The Dispatch Podcast - September 11: 20 Years Later

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

President Biden is having a no good, horrible, very bad summer. The gang, with Chris Stirewalt subbing in for David, discuss whether Biden can recover from the last few weeks. Is the only thing that can save Biden a reemergence of former President Trump? Trump is slated to visit Iowa and the group discusses what that means for 2024. And finally, Afghanistan is still in shambles and we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Listen to hear what Sarah, Jonah, Steve, and Chris were doing 20 years ago and how it impacted the rest of their lives. Show Notes: -Amy Walter on Biden’s approval rating -Jonah’s 9/11 piece Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and our special guest this week, Chris Steyerwalt. We are going to talk about the Biden administration, former President Trump, going to Iowa, the latest in Afghanistan, and our reflections on September 11th, 20 years later. Let's dive right in. Jonah, how's the Biden administration doing? Not great, Bob.

You know, look, I mean, lots of presidents have bad summers. Lots of presidents in their first year or their first term have bad summers. Summers are bad in Washington. This is a fact. You can look it up. It's in the Bible. But it does seem to me, that this has been particularly bad.

And his poll numbers, his approval is down. I thought as disapproved is somewhere around 50% at this point. He's particularly suffering among moderates and independence. And so I guess the question I have for the group, rather than me state the facts that we all already know, is this merely summer doldrums? and he'll recover, or are the best days behind him? And what does that mean going into 2022, never mind the vaunted 2024?

And since Brother Starwalt is with us, I will give him first shot. So when you talk about approval, disapproval numbers, the delta is what counts. I use the 538 average just because it's the easiest thing to do. and as of this recording, the president has a 51.5% approval, 43% disapprove. And the numbers, I'm sorry, other way around. I was going to say. Other way around, 49.1% disapproval, 45% approved. So that puts him four points underwater.

honor. The the bad news for Biden is that it is a sustained slide. It isn't, it hasn't been a spike. It's been really since there's really since June, May or June. Most of it is attached to coronavirus. Most of it is attached to frustrate people in every poll that you look for what's the cause. The leading the charge is coronavirus and frustration, understandable frustrations from Americans who at the beginning of the summer, the end of the spring, thought we were about to begin the party time, excellent of the end of the pandemic, and yet we find that we're still kind of edging around it. So that's the bad news. The good news for Biden is that most of his disapproval, the change are with people who do not disapprove him, right? The changes from people

who no longer approve him, but they're soft. Now, they're, they're, they're, they're, they've backed away, but it's not like they're, they're prime to go vote for Donald Trump in 2024 or something. So they're, they're winnable, backable, and he, if, if the economy gets better, if we get through this stuff, then sure, but of course, what Biden has to worry about is, if he drags a, let's say he drags a 45, 43% approval rating into midterms. And the Democrats get the kind of result that you expect when your incumbent has a 43% job approval rating, which is a whipping.

So let's say they do, you know, they lose 25 seats in the House, a couple seats in the Senate. This will reinforce the negative narrative and make Biden a lame duck. So that's he's got a, he's got a year to turn. it around. So Sarah, isn't part of the problem that, um, unlike Donald Trump, unlike Barack Obama, even unlike George W. Bush, no one's really that into Joe Biden, right? I mean, the, the intensity, intensity seems to matter in a polarized America where the, where people seem to think the only way to win is with base elections, um, and base fundraising and all kind of stuff and the voters who will crawl over glass for you.

No one's crawling all over glass for Joe Biden. They didn't do it in 2020. They crawled over glass to vote against Donald Trump. And isn't that lack of intensity, particularly going into 2022, bad news for Dems? I mean, we just saw this report this morning that Yonkin and Virginia is up to, and at least some credible people are saying this has something to do with the drop in the, the, the Biden stuff. Where do you come down on this? Yeah, so I obviously

am a big believer in not for it. I simply believe in it. In the turnout election model being our current politics entirely, that it is all about getting your team to come vote rather than persuading people in the middle that persuasion politics has basically been a thesis that has been disproven.

That being said, Joe Biden is an interesting experiment after Trump because I think everything you said is exactly right except you still have the negative polarization so yes Trump's not on the ballot but Democrats still hate Republicans, Republicans hate Democrats. Joe Biden isn't inflaming anyone but maybe they're just inflaming each other enough.

So that'll be interesting to see. And we're going to test this with the Recon, on Tuesday. So this time next week, the first topic we're going to talk about, I'm sure, is the recall election in California and what we learned. You know, I hate predicting these things. It's not what this podcast is about. And I don't think we have any special powers of prediction, the four of us. But it looks like Gavin Newsom is likely to win that. It will be interesting to see some of the breakdown of the voters where they are, where he did well, where he did poorly, all of the reasons you just said, Jonah. So fine, they don't care too much about Joe Biden.

Gavin Newsom is sort of like Joe Biden. No one is that fired up about Gavin Newsom. And he has let a lot of them down. He's hard to defend when he goes to the French laundry. But do they really want a Republican in charge of their state? Are they willing to show up to vote? That's the question. Same in Virginia. Although Virginia is interesting to me because Terry McAuliffe is basically an incumbent. high, high name ID in Virginia was a well-liked governor. He wasn't, you know, angering anyone. He wasn't a lightning rod particularly.

And Glenn Yonkin is still relatively unknown in the state. You know, there's one poll showing Yonkin up. There's plenty of polls showing. What is this poll? You guys have both now mentioned, I want to see the poll. What is this poll that has Glenn Yonkin leading in Virginia? I've seen polls that have it close, but I haven't said.

Trafalgar had it at two. This is a leaked private poll from the campaign or something like that. Oh, okay. I got you. I wasn't. I wasn't saying it's Missouri. I got a poll right here. I got a poll right here says I'm winning this race. That's what it tells you. Yeah. So what I was going to say about that is, you know, Republicans best hope in Virginia, if they're, you know, being really honest with you privately, is that they pull up within two of Terry McCallough. And that that in and of itself would be a shot over the bow at Democrats in a state like Virginia in those suburbs in northern Virginia. will we see that or will Glenn Yonkin lose by seven and Gavin Newsom you know isn't just not recalled but has a resounding mandate

heading into the rest of his term? I think those are actually reasonably likely outcomes in which case Biden's approval number didn't make a damn bit of difference. So Steve, feel free to react to all the things that you think are wrong opinions.

Oh, I will. Oh, I will. But, uh, You know, part of, so Biden's appeal was competence, compassion, and normalcy. And it seems to me that he's lost ground on all of those, even compassion, which I think he can gain back because people's memories are short, but some of his reactions to the Afghan situation were not exactly compassionate. and you only get to make one first impression. Is it a tougher slog ahead for them than these, you know, these pie-eyed optimists are making it seem? Yeah, I think it is.

First, let me just take strong exception to Sarah's claim that we don't have the powers of prediction here on this podcast. I predict that we will talk about Trump next. We're probably going to cover Afghanistan in the 9-11. They see her. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, you know, his, Biden's basic promise was I am going to relieve the country from the chaos of Donald Trump. And if you look at what he was gifted coming into office, it was.

was a vastly improving situation with coronavirus, a vastly improving economy, and a world that seemed to be with obvious, you know, challenges still in existence, not in the kind of chaos that, you know, the kind of daily ravings from Donald Trump suggested. in all three of those, we've seen him slip. We've seen him have problems. And this latest with Afghanistan, I think, will linger for Biden, not because people are so passionate about Biden, but because it really takes a chunk out of his claims to be competent.

by virtually every measure what we've seen, even if you agree with the withdrawal, has been totally incompetent. I think the point about intensity is right. I'm not where Sarah is on this sort of all or nothing base election versus persuading independence, but clearly, especially in midterms, intensity matters and matters above all else. There's a really good little short item from our dispatch friend, Amy Wall. officer's over at the Cook Political Report, talking about Biden's slippage in intensity and

the increase in the number of people who are intensely opposed to Joe Biden. I think if you look at that, that gives Team Biden reason to worry. And one quick final point, Jonah, to go back to your question about what's in front of him, he has to manage a very, very, very, very very difficult chasm between the moderates, the few but powerful moderates remaining in the Democratic Party and the many but powerful and angry progressives in the Democratic Party. That is coming to a head this month, right? He is going to try to pass this $3.5 trillion social spending bill that is in effect a wish list for the progressives in the Democratic Party.

the kinds of things that they've been touting for years that they're celebrating now. The New York Times even called it a total transformation of the social safety net. This is a big deal. It's what progressives have always wanted. And yet, you have reports that Joe Manchin, senator from West Virginia and staunch opponent of spending $3.5 trillion on the social safety net, doesn't want to let the final bill cost more than 1.5 trillion, which the progressives take great umbrage at. That's going to be a problem. He needs to maintain the enthusiasm or at least the willingness of progressives

to be in his corner. And if that fails or if progressives think it's too small or he didn't fight on their behalf, I think you see that strong approval and the intensity continue to decrease. All right, and with that, let's go on to Chris Steyerwalt. Donald Trump's heading to Iowa. Well, the person who is most keenly interested, I saw there was some sort of mumbo-jumbo, phony baloney poll that had Trump and Biden deadlocked in a head-to-head. And it's phony baloney because it's too early to say. though there is no doubt that Donald Trump is, it's interesting, Republicans are both over Trump

and under him at the same time. They're both Republicans seem to have normalized Donald Trump post-presidency, post-January 6th, but he also doesn't seem to have the kind of stroke that many people said that he would. We heard Matt Gates, the, The Cicero of the Flora-Bama coast tell us that Trump is ready to fight. He's going to run. He's going to get in the race. And he's going to, he needs a candidacy in order to have a platform from which to pummel Biden. And by the way, candidacy or the exploration of a candidacy would be a further argument for Trump in trying to get his Twitter account back, right?

that if you are a candidate for office, then how can you prevent this candidate from office from being able to share his exciting ideas with the people? So next month, the president is going back to, in a lot of ways, where it all started. It wasn't really the escalator ride in New York that brought Donald Trump into contention for the Republican nomination. It was the Iowa State Fair,

where he took people up on helicopter rides, Whirley Bird Rides at the Iowa State Fair that we said, oh, well, I guess this may be a thing. So Trump is heading back to Iowa for a campaign kind of event, and his aides say that this is a, that we're going to lock in the evangelical support early. We're going to lock in Iowa early. We're not going to make the same mistake as we did let Ted Cruz or some other evangelical burrow their way in there. and we're going to set up the block at Iowa.

So my question for you, Sarah, is, is this for real? Is this something you've got to do? You're raising money. You kind of have a campaign apparatus. You've got to have events. Is this deliberate strategy? What is this? When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

Everyone is telling us that Donald Trump is running for president. Donald Trump is telling us that he's running for president, Jason Miller, Trump campaign advisor, quote, between 99 and 100%. I think he is definitely running in 2024. Was this while he was detained in Brazil while he was down organizing, I kid you not, CPAC Brasilia, when he was doing CPAC Brasilia or somewhere else? I believe it was right before he was detained for CPAC, Brasilia. Yeah, he certainly thinks he's running. Could events intercede and stop him from running?

I guess. I don't know what those would be. Force majeure, you know? But yes, he is running. And for me, then, it's the cascading effect. You know, in the sweep, for instance, Chris, we covered, I forget how many now, a million Republicans who want to run for president in 2024. How many of those will be left standing if Trump won?

throws his hat in the ring. And the answer is like, maybe just Chris Christie. Maybe Chris Christie and like three other people. But like Christy Noem, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, they're definitely not going to run against him. Ted Cruz,

Tom Cotton, probably not, but maybe. So as long as Trump is freezing the field, it has all of these downstream effects that if he then, for whatever reason, doesn't run, there'll be a whole bunch of Republicans scrambling because they haven't really been running.

And if he does run, there's a whole bunch of just frozen campaigns waiting for 2028. All right, Steve, how does... So coverage of this is challenging, because on the one hand, he's a former president, he's the most famous person in the world.

He is Donald Trump. On the other hand, he's a 20-24 candidate, and it's a long way from 20, because it's too early to say anything sensible about 20-24 now, even if you're talking about Donald Trump. The mistake that the press made with Donald Trump in 2016 was that no matter what, it was good TV, so keep it on. How will, and I guess I should phrase it this way, in which ways will the press cover Trump long? Which are the most, which are the dominant ways in which the political press will mishandle coverage of Donald Trump? Yeah, I mean, we will see the exact same thing. Look, if your model is monetizing eyeballs, whether in print or video, you put on a lot of Donald Trump because Donald Trump is good for business. Trump said this, and he was right.

You know, we have seen in the post-Trump era, a dramatic drop-off. off, particularly for highly partisan media outlets and media outlets that generate a good chunk of their income based simply on volume, a huge drop-off in the number of people consuming that news. And I put news in that sense in quotes in many ways. We will see the exact same thing. I mean, it will be, I think, wall-to-wall coverage. He will probably generate pretty significant ratings.

I don't think maybe the same that he used to, but I think we'll see the media repeat many of the same mistakes they made. Let me take some exception to what Sarah said for real this time. My guess, and now this is where I am entering the perilous prediction zone, I don't think all of those people will abandon their runs and presidential ambitions if Donald Trump gets back in. I think we're likely to see many more of the potential 2024 candidates actually run, particularly those who think that they can run as something of a bridge between a Trumpist Republican Party of the last six years

and kind of the old kind of old school conservatism. Do you think Ron DeSantis runs against Donald Trump? I think Ron DeSantis could run against Donald Trump. I think Tom Cotton could run against Donald Trump and maybe most surprising of all. I would not be surprised to see Mike Pompeo run against Donald Trump. That guy has had. Talk about not having a great summer. There is a guy who has not had a great summer.

Well, when you embrace the Taliban as America's counterterrorism partner, it's hard to be more wrong than that. The preferred phrase is our partners in peace. Our partners at peace. Which presidential candidate has not let 5,000 Taliban fighters out of prison? Come on. It's just a cost of doing business. It's just a cost doing business.

I want to ask you to go ahead. Wait, no, I have an actual question. I thought of a question for you because I want to do it McLaughlin. McLaughlin Group style. True or false. Donald Trump's reemergence on the political scene is good news for Joe Biden. True. reminding people

particularly the people that Biden is losing right now who voted against Trump rather than for Biden reminding them of why they didn't like Trump is good for Biden I think also I think Trump is a good foil for Biden I do want to make two quick points

one at the beginning I kind of tuned out for a little bit because at the beginning you said something about how nothing was beneath Donald Trump and it made me realize that the underminer from the Incredibles really kind of nailed

Donald Trump's aesthetic. He says, Behold the Underminer, I'm always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me. I hereby declare war on peace and happiness, so all will tremble before me. Okay, so, anyway,

quite so. Secondly, I think you guys are all wrong about how it's clear that he's going to run. For the simple reason... I didn't say that. Okay, I think Sarah's all wrong because, first of all, I do not put enormous stake in what Jason Miller has to say about anything. But beyond that, the main reason why I think it's perfectly legitimate to bet that he's

going to run, giving what we know in sort of in the Aesopian faith sense of what Donald Trump is like. But the key thing with Donald Trump is, I don't think he knows. Donald Trump basically has Schrodinger's ego. Right? It's like the cat is both dead and alive until you open the box. He always, he has said a thousand times. I like to keep all my options open. You know, he wouldn't commit about whether or not he would contest the election two years in advance. He wouldn't commit whether he would contest the election in 2016. He says, I got to wait and see what happens, right? You know, and, and my guess is he thinks he can parachute in at the last second, clear the field of almost everybody, make poor, poor Ronda. DeSantis question a lot of his decisions of the last 10 years if DeSantis decides to run against him or not. And I just think it's for him, he likes to have people thinking he's going to run or thinking that he could run because it has all of the benefits of saying he's going to run without any of the drawbacks of actually saying he is running. But see, that's a question for me.

For all the reasons that he thinks he's benefiting for saying he's going to run, aren't those also benefits of him actually running? I don't see any real distinction. Why doesn't he have all of those benefits of being a candidate again? What's the downside for him? I don't know, because then, I mean, can he still rake in money

from all of these weird things he's got going on? Does he want to draw that kind of attention? He may have lawyers telling him, hey, you look, you know, some of these things going on with the New York AG, like we could maybe get you out of some of this, but if you run for president again, And everyone's going to go back to, you know, total panic mode. And that may not be good for you right now.

I mean, I don't know. I just think he's like, I think he likes to appear like he's running because it leaves open the option of actually running while also giving him the flexibility of playing a lot of golf, you know, and not running. And you should, we should also point out that Jason Miller at all, what Trump's toe dipping does is allow them. to build high the grift packing to raise all this money and build this organization. And I am also sure that it has occurred to someone that if Donald Trump doesn't win, that this whole, then they're bragging about the organization they're going to build in Iowa. Look, the campaign that won with no money and no organization is now saying it's going to win in 2024 because of its massive money, advantage, and huge organization.

I imagine that they believe that if Donald Trump doesn't run or is indisposed by the New York authorities, that somebody else could walk in onto what they're calling a turnkey presidential campaign. And who would that key turner be? Might it be DeSantis? Might it be whomever Jason Miller at all think is the most loyal factotum of Trump and Trumpism? All right, Steve, you're next. Is everything going great in Afghanistan now? So we've spoken about Afghanistan consistently now every week

for what the past six plus weeks. And one of the things that I think we've had some minor disagreements among our group and we've had some pretty significant disagreements in our group. But I think one of the things that we had in common was our bewilderment at the Biden administration's insistence that the Taliban might be good guys in this whole matter. And they've held open the possibility by not condemning the Taliban that the Taliban could be our partners in peace. They have at times offered forward-leaning statements, sort of affirmations that they expect the Taliban, might actually help the United States. We're

constructively with us, become an important contributor to the international community. And over the past couple of days, we have seen the Taliban roll out its choices for leading government positions. And not surprisingly, the putative partners for peace and partners in our counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan have installed as leaders of Afghanistan, several terrorists, including Saraj Hakkani, a deputy leader of the Taliban who has a $10 million bounty on its head by the U.S. government. Question to you, Sarah, does this finally signal to the Biden administration that their hopes for some kind of constructive partnership with the Taliban, which has changed not a wish?

since the 9-11 attacks 20 years ago is over. So let's start with something more basic. There was something deeply cynical about how the Biden administration has approached the last six weeks. And it's been kind of universally recognized but not talked about a whole lot, which is Joe Biden, I think, agree or disagree with what the outcome is. Joe Biden believed that it was important for him to get out of Afghanistan. He wanted to do that.

And everyone around him said it was a bad idea or a good idea, but the Biden White House seemed to have universally agreed that it would be fine no matter how bad the outcome was because Americans have short attention spans, the news cycle would move on. And that is deeply cynical, that it never, that it doesn't matter. And none of it mattered. their cynicism was always going to be true. And I think this week is what really is highlighting

the truth of it. The media was too happy to pivot to the Texas abortion law, for instance, after covering Afghanistan for six weeks and having some Afghanistan exhaustion. You know, we'll talk about September 11th next. But I'm sure there was a sense in the media at the time, some of you guys would know this, of like, oh, wow, we have just covered this and covered this and covered this for months and months and months. Wouldn't it be nice, you know, to cover the president saying strategery again or something? And that is what's happened. They've held press conferences on wildfires. They have told the Department of Justice to protect reproductive rights in the country. They're back to focusing on infrastructure and fighting with Joe

mansion, they are not attempting to pivot, Steve. They have pivoted. And we will still talk about Afghanistan. It led the morning dispatch on Wednesday morning still. But the cynicism of a White House who is then proved right about their cynicism is a dangerous precedent. Will it work, Jonah? Um, let me put it this way. It could work. It really just depends on what the actual events in Afghanistan and coming out of Afghanistan are. Um, you know, the, the way you listen, when I listen to Jen Saki talk about this stuff,

it is amazing to me how much of her pushback boils down to work. you know don't call them stranded you know three days later we're you know patting ourselves on the back for doing some sort of like you know Sherpa Gungaddin Telsing Norgay you know overland route to get Americans out because it's so dangerous and it's so heroic of us to do this but don't say they were stranded that even though that's what was required to get them out Similarly, don't call them hostages just because the Taliban won't let them leave until there are some unstated concessions from us. And so so much of the stuff is about wordplay and trying to shape the media messaging.

And I think in general, big chunks of the mainstream media are open to being manipulated along these lines. I think they're proud of the fact that they covered it pretty honestly and fair. but, you know, enough is enough. And so the question then simply becomes, you know, do we see mass beheadings in Afghanistan? Does al-Qaeda start launching new attacks? All these things are entirely possible.

And while I've said a bunch of times on here, I thought the mention media was pretty fair and honest towards this debacle, I think we can also concede that these stories would not end if this had been Donald Trump, like the relentlessness of the coverage of us betraying our allies and look at the bloodshed and all of these kinds of things would be a not, would be a drumbeat. And, um, and so I did look at, I, I agree with Sarah. It's, it's a depressing thing that the, that cynicism is the smart play here. Um, but it's at the end of the day, it's, it's out of

their hands to a certain extent. They have the wind at their backs because there are a lot of institutional forces in the media that would much rather talk about how the real Taliban is in Texas than talk about, you know, the actual Taliban in Afghanistan. And so that will give them a leg up. But some really, really horrible things with video could be coming out of Afghanistan over the next six weeks, six months, year. And the fact that Joe Biden, I mean, I hate to say this, the fact that Joe Biden was booed by a crowd

when he was visiting New Jersey about Afghanistan is actually, in some ways, a healthy sign that a lot of Americans aren't going to let go of this story. But I guess it's just wait and see. But will it really matter if we're not attacked again in the short term? Will news coverage of the Taliban beating Afghan women photographs of battered and bruised journalists coming out of Afghanistan statements about the reimposition of Sharia law? Is that enough to make the American people care or will it take another attack?

Absolutely not. We have Uyghurs in concentration camps in China. and we're playing basketball games over there because they buy Jordans 2. You have, you know, insane atrocities happening in several countries in Africa all at once. And, I mean, human rights abuses in Syria? I don't even know what all countries to name at this point. Americans have been told,

are used to being told that America is the best place to live on Earth. and look at all these horrible things going on. So pointing out horrible things going on in other countries, we have had to become numb to that because how could you possibly live in a world where so many true atrocities are happening to women and children in so many places in the world? So no, that won't affect anything

unless there's a terrorist attack at home. And like I said before, I do think this has an effect on how people view Joe Biden But that is a domestic effect that was influenced by a foreign policy outcome, not that the foreign policy or anything that happens in Afghanistan from this point forward will have much of an effect. We have what those students from California. Don't get me started on why there are students from California in Afghanistan on a field trip or something. But they're still over there last time I checked. But this is different, I think this is different because this was our project for 20 years, right? I mean, I think your point, it's a valid point on the Uyghurs in China and the collective global shrug. But we sought to make this place better, and we sought to make it different.

and it's pretty evident that we failed. Jonah, do you think we lost the 9-11 wars? The 9-11 wars meaning Iraq and Afghanistan or the argument? Given where we are right now. Given where we are right now. Iraq and Afghanistan and all of what went into fighting what was once called the war on terror. No. I don't think it was, let me put it this way.

I don't think it was all a waste. I think it is a perfectly defensible position now to say that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. I think that the war was a mistake. Certainly given the way it was, it was messaged and sold to the American people, it set us up for a lot of cynicism. And given the lack of, I mean, we don't have to read litigate the Iraq war. I think at the end of the day, the fact that we protected the homeland, the fact that we did not have another major terrorist attack here is an important, serious policy victory.

The fact that we signal to the world that we were willing to project power very far away to defend ourselves and protect our interests and protect our principles was very valuable. The problem is that now a lot of it has been frittered away. I agree with you that there's a moral distinction between what goes on with the Uyghurs and what goes on in Afghanistan. And since we have a larger share of blame for it, but I think Sarah's right that unless there are actual tangible impacts on America, the turning a blind eye will win the day. um and i hate scoring this on political things but i think for a lot of people they will look at whatever atrocities come out of afghanistan and so long as they are not mind-blowing they will either support or blame the various politicians they already dislike for it it was bush's fault or you know that or if they're partisan democrats it's

It's Biden's fault if they're partisan Republicans. And I think scoring it on the narrow politics of Joe Biden, I think it hurts Joe Biden. There's no way this helps Joe Biden. He had a theory that this would help him. I think that is not true. The only question now is how much it hurts him. And it's entirely possible. It doesn't hurt him a lot.

And I find that depressing, but I think that's entirely possible that it's true. So two quick things, Steve. one, because of America's enormous resources, if we have the power to stop something, isn't it therefore kind of the same as it's our fault if we don't? And so if we have the power to stop genocide in a civil war in an African country,

and then we choose not to, is that that different? To your point about, like, well, this one, we own this one. I think Americans do feel, should feel something like, we could choose to stop any of these things. We don't, for a variety of good reasons, by the way. But we have some moral responsibility to recognize the power that it is to be an American. Second, you know,

in the wake of September 11th, there were conversations for years about like, well, these countries can never be democracies. They don't have democratic institutions. They don't have the foundational civil structure. to be democracies. I wonder, Steve, what you think about what has happened and whether that argument is actually stronger or just that the people making it will think that it's become stronger in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, for that matter. Yeah, I mean, I guess I think that

to a certain extent, the critics have mischaracterized the original aspirations of our continuing presence in some of these countries. You know, you often hear critics say, well, you know, the United States went in and failed to establish Jeffersonian democracies. I don't think establishing Jeffersonian democracies was ever the real objective. Now, certainly you can point to George W. Bush's. Yeah, we sent over constitutional scholars to help them write a constitution. We at least tried. We wanted to. But it seems to me you can try, I think to a certain extent we had an obligation to try to help leaders in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

set up a government that would be more representative, be less authoritarian than what each individual country had had before without committing to creating a Jeffersonian democracy. I think there's a straw man argument at play there, and I think you could have had success in a way that fell somewhere in between, right? So you didn't have Saddam Hussein. ruling Iraq, you didn't have the Taliban ruling Afghanistan, and neither did you have in either place this Jeffersonian democracy that's the imagination of this, a strawman of the imagination of the critics. But you could have had something better. I mean, you know, there was an interesting series of articles written at the end of the Bush administration by people

who had been at times ferocious critics of George W. Bush on what Iraq looked like on what Barack Obama was getting in Iraq. And even Dexter Filkins, terrific reporter was at the New York Times, rights for the New Yorker said, look, despite all of our concerns and all of our criticism and all of the problems, what you have in Iraq at this point, this is, I think, February of 2009, is a reasonably stable government, a reasonably stable society with a reasonably strong civil society and the possibility that this could be a better situation than it was under Saddam Hussein. And there were mistakes made before we got to that point in Iraq. There were mistakes made certainly after we got to that point in Iraq. But I guess I don't think that we had

to create this kind of utopian flourishing democracy in order to have succeeded in a way that we clearly did not succeed, I would say, particularly in Afghanistan. If you look at what's happening in Afghanistan right now, it's literally the case that some of the very same people that we kicked out are taking power, again, founders of al-Qaeda, leaders of the Taliban, people, you know, that we had five senior Taliban commanders imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama exchanged them effectively for Bo Bergdahl, they've been leading negotiations. They're bad, bad, bad people. They were determined high-risk detainees when we had them at Guantanamo.

And they're now helping to run the Taliban. I just helping to run Afghanistan as leaders of the Taliban. I just don't see how you can look at Afghanistan in particular and conclude anything other than we lost, we lost badly, and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda won. All right. The last topic. This Saturday is the 20th anniversary of September 11th. I just wanted us to talk about it a little bit. I was at home waiting for my second year of college to start. We were on the quarter system. And I heard my mother's voice and she said, Sarah, get up. And I just assumed my grandmother had died because it was like that tone in her voice, you know, like grandma's definitely dead. And it turned out my dad had called her and said, that they needed to wait me up. We were in central time. So it was earlier. And I just sat in front of the TV for the next 48 hours. I didn't sleep. I just watched everything as an 18-year-old.

And there's just no question. Like, I knew it in the moment that it was happening that this would affect my worldview for the rest of my life and my generations. Like, what a, what a pivotal time for that to happen when you're 18 and it's your first time really stepping outside the bubble of your parents' world, and then the world changed. And a lot of my friends joined the military, deployed. That all happened in the months to come. So I don't know. I'm just curious how the experience was at the time for y'all. Did you, at the moment, where'd you think we'd be in 20 years, Steve? Yeah, I was actually on Capitol Hill, the morning of 9-11 getting ready to go cover a hearing at the Capitol, featuring Laura Bush on education and was watching TV when the

planes hit and watched the second plane hit. And so, of course, you knew. It was sort of this weird moment where you had still lots of, I think, news people in a very difficult position trying to avoid what I think was a sort of obvious conclusion that this was an attack, you know, talking at some length about how the air traffic controller system might be screwed up or how unusual it was to have two accidents or something like that. I spent the day in Washington, D.C., trying to do reporting, trying to track down my brother who was then working as an intern at the World Bank. And there was some concern at the time that the World Bank could be a target because the World Trade Center had been a target, and it was unclear whether they were

targeting global finance or the United States specifically, found him, he didn't call for like eight hours, found him, gave him a huge hug, and then I think I punched him really, really hard for not having gotten in touch with me that day. And then the next morning, I was on a train up to New York City. And I was attempting to do a profile of Hillary Clinton. and managed to talk my way right down to the hole at Ground Zero, which was sort of extraordinary. I mean, everything was, you know, still as it had been 24 hours, 36 hours earlier and just, you know, hard to process, I would say. I never was able to write the profile of Hillary Clinton. And it was, you know, I was working at the weekly standard at the time in that moment.

certainly weren't thinking of anything political. We wanted to just do a look at what somebody does, a political leader does in a moment like that. And that was her state. So was trying to get access to her and what she was doing. That was not happening, obviously. There was one thing I saw and rode up. But my write-up of it got lost. Walking around near Ground Zero that day, You saw dozens, probably hundreds of people walking the streets with flyers, pictures of their loved ones, stopping you desperately again and again and again. Have you seen this person? Have you seen this person doing anything they could to try to locate somebody who may have been killed? I came upon a playground where there was this kind of impromptu protest. And it was, you know, this had just happened. It was so raw. But there was a group of people.

It was almost like a soapbox in Hyde Park in London where people were standing up and giving speeches. And there was a group of people who, even in that close in moment after the attacks, were claiming that the United States had asked for this, that this is what we deserve, that we had been too aggressive in our foreign policy. and we sort of had it coming. And I just remember distinctly there was a guy there. He was wearing a tie-dye. I imagined he was an NYU student, but I didn't talk to him, whom I expected to be sympathetic to the arguments coming from the people sort of shouting and screaming, kind of anti-American arguments.

This guy was sort of a typical hippie-looking guy. And he spoke up and gave sort of one of the most impassioned extemporaneous speeches I've heard in defense of America. Not at all what I would have expected. I wrote it up. I sent it to my bosses back at the Weekly Standard. I've only been at the magazine for three months. I thought it was this incredibly powerful moment, and it turns out, you know, in retrospect, it sort of foreshadowed a lot of the kinds of arguments that we would see the country have. And it didn't run in the magazine that we week. And they never asked me about it. And, you know, I was relatively new to the magazine. I just thought,

gosh, they must really not have liked that. And I thought it was, you know, I don't like much that I write, but I really liked that long item. So I waited like six months and then asked my editors, what happened to that? I really felt I was sort of proud of that, that work. And they said, oh, we never got it. So I wrote this thing that I thought was. It's going to be, you know, this capture this moment, and they never even saw it. They went back and checked their emails and just never, never arrived. And to this day, Steve believes that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, probably right.

And I still do the best pieces of work you ever do, yeah, the best pieces of work you ever do are the ones that nobody can push back on. How's that, how's your first dog doing at the farm? Exactly. Exactly. Chris, 20 years later, what have you learned? Well, I was a newspaper reporter in West Virginia when it happened, and I learned that the buildings, the tall buildings in West Virginia were not under threat of attack,

though we like that one out that day to make sure that that was true. I think if you would even acknowledging the heartbreaks of Iraq and Afghanistan, even acknowledging all of that stuff. I think if you had told Americans 20 years ago that there would not be another successful large-scale terrorist attack inflected on the United States in 20 years, that people would say that that was pretty impressive.

I think if you were to tell people that the comity and self-restraint and the reduction in cynicism and all of that stuff that came after, was short-lived, they would believe that too, because what I have observed about 9-11 as a political force and a cultural force is it was a

pause or a departure from a political mainstream that was hurtling toward division and weirdness and populism and decadence, shout out Ross Douthit, for some time after that, if you look at the way the country was in 2000, if you look at how our politics were in 2000,

we have Donald Trump saying that Pat Buchanan was going to take over the Reform Party for the Nazis and that he wasn't going to be a part of that. I think the political moment of the 1990s and the knee-first, very individualized politics and weak parties, strong partisanship was paused for a period of time because of 9-11 and there was a greater sense of unity and there was a desire to have a shared enemy. And we had a shared enemy. But that, you know, within 10 years, that was, and that 10 years, by the way, historically speaking, is not

nothing, right? Ten years is a long time. But after about ten years, I think we were back to where we were before. And the Perotist moment and all of that other stuff and the dissatisfaction and the electorate was back. And so we saw. Jonah. So as the only New Yorker here, and who was living in Washington, D.C. at the time, who was living in Washington, D.C. at the time, with a wife who was starting to work in the Bush administration. I was, of course, in Pendleton, Oregon. Oh.

And I got back from my honeymoon on September 10th. My wife went straight to Washington because she had to start working for John Ashcroft as his chief speechwriter for the Department of Justice. And I went to the Pacific Northwest to pick up our dog Cosmo to drive him back cross-country because we had left them there during our honeymoon. And it was a, for me, it was a very emotional time. I was up very early trying to figure out how to write a column before I got on the road. So I saw, I guess one of the most weird memories I have of that whole day and it was a weird day was,

I was watching Fox and Friends at one point. And they had this guy on who had just a Newsweek writer. who had just written this apparently Bafo book about Bush v. Gore and how they almost convinced I don't remember who it was, but one of the justices to flip his vote on all of that. And it was a big deal and it was like front of mind back then, Bush v. Gore still. And then I remember it was her E.J. Hill was the former host? That's correct. E D.E. E.D. Hill. Yeah.

Says, hold on a second. We're getting early, we're getting reports of a small two-passenger plane hitting the side of the World Trade Center. And they cut away and then they cut back and they try to do the interview again. And then they get more reports. And they say to this poor schmuck who just worked for two years, you know, work for work like a dog on this book. I'm sorry, we're going to have to cut the interview short. I'm sure we'll have you back on soon. And he wasn't back on, as far as I know, he never got another interview on that book. I mean, it just, it was the way in which everything that came before 9-11 got swept away. I mean, it was sort of a metaphor about all that. Beyond that, I have a piece of the website today that people can take a look at if they want.

I'm generally pretty down on America in the, looking back in the last 20 years. It's difficult not to see the crappiness of the current culture war as basically, as poisoning so much of the fight about terrorism and 9-11 and all of that stuff and I don't think it was all a waste. I think Chris is absolutely right

that going 20 years without a major attack on us when we all thought one was definite is a significant accomplishment. But I have to say that from the idiotic paranoid nonsense about how the Patriot Act was a war on libraries to the constant invocation of how we were 10 seconds from Sharia law taking over America.

I think 9-11 ultimately, despite that initial burst of patriotism and unity, unleashed a lot of the worst aspects of the culture war. And 20 years later, it seems to me at least culturally and politically, we are in far worse shape than we were on 9-10, 2001, to deal with this kind of threat. And if we have another 9-11 type event where we are not, we are not psychologically or culturally prepared for it. And I think the COVID response demonstrates that. That was in some ways a 9-11 type event. And we have not handled it well in this country. And it makes me very sad. With that, we hope that all of you listening find some way to remember September 11th

in your own ways and families. I have one friend who takes her sons out to fire stations and bring coffee and donuts to the fire stations in their neighborhood. I think that's a wonderful thing to do. And so I just mention it for those who are looking for some way to engage with your family this weekend. And because Jonah was such a downer. Jonah was a bit of a downer. An accurate downer. And so perhaps bringing some donuts or cookies or hot chocolate or whatever else you might find to some firemen may be less of a downer than Jonah. Thank you for listening, and we will see you again next week.

You know,