The Dispatch Podcast - So You're Saying There's a New Sheriff In Town? | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah rank the winners and losers of Wednesday's GOP primary debate and vent about the embarrassing failure of the elite university presidents to denounce calls for genocide against the Jews. Also: -Kevin McCarthy’s retirement -The loser caucus -Trump's plans for a second term -Contemplating the end of America -Sarah explains the first rule of apologies -University presidents smirk at genocide -The value of challenging views at colleges Show Notes: -McCarthy's strange retirement video -G-File: Antisemitism Is Just a Symptom -Kash Patel: "We're going to come after you." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. That's Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. And I don't know, a lot of fun things to talk about this week. Sure, there were the debates. Kevin McCarthy saying GTFO to himself, Trump, floating the idea of being a dictator. And of course, the universities discover that maybe they liked free speech after all. Plus, we'll definitely talk about what we would be doing if we weren't doing. this. Let's dive right in. Steve, let's just start with the debate.

It was Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramoswamy on the stage last night. Only four people. This could have actually been in an alternate universe. kind of a great debate in some ways. Except for those were the four candidates on the stage. That was the main problem. Look, I thought the moderators did a good job of asking questions.

I thought they kept it moving. I thought they tried in a segment, I think in the second hour, to get the candidates to talk about this thing that the candidates have sought to avoid other than Chris Christie, which is Donald Trump in his 50-point lead. And they asked direct and pointed questions. I would have liked to have seen them probe a little bit deeper on Trump's legal problems, but they asked, pointed and direct questions of each of the candidates, and the candidates mostly chose not to engage them or chose not to engage them in a serious way.

The most obvious Dodge came from Ron DeSantis, who was asked about his rather oblique references to Trump's age and whether those references were a suggestion that Trump sort of wasn't up to the job in the same way that DeSantis has said Joe Biden wasn't up to the job. And DeSantis, I think, very awkwardly just refused to answer the question, repeatedly said, you know, 80 isn't in your prime anymore. We'd like a new generation. All of the things you do to talk around, this direct question. I think for people who were watching the debate and, you know, have concerns about some of the stuff that Trump says and, and, you know, you know, really asked questions about whether Trump is, is with it, is sane.

It was a totally unsatisfying answer. And Chris Christie seized upon that and sort of doubled down on what the, the moderators had asked DeSantis and pushed and grilled them and said, look, Ron, you, you're refusing to answer the question. It's a direct question. Give a direct answer. And DeSantis didn't do it. I think it was probably DeSantis' worst moment of a night. When he had some good moments, he had some better moments than I think he's had in. past debates, but this was a particularly bad one, and I think it came on arguably the most

important question. Jonah, Chris Christie, I thought, had the best debate performance. I didn't think it was really a close call. We finally saw the Chris Christie that I knew was in there and that I think we'd all been waiting for if you know Chris Christie well. And he just delivered it on all cylinders last night. But to Steve's point, one of his moments was saying that the other candidates were treating Donald Trump like Voldemort, he who shall not be named. And it was a nice little, like, it landed. It was a smart comparison, actually, because that's exactly what was happening. But Chris Christie basically rubioed DeSantis. And I don't know why the DeSantis team wasn't prepared for it, but he rubioed him on like a couple different ways. One,

really effectively calling him out for not answering the moderator's questions, not just the one that Steve mentioned, but also whether he would send troops into Taiwan, what he would actually do in Israel. DeSantis would have these, you know, his normal answers. Oh, Israel's a close ally. Here's what the Biden administration's done wrong.

And Christy was like, stop. Did you hear that everyone? He didn't actually answer the question. The question was, what are you going to do about it? And he doesn't have an answer to that. Or on, you know, sending troops into Taiwan. Wait, Sarah, can you give us a second? What does Rubioed mean in this context?

Well, I'm going to get to what Rubioed really mean, sort of like Bork turned into a verb. I'm going to turn Rubioed into a verb here. In specific, it means where a candidate who has prepared so much with his strategist for a debate gets so flustered, he not only can't get off his talking points, he literally repeats his talking points. And at some point, DeSantis, whether he was flustered by Christy or just forgot he'd already given that exact same line, says, twice in a debate, buckle your seatbelts because

there's a new sheriff in town, which was such a mushy mush of cliched mush. I mean, for a guy, if I can just pick him for a second. dude, you went to Harvard Law School. It's like the one thing they teach us is to try not to write like assholes. Like, cut the cliches. So the fact that he gave that exact thing twice was Rubioing, in my view.

But while I thought Chris Christie had the sharpest debate performance by far on the stage, it was just the debate that's different than like moving the needle. I mean, the response. from the audience was somewhat telling in that regard, they would applaud because he was right,

but they didn't like it. You could tell they were sort of applauding against themselves, if you were. At one point, Christy has to say, you know, the job of someone in these elected offices is to tell you the truth you don't want to hear. And the audience is like, yeah, but we don't want to hear them. So in that sense, Jonah, I want to turn to you about Nikki.

Okay, this is a really long question. Yeah, it is. Like, you know, when you're like, following your little kid around and they're holding all of their toys and they're just dropping them along the way. I feel like I've been trying to listen to this as they pick up each random thing. So, okay, do I need to hold on to this? Do I need to hold on to that? I love that Jonah's pretending like he would actually answer the question when he was following along. You'd say whatever the hell you want anyway. Nikki kind of refused to engage. She knew that she was

going to get the most attacks. Ramoswamy, every single answer he gave was Nikki is corrupt. DeSantis also spending almost every answer going after Nicky Haley Nikki Haley at one point saying they said do you want to respond to that and she said oh he's not worth my time it was so lovely so what did you take overall from Nikki the front runner for second place okay so I first of all I am loved to even appear to be proving Steve right about anything I do want to dissent I want to dissent on this, your definition of Rubioid, which I really kind of, the jello slipped through my fingers.

I wasn't quite clear what you meant by Rubioed. But like for me, Rubioid, which really should probably be called Christie's, right, because as Christie's doing the action, I am not a huge fan of having, no offense, Sarah, more lawyers in politics. But Christie proves on these debates what an incredible. valuable skill it is to be able to listen to hostile witnesses and actually listen for the contradictions, right, or listen for the weak spots. And to me, that's what we're talking about with Christy is like, he uses that skill and then breaks the fourth wall, right? He listens and he says, hey, what you were hearing was script reading. That was line reading. That was rehearsed dialogue. Here's what was the intent behind it and here's why you're hearing it again and it takes you it's very

meta in a weird way and it's one it's kind of a dickish thing in politics to sort of say hey by the way this is all kabuki and here's how i can demonstrate it to you but i also think it's kind of compelling so i thought that was his that's his real gift on those stages all that said to answer your question I think it was Nicky's worst debate. I think she got, but I don't think it was particularly bad. I just think she kind of owned the previous three. She didn't own this one.

You know, my wife who knows Nikki well and worked with Nikki, she was sitting there saying, she may be taking the high road now, but I promise you, for the next 20 years, she's going to be thinking about how to kneecap Vivek Ramoswani. And I think it was right for her to take the high road as best she could there.

I kind of felt that she got flustered. a little bit by the the jerkishness of it all. And weirdly, and I'd be curious what you guys think, I think she was a little taken aback in a weird way, their own off her game a little bit by Christy coming to her defense. I don't think they gamed out how to respond to someone being kind to her on stage. And for understandable reasons.

More broadly, though, even though I think it was worse, Nikki's worst debate, is DeSantis' best debate. Vivek Ramoswamy really leaned in to being Vivek Ramoswami, which is not a good look. At one point, listing all the conspiracy theories that he believes are true, one of which was the great replacement theory. He's like, this isn't a theory. It's a fact of, like, there was some weird stuff in that list. I was waiting for 9-11 inside job. There was a 9-11.

The thing is... The moon landing was not on the list. The ganging up on Nikki was bad, and it made them all look small. at the same time, as you know better than I do, Sarah, the significance of these debates, particularly this one, not a lot of undecided voters were searching for News Nation, found it, and listened closely to this debate. I'm just going to stipulate that.

And we have friends, colleagues, Chris Stairwaltz at News Nation. We wish them well. Some of their ads are quite dispatchy, which I thought was interesting. That said, none of the networks are going to be repeating the clips, which do matter of Ramoswami over and over and over again calling Nikki Corrupt, and if they do run any of that kind of stuff, it's going to be contextualized as what a jerk Vivek Ramoswamy was.

And meanwhile, Nikki taking the high road will be seen by infinitely more people on the replays. So I think she actually comes out of this. I think Christy won. Nikki came in probably a close third, because I think it was DeSantis' best debate, which is grading on a curve.

But on the replay clips, I think Nikki emerges as the number as the winner again because the stuff that they're going to replay is to her benefit. But do either of you, to ask, sorry, Sarah, to jump in on your turf, we're six weeks out. Is there anything in this debate that would change the trajectory of the Republican primary?

that's a little unfair because nothing in this debate could have but and again I want to give this the 5% shot I mean Steve I'm feeling very confident about our side bet here what let me give you sort of an alternate reality where the debate itself didn't matter but Nikki continuing to perform well and be the viable alternative um look the big question is does desantis wait until after iowa to drop out does christie wait until after new hampshire to drop out even if they both dropped out tomorrow and all of their voters went to haley which i don't think they would that still puts her shy of where trump is in new hampshire so what you have to have happen is that nicky is sort of building a slow momentum that all those guys

do drop out most of their voters go to her her, again, asterisk, whether that's actually what would happen. And as she builds momentum, current Trump voters turn out to be supporting Trump in those polls, not because they particularly are attached to Trump. They don't mind Trump, but they'd be very happy with a viable alternative. They don't just want to flush their vote down the toilet, though. So Nikki's got to really build, you know, she's at roughly 18, 19 percent in New Hampshire right now.

Ain't nothing. Trump's at 45. So she's got to build now quickly every week to get within striking distance of him and then there's some chance that that would be enough to pull Trump voters of its own weight. But it was never going to be she sent something at the debate or really landed a blow against Trump.

That's why you don't hear them landing blows against Trump because that's not how this would play out in the moonshot in which it does. But by the way, Steve, Jonas said that he thought this was DeSantis' best debate? Did you agree with that? Yeah, so I don't think DeSantis has been a particularly effective debater, given his Yale chops and what we've heard about him,

you know, that he's a sharp reasoner, he's articulate, he can push back on his opponents. I think he's just not a very good debater in general. I always, when I watch DeSantis, I think, he gives sort of the the answer that you know what he means to say and you know where he wants to be but it almost never lands it's never he doesn't create moments it's it's not the kind of um final uh definitive answer that i think he wants to give so i don't think he has done well in these in these earlier debates and almost by default i thought he did least poorly

last night of his previous debates. And I agree with Jonah that I don't think Nikki stood out that way. I mean, Christy was, I didn't think Christy was on. I mean, we've seen Chris Christie when he's on. You know, he had that moment in his closing statement where he sort of started to end it. And then I think he realized he had more time. So he then added some more there and then it had a little more time and added a little bit more. It felt like that Ben Stiller prayer in Meet the Parents, where he just kept going

and then added more and was making it up as he went. So I don't think Christie was exactly sharp. It wasn't a great night for any of them, I don't think. But DeSantis did better than he did in previous debates. And they all benefit from the contrast with Ramoswami, who's just so odious and loathsome. It's hard really even to talk about. There was a great point. Can I make one last point about Ramoswami. You know, one of the things he does, and look, if you've ever done television, people tell you to do this. You can get training. They say, speak with authority, even if you don't have any idea what you're talking about. Speak with authority. Say it like you mean it. And at one point, Christy had sort of handed Ramoswamy his ass on one of their

exchanges. And Ramoswamy was trying to sort of be tough guy to Christy. And he puts up his hand. And he says, we just learned three things about Chris Christie and that answer. which is another sort of debate trick, right? Like, say three things, it sounds like, wow, this person has an ordered mind, really understands what to say. And then he barely got out number one, and we never heard about two and three again.

It's just like they just sort of evaporated. Every time I watch these debates with Vivek Ramoswamy, on the one hand, I believe that kids are basically 100% nature and zero percent nurture aside from the sort of end of the bell curve, highly traumatic, you know, maybe it can be good traumatic, but really bad traumatic events, but that like there's no free will in parenting because it keeps me warm at night to think that I have no, like my, my worst parenting has no effect on my kids. But for some

reason, when I watch these debates, I think, how can I make sure my sons don't turn out that way? Like, what are the parenting tips to like, just not that? You could show them, you should show them these debates. Like starting now. Don't do that. Case did join me for the debate. Now that may say more about his sleeping habits right now. Yeah, he was pretty fussy. So I can't tell whether he was listening and just was like, no, mommy, no, no more Vivek. Because all he can say is goo. But also Vivek does look a lot. At least the hair is very reminiscent of the heat miser from the old Christmas cartoons. My in-laws are coming in town and they make us watch that so much. So I'm a about to have full heat miser for a week here.

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of course he was going to stay around Congress and run for re-election at that he's not running for re-election and he's taking his toys and going home basically immediately now that he realizes he's not going to be speaker again two lots of retirements going on in Congress right now is Kevin McCarthy fit into that larger theme

or is he his own beast and three yes vivake oh my God I just vivaced myself the three was the one I actually cared about. Hold on, Adam. Hold on. Just say, oops. I guess we can't call out of a vague, right? It was the Rick Perry original. Yeah, because at least Rick Perry got to two. But they only got one. Well, if you're throwing the question to Jonah, he's going to ignore it anyway, so you can just...

I answer the question. Oh, whoa. Oh, wait. I know three. I know three. And three, the Republican majority is now so slim that as one of our colleagues said, these guys could commit murder on camera and the Republicans can't expel any more members or lose anymore like they need to put them all in padding and bubble wrap at this point it's getting so tight Jonah feel free to answer whatever question you want

I'm sorry were any of those questions did I don't blame me See, he's not even listening. Yeah, exactly. No, seriously, were there question marks in any of that? I can ask them if you want. Would that make you?

Yeah, could you? Could you repeat your question in the form of a question? That would be awesome. What do you think about that, Jonah? Yeah. Well, Sarah, who was a lovely and talented guest on the Remnant this week. We talked a good deal about the loser caucus kind of stuff there, and we talked about that stuff.

a lot around here. I'm still trying to figure out what the question was. I don't blame Kevin McCarthy in the slightest for wanting to get out of Dodge, right? He's looking at a giant pile of American currency just sitting there that he can get, you know, he can make a large amount of money very quickly. And he was only hanging out there

because he thought he could be speaker again. and I think it's been communicated to him that he can never be speaker again and it's really, really... I mean, look, what's his face? Cameron in the UK spent, you know, he went out as prime minister for 10 years and came back as foreign secretary.

Maybe that's a model for McCarthy, 10 years from now, but for right now, it's... I don't blame him on a personal level because it's just got to be humiliating to be walking around there and having people just...

Because now the conventional wisdom is at the end of the day they just didn't like him. Or at least a significant number of people just didn't like him because Johnson is doing the same stuff that they threw McCarthy out for. And so McCarthy would go around and say,

well, why are you okay with him doing it and not me? And the only answer that can emerge from that is because a bunch of people don't like you. And that's got to suck. on the just to expand this out a little bit the

the easiest way for conservatives Republicans or however you want to describe them the right to have major legislative wins is to have large major majorities you can't have serious wins on policy of any kind without either a large majority or a real willingness to work with the other party

just not possible and we see this across the board. I was saying this to somebody recently, but just like go look at what FDR's majorities looked like, the Democratic majorities looked like in 32, 34, 36 for FDR. I mean, I think at one point the Republicans were down to like nine seats in the Senate. You can get a lot done when you can afford to lose 12 Senate votes and still beat a filibuster, right?

And the Republican Party has this collective action problem and that they, internally they don't know how to be a majority party and they don't think they have to because the Democrats have the same collective action problem. And so as long as both parties think they can only be a 48, 49% party and maybe during a good year a 50.1% part, party, you're going to have this kind of stalemate and you're going to be held hostage by the AOCs and the Matt Gaetz's and the people who make purity and, you know, fighting the enemy

more important than actually accomplishing. I mean, Steve, at this point, truly any member can hold the caucus hostage. Yeah, no, it's a problem for Republicans. But look, I think Jonah makes an important point. And it's and it's and it's worth sort of dwelling on it for a moment because I think it tells us something about the way that Congress is covered. Kevin McCarthy, there was deep skepticism of Kevin McCarthy from within the Republican conference in a way that went far beyond what I think the day-to-day reporting about Congress and McCarthy suggested. We spent a fair amount of time on it here, actually, but there is, there's a tendency when you're covering Capitol Hill and you have somebody like Kevin McCarthy as speaker, and your job and your ability to do your job well, to a certain extent, depends on access to McCarthy and McCarthy's world. You tend not to report as critically on McCarthy as you might otherwise.

And I think there were places that sort of repeated uncritically McCarthy's talking points or at least gave prominent voice to them in a way that obscured the deeper lack of faith in Kevin McCarthy. And I think we have seen this sort of from the beginning. I think one of the, well, McCarthy put out this statement in this really sort of over the top cheesy video about his career yesterday. And he walks through his career and he, you know, revisits the things that he thinks are highlights. And he ends by saying that, you know, it's been a bumpy road or something to that effect. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. Fact check false. I mean, stop and think about that.

Like, any other way? Like, you're thrilled to have been thrown out on your ear by your own colleagues? And I think, you know, he had lots of problems. I mean, Kevin McCarthy, he blew his earlier chance at being speaker because he went on television and essentially labeled the Benghazi hearings as political as an attempt to get Hillary Clinton when many members of his conference actually took them seriously and thought it was worth doing the committee because they had stuff they thought they needed to find out. So he sort of blew his chance then because he was not very good at this. Then this time, early in his tenure, you'll remember the book by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, formerly of the New York Times, No, Both at Politico, came out. And they reported that McCarthy had said on a phone call with congressional leadership,

other Republican leaders, that he had told that he was going to tell Donald Trump, he needed to resign in the aftermath of January 6th. And he was sort of, it was this chest thumping that they reported. And then, of course, McCarthy went to Mara Lago three weeks later and made nice with Trump. Well, when they reported that, McCarthy denied it. Unequivocally didn't happen. These guys are making it up, fake news, et cetera, et cetera. And they waited a couple days.

And then they released the tape that they had of McCarthy saying exactly that. And look, we all know, I mean, we cover politics. We've all been involved or covering politics for. for a long time. You know that members of Congress and political candidates, presidential aspirants, play fast and loose with the truth. They might shade something here or there. They might spin something here or there. But rarely do they tell, at least in my experience still, just bald-faced, aggressive lies. And then when they get caught in those lies, as McCarthy did in this case, you have to come up with a way.

way to explain why you were caught lying so that people might trust you again, however improbable that might seem. And McCarthy didn't do that. He just sort of stood firm and was exposed as this obvious and horrible liar. And I think what that incident did, there were other incidents along the way that I think had the same effect. But what that incident did was make clear to fellow Republicans in the House that McCarthy he couldn't be trusted, that he would tell them things that weren't true. And when you go back

and you look at the kinds of things that we heard his colleagues say, both the Freedom Caucus types who ultimately brought him down and the moderates, in some cases in public, in some cases, privately in conversations with me and other reporters, would say, look, we just don't trust the guy. He told us he was going to do X and he didn't do X. He told us he was going to say Y and he didn't say why. I think that fundamentally, even in this era where, you know, you have Donald Trump say things on a regular basis that are verifiably untrue, demonstrably provably untrue, I take some small comfort that part of what led to Kevin McCarthy's undoing is the fact that he was a liar, a frequent liar, a really bad liar in a way that led his colleagues not to believe him.

All right. I want to read you something. There's been a lot of talk out there about Trump's comments that he'd only be a dictator on day one and various prognostication by people, that he would, you know, pick Stephen Miller as Attorney General or Steve Bannon as chief of staff, J.D. Vance as VP. A bunch of anonymous sources on that. But here's the part that I was interested in. This is a quote from Cash Patel. He was sort of a minor figure in Trump world. during the administration and now really likes doing interviews. Quote, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, Patel said. The Trump campaign advisor said,

idiotic comments like this have nothing to do with our campaign. So I guess my question is, on the one hand, there's a lot of doomsdaying about if Trump gets elected, he'll never leave office, he'll challenge the 22nd Amendment somehow, he'll be a dictator. But then you have, you know, them calling Cash Patel an idiot. And that's on the record. So what am I, where are I falling on the record, right? It was an anonymous quote about Cash Patel, whoever said it didn't say it on the record, which would have been helpful. Look, I don't think we have to use our imagination on this. You have Donald Trump himself at an event in

Florida at a speech where Mike Flynn, former national security advisor, who was booted from his position for having been caught in his own set of misleading statements, and who has since gone very Q&ON. Like, Mike Flynn is running around the country leading these sort of Christian nationalist revivals and saying things, like embracing virtually every conspiracy that Vivek Ramoswamy mentioned in his debate performance, not a terribly credible person anymore. And Donald Trump, at this dinner, Flynn is in the front. Trump is the Speaker of Note, tells Mike Flynn to get ready. He's coming back into government when Trump is reelected.

So you don't really have to use your imagination to think that he might be willing to make Steve Bannon and his chief of staff or do these other things that people are suggesting, even if they're suggesting this stuff anonymously. And Cash Patel, to use one example, remember, after the election, after Donald Trump lost the election, after it was shown that he lost. the election. After his campaign, people told him he lost the election. After senior White House staff, including White House counsel, acknowledged to Trump in private that he had lost the election, he removed the leadership, or forced out, removed, fired, depending on your view, leadership at both the Pentagon and the Justice Department. And Cash Patel was one of the people he installed, as I think it was chief of staff at the Pentagon in what many people inside the administration,

again, people who had worked for Donald Trump, who has formed loyalty to Donald Trump, supported him in a variety of contexts, thought was an eagerness to use the Insurrection Act in to advance these sort of cockamamie election denial schemes, including some, that were later advanced by Mike Flynn. I mean, Mike Flynn was somebody who was talking pretty prominently

about using the Insurrection Act to rerun the election, to take back the voting machines, which he said were manipulated somehow, never was able to produce specifics or any evidence on that, and to rerun elections in the swing states. I just don't think it's that crazy to think that the kinds of things we're reading about how Trump would like to staff his administration in the second term

corresponds with what we're being told. These outside staffing efforts are very clear about what they're asking prospective staffers, and loyalty to Donald Trump comes sort of beyond anything and everything. So, Sarah, you, partly out of your weird compulsion to steelman positions you don't actually hold,

you push back on a lot of this on, again, this fascinating episode of the Remnant, and which most people, I think both of our surprise, like mostly for the dating advice at the end. Perhaps because contemplating the end of America as a self-governing republic is a little bit not, you know,

what are you going to comment on in the comment section on that one? Exactly. So, I think, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think I'm going to write about it. the is Trump a fascist, will he be a dictator stuff, all this kind of thing. First of all, I don't know that strategically it's the smartest thing in the world for defeating Trump because it allows a lot of people to tune out any criticism of Trump who want to support Trump

or are inclined to support Trump. That's what they say about all these guys and then they just, they tune it out completely, right? in a similar way that the brag indictment of Trump helped inoculate Trump against serious indictments and so as a I understand the intent

from the Atlantic crowd and those guys and I agree with a lot of their concerns but I don't think that they are accomplishing what they think they're accomplishing by going this way.

Also I think some of their arguments are kind of weird like if Donald Trump is elected president, he is actually allowed to appoint people in the executive branch. You know, like, that's what all presidents do. I will not like it. And I think it could be really bad. But to like, it's got this sort of like, those Shelbyville kids like candy for the sweet, sweet taste. Like, if Donald Trump is elected, he'll appoint people. Well, yeah, we know that, right? At the same time, I'm with Steve that I, let me put it this way, your point about anonymous sources,

not being reliable because it's Steve Bannon and Steve Miller and the other people on the island of Misfit Toys, working sources, telling Rolling Stone what it wants to hear, pandering to their people. There's a lot of that going on. At the same time, that stuff will make it harder and harder for any halfway decent and sane person to work for that administration. Because that is the messaging that you're going to get

about what that administration is going to be about, and they're like, I don't want any part of that, right? So it's not harmless, and it's not insignificant. And so by scaring away even the most intense, intensely partisan normies, and we all know a lot of intensely partisan normies who want Republicans to succeed, who don't like Trump, but would think about joining an administration, but not if they're talking about the CIA director,

throwing journalists in jail, right? So, like, the people who are left who are going to be willing to work for this administration are the ones who are going to say, that sounds awesome. I want to get on board early for that. And so it can become self-fulfilling prophecy. And because we know Trump responds most and most sincerely to abject flattery, you know, he was unable to criticize QAnonon because, they said nice things about him. It took

constant lobbying from people, and I've talked to people who lobbied him to get him to condemn David Duke, because David Duke said nice things about him. To this day, he won't criticize Putin because Putin says nice things about him. These people have his number, and they can do a lot of damage framing Trump as a dictator, even if Trump just wants to be a performer. And, you know, I think the contingency and the possibilities of accidental random error don't get enough appreciation from historians looking backward and from pundits looking forward.

Everybody wants to say, oh, here's the plan, this is what they're going to do. When in reality, people respond to screw-ups, people respond to the abilities of the staff they have around. around them. They get stuck on these decision trees that narrow the scope of what they can do and the people making the recommendations around them. If they all suck, if they all like being on Steve Bannon's in a war room, then the Overton window, the menu options for Trump to choose from are going to be pretty scary. And it doesn't matter what's in his heart, which I don't think his heart is a good heart. So... I don't think he's going in to want to be a dictator.

I think there are people who want him to be a dictator. I mean, Jesse Waters said in 2016 that he wanted him to be a dictator. There are people who talk like this, who think like this, but you surround someone with an ego like Trump with people who say you should be a dictator. It is not unreasonable to think he will do dictatorial things. I am not saying that he will, I think our system is still strong enough to stop an actual dictator.

but at the very minimum, he's going to behave in a way where you don't have to pronounce the tater. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

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Late last night, as I was watching the presidential debate, I was getting a flurry of texts from some friends that included what I would charitably describe as the appearance of a hostage video from the president of the University of Pennsylvania that was put out on social media, where it was meant to be a walkback from her testimony that she'd given before Elise Stefonic alongside. the presidents of Harvard University in MIT. I teach a communications class at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, and I actually teach a whole day on apologies. Do you know what the first rule of apologies is? Don't blink torture. Apologize. That's right, Steve.

You get an A. Jonah gets a C. Because of great inflation. Apologize? So, yeah. There was no actual apology in that. this video. But this comes after all three presidents were asked whether calls for the genocide of the Jewish people would violate their school's policies. None of the three answered the question. All of the three smirked while not answering the question. The smirking got weird,

let me just say. And two of the three verbatim said it would depend on the context, which was laughable on several fronts. And David and I ranted about this on AO, but just to quickly run through the fronts, one of the fronts is just from a communication standpoint. That's just the questions about genocide and you're like, depends on the context. Like, that just probably is not going to be

the best answer you can give. There's also the hypocrisy element that if this topic had been anything other than anti-Semitism, we all know that wouldn't have been the answer and it certainly wouldn't have been what's happening on campus. And the third is that, and this one, is a little more complicated, perhaps, that the question they took as some esoteric

theoretical question on how the First Amendment works, which of course they're not obliged to follow, they're being asked about their school's policies, but the problem has been repeatedly students on their campuses have violated clear policies of the school, and the schools have done nothing to enforce those policies So they enforce them against other students for other things, and I'm particularly thinking here of all the lawsuits

that have been brought by Christian legal societies or pro-life students because they didn't get the permit for the five-by-10 box. They were allowed to stand in to hand out flyers or hold a sign. But all of a sudden, these students are marching through the library. One student claiming that she'd been assaulted in the library, another student at Penn, talking about, you know, swastika's being drawn near his dorm room, you know, then the policies

aren't enforced. So you've got an enforcement problem as well. It was a disaster of a hearing for these guys, so much so that the White House put out a statement saying, and I don't have it right in front of me, but something to the effect of, we can't believe this needs to be said, but yeah, genocide and calls for genocide are bad. Is there anything that's going to change? Is there any takeaway here? Are we seeing the end of these institutions carrying the weight that they have potentially? Are parents going to be hesitant to send their kids to Harvard? Or is it like, look, I don't like what Harvard's doing, but that's Harvard. Of course you should go. Is there any consequence to this being a crap hearing? Jonah? Tell me there are consequences. Yeah. So I went on

quite a stem winder on this in the Wednesday due file. But, and I have, I have views. But I'll agree with you, since we're talking about the incredibly important field of communications, I'll let's just say that when you're the president of Harvard, Penn, and MIT, and you testify before Congress and Elise Stefonic eats your lunch so badly that the entire cast of Morning Joe does nothing but rain scorn down upon you, your strategy did not work.

I'm just going to put it that way. As dumb as it is, I think the smirking actually really, really didn't help because it made it look like they thought they were owning Elise Stefonic. They didn't even realize.

Yeah. You're being asked about genocide. Like, think about the topic for a moment. Why are you smirking? Yeah. So, like, the only criticism from the left that I think has an interesting point to it that I've seen,

Shottie Amead at the Washington Post, who I disagree with, pretty profoundly on a bunch of things these days, but he's a nice guy. He says the problem was all three of the speakers bought into the idea that Global Intifada

means genocide of Jews. And once you buy into that, you can't say it depends on the context, right? So, like, if they had said, well, look, I don't think that that's what these students, but that's not what they mean. But, you know, and so when you say that Global Interfata,

Fata means global genocide of wiping out the Jews. I think we're talking past each other. If they'd say something like that, it could have opened up a whole other dangerous line of conversation for them, and maybe that's what they thought they were avoiding. But it's the smirking. It's this, it's this, well, first of all, it's not just the smirking, because the amazing thing you could tell how they did not read the room was when the Harvard president gives an answer,

that just falls flat, you know, just not good. Yeah, thinking like that, like she said, it depends on the context. Yeah, and so they sounded like the kind of jerk professor who smirks when a kid offers a really bad theory about what happened in the past and or about how some math problem works or whatever. And they want to let them keep talking without correct. directing them. And that pose is never a good look in a public hearing, but it's really bad when you're wrong, right? When you're saying it depends on the context about genocide. And I agree with you

entirely. Like, you know, if you, if you say men can't get pregnant, you're in big trouble in a lot of these classrooms and fora on these college campuses. But if you say gas the Jews, well, context matters, right? We need to know what Jews? When? For what reason? Are they colonial settlers? I mean, and normal people hear this and they're like, are you frigging me? I mean, it's like, I get context. I get appreciating context. I actually get having a passionately maximalist free speech position. I don't agree with it for a college campus, but I get it. But we've been subjected to now, depending on how you do the math, 10, 20, 30 years of stories of crazy stuff on college campuses of people not being allowed to say

this or having to say that. And then all of a sudden, these guys fall back on First Amendment principles and their First Amendment values. No one's buying it. And so I don't think any of these presidents are going to last long. And just lastly, about whether it would matter, look, we both agree that small donors are bigger problem in politics than big donors. Big donors don't have a big influence on the parties anymore, at least not the way their detractors think they do. Big donors still have a big influence on elite universities. I don't think they need to because Harvard is basically a hedge fund that runs classes on the side. But they're very responsive to big donors because they think part of their job is to just keep this money coming in. And when all

these people, including, you know, my friend Cliff Asness is pretty public about this. When they pull their money from Penn, when they pull money from places like Harvard, that signaling goes to the board. The board members are board members mostly because they think it's a Veblen good. They like to say how prestigious it is to be on this board. If it becomes embarrassing or really hard work, that has an impact too. And so I think it's going to take a long time to fix these things, but it's good that this is happening. Steve, are their consequences? I don't know.

Everybody should read Jonah's G-file on this. It was terrific, and he led, I mean, I think the three of us all were struck by the smirking, which was really, I mean, the substance of what they said was, I think, in many ways, as deeply offensive as Jonah says it was. But the smirking was unbelievable, and it continued and sort of grew. I mean, the president of Penn, as she was engaged in this back and forth with Elise Stefonic, sort of half smirked in her first answer, then smirked a little more in her second answer.

And by the third answer, it was like a full on, like, in your face, smirk. Like, she wasn't taken. Like, this whole thing was a big joke. And she couldn't wait to go and have drinks with her friends and talk about how stupid Elise Stefonic was. Really offensive. and the fact that, as you say, Sarah, that the subject at hand was genocide

suggests just a total misunderstanding of what was going on here. Or they did understand. If they understood what was going on, they can't have understood how it would play because they never would have done this. Two of the three, at least, maybe all... Oh, I agree. They didn't understand how it would play,

but they thought that that would have been... They believed that that was an acceptable way to talk about it if they'd been surrounded by their friends on their campus, the people who they, like their faculty, they thought that's how that exchange should go in their own worlds. What was the shock was that that wasn't how

the world outside of Cambridge views that conversation. You can smirk about calls for Jewish genocide in the faculty lounge. It would appear based on that testimony. Yes, and I think that's the point. That's the big point. I mean, so I've had, you know, I've, I came up in, as an undergraduate in, in the top of,

of old school political correctness, which was not nearly as, I think, stultifying as the current academic environment on campus. I got my graduate degree at Columbia at a time where I had a professor literally tell me to shut up for asking questions in the journalism school. So I'm well aware of just how radical the professors and administrators on these campuses can be. And I, you know, bothers me. It's not, it's not right. But when it comes to my own kids, I've had this long-running argument with some of my conservative friends. And, you know, a lot of this is based on my own experience. I was a conservative as I went through undergrad and grad school, a couple different places. And I think I came out of it better, fighting with these professors

with PhDs who had spent, you know, in some cases, decades studying political theory, bringing my own views, having those views tested, engaging in public back and forth with people who knew a lot more than I did was really good for me. I think it's sharpened my arguments. I think it's sharpened my reasoning. And I think I came out of it better. And that's basically been my view of how to think about this as I think about sending my own kids off to to colleges. So we took our oldest to look at schools. You know, there were some schools where we would take the tours and they were kind of like laughably in your face, woke politically. It's like the kind of thing if Jonah were writing a parody of a school, this is what it would sound like on the

tour. Swarthmore is one that came to mind. It was just every like, you know, and our cafeterias are farm to table served by, you know, it's. It just was like hilarious, right? And we had conversations about whether that would be a good learning environment. But I've never thought, like, I'm not going to send my kids to these really good schools because of this. And I will say, I didn't watch the hearings live. I heard all of this sort of reaction to them and assumed it was an overreaction because it couldn't really have been that bad. they couldn't have been this morally obtuse.

And in fact, I think when I finally got down to watching it, it was worse. It was worse than I had thought. And I will say as somebody, I mean, I've made this argument with conservative friends for a couple decades now, as we've talked about sending kids to places that don't share, share my basic values. It's, I'm sort of seriously rethinking it. I don't think it's, how can you get a good education in an environment that, that, as you say, Sarah, where the faculty lounge would all be nodding their heads and smirking along. Like, they're not open to real inquiry.

And I'm probably closer to the kind of campus free speech absolutist position than Jonah is. But the problem or part of the problem is these schools don't believe in free speech either. Correct. Right. It's unbelievable. That's the hypocrisy bucket, right? Like, if they were enforcing these policies against everyone or not enforcing them against everyone and saying,

nope, we just believe so much in free speech, we're just going to have to let this one ride. But that's so laughably untrue. Our friends at fire, who have done these rankings and looked carefully at this Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They did a survey of campus free speech. They've done this now for a couple times.

And the two schools at the very bottom of the survey, Penn is second to last, Harvard is last. And when you look at the result, the characterization of the free speech environment that fire puts, abysmal is the word they use to describe it. And if you just go back and you read, go do a search for the Harvard Crimson

and read about microaggressions, Harvard has launched department-wide, school-wide investigations of professors guilty of microaggressions. There was a big investigation back in 2018 of the School of Public Health for professors who said things that offended students, one way or the other, created an unsafe learning environment.

Remember, there was a time where speech was violence, so you didn't need the speech to lead to conduct, which was the argument from these professors in this context. Speech was itself violence. You go back and you read these things, and it was intentional or unintentional microaggressions. There's an article in the Penn student newspaper from a young woman who was contemplating,

signing up for an honors course to finish her years at Penn, and she went and saw her advisor. She describes how the advisor said, this is, again, by her own accounting, said, are you sure this isn't going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Which I read to be, boy, that's a big workload. are you sure? That's exactly the kind of question I would want a professor to ask my kid

if they were contemplating, taking on an extra workload to end their college career. And she writes an entire article about this being a microaggression and about how the professor was coming after her and how, you know, she was certain that the professor wouldn't have asked this of others. That's the environment we're operating in. And yet these professors, these presidents are willing to, I would say tacitly condone calls for genocide. It is truly outrageous and it should make people rethink. So, Sarah, I mean, like, I don't want to revisit our epic conversation about your passionate defense of Nazis at Skokie. But so here's my, when Steve says I'm not, that I'm less of free speecher than he is on college campuses, he's right, it's true.

But the problem with free speech policies on a place like a college campus is that they're always going to be about judgment and interpretive. and enforcement, right? And so what, I think we lost something when we used to have notions of like good manners, decency, common sense, honor codes, ladylike behavior, gentlemanly behavior, those kinds of things. And there is some speech that while perfectly permissible on free speech grounds, on First Amendment grounds, is not necessarily wise, appropriate, decent, honorable, whatever. And so, like, my old friend Peter Beinart,

he says, you know, I get why some Jewish kids feel unsafe when they hear Global Intifada, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if we ban that, why aren't we going to ban the Israeli flag because there are Palestinian kids who were reminded of their relatives being killed? I get the point. The problem with it is that one RISLY flag is a noun and the calls for Global Intifada are verbs,

and these are different things. But just more broadly, I think that days after, sometimes hours after, sometimes we're still going on, families are being set fire, raped, murdered, babies killed, taking prisoner, taking hostage,

all this kind of stuff, to call for global intifada, maybe completely within your First Amendment rights. But it's incredibly insensitive and rude, and it doesn't seem at all, unreasonable for a college administrator to say, not because it's violence, not because it's triggering, not because it violates this sort of safe space thing, because it violates basic human decency that you don't say, that you don't cheer on this stuff while it's still fresh

in these Jewish kids' minds in the same way that you would never cheer on violence against black people in the, like, days after the George Floyd thing, right? I mean, like, it seems to me common sense can rule here as a defense of free expression and free exchange of ideas in a civil academic environment, even if you are violating First Amendment principles at the margins from time to time. The problem is that these guys are into social justice engineering, and so there's some speech that they think is that should be privileged and other speech that shouldn't, and the Jews just fall out of their math. on this. Um, where am I wrong? Okay, so two points I want to make on this. One, I would be very interested in seeing the results of the experiment of a private university, basically saying when you are in a class situation, an academic environment, and that could include, by the way, lunch with the professor, I think. But, you know, otherwise in class, it is absolute free speech.

You can say anything, no matter how offensive, because that is the learning environment. and we have to be able to challenge even, you know, why isn't white supremacy a good idea? And outside of the classroom experience, something like what you're saying, Jonah, which is we're going to have a code of honor and civility where, yeah, you try really hard not to offend people. Now, part of that's going to be the punishment

if you violate that outside the classroom code. I don't think it should be expulsion or anything like that or an investigation or you have to sit in front of whatever. I think it should maybe just be a like, hey, some people thought that that wasn't cool. You should know that. So there's a punishment aspect to that as well. But I'd be curious in that experiment. I guess I just think overall, I fear that there won't be consequences for this.

And I don't like that. But if there are any consequences, here's what I think they'll be. The progressive movement has so be clowned itself on so many areas in the last two months, right? Believe all women, speeches, violence. they've had to walk back every everything that they said was sort of a pillar of their social justice engineering when it comes to Jews. They're not going to be able to take that back now

because even these professor or these university presidents were having to like now be free speech. Uh, absolutist basically in order to say why you were allowed to do this. So look, maybe the result will actually be positive change on these campuses for free speech because they won't be able to now go back to enforcing their speech as violence code. Maybe that's worth something. All right.

With that, we're going to leave you there and we're going to hold on our conversation of what you would be if you weren't this to next week. Bye. You know,