The Dispatch Podcast - President Trump’s Influence Continues to Wane

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg and Megan McArdle to discuss President Trump’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly and the administration’s decision to ban CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House. The Agenda: —Trump’s U.N. speech —Trump’s waning influence —The White House press bans —What the media got wrong —Trump’s approval rating —NWYT: A COVID-conscious lesbian bar Show notes: —The White House’s justification for banning Politico —ProPublica reporting on Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding —Megan: Politicians are stuck in a time warp —Echelon polling on Trump’s approval —Mike Warren’s Next Right —Jesse Singal on the Last Ditch bar —Stephanie Slade on The Remnant —Stephanie Slade with Megan McArdle  —Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we discussed President Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly. The administration's decision to ban CNN, MS now, and political from the White House, and a Republican senator's call for an investigation of the Trump family's business dealings. And then not worth your time, a COVID-conscious lesbian bar in Massachusetts. I'm joined today by dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg and dispatch contributor, Megan McArdle. Let's start. in. Welcome, Jonah. Megan, happy to have you. I want to do something a little bit differently, in part because I just am not as, I haven't done as much reporting and following the news as I usually do. I want to talk about four different issues today in the time that we have. One because it's a world event, one because it concerns how we get our news, one because it illustrates a changing dynamic in the Republican Party, maybe, and one because it's just really funny. But I want talk about these things all through the prism of one question. How much does this matter? And I want to do that in part because I think there's maybe no question that I get more often when I talk to Normies,

regular news consumers or dispatch members across the country who say I'm paying attention to the news. I follow as much as I can. I read the newspapers. I listen to your podcasts. I check out the dispatch. I read the newsletters. And, you know, one of the things I think the dispatch does well as we help people determine what's important, what actually matters, and what doesn't matter. But if you're just paying attention to the news on a day-to-day basis, it is sort of hard sometimes to figure out what matters and what doesn't matter. So with that in mind, I want to start by discussing the president's appearance at the United Nations General Assembly. This is a big deal around the world. This gets massive coverage. If you read the papers in London, if you look at

European papers, if you look at papers in South America, Asia, tons of attention. This is a really big deal for people around the world. It doesn't get that kind of coverage here, but it still gets a lot of coverage. And Donald Trump went to the United Nations this week and gave a speech. I would say characteristically bombastic, feisty, combative, pounding his chest, provocative, but ultimately, I think, somewhat familiar ways. So I'll start, Joan, with you. What did you make of Donald Trump's speech to the UN this time? This happens every year.

And did we learn anything about him or his views about the world? the supposed Trump doctrine, what did you take away from that? I'm torn about how much UN speeches matter because, you know, I would lose my coveted 1980s right winger Dakota ring if I didn't denounce the United Nations. But so it was interesting to me about Trump's speech is that it simultaneously laid out at least major elements of what could be called the Trump doctrine or like Trump form. policy at a moment where his credibility on foreign policy is just evaporating before our eyes. So in theory, it was actually kind of interesting.

But in practice, I think one of the most fascinating things is when Trump first threatened to destroy Iranian civilization on a truth social post, we talked about it here. People talked about it was threatening a war crime. People talked about it was genocidal. You know, there were people who literally legitimately thought it. was impeachable and people freaked out of the idea that the president do this. Trump now does that routinely and everyone yawns, including the Iranians. He did it at the UN and people yawn about it.

And what's significant about it is, first of all, we've all become a nerd to it. But more importantly, it shows that he has very little credibility about this kind of stuff. And therefore, the United States has very little credibility because it actually comes across as a sign of weakness at this point. Like, no, really, this time I mean it, right? It's like it feels desperate. And that he did it at the UN is kind of fascinating. And the reason why it's bad that he did it, well, there are a lot of reasons why it's bad. For example, it's bad to do.

But second of all, it's bad to do at the UN for the reasons you, you know, alluded to at the beginning. That'll get covered. That has been covered in every form. newspaper, every network out there in the world that the President of the United States is threatening the total annihilation of a country and looks kind of like an idiot doing it. And like that's just not good for anybody. But it also, the other thing is it just the speech really felt like he thought that the speech would help him in crucial Waukeshaw County in the midterms. It had that kind of vibe. And that too is kind of a sign of desperation.

particularly when he says he started saying i am you know he was trying to tell the he literally said to the iranians i am not on the ballot like they think they can wait me out because they think i'm on the ballot but i'm not on the ballot but he said it in a way that was sort of making the wish the father of the thought that like these midterms won't hurt me because i'm you know whatever and it just it seemed like a man who's kind of decompensating to me but well and and to that point i mean it was not not two weeks ago that president trump at the non-convention convention Convention in Dallas told Republicans act and vote as if I'm on the ballot. Yeah.

The most important thing is me. I'm on the ballot. You should act that way. Megan, I, to Jonas' point about the language, I, when I heard the president say, you know, we'll annihilate you or whatever, however, he phrased it. I just feel like the White House speech writing team, they're basically at this point just synonym finders, right? They look through a thesaurus and they're like, annihilate it.

No, no, no, no. Eradicate. No, we've used eradicate. Wipe out, exterminate. You know, it's just like one after another after another to try to sound tougher and tougher in these prepared remarks. Did what he said at the UN matter in terms of the substance itself? And to Jonah's point, if it's the case that he's not taken literally or seriously at this point, what are the effects of that on the way that the United States conducts its foreign policy or leads the world? I mean, I think we're not leading the world right now. I have on this podcast, I think, made the comment before that someone once said, everything Donald Trump says makes sense if you just imagine it being prefaced by Donnie from Queens. You're on the air. Yeah, yeah. And that dynamic has been, you know, like was in some ways.

as helpful to him because it was people were so overcome by surprise at the stuff he came up with that stuff would happen because people didn't know what to do. It was like, you know, you've invited some random guy to your dinner party and he just keeps saying random insane stuff and everyone just kind of goes along with it because you're just horrified. And you're just like, yeah, sure. Absolutely. We should kill all the puppies in the world. That makes sense to me. Tell me more. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. But the schick has gotten old. And behind Donny from Queens, there were not a lot of good implementers or indeed good policy ideas.

And that's showing through too. He has ripped up our alliances. He has done a bunch of damage to our civic institutions, et cetera, et cetera. But like, I don't want to say, you should never say it can't get worse. It can always get worse. And indeed, it can't get worse is the justification. A lot of people gave me for voting for Donald Trump and the second time.

And look, look where we are. Here we are. Treasury bonds now comfortably over 5% for the first time since the early 2000s. So I do think it can get worse, but I don't think, like, he, the fact that he gets up there and rambles incoherently

about how he, Osemandius, tremble, look on my works, he mighty and despair, that no longer lands. He's just like, it's all priced in at this point. Yeah. And now the bond market is pricing and the fact that he's fundamentally irresponsible about the budget and that things are bad and that no one has any intention of doing anything about them until things get much worse. I don't think he knows he's got a failed presidency, but I think it's pretty obvious that he's got a failed presidency. And what we do for the rest for the next two years is try to wait it out and see what happens next.

I think that's where we are. There's not going to be major policy coming out of this. administration, if something happens, that will be concerning because I'm not sure I want these guys in charge of it. No, I'm pretty sure I don't, actually. But I don't think it has consequences in the sense that like now we've got a Trump doctrine and we know what he's going to do. Right. What he's going to do is fixate on the ballroom and react impetuously to events as they unfold. On this waiting for Godot-like vibe about the end of the Trump era, another data point.

Wall Street Journal used some AI tool to analyze 70,000 hours of MAGA podcasts, and they found that mentions of Trump are just absolutely plummeting. Like, they're not talking about him. And I don't know how much Trump realizes that quite yet. But there's a kind of fun game theory to this as the, because you know that the MAGA people around Trump are going to increasingly know that. They're going to see signs that Trump's relevance and centrality to their financial, political universe is ebbing.

And just as I know we're going to get into this topic with Republican politicians, but there's a staff version of this, too, is when you realize your bread is going to be buttered elsewhere, you know, while you're still working for the administration, that means you are not going to be the turnkey implementer of every Trump policy the way Trump wants anymore. You could see them starting to lose control of cabinet members, you know, and other people, as they all just start to, like, look for the exits and their own post-Trump era niches. I mean, I think you saw this in a weird way with Biden in a different way. And it was something I had not considered before about the downsides of having very old presidents.

But for the people who were staffing the Biden White House, other than the people right around him who've been with him forever and for whom this was the swan song, for the rest of the people, like, Biden was not their future. He was not even going to be the Eminol's Gris getting them jobs elsewhere. And so you saw very early in his White House that people came in with agendas that were about getting. getting the next job and thinking the next job would be in some kind of giant Warren-Burney apparatus. And that affected policy in a lot of ways in implementation as well as what the policy was and part because Biden was so checked out.

We don't quite have this problem with Trump. I wouldn't even call it a problem. If Trump were more checked out, that would probably be good. Just build the ballroom, dude. I've been trying to convince my liberal aunt that, like, for all of my qualms about the way it was done and so forth, that the country is better off with Donald Trump spending more time picking out marble and arguing about bathroom fixtures for the ballroom. We'll be safer if he spends time on the ballroom because of its national security.

Great national security significance. Yes, yes. That's what I meant. And so, yeah, I think that the people are now eyeing the exits. I think you're starting to see, look, this has happened before with Congress where these guys eye the exits and then Trump goes and throws himself in front of the door and they look at the screaming horde of voters just beyond and are like, okay, I'll do what you want.

But I think Trump is losing the power to do that. Because again, he's not the future. And I have thought this would happen and I have been pushed back on by people who were like, A, he's going to make himself a dictator. I think I'm courting the fickle hand of fate here. But

I think that we're now beyond that risk because he's so unpopular. And he doesn't have, a consolidated power base, like in the military or in the courts the way that you need in order to pull off an auto coup, as they call it. And so people are just saying, oh, yeah, someone else is going to be the guy in a few years. And I need to figure out how I can be that guy, or at least have my sucker-like lips attached to the butt of that guy or girl. I don't want to be sexist here. And that is, that too is depleting his power. Yeah. I'm tempted to say Wade immediately

to the question of the media and what he's been doing over the past week, speaking of authoritarian instincts. But one more question on the UN and everything that surrounds it. It could be said that if you look at past presidents, recent past presidents, the moment at something like the UN General Assembly that matters is the speech. People wait to see what the American president is going to see. The leader of the free world, even I would say Barack Obama, who, you know, famously was leading from behind, wanted the United States to take a sort of a less forward-facing role in the world. What mattered there was, what did the president say in his speech? What does this tell us about the things that he's likely to do in the coming years? And at the

The symbolism was really just the symbolism. With Trump, I think you can make the argument that, as Jonah pointed out, the speech itself just doesn't matter because he says this stuff again and again and again. It's the same version of something else. It is the Donnie from Queens. It's a sort of dressed up version of the kind of thing that he would say in his imprompt to, you know, gathering with reporters at the White House. And so it doesn't really matter that much. But the symbolism in many ways tells us a lot more about. what the president is thinking at a given time.

One of the things, one of the news items to come out of the UN General Assembly is that the United States is for the first time since 2019, inviting Vladimir Putin to attend the G20, which will be held at Trump's golf course in South Florida. I think later this year, early, I guess it's early next year. You know, there was a time when people thought Vladimir Putin was going to be isolated,

certainly after the invasion of Ukraine. That was a part of the Western world's goal was to isolate this aggressor, the person who launched this war of aggression. That appears to be off the table. You have President Xi from China visiting Washington, D.C., and Donald Trump putting on, you know, great pomp and circumstance for Xi when he arrives at the airport. The president doesn't often do an airport greeting. He did an airport greeting.

There was a red carpet. They did the Star Spangled banner. There was a flyover. It was a big sort of symbolic moment. And I wonder, Megan, if you think that the symbolism in this case, I mean, it's ultimately it's still just symbolism. But does that tell us more than what we got from the actual words that he spoke at the General Assembly?

I don't know what it tells us. Right. Look, the thing that Trump has always been better at than other presidents is this kind of Sturman-drang symbolism, the big that. the spectacle of things. Like, I take the point, but I'm not sure what I read from that. I mean, maybe other people have more insight into, like, foreign policy is also not my forte.

So, you know, I would say, so just to push, just to push further on that, I would say what, what it tells, this is not something that other presidents would have done, in my view. They wouldn't have literally rolled out the red carpet for she at a time when we are in sort of intense standoff with China on a number of things and should be in a more intense standoff with China on a number of other things. He's effectively courting. He's simping to Vladimir Putin in a way that I think signals a shift in how the United States regards these aggressive authoritarian around the world. I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure that you can then from that say, and therefore, X, Y, and Z, you know, what does this matter to go back to my

original question? But at least to me, signals something of a change. Am I just over-reading that, Jonah? Everything's changed since beginning of Trump's second term, right? The way I look at it is, for a long time, anti-American voices around the world had to do a lot of work to come up with narratives about how America was an empire, it was getting into wars for oil, that it was no different than the Soviet Union or China, that it was deeply hypocritical with all of its language

about democracy, this, and freedom, that. And what matters about the way Trump is behaving and talking is that he's kind of proving those people right insofar as he is completely shorn himself of any redeeming rhetoric about America's role in the world and instead talks like he's revealing our real what our real motives were all along which they were not right and so the way i think about it is like it's it's a weird analogy but remember roger ails his whole technique when he was a consultant where he would fly into various cities to like consult on the new local news channel and he would watch the news show with the volume off

and um and then he would come in the next day and say fire this guy give this woman more time do this do that because he didn't really actually care about the delivery he cared about body language and presence and whether you can like own the screen and that kind of stuff which explains why you were on fox it it really does just eye candy that was it i just had to keep saying um i think i need a large because they just want to put me in all this tight fitting stuff. No, but if you watch the coverage of all this with the volume off, in effect, you know, figuratively and literally, the body language of the United States is that Trump wants to be buddies with Putin and Xi.

He's going to bend over backwards for them. He's stiff-arming friends and allies. I mean, it's a concentrated form of the narrative we've had for a while now, right? And I think with the Russia stuff, like the revealed preferences of this administration, are just spilling out, right? You have this Whitkoff plan, which is basically just to make the United States, or at least this coterie running the United States, this, you know, the oligarchs running the United States, business partners with Putin. And that's what peace looks like. And, you know, when it was a week ago, we had Kushner saying that, you know, the only reason this war is going on and

we don't have a peace deal right now is because the Ukrainians don't want to give up, you know, swaths of their country that they've lost tens of thousands of lives defending. They don't want to give it off, give it away with a stroke of a pen when Russia can't conquer it through military force. And that's the stumbling block, according to these people, to them getting some sort of mineral deal. And so I just think the the subtext and the text are kind of merging at this point. And it comes across in events like this where the people of the world say, oh, yeah,

This is just like Donald Trump is is not contradicting the American tradition. He is proving that the American tradition was was BS all along. That's that's not great. You know, he's done that on the I would say he's done that on the on the domestic side. I mean, if you look at the way that the left has portrayed conservatives free market types for for decades, they've basically made the argument that conservatives prioritize and care about and, and want to, want the kinds of things that Donald Trump is now doing, which makes it a lot harder to push back on the left, given what Trump is doing. One final point on that, Jonah, on the on the Russia stuff,

I am catching up on the book regime change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for the New York Times. Terrific book really recommend it for anybody who wants to sort of go several levels deeper on what's happened over the past two years. And they make clear, they're reporting, makes clear in a way that you sort of forget because of this sort of constant flood of news, that this was Trump's position from the beginning with respect to Russia, was this is all about business. We need business deals. Let's make some good deals. And it was the thing that was so jarring when Marco Rubio, who certainly knows better, was the one articulating that in front of the plane in Saudi Arabia after meetings back then. All right. We're going to take a quick break,

but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money.

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And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. I want to move on. to our second topic. And again, thinking about this in the frame of what does this matter, we've seen over the past week starting last Friday, we're recording this Thursday late morning.

We've seen over the past week, Donald Trump, once again, pick a fight with the White House press corps. Last Friday, the three news outlets, CNN, Politico, and MS Now, which is the new name for, or the old MSNBC, were barred effective immediately from the White House grounds, Jonah. We should disclose that you are a CNN contributor. So they announced that on Friday and on Saturday,

reporters from those outlets were not allowed on the White House grounds. Early in the week, the TV networks said that they would not be participating in the pool, which is responsible for most or almost all of the video that we see of the president, in his day-to-day activities. This quickly moved to the courts. There were arguments in the courts on Wednesday.

And overnight, a judge said, in effect, that the White House can't do this. The White House has to allow these outlets to report. This is the New York Times reporting from Thursday morning. A federal judge on Thursday said that President Trump's order barring CNNMS now and political from the White House was likely unconstitutional, or the administration. to restore access to the three news outlets. Then early Thursday morning, a reporter from Politico went to the White House and was not allowed to work from the White House with the White House apparently defying this judge's orders.

On the one hand, you look at these events and you think Donald Trump has been declaring that the press is an enemy of the American people since before he was elected president. He has tried to bar reporters in the past. He tried to do this with Jim Acosta and others. He's constantly, I mean, he almost never gives a speech these days or gives a press conference without railing on reporters. And in that sense, it's an old story. On the other hand, this seems to be escalating it. Picking three outlets.

He initially said they shouldn't be allowed to report on him at the White House because they report fiction and lies. which is a common thing he says. But that was the basis that he gave for barring them. He later tried to make a national security argument. His team tried to make a national security argument in court. Megan, how much should, does this matter in real life? I mean, is this just an inside the Beltway thing? Or is this the president really fundamentally challenging First Amendment freedoms of reporters?

It matters and it doesn't, right? It doesn't matter because this is not. There are a lot of reasons that that White House job, you know, you can't wander around the White House anymore. I think that's started in the 80s. It's a very restricted job. It's like prestigious. These are great reporters to be clear. I'm not like, I'm not dissing on anyone else.

But the job itself, but also these outlets are not as influential as they used to be, right? Like the, you can really see just in five. years, certainly in 10 years, how much the influence of the media over politics has diminished. And partly, this is the result of that. And one thing I think that the establishment defenders, of which I am one, do need to understand is that the reason this is happening in part is because we've already lost influence, because he can. Ten years ago, they would have cared about their story because 10 years ago, most people got their new, got daily news from a website or a TV network or a newspaper. And that's not really true anymore.

People don't pay as much attention to the news. They're getting it from a wider variety of sources. They're not, there isn't this like establishment that Trump can fight against. And that's why he can get away with it and also why the fight matters lesson in some ways. Like, look, I don't think, I've told the story probably on this podcast before about being at a Trump rally in Arizona in 2020. It was for Carrie Lake. What year was that? I'm old.

I want to say 2022. And so I'm there. And the crowd, like there's a pen for the reporters. And the crowd is like booing and lock them up and really angry at the media on his lines about how about the media is. But to me, they were perfectly nice. I was like, I was in the wrong side of the you. I was, they helped me. Everyone's like, honey, get out of the way. Get out of the way. This girl, this nice girl has to go, like, get to her spot. I had heat stroke. People were bringing to me water. I had the press badge. You know, it was a kind of symbolic thing, but it didn't go that

deep. And so I don't think it matters in the sense that, like, he is going to succeed. You know, the judges are eventually going to stop him. It'll go to the Supreme Court. They will stop him. I don't know enough about the law to comment. I mean, I think the one complication is, like, does the White House not have the right to decide what outlets are allowed on the grounds? Right. Like, there might be reasons. And I think that, like, you can't pick these. particular reasons, but I assume that you can't just identify yourself as a reporter and say, I have started the no-name blog and you have to let me on the White House grounds now. But I don't think this is going to go anywhere in terms of meaningfully restricting the flow of

information or meaningfully curtailing the freedom of the press. Nonetheless, I think it's really important. And it's important in part because it is an attack on the freedom of the press. it is an attempt to control what the press says and that impulse, which we've known he had, but it's disturbing every time it's exhibited. And I also think it's that he's escalating.

That he is kind of like a drug addict. It's not getting enough of a high out of just saying that we're all liars and frauds. And now he's amping it up. And I worry not just about I love my people. I want us to have access. But I worry about where else is that impulse going to kick in as his presidency falls apart. Yeah. I mean, to take this back to what we were just discussing a moment ago on the world stage is a president who thrives on attention.

He needs attention. And when he doesn't get attention, will his response be to just crank things up so that he continues to get attention kind of no matter what? I think that's a valid John, does this matter in a serious way? And what about the, you know, it was the case at the beginning of his second term that we said, hey, well, no things are really serious and spinning out of control when he begins to defy judge's orders. And it appears like we've, there's more to learn here, this has all happened within the past couple hours, but it appears like that's what's happening today with the White House not allowing the political reporter on White House crowns to do the job.

Yeah, if I had to guess they end up backing off on that, that this was someone thinking that they were doing what the boss wanted and wires crossed. But I could be wrong. I just given the places where Trump has backed down to the Supreme Court prior to this, the idea that this is the Hill, the Attorney General, White House counsel, Donald Trump, want to go full Andrew Jackson or full apocryphal Andrew Jackson, I just find unlikely. But we'll see. I don't know. on the law stuff um i agree with me like i think megan was just is just too nice a person to get at one of the difficulties here which is that but i could hear it in the background so i'll just be blunt about it one of the problems with these kinds of stories is it gives a lot

of people in the media the excuse to behave in a way that a lot of people or i'll just say i cannot stand. We are the guardians of the First Amendment. We are the watchers on the wall. We are just here as a servant of the people as champions of truth. And I'm not saying they're wrong, right? Because this is important and the First Amendment does matter and freedom of the press really does matter. But just the self-congratulation that comes out with these kinds of moments, I don't actually think helps the press. And I wish that some news anchors and editorialists, would think about their tone a little bit rather than self-congratulate as much as they do in this stuff. But on the law part, Megan's absolutely right. You don't have a right to White House

Press credential. Like, we cannot, we don't have one. We can't get into the White House. But if you get one, you cannot have it revokes because you don't like the coverage, right? That's the legal issue. It's viewpoint discrimination. All the precedents go that way. Like Jim Acosta, I do not think behaved well as a CNN White House score as, when he was in office. And I say that as a CNN contributor now, but if you give him the credential, you can't then say, we're taking it back because we don't like what you're saying about us. That's basically what the law says. I am very skeptical that this is going to make it to the Supreme Court or that if it does make it to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court issues some

clarifying set of rules about all this kind of stuff. I think they'd rather just stay out of it. But I think, you know, when Megan talks about how the media matters less than it used to, this gets at almost a personal peeve of mine. They're an enormous number of people. We've all met them. We've talked to them. Some of them are friends of ours. Some of them are professional right-wing, quote-unquote, media critics who either directly

or indirectly advance the argument that if it was a woman, weren't for negative media coverage, Donald Trump would still be hugely popular. That if it weren't for the fact that they're distorting what he says, and this is what Donald Trump's view is, right? I mean, that's literally why he saw Natalie Hart showed him some clips. He thinks to the extent that he can believe the fake polls, the extent to which he is unpopular, it is because he is not being covered fairly. And this president, more than any other president in our lifetimes, has the means and the ability to get his message directly to the American people. People hear him directly. People see him on true social. People get the clips of him saying

the bonkers town crazy stuff that he says. And they don't like it straight from the horse's mouth. And Trump and a lot of his enablers and defenders and media research center types and, you know, newsmax hosts, they think, what was wrong with that? That sounded awesome. So it must be the way the New York Times, which most Americans don't read, the New York Times is distorting what Trump is doing. Like, New York Times is covering that the fact that the, I have all sorts of problems with the New York Times.

But New York Times is reporting that the Iran war is still going on. That's Trump's bigger problem. New York Times is reporting, or Fox News is reporting, the media is reporting that diesel, like $6.50 a gallon. Yeah. Right? Like that fact is driving more of Trump's unpopularity than any negativity emanating

from Morning Joe. But all these guys want to argue about the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave and say, oh, it's all the shadows, right? And it's like it's all of the, it's the coverage that's making people dislike us. what is like the prime minister of England famous apocryphal line you know events dear boy events right it's the actual way Trump is governing both his words and his actions that are driving the ground truths here and they can't accept it and so I hate so much of this conversation yeah so I think that actually interestingly the people most likely to go into the uh odes

to the importance of a free press, which, to be clear, free press, all for it, exceptionally important. Maybe my favorite, I think it's my favorite amendment. So I am not denigrating the underlying thought, but I agree with you that like the self-congratulatory tone in the same way is like,

if you're a very accomplished person and then you go tell people that, they don't like it. They don't like think better of you. They think yourself important and annoying. There's a Ron Burgundyism to it. You know, like, I'm really a big deal. Yeah.

But, you know, there's this whole crew of people who have been urging the media. We're not hard enough on Trump. The reason Trump got reelected was the media didn't do its job. They didn't tell people that, you know, Trump's a bad guy and he's a fascist and he's an authoritarian. And I was like, when did you wake up from the coma? Yeah. And are you getting the physical therapy you need? to get back to hell because it's all we did during the first Trump presidency.

And it didn't work. But these people are stuck in like 2000. They were to call them about this like a month or so ago. And the people on the right who do this are stuck in the same time warp. Because I do think that in like 2004, you know, the media was good for like two points in an average, for the Democrat, an average election. It wasn't going to keep a Democrat for me. people who were really unhappy, but it did on the margin make a difference because stories that

hurt Democrats, it's not they never got run, it's that they had, they'd declare a higher bar and news that hurt Republicans had to clear a lower bar, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I like it, you know, everyone knows the song I'm about, I'm about to sing, so we'll just assume I sang it. But they're both stuck in this idea that somehow like it's the media, it's not the media anymore. Like, we still have really important functions, getting information out there, telling our readers how to think about stuff. But we do not in the way that we did for about 50 years, 60 years after World War II, there is no like establishment media consensus that is driving what people know and how they feel about it.

What is driving what people know and how they feel about it is, first of all, like, oh, just a wild assortment of podcasts and TikTokers and so forth as well as the mainstream media. and a bunch of new conservative sites, a bunch of new liberal sites. But it's also, as you say, it's the facts on the ground, right? People are going to notice that diesel is expensive. You can't stop them from noticing that.

And you can't complain that they only noticed because the media told them. If you have to buy diesel, you notice when you pull out your wallet. And if you don't have to buy diesel, that's probably not determining your vote anyway. And that's just true on a zillion things. interest rates are high. Inflation is still above its target. You know, like job growth is was,

has actually been okay in recent reports, but has been somewhat anemic. Like, that's the stuff people care about. They're not like caring because Jamel Bowie at the New York Times said something mean about Donald Trump. And that, that is why his approval ratings are in the seller. No. Yeah, I want to, I want to end by pointing to a terrific article in the last. Washington Post by Scott Nover, who covers the media for the post. And it gives, I think, a real insight into sort of how this game is typically played between the White House and the White House press corps, but in particular this White House and the White House press core. And it's such an unbelievable example of bad faith that it's worth a moment on it.

The White House banned Politico, along with CNN and MS now, and in a letter to Politico, the White House walked through the reasons that it was banning Politico. And one of the reasons it said was it used anonymous sources and was, quote, trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and publishing sensitive or classified information, unquote. And the White House provided to Politico three examples of this. One of the examples that the White House provided to Politico for banning Politico from covering the White House was, an article in which Politico quoted an anonymous source who the White House provided to Politico for background for the story. And the anonymous source, it turns out, was the vice president of

the United States. This happens on a regular basis when I used to cover the White House more regularly. I mean, in fairness, unreliable source. I mean, fair. Like, that would be the best argument for it, right? So this happens. When I covered the White House more closely under the Bush administration, to a certain extent, the Obama administration, White House press, certainly the White House press corps and then other people beyond the White House press corps are invited to participate in these calls. They're conference calls. You come on. You agree in advance that you will use the information, but either you won't quote the person or you'll quote the person only as a senior administration official. But you're listening to the person you know exactly who the person is. And sometimes the person, you know, in the course of talking through whatever the issue is of the day, will identify him or herself, you know, and say, well, I was talking to the president the other day in my West Wing office, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They do this all the time to provide reporters with some understanding of what's happening behind the scenes. It's one of the ways that reporters can write about what's happening, sort of what the thinking of the White House is, why they're reaching certain decisions, explaining what they hope to get from certain decisions, is this reliance. on these background sources. Well, in this case, it was the vice president of the United States who was provided to the White House press corps to do this background briefing on on these information about the likelihood of getting an Iran deal. And so the political story quoted as a senior administration official, somebody who said that their likelihood of a deal, an early deal, I think this was the memorandum of understanding, were between 80 and 85, percent in the White House in its letter this past week condemning Politico for having done this

wrote publication of sensitive security information and misinformation about national security information deferts White House resources and those of the national security team in particular, literally Politico quoting the vice president of the United States provided by the White House. Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join, and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month for free. Speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to

give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. I want to move on to our third topic and get your sense on whether or how much this one matters. We had something this week that we really don't see, or at least not to this degree. I would say we're seeing it more in recent weeks and months, as we've noted on this podcast, as the dispatch noted in its editorial a couple weeks ago, of Republicans defying the president and sort of doing so out loud. But this week we saw something even more striking. Senator John Curtis from Utah wrote a letter, a public letter, to Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

calling for an investigation of Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, because Donald Trump Jr., had parts of his wedding or the post-wedding celebrations paid for by a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. The Donald Trump Jr. and his wife have admitted that they did this. There was a pretty fantastic reporting by ProPublica detailing the relationship with this Russian oligarch. He funded to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, these lavish parties on this private island after their wedding. And this is somebody who's gone on delegations

with Vladimir Putin close to the Kremlin. John Curtis, Republican Senator from Utah, wrote a letter and to both Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin saying that the government should investigate this relationship between Donald Trump Jr. and this Russian oligarch. He first pointed to Hunter Biden and pointed out the corruption of Hunter Biden trading on his father's name, said, in effect, Republicans were right to be concerned about that. Then he writes, more recently, questions have arisen about the relationship. of President Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with foreign business figures and the acceptance of significant gifts, he talks about the wedding party. These concerns are compounded by Donald Trump Jr.'s active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, his continued pursuit of international real estate deals involving direct meetings with foreign heads of state and his reported investments in defense contracting. This pattern extends to his significant financial and advisory ties to prediction market platforms that depend on favorable federal regulatory decisions being considered by the Commodities Future

Trading Commission. Goes on and says that this is legitimate, that there should be an investigation, any rights in closing. The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president, nor should congressional oversight begin and end when control of the White House changes hands. Very aggressive letter, something we are not accustomed to seeing from Republican elected officials in Washington. Megan, as I pointed out, we have seen more Republicans willing to stand up to the president, willing to challenge him, mostly in an electoral context. He's polling poorly. Some of them are running for re-election. But this goes, it seems to be quite a bit further. Is this an indication of things to come?

How much does this matter, does this letter, does what John, Curtis did here really matter. I think it matters because it's correct and it's the decent, courageous thing to do. I hope it's a sign the nature is healing. I am reluctant to predict that it is because, you know, how many times have we all been through it watching Republicans try to stand up and then Trump growls at them and they fall back in line. But, I mean, I think the signs are in some ways more propitious for it. His polls are in the basement, as I said. He is, like, after midterms, he's going to be a lame duck. He's already in some way a lame duck. And he doesn't have a lot of leverage because, again, his polls are bad. And one thing that I wonder

about Trump is, like, to what extent the Republican base has had kind of a bandwagon effect, right? obviously to some extent, to how great an extent. When Trump looks like a loser, do you become less afraid that he's going to come into the primaries and hurt you with your voters? Does his base start saying, oh, yeah, he's a loser. And it's not just like the polls are bad, whatever, the Iran War, which is obviously not going well,

and anyone with a brain can see it's not going well, and all of the pocketbook stuff. as the gilding comes off, the error of invincibility comes off. You know, Timur Karan, who wrote a great book called Public Lies, Private Truths, which I recommend to everyone. I just reread it recently, and it was like every page I was highlighting, because it's just so full of insight. One of his big insights, right, is that when you have people falsifying their preferences,

as I think we can all assert pretty safely, a lot of people in Republican politics are. They hate him. They talk about him in private in a way they would not dare do in public. That you can get what are known as these preference cascades, where once one person does it and gets away with it, other people suddenly understand there are other people who want to do this, who feel the same way, that it's possible to do, and you can get a very rapid progression of events. And so if this gives, if this puts a little spine in some other Republicans, then I think it could be very significant beyond the mere fact of like having done the right thing and displayed courage for which I applaud him.

Yeah, Jonah, I want to spend some time going even deeper on this next week. But to Megan's point, you're seeing, you know, John Curtis did what he did. I agree with her. I think it was tremendously courageous. just the fact that he detailed this alleged corruption that needs to be investigated and didn't just do the sort of hand wave. Hey, there might be some corruption. Can we look into it?

Even that I would have been happy with. But he was very specific about the various ways in which Donald Trump Jr.'s activities reek of corruption. John Curtis did this. You've seen congressional candidates, Senate candidates, Mike Rogers, Senate candidate, in Michigan this week, say, the war in Iran needs to end. You've seen other Republicans do this.

You've seen other Republicans start to articulate in public the views on tariffs that they've articulated to us in private over these many months. Is he stepping forward in a way that could invite others to really do this in a substantive way? I don't think we're going to see a lot more of this from senators until after the midterms. but then you could see a lot more of it after it's funny so i um i had to do npr very early in the morning earlier this week and they sent me the in advance the pbs merrist poll which is a good poll right serious poll um they sent me the embargoed version like wednesday night to talk about first thing in like 6 a.m the next morning and uh the i'm not a huge poll studier but i kind of got obsessed about this one data finding, it found that Trump's overall disapproval, so somewhat disapprove plus

strongly disapprove, was 59%. What do you think the breakdown was between disapprove and strongly disapprove was? So it was 6% disapprove, 53% strongly disapprove. And, And I spent a while trying to figure out, I will admit, I talked to chat GPT about this to find me polls, right? This was a good use case for chat GPT. It was like, how unprecedented is this, you know, to have this kind of intensification? For conversational purposes, this is fine. You couldn't really do it methodologically because different polls, slightly different questions and all that kind of stuff. But the gist is that the total disapproval number is not unprecedented.

It's unprecedented for Trump. It's the highest number that he's ever had. And it's competitive with the highest numbers of anybody. But the ratio of like literally 89% of your disapprovers are strong disapprovers. That is essentially unprecedented. And I think you can find similar trends on the approved side, right? Basically, it's like, you know, you put Trump's presidency in a centrifuge and you spun it. And most Americans, not only, there are very few mixed feelings about Trump anymore.

Either you still absolutely love them or you really, really don't like them. But the space for the, I like some things, I don't like other things, that's being cleared out. And I think in that environment, it makes it a lot easier for a lot of politicians to make some, you know, decisions because everyone needs to sort of choose a side. And so you can see a lot of these signs. I mean, I thought the, I didn't see a rep. I haven't seen a politician get more free media from something the way Salazar got, the Florida Congresswoman who ran this ad criticizing Trump for his immigration policies. Like every network has replayed that.

It was like all over the Sunday shows when Trump loses in polling for immigration and the economy. Like there's just, there's no reason. to put your neck out. So like Byron Donald's, Steve, you went and did that Florida piece about all these candidates, whatever. Every single one of the Republican primary candidates had just Trump, Trump, Trump on their websites. Byron Donald's who's running for governor has scrubbed all the images of Trump off of his

website, right? Amazing. And I just don't think you go back to that after a drubbing in the midterms. And so I do think there's going to be a start over. A lot is going to depend on how aggressively. I don't think anybody disagrees. Democrats have to look at like impeachment stuff for their own internal reasons. I'm not talking about all the merits, although I have no problem with the merits.

That's where the animal spirits are. So there's going to be a lot of oversight that's going to have a vibe of building towards an impeachment thing one way or the other. And how they handle that, I think, will determine what the new middle ground position is for people like Curtis and other Republicans. And we just don't, we just don't know yet. I think one of the things that's interesting, and I don't know if this was in that PBS, Maris poll, Jonah, but one of the interesting things about the Trump presidency's both is, you're right. The strong approve was high. The strong disapprove was high. And that's really been the case for the better part of six years. I think one of the things that's changing and one of the things that opens up this ground for people like John Curtis to do what he's doing for Byron Donald's to do what he's doing is that the strong. approved number is ticking down. In some cases, I think in some polls plummeting. There was an echelon poll this week, and I don't have it handy,

but we'll find it and put it in the show notes along with Megan's column that she mentioned that found that strong approved number is diminishing and diminishing in a pretty significant way. It's interesting. I mean, Megan's better to talk about this than I am. But if you were going to think of an issue set that was more designed to whittle down, not the strong

but whittle down his strong approved number, right? His voters are concentrated, the hardcore MAGA people are concentrated disproportionately in red states, obviously, rural agricultural manufacturing red states. And the southern farm belt, Sunbelt, you know, the upper Midwest, and I don't know, $6.50 cent diesel, that'll do it, right? Yeah. Also like disproportionately the super MAGA people, I think they misread. I think their arguments are bad, but doesn't matter for their emotional attachments.

They put a lot of emphasis in the no more foreign war stuff or no more endless war stuff. And so the Iran thing rankles them disproportionately. They're also the crowd that is more likely to listen to the Tucker Carlson's and all that. So like, just like between the economy, what's happening and the rhetoric out there, you can see why he's starting to peel off the people who stuck with him for so, so long. And I agree with you guys. he'll be less powerful, but his frustration about not having sway the way he once did could cause him to do some things that are not optimal. Indeed. I mean, frankly, Tuesday can cause him to do things that are not optimal. So it's hard to disagree with that. But I also, as I said before,

I worry about where this goes as things start falling apart. Well, our Mike Warren had a issue of his newsletter Next Right that we published. Again, we'll put that in the show notes as well. He spoke to state-level legislators in a number of different states across the country, but concentrated in the Midwest, who found that their legislators, assembling and state senators are polling well ahead of Donald Trump and looking to survive despite the fact that his approval numbers are so low. Finally, before we go, I wanted to talk to you about The Last Ditch Bar. The story that went quite viral this week, first, I guess, reported or discussed by dispatch contributor Jesse Single on his blocked and reported podcast and later written up in the Boston Globe magazine. And it involves an establishment called The Last Ditch Bar. Last Ditch Bar, last ditch bar, last ditch bar,

and arts venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, which announced to its patrons that they were going to be lifting a requirement that all patrons at all times wear well-fitting KN-95 masks or better in order to come to this establishment. I did not know any such establishment. in the entire country still existed that required masking at this level. I certainly didn't know that it required K-955 yet. What the bar proposed to do because it was not doing well, it was hoping to attract new patrons, was that on Saturday nights,

it was going to allow people to come in without masks. And the way that it announced this was on an Instagram post that read, It is with love, we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas. We will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional. The reaction to this from some of the patrons, a good collection of the patrons and beyond, has been, I would say, rather extraordinary with accusations that the owners of the establishment are trying to kill people by not requiring full mask. at all times and that they're not intersectional enough.

Joni, you read the story in the Boston Globe. What was your reaction? I've mixed views about the whole, first of all, kudos of the Boston Globe for doing it. Kudos for them to do it deadpan, right? Just as a journalistic thing to just let people tell their thing without getting in any sort of side comments about late capitalism or whatever, I think was very smart, very good. They're going to get a lot of grief for it, but they're also getting a lot of

subscriptions and I salute them for it. I think that's great. On the one hand, I have to say it is obvious to me that some of these people have legitimate mental health issues and that the neuroticism of the social media age and a lot of the gender ideology stuff has not been good for a lot of people. I do just want to say that. That said, I kind of like that these places exist. I just had both Megan and I conveniently on the same day release podcasts with Stephanie Slade talking about fusionism.

And when I had Stephanie on my podcast, one of the places where Stephanie and I got it a little bit of a friendly disagreement, I should say, is I think people forget that liberalism has to include room for sort of cultural pluralism in the sense that you need weird places that have weird things, right, and that go different ways. And so I kind of like that this place existed. I don't think I would like any of these people that much. I don't think I'd like to go there except for the sort of drive-through safari aspect of it. But I would rather that these places exist.

I'd rather, you know, I gather this town as like the. the artsy lesbian capital of New England at least. And I think it's great that such a thing exists. And, um, but like my favorite line from this thing was about was from noir, who is a black drag queen professional pain in the ass to everybody. That's the vibe that you get from noir. Noir who harassed this bar. was one of the leaders of the thing.

When talking about how the owner was very upset and crying, it says, noir spends the hours after the meeting posting furious Instagram stories about Matilian, who's the last owner of this lesbian bar still working there, and who's losing money and going into debt. One of the co-founders of the bar has gone off to Clown College. Anyway, about Matilian and the last ditch, who, and Matillion uses the pronouns, she, they, the Boston Globe tells us.

Noor says that Matillion had been shedding white they, them tears, he writes. The bar was not a safe environment and not interested in revolutionary praxis. Now, yeah, it was a bar. It's like the job of the bar was to sell drinks to. to lesbians and their friends. You are not understanding what this place was, John. If you say it's just a bar. And so anyway, I do think these people have some serious mental health issues,

but if they get help, like, I want more weird places in the country. And so I was kind of glad to hear about this place. And even though it made me uncomfortable in parts. So, Megan, they made this announcement that they were, again, the announcement, the initial announcement was that they were going to go masked optional on Saturday. night, just this one one night. And among the responses that they got, just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with. One commenter wrote, people like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience. And then a third commenter.

I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists. It should be said that the woman that Jonah mentioned said, who is the remaining owner, claims that she had been, I think, living in a car for a while. She's losing a ton of money. She's on the hook for a $50,000 loan that they made to make this thing happen. Actually, very sad story on just a human level. I mean, and like a really common story when opening a restaurant or a bar.

That is where it is likely to end up, guys, if you were ever thinking, I'd like to own, you don't want to own. I mean, this is the main reason. Right now, I should probably have my own burger restaurant or, as we've talked about forever, a grilled cheese food truck. But the main reason I do not and have gone into the lucrative profession of journalism is because I worry about crashing out if I were to start my own restaurant. But it got that kind of a reaction, just this announcement that they were going to go mask optional one night. So they posted a response on Instagram. They apologized. We're sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change, the norms in scheduling impacting the most intersectional of us.

We understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully. So they posted this apology. Look, we weren't sensitive enough. We're so sorry. And then they get responses to that apology, blasting them because the apology posted on Instagram was not accessible to the visually impaired. So one user wrote, this is not an accessible post. It indicates the lack of care or interest in disability intersectionality because they

didn't provide what is called an alt text for the visually impaired. The story just kind of spirals from there. Megan, your thoughts, do you, like Jonah, love that the country has places like this? And what did you make of this? I think for people who were not on the left, there was a kind of Shadenfreude to reading these stories five years ago because it felt like, and like a real fear that this week, the last ditches bar next week the New York Times right um that fear has passed and so yeah i love the weird spaces like joan and i grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of you know like the marxist bookstore and so forth that was like the holdouts from the 60s and 70s and they were delightful with the health food store

and like i'm i'm happy to have those places exist i am sad that this particular community is destroying a place they want to exist, that the norms of this community are such, that it is not possible to operate to serve this community because it's this constant escalation, as we saw in Woke 1, which was indeed crazy, that it was just a purity spiral. It didn't matter what you did, it was never enough.

And I was thinking about the fact that, like, during the Great Awakening, during that like 2014 to 2024, 2025. I would say 2024 was when it was really tailing off. There are a lot of companies that went into politics as a way of getting customers and upping their brand. And this can work for a lot of niches, right? You're doing the vegan bookstore. You're doing the like your politics, your busboys and poets with your civil rights.

library next to your coffee shop, right? This is a copy chain, for those who don't know, in D.C. does very well, multiple locations, and people really like it. And it's like a left-wing bookstore and a pretty good restaurant and coffee shop. Try the falafel if you go. But this is a community that you cannot profitably serve. Because here's the thing, like I was, of course, like the nerd I am, thinking about the business stuff underneath all this, right? The way of makes money is by selling you liquor. That is what a bar does. It sells you liquor. That is the most high margin thing they sell. As you drink more of it, you become more profligate in your purchases. So it's a nice little self-lubricating cycle. People in KN95 masks are not consuming a lot

of liquor. Even if they're pulling it down to drink, which kind of obviates the point. They don't drink that much. They're not ordering that much. They're not ordering food either. They're basically sucking up square footage without paying for anything. There's also, you know, in the article and in Katie Herzog's excellent reporting for Blockton reported that, you know, they had a cover, but they didn't want to be exclusive, so they made it optional. And so more and more people stopped paying the cover charge. And like the economics of trying to do this particular brand of leftist politics as opposed to like, Here is your $18 lamb shakshusha for breakfast, and then here's the $40 hardcover book you could buy in the bookstore.

That is definitely a vibrant market, especially in Washington, D.C. But the market of people who don't think that anyone should have to pay for something unless they're rich, and who don't want to drink or eat in your drinking and eating establishment, that's on a market. And that does make me sad. What I was thinking about it was like, how could you save this? And the answer is you can't. I don't, there's no way this bar is going to survive as far as I can tell. What you could do is try to organize a space where like it's supported by donations and it's a charity.

But they didn't do that. They wanted to organize a space that has like high needs for the liquor bill and the taxes and the insurance and the rent. And then no one was paying for it. And then they yelled at the people. who are trying to make it pay. And this is like, that community is going to have to figure some stuff out if it does want spaces where people can go. Because the thing that they want is like an imaginary space where it's just free and

it's provided by the angels. And you can just go do whatever you want and not have to think about the economics of it. And like, another way of putting that is that the internal status economy to this highly progressive community destroyed the actual, like, economics of a business they wanted to exist. So one of the things I kind of love about it, if one of the founders of this bar and I were stuck on a plane together or we met at an airport bar or somehow I found myself in conversation with them, you could hear that, I can imagine them saying, you know, the only reason why this

bar didn't work is because of capitalism. and me saying, correct. Like capitalism doesn't let you run special needs bars at a loss indefinitely. And if you think that's unfair about capitalism, I'm all ears about what the system you think will provide that. But for our purposes, it's true. And there is this palpable sense from people. I mean, like, you see this on social media all the time. There are people who say, I hate capitalism because, you know, it requires us to work.

And you're like, well, yeah, but so does life, right? I mean, like, and there is this thing running through this of these are the people who think this system is unfair. And if you set your expectations the way these people do that every social media post, including one about a K-95 mask optional night a week, like the other six nights a week, you have to wear your mask at this bar. But to have one mask optional night is essentially genocide. These people are going to live an entire life of unfulfilled expectations. and it's nobody else's fault because life cannot meet your expectations if those are your expectations.

And so there's a melancholyness to it that I think is kind of sad because they just have these people, they don't deserve to have miserable lives. They're choosing to in some ways. And I think it's sad. A purity spiral indeed. I like that phrase, Megan. I did not originate it. I should be clear. I have stolen it from others. I like it anyway. It's apt, I think, in this context. Thank you for indulging me in this what really matters conversation. We got through a lot of material, not an efficient amount of time. See you next time. Finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always,

if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even emails, from reporters who have been banned from the White House. That's good to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in, and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible.

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