no. This, corn beef is the Liberacee to, uh, corn, uh, Pistrami is the Liberacee to Frank Sinatra's corned corned beef. Oh, my gosh.

So I thought corned beef was to R.C. Cola to, uh, to pastrami's Coke. Oh, well, no, that's, let's not be up fair. I mean, it's sort of like in, in, in, in, in, in, And meatballs, when the winner of the contest of what did we have for dinner last night and the guy says some kind of beef, like, you knew he couldn't be talking about pastrami, but he might have been talking about corned beef. Corned beef is delicious and I love it in all directions.