The Dispatch Podcast - Sad and Predictable

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Join Sarah, Jonah, and Kevin as they welcome David Drucker in his debut DisPod appearance. The crew looks into the Tyre Nichols tragedy and the root causes of bad policing. They give a nod to the dog and pony show of House committee assignments and conclude with a fiery debate about Nikki Haley's presidential dreams and whether Trump admin veterans deserve the mark of Cain. Finally, Sarah highlights a few mysteries overtaking the Dallas Zoo in a Worth Your Time segment. Show Notes: Will Hurd:  "One thing I'd love this Black History Month..." The Dispatch: The Race to Racism The Dispatch: Nikki Haley's Campaign-In-Waiting Starts Its Engines Dallas Zoo monkeys found Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, and the podcast debut of David Drucker, who has joined the dispatch. And we're just so thrilled to have him on our political team. David, welcome. We have plenty to talk about today. We will start with Memphis, but we will also talk about happenings on the Hill, some 2024 news. Who knows? Who knows where we'll get to?

Let's dive right in. I really just want to call you new David for the rest of the podcast. But we're actually going to start with Jonah. Jonah, you wrote about the protests that are happening, Memphis, race related to police, I thought it was a great column, even though I didn't agree with all of it. And I'm wondering if you could sum up

where you think the protesters are wrong, I guess? Sure. I mean, it depends which protesters we're talking about, right? You know, I have no problem, I have no objection with people who are horrified by what happened to Tyree Nichols. Because what happened to Tyree Nichols is horrifying.

Um, even though I think, you know, I suspect that this is all going to become more complicated down the road when, when these things go to trial. Um, but that's a conversation we can get to for another time. Um, my objection with, uh, the sort of the way this stuff is framed is, um, there are an enormous number of people who should know better, who just simply say policing is racist. like no qualifiers, no adjectives, no adverbs, just sort of policing, qua policing, the institution of policing is racist. And there are even people, these are prominent people, people like Taunisi Coates, James Clyburn, who's the number three guy in the House Democrats,

said this a while back. There's this whole theory, the sort of almost urban, it's not quite an urban myth, but there's this theory that slaving, that policing in America is, descended directly and immutably from the practice of slave patrolling, from fugitive slave patrolling.

You had a writer for a contributor writer for the Atlantic say the other day that that policing is a product of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. And so my problem with this stuff is that it's very stupid. And it's just factually wrong. I keep trying to figure out what the earliest police forces are and the earliest police forces are lost to history

because policing is basically what states do. I know we have an anarcho, sometime anarcho capitalists and Kevin Williamson here, so maybe you can push back on this for me. But the ancient Egyptians had police, the Babylonians had police, the oldest still operating police force in Europe is from 1275 or something like that.

Were the oldest police force in the United States is the Philadelphia Police Department, which was started up in 1751. Were they all inspired by the future of slavery? Act, which happened, you know, sometimes centuries or millennia later. And similarly, we talk about America as if it is... You know, Jonah, if you're trying to defend police from the accusation of racism, maybe Frank Rizzo's old organization isn't the first one to go to.

I am not trying to defend it from that. I'm perfectly finally believing that there are institutions that are, that are, the police environments that are racist or have a racism problem. But point taken, my point is simply. that there are other things going on, right? Human beings, particularly men, have been known when they form up in numbers to do bad things when their blood is up.

Sometimes those men are in criminal gangs, and sometimes those men are in police uniforms. And what we get after each one of these kinds of incidents is everyone starts with the conclusion and then just take sticky notes of random things and attaches it to make the argument. American policing was not created because of racism

and catching fugitive slaves. Policing in and of itself is not racist. If it were racist, you'd have to explain why every country literally in the world has police departments. And the reason why this is bad is that if you think you have the answer

and the explanation for a very serious social problem and you're wrong, you're not actually going to do much to fix the problem. So, Kevin, before I come to you, I want to run through some of the stats that Jonah included because I thought they were interesting.

In the last 12 months, about 1,100 people were shot and killed by police. Going by data since 2015, the killed are overwhelmingly male, 96%, armed, 83%, and under the age of 44, 73%. They are not overwhelmingly black, but they are disproportionately black. 27% of those killed were black, while the U.S. population is 14% black. 51% of those shot were white, while the U.S. population is 57% non-Hispanic white. One in five victims had confirmed mental health issues, and overall, the U.S. ranks 33 in the world for police confirmed killings. though as Jonah points out

this assumes country like China, Russia, India, Mexico, North Korea, collect, and report accurate statistics, which let's just assume not so much. You know, part of the problem with taking a single incident and having nationwide protests is that it doesn't

tell you whether there's a systemic problem. At the same time, it does feel like there's a systemic problem, doesn't it, Kevin? Yeah, I think complaints about policing are, in many cases, well-founded. The racial aspect of these complaints is often exaggerated, but that doesn't mean that there's not some underlying issue there.

You know, there have been a lot of, to speak to Jonas earlier, a point, there have been a lot of different kinds of police organizations over the years. You know, the first of all modern police department was the Metropolitan Police in London, and founded by Peel back in the 19th century. So, you know, kind of police departments, as we know them, city police departments are relatively modern inventions. But if you look at the way police have operated in the past, or police-like organizations have operated in the past,

for a time that the mafia essentially were the police in parts of Sicily, or at least what, you know, what ended up becoming the organization, we know as the mafia. And they were kind of... In Philadelphia. To bring it back to... Well, this is way back. I'm talking kind of late Middle Ages.

They were kind of a sort of a Muthwaween kind of organization. They were, you know, public defenders of public morality and that sort of thing. But what we really know is, as modern police departments are relatively new inventions. And they have a lot of the character that you see of other kinds of similar public bureaucracies. Police departments in the United States, like most public sector agencies in the United States, aren't especially good. Public sector stuff isn't just one of the things we're really good at in the United States compared to a lot of other countries. We have generally poor public sector services from Department of Motor Vehicles to the police, to the IRS, to everybody else. When you have failing institutions like that, they tend to impose higher and more severe costs on people who are poor, people who are socially marginalized in other kinds of ways.

So one expects to see the bad consequences of bad policing felt more intensely in certain communities, including, including particularly poor, high-crime, urban African-American communities. So the sense that there is a kind of widespread failure there and the pain of this failure is born disproportionately by not by people who are African-American, which is not the same thing as saying African-Americans at large, right? because when you talk about black Americans in crime, you're still talking about a tiny, tiny share of the population.

We go through all this kind of funny stuff with race and criminal statistics, and you can look and say, yeah, the homicide arrest rate for black Americans is five times whatever it is for white Americans, but that ends up being five out of 100,000 instead of one out of 100,000. You know, you're talking about a disproportionate share, but a very small number. So there are particular communities, in particular cities, especially, that have, you know, great intense, comprehensive public sector failures, like St. Louis is one, Baltimore is one. Memphis is not, you know, famously a well-governed city.

It's not famously a city with effective public institutions, that sort of things. It's no surprise that the police department is similarly troubled. Like a lot of police departments, they've had trouble recruiting people over the last couple of years, especially since the George Floyd stuff. I hate to sound flipping about that, but American police departments just typically don't attract the very best people. The cops who were involved in the beating of Tybee Nichols, all with exception of one,

had some pretty serious write-ups and disciplinary measures on their histories and whatnot, including one who turned in a patrol car with a revolver in the backseat because he hadn't bothered to search the guy who came in. Another one was caught up been a situation when he was a prison guard on which someone was beaten very, very severely in his cell. And he says he didn't do anything wrong, but the department issued an apology to the

person who was beaten, although his lawsuit was thrown out. So there's some red flags in the situation before you even get to where it is. And that's almost always the case, right? I mean, these situations don't come out of nowhere. They're not unpredictable. And I'll say one final thing about communities that are particularly impacted. And this sort of gets to do to the, is it a bad apples issue or is it systemic? Let's presume, for the sake of argument, that it's not systemic.

Let's just presume for the sake of argument that it's a bad apples issue, but that there is national scrutiny on the bad apples. And it creates its own problem. Right after the George Floyd incident, the murder of George Floyd, for various reasons I was interviewing Senator Marco Rubio and it was at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests

and I was asking him a question about Black Lives Matter and whether he agreed with it or not and he said he didn't know you know he said the organization Black Lives Matter is one thing the slogan may be another thing but what he did say to me is even if you assume that there is nothing wrong with our policing and that the problem is crime

and, of course, as a Republican, he is generally a law and order kind of Republican, generally speaking. He said, however, if a significant portion of Americans believe that the policing tactics and police forces are racist or treat them unfairly, if that's what they believe, because that is their experience, even if it's not technically true, it's a problem that society needs to address. And I thought that was a very interesting statement. Can I respond to one little thing real quick? I think that the problem is a lot worse than bureaucracy's failing to do a job that is hard. And I think that we go wrong if we look at it that way. You know, every big city police department in this country either currently is or it has been at some point in living memory, a host organism for some organized crime outfit. You know, in Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, you have the sheriff's gangs.

In LAPD, you had ramparts, which wasn't just corrupt cops. They were robbing banks and stuff. In NYPD, you had detectives who were acting as assassins for the Gambino and Lucasey Crime Syndicates in Philadelphia. It was racketeering. There is something about these organizations that lend themselves to that kind of exploitation and that attract sort of people who are going to engage in it. I think we have to look at police departments from that point of view as being a kind of

obviously necessary organization but a necessary organization that brings with certain kinds of predictable problems. These things are not surprises they shouldn't be at least at this point. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I don't dispute that at all.

At the same time, David touched on something that I think is sort of worth pointing out that a lot of people are afraid to point out because it sounds like blaming the victim. And I'm not saying, I don't think there's a lot of victim blaming that you can do with Tyree Nichols.

If you talk to cops about what happened, you know, they're appalled with the bad procedure, right? I mean, like, it should not take five big guys to restrain a 145-pound guy, even if you have, even if all sorts of chokeholds or whatever are outlawed, that should not be hard. And the problem is they gave them all these different orders, and then they pepper spray him in the face. And so he puts his hands up to his face and they said, we told you to put your hands back into your back. Well, it's like a reflexive thing. It's very hard not to put your hands to your face when someone's, punching you in the face or pepper spraying you.

And so I'm not trying to do a victim-blaming thing with him, but in a society or in a segment of society that has high levels of crime, cops put up with an enormous amount of stuff all the time that makes for very boring body cam footage. Every cop that you see walk up and ask for a driver's license with his hand on his gun saying, let me see your hands and all that kind of stuff. the adrenaline is pumping through them in all of those instances where nothing happens. And that's a very high stress kind of environment.

And if you don't have the right training, it's very easy to see why even some well-trained cops pop off irresponsibly and unforgivably when they do meet resistance, when they do find someone who is not complying. And I think that that's the argument for more and better training. But it's also an argument for recognizing that not every person that cops encounter that gets unlawfully and inexcusably brutalized doesn't contribute to that environment, doesn't contribute to the stress of the situation in some way. and like the only piece of advice

that I think you can really get out of this other than prosecute cops and train them better and all that kind of thing is don't run from cops I once ran from a cop when I was 17 years old, 16 years old

and the cop grabbed me the room against the wall and gave me a lecture he was saying never run from cops we hate running and if we have to run you're lucky

I'm not going to beat you here and it was just a straightforward let me give you the facts of life we can forgive a lot if you don't make our lives more difficult. And I'm not saying I like that attitude. I'm not saying that's a good attitude, but I think it's a fact of life.

And parents who tell their teenage kids, white or black, don't give trouble to the cops, blah, blah, blah, for your own good, even if it's unfair, it's good advice. What kind of training do they really need, though? I mean, it's like a 30-second seminar that says don't beat to death on armed people.

Yeah, I agree. I think the problem with the, like, more training aspect here. It's like more, how does more training fix some of this? But let me push back on that too. There's a little post-it note on the board every morning. Remember, don't beat anyone to death today if you don't have to. I want to push back on that too, though. First of all, one kind of training is like, is what, conflict, de-escalation stuff, which I think is good.

But second of all, training has worked. The death rate of the homicide rate for African-Americans killed by cops has plummeted. in the last 50 years because society says this is intolerable. And instead of saying there's still more work to be done but we're making progress, we get arguments from a lot of people saying

that this is an intractable, unreformable, unfixable, unfexable, permanent problem and that it's so permanent and so bad that we can't emphasize reform anymore, we have to get rid of policing entirely, which is crazy talk. I just want to end on the political,

element of this, and I mean the right versus left, Democrats versus Republicans, not all Democrats, not all Republicans. But I think if I asked most people on the right, whether there is a systemic problem in higher education when it comes to wokeism, free speech, however I'd want to define it, I think they would say yes. And if I asked for evidence of that systemic problem, you know, they would be pointing out individual issues. But if I did that for the police, a lot of those same people on the right would say, no. And I'd say, well, but there's all these different examples.

Tyree Nichols, George Floyd. Why do you think that's not evidence of a systemic problem? And they would say those are individual incidents. Those are bad apples. And I think you could do the same thing on the left, by the way. Just, I mean, reverse them, right? And I find that interesting and sad as a political reality. But I wanted to point out something that Will Hurd.

That's why we have this podcast. It's to point out the interesting and sad about politics. That's so true. Although I think that particular aspect is boring and sad. Because it's just so predictable. Will Hurd, friend of the pod, long time personal. friend of mine put this on Instagram. One thing

I'd love this Black History Month is not to have to decide whether to watch the newest video of a black person being murdered in police custody. I shouldn't have to look at the swift accountability leveled against the Memphis Police over Tyree Nichols' murder as a silver lining to make it hurt one degree less.

I'm just tired of this being one of the things America is known for. I appreciated his statement because it gets to the exhaustion aspect of this. And it's hard, you know, we can talk about more training is good, more training isn't fast enough, or this is systemic, this isn't systemic. Police jobs are hard. But this is exhausting. And I just appreciated Will Hurd posting that and wanted to share it with our listeners because I think he's an important voice on the right for this stuff. And I think it's important for people on the

right who feel exhausted, who don't have all the answers right now just to say something rather than let the loudest voices on the right who tell us that there is no problem in the police side, but there's a huge problem in the higher education side, maybe take a step back. 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.

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I want to totally switch gears here except for the fact that it's going to be a political tit for tat and talk about House committee assignments. What could be sexier on this Thursday morning? The House is set to vote on whether to remove Democratic member Elon Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That has to go to a vote. My understanding is that removing congressmen Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from House Intelligence didn't need a vote because that's a select committee. That's already been, they've already been officially denied seats on those. This is, of course, exactly what McCarthy vowed he would do. He said that if Democrats removed Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar from committees that, you know, what's good for the goose

is going to be good for the gander, and here we are, and it's the gander's turn, can you tell us where things stand. That vote is going to happen today for Omar, probably while we are taping this. And is this now going to be our new reality that we just remove sort of the most egregious members from the other side for funzies? And I'll point out, by the way,

the funny thing to me is that Marjorie Taylor Green goes on to raise $3 million in the quarter after she's removed from her House committee. And Adam Schiff, who was just removed from House Intelligence, the Permanent Select Committee, just was endorsed by Nancy Pelosi for Senate in California. So it seems like it's good business. It's the air of shameless politics.

I mean, you know, there's no better way to rise in your party than to have the right enemies. And when Marjorie Taylor Green was kicked off of committees by a vote of House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it just made her more of a rock star than she already was. voters these days, particularly small dollar donors who were really involved in at least observing and participating in politics, even if they're not really

party people. They just get really jazzed when somebody defies the so-called establishment and is hated by all the people they hate. And so that was really good for Marjorie Taylor Green. I suspect the same will, it will be the same for Congresswoman Ilhan Omar if she's booted from foreign relations and I'll get to that in a second here

she will raise boatloads of money she's in a safe Democratic district but now you'll really never beat her because she'll be a martyr and we're seeing the same with Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and you're right about this when you have a House select committee these are leadership

appointed meaning they can be leadership locked so there wasn't any vote there but in a standing committee it requires a vote of the House to remove somebody. Republicans have a four-vote margin. So it's unclear if they're going to have the votes to get this done, because there are some Republicans that seem to be principled on the notion that people should not be removed from committees for saying ridiculous things, whether they're anti-Semitic, whether they're racist, or anything else. And so I think we need to be

clear about what this is about, it isn't necessarily about, I don't believe that you should be removed from a committee because I don't agree with you. I think there is a line at which anybody would probably be removed from a committee. I mean, I think if, you know, some member of Congress decided to put on jackboots and wave the swastika, I imagine they'd be voted off committees by just about everybody. abstaining. Yeah, so apparently, by the way, you can, yeah, you can go to events, as we look, you can go to events where these people are, but as long as you don't put on the uniform,

you're cool. So, yeah, so what we have here is, you know, especially in this era, and I think really with both parties, but we've seen this really with Republicans in a way that I don't recall 20, 30, 40 years ago, seeing it with them. if you've done us wrong, then we are going to get our revenge, because if we don't, our most committed voters are going to get really upset with us. We're not taking our revenge. And so after Marjorie Taylor Green was removed from committee, you know, Kevin McCarthy,

then the minority leader said, if you do this, we will do it to you. And Ilhan Omar has said some very anti-Semitic things. She claims not to have been aware of anti-Semitic tropes. Okay, fine. and so they're going to try and remove her but for some Republicans Ken Buck was one Nancy Mace is another Victoria Sparts was another

although I think she's now sensual vote to remove Ilhan Omar there is a concern that this just is unsirious and will lead for an endless never-ending tit-for-tat that is counterproductive so will McCarthy get the votes

I suspect in the end he probably got them if this is, you're listening to this after the vote. But, but it's unclear. But that is exactly what this is. It is simply revenge for Green. Had Green never been removed, nobody would have removed Ilhan Omar or tried to,

and that would have been that. But, okay, I just have a factual question here. On Elon Omar, there are plenty of statements we can point to where she has been condemned by her own colleagues on the Democratic side. for anti-Semitic tropes. And you're right, she said she doesn't know a lot about anti-Semitic tropes, which is maybe its own problem. She said she didn't know money.

You know, Jews liking money was an anti-Semitic trope, things like that. She thought the horse vessel song was an anthem for Norseki farmers in northern Minneapolis. The Martians know that. But, you know, okay, Marjorie Taylor Green apologized, too. It didn't make any difference. She was removed from her committees. That, at least, I see an equivalent to. What is the argument on Swalwell and Schiff?

The argument on Swalwell and Schiff is that they told them much of lies about the dreaded Russia hoax and therefore cannot be trusted with American secrets and cannot be trusted to... But also, Swalwell had an affair or something with supposedly a spy. I mean, I'm just saying what they're saying. By the way, it's created this issue now. I think, by the way, I think part of this is a little bit revenge in that McCarthy's Pittsburgh, for the January 6th committee were blocked by Nancy Pelosi, who then I only took, of course, Kinsinger and Cheney. So there's a revenge element there,

but I think that there's an argument to make that... The January 6th committee people being blocked looks a lot more like Swalwell and Schiff to me in the sense that it's not that you said something that was just so beyond the pale of acceptable discourse. It is a political thought, yet you're right. I mean, Swalwell has admitted to saying things that... sorry, Schiff has admitted to saying things that were untrue.

Swalwell, there's the Chinese spy thing, I guess. But at the end of the day, that feels just purely political and less, you know, Nazis and Jewish space lasers. Look, even if it's, even if there's a case to make, it's all purely political. Because members of the House of Representatives at the very least are a broad cross-section of America, believe it or not. So, like, if you're wondering about your government, like, blame yourselves.

There are hundreds of them. I mean, you're right, there are 435 of them. And then there's another 100 senator. So there are more than 400 of them, and lots of them say wacky stuff. Lots of them. They have all sorts of strange opinions. Now, they're not all, you know, racist, anti-Semitic opinions. But you'd be surprised what some of them say.

And if they really want to start policing who said what and who spun what and who lied at some time or another about some policy, there'd be nobody on committee. Jonah, it does seem interesting that Republicans remove Adam's shift from a committee for lying while George Santos is sitting there. Yeah, although George Santos has now recused himself, right? That word doesn't make any sense.

I know it doesn't. I'm just, I'm sorry, people can't hear me making air quotes around recused. I use my fingers. But, yeah, So I basically agree with you guys. Look, everybody, this is a non-zero-sum game for everybody. Everybody benefits from this except the people watching, right? So everyone raises more money.

Adam Schiff is in hog heaven having been kicked off. Elon Omar is very happy about being the center of attention. Kevin McCarthy is very happy to say that he's accomplished something when he goes on TV. and at the same time, I'm actually more okay with this than I normally would be because Congress is supposed to be kind of a zoo and like it's supposed to be like a political cauldron and because none of it really matters

except if you're someone who actually thinks they should be doing their jobs then let them actually think Congress is important and that committee assignments are important. I mean, maybe that's like a good lesson for these guys to learn since they forgot it. And other than that, it is, I just, anybody who says it is a, someone said recently that it is a crisis

for national security not to have Adam Schiff on this committee because he knows so much about intelligence or whatever. And it's like, oh, no, is Nancyville. It was like, It's America in danger not to have Adam Smith on it. I think Adam should have that actually. I'm sure he did.

I'm sure he's saying that right now. Printing that bumper stickers. It's just also pathetic. But I kind of like it for some reason. All right, Kevin. Last word to you on this. So my least favorite expression is this is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like, right?

So people in Minneapolis get to send a Jew-hating weirdo to Congress and a self-interested creton from California gets to say, no, you don't get to be on committees. That's fine. The alternative model is the one that I like to see, which is where institutions care about themselves and take some defensive measures on their own. I would love to see Marjorie Taylor Green denied committee assignments

by the Republican. I would love to see the Democrats come out and say, no, this lady is a crank, and we're not going to put her in any committees, and we're going to let her sit in the back and be a backbencher and give talks about how Jews love money and their first allegiance to Israel and all the rest of this stuff. But yeah, it's hard to work up too much

of a head of esteem about this. There's this, you know, kind of the tit-for-tat stuff and the procedural maximalism is a problem, you know, in writ large for Congress where now you have these kind of grandstanding confrontations on every procedural choke point, every, you know, minor parliamentary advantage gets blown up to its greatest possible interpretation.

The thing about this that I think is historically kind of interesting is that typically Democrats are the ones who make innovations on this front and then they get mad because Republicans are good at it or we'll do the same thing that they do. Like there was no complaints about gerrymandering for 100 years until Republicans got good at it until some Republican figured out how to use a computer and they figured out how to do this stuff. There was no complaints about the politicization of,

of the process of confirming Supreme Court justices until Mitch McConnell decided he was going to be, you know, a real SOB about it. And now the Democrats are sort of getting paid back with their own for what they did earlier. And it's hard to approve of that. Someone eventually has to be the grown-up in the room, but it's also hard to get to, you know,

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Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. All right, this almost belonged in the worth your time, but it's not. It has made it in, but boy, it felt like a close call. Nikki Haley is announcing for president on February 15th. This is not a, is Nikki Haley worth your time? I think she'll have a serious candidacy.

It's more like Nikki Haley's announcing for president. Is that worth your time? Because they're all going to announce for president. And we're going to pay more attention to the people who announce when there's fewer people who have announced type thing. Joan, I'm going to start with you. Nikki Haley. initially said in the summer of 2021

that if Donald Trump got in the race, she wouldn't run. Then she said, if Donald Trump got in the race, she would call him first and they'd work it out. She's been on sort of that line for a while. And she did, in fact, it sounds like, call Donald Trump. It seems like they did have a phone call. They did talk it out. And he gave his blessing, I suppose.

Nevertheless, on truth's social, his reaction was Nicky follow your heart not your honor attached to a video of her saying she wouldn't run

if he got in the race I don't even know Jonah what do you make of it so I should do a full disclosure my wife once worked for Nikki Haley

both at the UN and also on a couple of her books no longer does I won't let my wife speaker of mine about the rest of it I think we are shaping up

for another 2016. I mean, it feels more and more like it. You have all of these candidates not wanting to be the one to go after Donald Trump directly, wanting to be the one to sort of pick up the ball after Trump fades. I mean, we're literally seeing people say

these kinds of things and strategists talking this way. Larry Hogan said something like this recently. McKay Coppins has this piece in the Atlantic where he talks to Robbins, Portman bless his heart and Rob Hortman says look you know I feel like maybe I think what's probably going to happen is Donald Trump is going to realize that for the good of the country he would be and also for himself he would rather be an elder statesman in the party than actually president run again and so he'll he'll gracefully bow out or something for that effect and McKay

Coppins admits in the article that he burst into laughter when Portman had said this and then Portman says okay I guess maybe that's a little far-fetched huh and And so I'm having major 2016 flashbacks. I feel like Roy Scheider and Jaws, too, running around with an 8x10 fuzzy glossy saying, that's a shark and God damn it, I'm not going through that hell again. And so, again, like,

it's fine that Nikki's going to run. I think she'll do better than people think she's going to do. I wouldn't better to go on her to go all of the way. or at least not heavily but we have this I mean I feel like I should have I should have copyrighted the Belling the Cat problem talking point

because I've been using it for so frigging long which is like in game theory when you Belling the cat problem is when it is in the interest of every mouse to put a bell on the cat but it is not in the interest of any specific mouse to be the one to put the bell on the cat and right now we have have a problem where it is in the interest of everybody to see Trump have a bell put on

him, by which is being defanged, taken out, whatever. And instead, everyone wants to be follow Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio strategy from 2016 of being the one standing when somebody else takes Trump out. And I'm not saying Trump is going to be the nominee. I'm not saying Trump is going to be the next president or anything like that. I am saying that there's a remarkable lack of imagination among Republicans right now. And I think you can make the argument that Ron DeSantis is in fact helping Trump because he is sucking up all the money and attention

from any other Republican and serving as a blocking tackle and if you don't think Ron DeSantis is going to go all the way he's actually helping clear the field in some ways for Donald Trump instead. Rant over.

Okay, but a it's hard to argue with the atmospherics. You're exactly right. right in general, but you think back to 2008. There were plenty of other Democrats who ran in the 2008 Democratic primary. John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Jim Webb, yada, yada, but we don't ever think about them

because it became a two-man race immediately from January of 2007 when they all announced for some reason very, very early that year. It was always Obama, the upstart, the change, the different voice. versus Hillary Clinton, the juggernaut, and could he take her down? And that narrative was it, I mean, it was hard for Obama to seal the deal in the end, if you remember, but it was always miserable

for the Clinton campaign. And Donald Trump was absolutely much more like Obama in 2015, no record, could say whatever he wanted, all change, all hope, all different. This time he's looking a lot more like Hillary Clinton. And if DeSantis is more like the Obama figure, and maybe more to the point, if the race shapes up, more like the 2008 race, where it's this narrative about the juggernaut versus the upstart, maybe it's not 2015 all over again. Kevin, am I deluding myself?

Probably. In that case, by the way, it makes Haley, you know, Jim Webb, and it's sort of irrelevant. Hmm. Haley is Jim Webb. Yeah. I was just thinking, you know, the best part, the best thing that ever happened during Donald Trump's presidency is when they decided to put Jared Kushner in charge to come up with an immigration plan. And he came out with this idea for merit-based reform. And just seeing the name Jared Kushner juxtabosed with the words merit-based just was such a good laugh that it was almost worth all the rest of it. So, you know, Trump going on and giving Nikki Haley a lecture about honor has been so far the most entertaining

and amusing thing to happen in politics in at least the last couple of weeks. It's really hard for me to care what happens to Nikki Haley, honestly. She has been just so on both sides of everything and such an obvious opportunistic sycophant that I just think she's contemptible, I guess, maybe it would be the right word. So Kevin's still thinking about it.

He's still on the fence. Okay, here's the thing. So in any decent and sane world, no person who will be able to senior figure in the Trump administration would ever have another position in public trust, just ever. They'd never be elected to another office,

never be appointed anything. Probably shouldn't serve on corporate boards or other positions of public trust. There are a lot of lawyers that still need to lose their law licenses probably for things they did during the Trump administration. Hey, Kevin.

Hi. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. On a special paywalled episode of Dispatch which plus Kevin and Sarah have a further conversation. Yeah, so about that. But that's not what's going to happen, right?

There's going to be a lot of these people in the race. And the tragedy for me is there's a lot of things that I would like about Nikki Haley. I sort of on some of the policy stuff. I think she's actually pretty solid on some things. I like her instincts toward moderation, even if they are, you know, obviously self-serving and affected in some ways. But it's just, you know, even her, you know, efforts to try to make nice after criticizing Trump pretty harshly after the January 6th stuff,

I think it's been pretty gross. And it is difficult to care very much about that. That being said, I think you're probably right in some ways about there being a sort of two-person polarity to this because there's going to be not an anti-Trump candidate in the race, I think, because there's just not enough support for an anti-Trump person in the Republican Party to sustain a candidacy. But there will be a, you know, non-Trump or post-Trump candidate, someone who tries to run in that lane, as they like to say. And then there will be the Trump element, which will probably be Trump himself. And so that does make it look like it's probably a kind of DeSantis versus Trump race with everyone else trying to get a little piece of something. There's not going to be anyone to get

into the race, I think, who is as Trump-like as DeSantis is, at least on the, you know, cultural stuff and the style of politics and in speaking to those elements in some ways. And DeSantis is already taking my advice on whacking Trump around on being the guy who was too much of a wimp to deliver the win last time around. And I think that's

going to be a powerful line of argument and indictment for him. And also he's got the cooks on his side because Trump was associated with vaccines and that stuff and still proud of one of the few good things his administration did, which was get that effort out on the road real quickly.

So it seems to me like it is very likely to be a very strong kind of DeSantis Trump and everybody else. DeSantis isn't expected to announce until Memorial Day or after. After the Florida legislative session concludes, after the resigned to run Florida thing is fixed up. So we've got months until DeSantis jumps in. And in that way, it's very different looking than the Obama Clinton thing where they got in within 10 days of each other, by my memory, roughly. So what does this look like for the rest of the winter spring? So this is where I think 24 is shaping up a lot different than 16 in that even for candidates in the 16 race,

which means in 2015, that didn't get in until May and June of 2015, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, a whole number of candidates. Marco Rubio, I think they've gotten in April. there was so much positioning immediately after the 2014, the midterm elections, and so much activity. And what you have now is a bunch of candidates that are all sort of circling each other. They're trying to figure out how strong Trump is and how much command of the party he has. They're also trying to figure out what is DeSantis really doing. Is he definitely going to run?

Is he as strong as he appears to be? or is he going to pee too soon? They're also, and look, this is from conversations I've had as well in my reporting for the dispatch. They're very acutely aware that they all get in and it facilitates Trump by default. Even with everything that Trump has been through, he retains, depending on the state,

anywhere from 25 to 35% of the committed Republican voting base that are going to stick with him most likely. And if they all get in, then he gets to do what he did in 2016, even in a weakened position. And they're aware of that. So there's not a big hurry to divide the field. Obviously, some candidates will get in.

Mickey Haley's going to be the first that appears. And she has a real authenticity issue to overcome. And we're in an era where authenticity really matters. 20 years ago, 40 years ago, you always had to be authentic and charismatic and all that. But they understood you spun. Yeah, you told them. a couple of fibs. You were this way with one group, this way with another group is just

kind of what you had to do. Authenticity really matters here. I think a couple of other things to be, I think, that it matter in the ways this could be different, but may not be. Is Donald Trump in 2016 was the ultimate change agent. And it was like the change agent who challenged dogmas in both parties versus a collection of Reagan-era politicians that were promising me tax cuts for the 55th time. And yeah, I like tax cuts, but, you know, You're all from the old guard, and I've been hearing this stuff for years, and you're not really speaking to the problems I have today. Trump is now sort of – Trump is an incumbent who doesn't have an unblemish record,

and I mean electorally, and the choices that Republicans may have in this primary are going to be I could have a fresh change agent who's not a throwback to the Reagan era, or I could have a president who's a former president, who's been on the scene forever. Maybe I'll go with the change agent. So it's not just Reagan era versus Trump. It's going to be Trump versus Trump-era fresh. And that is something that some of these candidates could exploit.

I will say, finally, that you're all making a very good point. This is very necessary. You're not going to beat Trump unless you take him out. It's going to show Republican voters that you're a fighter. And that's about the most important things you can show them, other than not being heterodox on important issues like abortion and gun rights. You have to fight him because that shows them

that you're a fighter. Not only can you not beat him if you just hope he goes away because he'll never just go away, it's an important thing to show Republican voters that you're willing to fight the biggest dog in the room because that will tell them that you're willing to fight the Democrats

and dopes in the media like me and everybody else. And so it's a very important thing to do. I think some of these politicians have learned that lesson, but we'll see if they're willing to take the lessons they've learned and put themselves on the line. All right, and with that, we're going to move on to not worth your time, but with a little twist because the answer's already yes. Jonah, this one's really just for you and me. Kevin and New David just have to stick around.

The tamron monkeys that were taken from the Dallas Zoo have been found in a closet in a home on the property of a church outside of Dallas. This comes after the enclosure for the clouded leopard had been cut. She escaped but was found. A similar cut was found in a different monkey enclosure. Then the 35-year-old endangered vulture named PIN was found dead. They've said there was a wound, death suspicious, etc. Then they stole two tamron monkeys and hid them in a closet in an abandoned house.

Thankfully, the monkeys are found and unharmed. I don't understand why this isn't like the shark attacks of, was that 2001 where that just dominated the news all summer? Every time someone saw a shark, thought about a shark, if there was, you know, a beetle that looked kind of like a shark. I mean, this is a big deal. Someone is messing with the zoo animals, and I don't know why we're not all taking this more seriously.

If we all just did this together, we could find this person or persons and stop this. I don't want to keep looking for any more monkeys or leopards, and the dead endangered vulture really bothers me. Why is this not bigger news, Jonah?

So once again, I would just have to say you were once again underplaying the story. The really interesting development, like we're in the middle of all of us talk about apocalypses. There's this new show on HBO. It's all about zombie apocalypse and all that kind of stuff.

There was a movie called 12 Monkeys, which was about basically a pandemic kind of situation coming out. We just got out of a pandemic. Louisiana Zoo just had 12 monkeys stolen from it. Dismiss this coincidence. I don't think so. So there's just something going on out there. And there's this new fungus thing. The whole premise of this HBO show is that fungi,

cannot live, and I don't mean like, hey, I'm a fun guy, cannot live in warm climates, but now a sudden there's these news stories out that fungus are adapting to global warming, which is the entire premise of this zombie show on HBO. I mean, in fairness, the entire premise of the show doesn't make any sense in The Last of Us because it's that fungus can't live in humans,

and it's like, for any woman, that's a very confusing thing to say. All I'm saying is sell your bonds. Kevin, why can't we all center around a story that isn't culture war, that isn't politics, where we could all feel like we were doing our part to help the zoo stop a crazy person stealing and killing animals? I feel like this is what the country needs right now, and yet we're not doing it. Why? You know, I live in Dallas, and I say let the leopards out. Let them out. Let the monkeys out. Yes.

Let them all run wild. Dallas is not going to notice the difference. This city has bigger problems. I think you could run a whole, you know, Barnum and Bailey elephant parade up Elm Street in Dallas, and the city wouldn't notice too much. The city's got bigger problems than that. So that's what I think about that.

All right. Kevin's out. new david last word to you why can't we all get along people only care about cute animals the clouded leopard's adorable it's a little bit bigger than a house cat super super fuzzy fluffy cute thing and the tamarin monkeys look like old men but when you see a but you see a news headline and you don't see the picture and it just says leopard anything leopard that's thinking you know very fast very evil brutal carnivore you know i made that mistake on one of our podcasts someone was talking about the missing leopard and i i pointed out that I actually have a safari rifle, so I'm ready to finally get to use it. Kevin. Someone sent me a picture of the actual clouded leopard, and it's this, you know, sweet little kitty.

Listen, I mean, I'm all for animal stories. I have kids. They love animals. But, you know, Americans care about cute animals. So you either got to do it with pictures or you've got to find, you know, missing dog stories. Interesting. I will say that the vulture may not be traditionally cute.

The endangered vulture. his name was PIN, 35 years old, may he rest in peace. But, and I think Jonah will be with me, PIN was freaking adorable. And vultures are incredibly smart. We need them. Countries that have tried to wipe out vultures find that they have a big carrion problem

with bacteria and gross stuff. What do people say about people they don't like? You're a bunch of vultures. I mean, you're never going to get us there. You were being nice. They mostly say that about lawyers. All right. With that, David hates lawyers.

Kevin thinks I should be disbarred. Jonah, you're my only friend. Thank you for joining us. If you like this podcast, leave us a rating. It helps other people find it. Or you can join as a dispatch member and hop in the comments section. And you can also weigh in on my disbarment.

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