The Dispatch Podcast - Supreme Court, Abortion, and the Political Fallout

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

What are we to make the Justice Samual Alito’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health? Our hosts are here to discuss as the politics of abortion take shape. Sarah, Jonah, and David then pivot to what they learned from Tuesday’s primary elections. And finally, what does all of this mean for Trump’s chances in 2024?   Show Notes: -David and Sarah’s podcast breaking down the Suprme Court leak -French Press: “The Supreme Court Abortion Leak—Your Questions, Answered” -G-File: “Why Joe Biden Hates Saying the A-Word” -The Sweep: “What Does J.D. Vance’s Victory Tell Us About the Midterms?” -Sarah in the Washington Post: “We in the ‘shallow state’ thought we could help. Instead, we obscured the reality of a Trump presidency.” -Smithsonian’s National Zoo: “Tragic Loss of Animal Life at Smithsonian’s National Zoo” -DCist: “There’s An Angry Turkey Attacking People On The Anacostia Riverwalk” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgher, joined by David French and Jonah Goldberg, plenty to discuss this week. We'll talk about the politics of Roe and the draft opinion leaked from the Supreme Court. Check in on the primary elections in Ohio and what, if anything, we learned on Tuesday night. And finally, the combination of all of the politics of this week and what it potentially means for Donald Trump, the Republican Party in 2024. Let's dive right in. Jonah, I'm going to start with the non-lawyer on this podcast. You wrote an interesting piece about how the politics are shaping up around the leak draft that would overturn Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court sometime in the next two months. yeah i mean i just from the beginning it's funny it's like now people are catching up to this observation but of course i was so perceptive much earlier um i just found it really shocking that almost instantaneously people starting with joe biden went to the argument about how this decision

threatens all this other stuff and if you grew up in the era that you know david and i grew up in rather than some larval life form like yourself. With the possible exception of black voting rights, like Roe and abortion rights, has been like the central pillar of progressive fundraising, of progressive messaging, of Democratic Party messaging, long before Republicans started having litmus tests for Supreme Court appointees,

Democrats had litmus tests for being pro-Roe. And almost instantaneously, the response, from Joe Biden on down was this could lead to all of these terrible things, as if the thing in and of itself, what Heidegger might call Dazine, was not, I'm not sure if that's right, but it sounded good, didn't it? So wait, you're dropping intellectual snobbery that you're not even sure is accurate. Dazine's close.

It has to do with being and on being. Anyway, my whole point is like the thing in and itself, right, is should be a big enough deal. And I made a lot of people angry because I compared it. Obviously, I think abortions are different than guns. I think we can come at that conclusion from a lot of different angles. But when courts threaten gun rights, gun right advocates talk about guns and gun rights. They don't say, well, this could lead to all of these other terrible things. They defend the actual merits of the thing that they're organized around.

And it was just been shocking to me that both the media and the sort of immediate talking points were to say, oh, no, this is going to be really dangerous for interracial marriage and for gay marriage and all these other things. And I think part of it has to do with the fact that they're looking at some polling, maybe even some sort of David Shore adjacent focus groups that say people don't want to talk about abortion. And in fact, I think a big reason why Roe is popular, that people don't want to overturn Roe, has less to do with the fact that people don't want to overturn Roe has less to do with the fact that people. understand what's in row and more to do with the fact is they don't want to talk about abortion abortion makes people uncomfortable including pro-choice people and so changing it to some other thing about the slippery slope and the handmaid's tail and interracial marriage because we all know that clarence thomas has been itching to find a reason to rule his own marriage is unconstitutional is just easier ground for biden and the democrats to argue about and i thought it was just

extremely telling that given how important abortion rights are to the democratic party last week was the first time Joe Biden in his entire presidency said the word abortion, which is just kind of shocking. Okay, let me push back on that a little, which is it is actually just smart politics that no matter what the topic is, expand it to everything, make it existential for every single person in your base. And so in fact, all you've explained is that Republicans aren't as bright because when you talk about gun rights, what they should be saying is, and next they're coming for your religion. Oh, wait, I think they have said that before. Yeah, let me push back on that by citing, admittedly a controversial expert on these things, Sarah Isger, who pointed out

that the two parties have self-sorted to a great degree. And so if you actually are just talking about abortion, you're not actually adding new voters to your column, right, because you already have them. My observation here isn't that it's necessarily bad politics. My observation is that having gone to an all-women's college and been berated a great deal in the abstract about abortion rights issues, which I had no tangible experience with at the time, I've been told that the thing in of itself, the glorious, important, vital thing are the actual abortion rights. And you would think, given that that's been the messaging for 50 years, they might stay on that message for a couple days rather than a media out of the block talking about something else.

Jonah is going to an all-women's college, like having a bunch of big sisters, like those guys who had, you know, were like the youngest of four sisters or something and that they're, like, really good at talking to women and understanding women's issues or, you know, by college, is it already baked? I came out of it being much better at talking to women than I went into it. I will grant you that for sure. But the baseline is important. The baseline is important.

And it's a longer story for another day. And we haven't gotten David in. And I don't need to dwell on my role as the Rosa Parks of Gender Integrated. here, so, like, we should probably move on. I'm interested in this story. Are you kidding me? I mean, Steve's not here, so we get to do weird stuff. That's true. David, why do you think the politics around Roe has shifted? Because at least to me, it feels like if this had leaked from the Supreme Court in 2006, 2009, very different reaction. Yeah, I think the answer is it's a complicated issue in this.

this answer, it gets relatively simple in two ways. One, there's just a lot fewer abortions than there used to be for a ton of reasons. And related to that, there's a lot easier access to contraception than there was. And so the reality is that abortion is A, I think as Jonah said, people don't like to talk about it. I think people like it less than they like to talk about it perhaps even less than they did. After almost 50 years of experience with essentially abortion on demand, there's a lot of unhappy outcomes about this. And I keep going back to this study, this Notre Dame study of these hundreds of Americans that they interviewed. And even amongst the most pro-choice, the people who are most supportive of abortion rights, this sentence was

true. None of the Americans we interviewed talked about abortion as a desirable good. And then you go down in that same paragraph, stories from those who have had abortions are likewise harrowing, even when the person telling it retains a commitment to abortions availability. So it's very much less common. So the issue is more downstream from the majority of Americans' lives. And even amongst those who've had experience and remain committed to abortion rights don't look at it as a positive good, as a desirable good. And, you know, there's another sentence in this study. It says Americans do not uphold abortion as a happy event or something that they want more of. Now, why would you pivot to talking more about gay marriage? Well, one is there's a legitimate reason

to believe that the right would want to take more, it would want to take aim at gay marriage. But another reason is for people who, gay marriage is a happy event, right? So it's something that is, something that is celebrated. Nobody does that except the tiniest, tiniest, strangest fringe of the shot your abortion crowd on Twitter or the extremes, extremes, extremes of universities. people don't celebrate abortions, people celebrate gay marriage, people are happy about gay marriage, and I just think there's just such a fundamental emotional difference between the two things

that, you know, Jonah's right, people don't want to talk about it, and 50 years later, with the abortion rate much lower than it was before Roe, it's way downstream from most people lives, but comparison to even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago. So is it possible, though, that we're just talking about this too early? I mean, I've now seen Twitter posts that purport to be organizing rallies at Chief Justice Roberts' home, Justice Kavanaugh's home. They have it on a map. There's going to be a large rally in D.C. next week. Maybe this just came, you know, too early.

All these organizations expecting the decision in June weren't organized this time around. In fact, in a month, we're going to be on this podcast saying, well, we just were, you know, it was at the very earliest point of this and we didn't appreciate the large wave that was coming. I think that's possible. David, go ahead. Or Jonah. I think, you know, obviously, I mean, Pam Plyardhood and other similar groups have raised scads and scads of cash. And if they're not willing to spend it now, when would you spend it? You know, it's like saying to the Ukrainians, you know, hold on to your defense budget for later. I mean, it's like this is the time. And. and so I agree but I mean like I mean you're a better person to ask this than I am but like let me let me back up I think Roe is wrong I think people who are pro-choice should also agree that Roe is wrong as a matter of constitutional stuff and and that you can separate the desire the argument for being pro-choice from the actual constitutional merits of Roe I think one of the problems that the left and abortion rights supporters have gotten themselves into is they've gotten spoiled and lazy um by actually not making by feeling like

they don't have to make good constitutional arguments for abortion um or abortion rights um that said i think that the the i personally have no problem with the idea that this could create all sorts of headaches for republicans downstream and i think it will in specific districts in specific states. That's fine because if you're at a principled position about overturning Roe, part of your arguments is that when you send this back to the states, you're going to have a lot of arguments about it. And you're going to have a lot of democratic fights in legislatures and among policymakers

and people are going to come to different conclusions in different places about how this stuff works. And will that bite against Republicans more than Democrats? Probably. I just, I'm sort of going back to the original, you know, is Gurian point, which is to say, that I'm dubious that there are enough swingable voters, that there were enough Republicans in the suburbs who will now become single issue pro-choice voters to change the macro trends, but in specific places, I don't know, like the Cleveland suburbs, maybe this is like a frigging

earthquake of massive proportions. I just don't know yet. David, this kind of anticipates my next question, which is both political parties, to me, have been hiding behind row, you know, having their cake and eating it too, because nothing they actually did on this mattered. And so what you saw was on the right, a bunch of Republican state legislatures passing either very, very strict row trigger laws, you know, heartbeat bills, or really sloppily drafted, not an or actually, just an and or, sometimes both, sloppily drafted pieces of law that are law in some of these states which could have the effect of criminalizing

ectopic pregnancy removals which have generally not been classified as abortions because there is no potential life there there's only the potential death of the mother and going and reading some of these that it definitely doesn't it's not drafted correctly even though again any pro-life person who actually knows what they're talking about

would tell you that ectopic pregnancies are not abortions But if you don't draft your law, right, it doesn't really matter what you believe in your heart. Okay, but on the left, Chuck Schumer just in February introduced the Democrats bill to protect abortion rights in case the Supreme Court overturned Roe. It had no limits on abortion to speak of. So like 39 weeks, you could have an elective abortion under Chuck Schumer's version, which also seems like it would be deeply. unpopular and a weird, weird law for the United States to have. But again, they were all getting to do this because none of it actually mattered. It was talking point politics. Once Rose gone, it changes all of it. And yet it's still in the backdrop of our very extreme base oriented

parties. So my question is, are they going to keep doing what they're doing because that's what the base wants? Or in fact, are we going to have reasonable legislation in these 20 or so states that do not have laws on the books, if row falls. And some of them, the more purple they are, the more reasonable-ish, I think the legislation will be. What's really unfortunate about this, if this opinion holds, it's dropping into a state-by-state environment that is in the middle of a culture war flex off. Like, these various legislators are just peacocking around right now with legislature that

with legislation that is some of the most poorly drafted extremist stuff I've seen. And it's been to this point, you know, mainly before, you know, the Alito draft lead, it's been mainly on issues like CRT or LGBT rights. But it's just been an escalating series of culture war aggressions. And that's where a potential row reversal is going to fall into. one of the most dysfunctional state legislative environments, well, I would say the single most dysfunctional state legislative environment that I've seen in my adult lifetime. It's this incredible combination of extremism and stupidity. And that's where it's landing. So here's what's going to happen

is you're going to have a festival of terribly drafted laws, at least being introduced, at least being introduced. Now, the question's going to become, is abortion so downstream from people's lives in many states, or is the base capture so complete where the fear of being primaried, for example, is so front of mind that some of this absolute nonsense becomes law? I can't say that won't happen. I can't say that won't happen. And as you said, the base capture here is not on just on one side. I mean, you've got Democrats running for statewide office in Texas and Ohio essentially saying, hey, no limits, no limits. In Texas and Ohio. And part of that, I think, is related to what have you talked about, Sarah, a small dollar fundraising. They still need to

raise money. And who do they raise money from? They raise money from the base. And the base will have, will brook no compromise here even if their position is a 20% position or a 25% position with the public um now the fact of the matter though is i do wonder if the base there is a certain base logic that goes like this that's not quite yet been disproved everywhere or really all that many places at all which is we have so much negative polarization that if the base position prevails we can always say you may not like us and you may think we're too extreme, but what are you going to do? Vote for a Democrat and win.

Yeah, I just think if you expand that out, so those laws go into effect, you're going to have news stories on the one hand of an elective abortion at 39 weeks or something really, really ghoulish. And on the other hand, there are laws that do not have exceptions for the health and life of the mother in some of these places. and you're going to have women die because they weren't able to get life-saving medical care. I do think that will change even some of the base politics. I mean, how are you going to defend that in your state?

But it doesn't mean that they won't go into effect first. Right, right. I mean, and that's the thing is the dynamic is we're going to propose the most extreme bill possible, workable or not, realistic or not, well-drafted or not. well, drafted or not, and then if you raise any objection to it, then you're going to be subject to a hurricane of gang tackling and shaming online because you're weak. You're weak. My legislation written in crayon on toilet paper is the strength that we need.

And if you say, you know, I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense, and that could kill people. What are you? Surrender monkey? I mean, you know, it's just, that's the level of the discourse. I mean, I'm barely exaggerating, barely exaggerating. So I have a question. I agree that that stuff is, I mean, you already see in Louisiana there's some legislation percolating up to rule that abortions are homicides. And, you know, I mean, again, I haven't looked at it. It may be being reported on badly, but top line, what could go wrong, right? I mean, like, Clearly there's going to be some really ugly stupid stuff. And I would argue on both sides.

I mean, the Democrats have gotten themselves into a mess. Remember, the state legislator in Virginia a couple of years ago, who basically at first said that abortions should be legal until the baby is delivered. And she said, oh, I didn't really mean it, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you had Governor North Carolina at the time sort of half defending it. And it's certainly not providing useful messaging. And so, like, you can see lots of hot house stuff going crazy because there are media outlets that are highly incentivized to take the craziest interpretation of already crazy proposed legislation. So I agree with that. The idea that somehow this won't happen at the national level seems unlikely.

So I sort of have a constitutional question for you both. Like, if it's unconstitutional to impose abortion rights maximum. across the all 50 states, are there comparable constitutional problems? I get asked this question a lot. Are there comparable constitutional problems with the federal government trying to, are imposing maximal abortion bans across all 50 states? Are they just not the same constitutional questions at play? They're not the same constitutional questions at play because one is about,

one, the Roe question is about the constitutional rights of the woman who is pregnant. The abortion ban question is about the constitutional rights of the unborn person. And so you're actually, it's totally different questions. Now, we've never held that someone who hasn't been born yet has 14th Amendment rights to life, liberty, et cetera. Maybe they do. Maybe they deserve equal protection under the law. You'll hear from a lot of people that that's like a really uphill battle, but under

Alito's draft opinion, which looks at sort of the original understanding of what was allowed and punished in sort of colonial or pre-14th Amendment law, there certainly were criminal laws on the books that were different if you, for instance, killed a woman who was post-quickening pregnant that took into account that you also killed a baby. Right, but there are very few federal homicide laws, right? I mean, you have to be like a postal worker on a federal peer. Oh, no, no, no. I'm talking about the constitutional issue at the Supreme Court. Right. So I'm talking about, can Congress? Can Matt Gates introduce the No More Abortions Act of 2024?

So the first question is, can the Supreme Court hold that a fetus has rights under the Constitution? So it doesn't matter what Congress says. The second question then is short of the Supreme Court, like in a post-row world, Congress can have abortion, have a say in abortion. So there's, can Congress, can Congress, codify row, they would need to use the commerce clause saying that abortion affects interstate commerce or tie funding to it. And I think that's the far more likely avenue, similar to how they raise the drinking age federally. They didn't really. What they said was your highway funds are tied to raising the drinking age to 21. Congress could use that ratchet either direction in this case, say abortions must be legal up to 30 weeks. Abortions are prohibited after five weeks, whatever,

and your Medicare and Medicaid funding is tied to, your state Medicare and Medicaid funding is tied to whether you have that law on the books. I don't see, I mean, you always have to have it related to the funding in question. So, for instance, you couldn't tie an abortion law to federal, I don't know what's like your National Guard funding. Yeah, highway funding, whatever. Something totally unrelated. That would be found unlawful. But I think Medicare and Medicaid funding would be just fine. And I think that there's a pretty clear avenue to that unless David and I haven't actually not talked about that. And, you know, there is a national partial birth abortion ban that is in place and that was upheld. So, you know, there is precedent for upholding national abortion legislation, at least to some extent. So, you know, look, I mean, there's a lot to talk about there, and it would get pretty wonky, but I think it's far less likely that we would see extreme abortion legislation coming out of Congress than out of dozens of state legislatures at the moment. Also, in general, it would be drafted better. Right, but the Handmaid's Tale sort of theory needs to hinges on the national level, right?

The theory of heading towards dystopia can't be, well, Alabama will be dystopia, but New York and California will be just fine, right? And that's why it comes up. Although Republicans take the Senate in, you know, January of 2023 and they have the House, you think they're going to keep the legislative filibuster? When they don't have the presidency. Oh, good point. I don't think that. I don't think they'll. Good point. All right. All right. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security

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handily more than I thought he'd win by in the Ohio Senate primary. He was the Trump-endorsed candidate. Josh Mandel coming in second. Matt Gibbons coming in third. What did you learn? Jonah? I learned that Ohio and the great spirit of James Trafficant is alive and well and that the Ohio GOP base is very Trumpy and that if you add up all the people who campaigned on how much they liked Donald Trump's Musk, there was a decisive. majority of GOP voters in the primaries that were clearly enthrall in some way to Trump. I mean, like, voting for Mandel was not an anti-Trump move, right? I mean, like that, you're still in that column.

I don't, I think so I think in crowded five-way races, six-way races, whatever that was, Trump's endorsement matters a lot and people who want to argue that the the ghost of Donald Trump has been purged from the GOP have a hard evidentiary case to make. That said, I don't know that the lessons of Ohio are transferable in the same way in every other place. You know, clearly Georgia is the counterpoint to all of that. And other than that, I'm not sure that there's any profound lesson to learn except that, you know, I think the general trend that if a state has a brain drain of young college educated people, it turns red. And Ohio has proved that in a major way.

So, first of all, I said Matt Gibbons, which is a combination of Matt Dolan, who came in third, and Mike Gibbons, who did not. So he ran against J.D. Mandel. right? That's right. J.D. Mandel outperform Matt Givens, that's for sure. Before we make fun of these old men for being senile, perhaps I should look at my own head. Okay, but David, we got this question from someone in the comments. Doesn't, though, another way to look at this mean that nearly 70% of people in Ohio of the Republican base didn't vote for the Trump-endorsed candidate?

Doesn't that show that Trump isn't very powerful? Well, considering he was lagging before the endorsement by all available polling and then vaulted into first place after the endorsement indicates the endorsement still does move people. You have to really squint to look at Ohio as undermining the idea of Trump's influence over the party. You're squinting. No, you're closing your eyes, I think. You're just officially closing your eyes. So, you know, I think Jonah nailed it in a multi-candidate primary, especially one where all but basically one of the multi-candidate contenders were desperate for that endorsement. So most of them were campaigning not just to Ohioans, but to Trump for the vast majority of the campaign and then sort of Trump swoops in at the very end and kind of knocks the legs out from everyone who was saying I'm, you know, Mandel's pro. God, pro-gun, pro-Trump, and Trump's not pro-Mandelle. And then there's another thing here that I don't think that any,

I haven't really seen people talk about, and that always makes me nervous that maybe I'm totally wrong. But J.D. Vance in a debate, in a debate, in a, he comes across as more of a normal human being than Mandel does, for example. He comes across more adultish. He comes a, you know, even when he's defending Marjorie Taylor Green, he has this kind of manner about him that it's like, huh, say more. You know, he has this way of, he just talks more like a normal human being. He conducts himself more like a normal human being.

And the Mandel campaign, Mandel was so obviously artificial. And look, we know that Vance has done all of this flip-popping. We know that Vance, you can put Vance's comments from three years ago, side by side by side. with Vance's comments now, and you think the guys had a stroke. They're so different, right? But when he's just campaigning, when he's just talking, when he's just debating, I feel like he was just better than some of his opponents who didn't talk like normal people, who were so obviously buffoonish in some of their rhetoric. And so I just, you know, I think candidates matter. And I'd be curious about your opinion on that, Sarah, that was he a better candidate?

So yes, I think Vance was clearly a better candidate. You know, when the stories are now getting written about why Trump endorsed Vance over Mandel with all this insider stuff. But it really seems like it boiled down to one thing. Mandel lost the endorsement when he, like, challenged a 70-year-old man to go out and fight him outside the debate. That it just seemed so bizarre and unhinged. But that was sort of Mandel's whole campaign was the bizarre and unhinged as a, you know, feature, not a bug. Ha ha! Trump's bizarre and unhinged,

so I too shall be bizarre and unhinged, which is kind of a misunderstanding of the popularity of Trump. Actually, it's a total misunderstanding. I agree with you that absolutely Trump had a great night, and there's just no spin on that that is believable otherwise.

I also agree with Jonah, though, that Ohio had some unique features that I don't think are replicable in Georgia and Pennsylvania. It was a crowded field. but it's also really important that the crowded field had nobody who was famous in it. Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance

sort of became well known through this process, but people really only knew them through these campaigns. And so what other people said about them, things that happened week to week, became really important, as opposed to, for instance, in Georgia,

Kemp and Purdue both have not just run statewide campaigns, held statewide office. People know who they are outside of Trump. They're very famous in the state. In Pennsylvania, he've interestingly got this other dynamic, which is Dr. Oz is very famous, but he really only has one opponent right now. And so everyone can pour whatever they want into that other guy. And he becomes this amalgamation because his Dr. Oz is famous, just very different dynamic. So I think what you saw in Ohio is, that the Trump endorsement for J.D. Vance off the bat was probably worth three points,

maybe five points, not that much. I mean, in a primary, it's a lot, but, you know, it wasn't like he was moving 20-point numbers here. But what happens next is that that large field started to consolidate. And the reason, by the way, that I say that, you know, J.D. Vance arguably went from 11 points to 30 points after the Trump endorsement. So why am I not saying that Trump move 20% of the vote. Because right after Trump endorsed, J.D. Vance did go up several points. But so did Matt Dolan. Matt Dolan jumped 10 plus points after Trump's endorsement, the guy who was not the Trump guy who didn't try to get Trump's endorsement, which means that something else was going on as well. The field was consolidating once Trump endorsed. That's what people

were waiting for. So you had a whole chunk of undecided voters and they started to move. Once they started to move a whole bunch of other dominoes started to fall. Again, something that you're actually not really going to see in two-man races in Georgia and in Pennsylvania. So it's not that Ohio is unique because it's Ohio. It's that Ohio is unique because of the dynamics in that race that just aren't happening in some of these other races, except maybe for Missouri. Now, Missouri is a deeper redder shade than Ohio, but there's a similar thing going on in Missouri with a whole bunch of candidates. Ted Cruz has endorsed one. Josh Holly's endorsed a different one, right? It's his state. That's an Ohio-esque situation with a lot of undecided voters where Trump coming in could

really shift the race. Okay. Well, then let's talk about Donald Trump. So we had a good night in Ohio. That was the first primary, which I think was very good for him because it sets this narrative before then his candidate loses in Georgia and, you know, is running behind in Pennsylvania, we'll see again, you know, a lot can change before the Pennsylvania primary actually happens. What does this mean for the field of Republican candidates in 2024 and what does it mean for Donald Trump

as a potential Republican candidate in 2024, David? I mean, it's still his party. And, you know, now it's not as, he doesn't have as, tied a grip on the party as he did. I think that's indisputable. But look, let's put this in perspective. Okay, so here we are in 2022. I wasn't that old in 1982, but here's one thing I remember. The Democrats were not running around basically knife fighting each other over the Jimmy Carter endorsement. Okay. In 1994, Republicans were not strangling each other over the George H.W. Bush endorsement. Why did I single those two guys out? They're the last two one-term presidents

before Trump, and the parties took those presidential losses as evidence that we need to turn the page from the approach of that president. Trump's achievement in not only keeping his base tied to him, but shunning any stench of his loss, and not just his loss, but the loss of the House and the Senate in this two-year span from 2018 to 2020 is unbelievable when you like step back from it. It's unbelievable that people are still fighting over his endorsement after that string of losses. He's so convinced people that they were not legit, not real losses that he's still got the grip that he has. So look, I feel like we're kind of in a race against time in a way. His grip is loosening, just more with maybe with the passage of time than

almost anything else. But it's only got a little more than a year to loosen before time comes, because remember, it's June of 2015 when he announced. We're about a year from June of the previous, the year before the presidential election, when people are going to start announcing. So over the next 12, 13 months, is his grip going to slip enough where he decides not to run? I doubt it. I doubt it. And look, I do think if Brian Kemp wins, it's a blow to him. Not that huge a blow, not compared to losing the presidency. If Dr. Oz loses, it's a blow, but not compared to losing the presidency. And that didn't do him in. So my big, what I'm hoping is it slips enough to where he gets credible primary challengers. I don't think it's going to slip so much that

he's not the favorite going in to 2024. I'm really pleased that you remembered that, in fact, Carly Fiorina announced on May the 4th, 2015. That was really kind of you. This is our anniversary week. The Carly campaign. And what a great day. Did she pick Star Wars Day for a reason?

No, we did not think of that until we showed up on the GMA set that morning, and there were a bunch of stormtroopers. I mean, she could actually rock the Princess Leia Buns. She really could. It kind of has that right shape, but her face. That right shape. What did Jonah say about learning to talk to women? Okay, Jonah.

He just said he got better. He just said he got better. That's right. That's right. Great on the curve. Okay. Larry Hogan said something. This is the Republican governor of Maryland.

One of the most popular governors in the country, if you base that by how popular they are with their own constituents in their state, which is actually not. It's a weird that we say most popular governor in the country, by the way, because Maryland's a pretty small state. They're not particularly representative of the country, but there we are. It's sort of like saying the most popular high school class president in the country. I mean, it's like, because it's contained to a special unit that has no bearing outside. I mean, I would argue among Republicans, Desantis is obviously more popular than Hogan is, but it's a different metric. It's a different metric.

He said something which made me want to throw my computer across the room. So I'm going to read you what he said. This was in his interview to Axios. He envisions a 2024 presidential primary with 15 or more Republicans, not necessarily including former President Trump scrambling for Trump's base. While, I want to go in a completely different direction. And I think that lane is wide open. It's just 2015 all over again.

Nobody learned to anything. I learned something. Lane is a trigger word for you, Sarah. Lane really, Lane is a trigger word for me. Let's just have 15 people run again. There's no downside. There's only upside to running for president. Truly, I feel like I've been put in a time machine to my nightmare.

So at some point, we should get one of the youngans to do a dispatch podcast or dispatch podcasts glossary, right? And so like terms, dog could be in it from AO and all that kind of stuff. And just so people know. And like one of the things we're going to have to add, which I've been bringing up for six years now, is the story by ASOP, you know, ASAP's fable about belling the cat, right? Where when you have, it's a bunch of mice, it's in all of their interest to put a bell on the cat, that a bell be put on the cat. It's in none of their individual interests to be the one to volunteer to do it because the likelihood of them dying is very, very high. And that's why, that's how we got Trump in 2016, is that everybody ignored Trump because the game theory

was such that their individual interests were not served by being the one to take out Trump until it was too late. And it looks like, you know, we're all Roy Scheider and Jaws 2 saying, as God is my witness, that's a shark, and I'm not going through that hell again. Because it looks like we're just going to repeat the damn thing. I do want to say. I just, to sort of tie back to the previous point, it's really worth emphasizing as the in-house conservative ideology obsessive, that Trump's endorsements in no way, shape, or form have any intellectual philosophical content to them whatsoever, including by his own admission, right? I mean, like, they are, first of all, you have to love Trump, right?

You have to talk about how not even God could make a bolder so heavy. Trump couldn't lift it. And then, and you have to say the 2020 election was stolen. That's it. Right. And can I give, can I, though, there's, there is one through line, actually. Okay. That I think people haven't noticed because it, I saw it firsthand.

What Trump really likes is when someone said something bad about him. And then changes. And then changes their mind. Right. Again, but that is not an intellectually or philosophically rich criteria. Oh, it's philosophical for him because for him that means power. Someone who love Trump all along, all they can do is lose altitude. Look at Jeff Sessions.

Look at Mo Brooks. If you look at the people who he's most enamored with, it's the people who were like Kevin McCarthy saying he was going to ask him to resign and then flying down to Mara Lago and defending him, Trump really likes that. And it's not just it's not just forgiveness for him. It's actually way more. It's an actual positive. Okay. So I will add that to the trinity of criteria for Trump's endorsement. But Trump also has said many, many times, and he leak it all of the time. He wants to back people who will win, right? He says the quiet part out loud because he wants, you know, I mean, one of my, yearbook quotes was from Lord Sassoulet, which was high school yearbook quotes, which was nobody ever bet enough on a winning horse, right? If you know the candidate is going to win for Trump, it's a no-brainer to endorse them because then you get credit for the win. It's like K Street lobbyists, you know, call themselves rainmakers. The rule of thumb is when it rains, dance, right? Because you get credit for the rain. Trump wants credit for the wins. There's no ideological, you know, content to it. And so, like, you can't show me a real through line between just J.D. Vance and Dr. Fricketts.

Oz, you know, there's no, like, you know, like, oh, they both have the same position on Edmund Burke. I mean, like, it's just pure rank, you know, power politics, narcissism, and all of that. And I think, so I have a, I'll put this in a form of question to throw back to you guys. This week, Mark Esper's book, former Secretary of Defense is dropping. And yet again, right, we have another series of revelations. that, you know, the specifics were, Trump asked, you know, whether we can bomb Mexico and then just deny it because, you know, maybe the Mexicans would think those missiles coming from the north came from Canada or something, right? You know, Belgium really, you know, has some new tech. But the gist of it is from Esper, as like with a gazillion other former cabinet secretaries who at the time were very Trumpy, is that he's unfit for office.

and I guess the question I have is does that have any traction with anybody who isn't already convinced that he's unfit for office because it just seemed to me that if HR McMaster and and Esper and you go down this long list of people

who all serve with them up close John Kelly all serve with them up close all were all in at least for a little while and then got a close look inside the horse's mouth and said mother of God. Yeah.

Shouldn't those ads be effective? Can't they mock Mike Pompeo ad be? I mean, maybe not Mike Pompeo because he's not saying that stuff, but somebody. Or is that just, it just, does it all just not matter? I mean, should I go full Bill Murray and meatballs and just start yelling, it just doesn't matter? You know, I agree with people are saying, Mark Esper, why weren't you saying, resigning and speaking out at the time?

That's a very, but at the same. same time, does it matter politically? Look, I'll tell you the moment when I thought, man, you know, I'm seeing this sort of cult of Trump form right in front of my eyes going from the hold the nose and vote for him to having the Trump flag and being in the Trump boat parade before the boat parade was invented. When Mattis resigned and when Mattis did everything that you're supposed to do when you have seen an unfit commander in chief in front of you, when Mattis resigned and he was at that time, Trump folks loved Mattis so much that he was sort of a guy they put in your face to say, look how responsible the Trump administration is. He's got the best American general as the Secretary of Defense. He's got Mattis. Mattis is with him. How can you possibly say this administration is in the least bit irresponsible? Mattis is going to help guide this ship. Mattis says, this guy. is completely trying to divide Americans.

This guy is making erratic bad decisions. I can't serve under this guy, resign, and then people immediately turn on Mattis. And so if Mattis doesn't do it, is Esper? I mean, you know, Mattis was, for those who knew, I mean, he was a legend by the time he became Secretary of Defense. And one of the most successful battlefield commanders in modern American military history and beloved by the troops. And then he says it.

He just says it. This is what who Trump is in the aftermath of a Trump, a pell-mell Trump withdrawal that Russia took advantage of. And still, everyone's like, Trump. And so that's when I knew. That's when I knew the hold the nose phase, if it ever really existed, was over. There was Trump. And you were loyal or you were not.

And if you, and there wasn't a, there weren't a set of facts that could cause people to turn on him. And we just have seen that again and again and again and again and again since that time. So I wrote that piece in the Washington Post in 2020 where I talked about the decisions of people who went in to work for Trump who hadn't supported him in the campaign, hadn't voted for him in 2016, but nevertheless went to work for him. because they thought it was important that good people serve in government, and if they felt qualified and were asked, they thought it was their sort of public duty to do so. And I said that there was, as it turned out, a real downside to that theory and that philosophy, which is by giving counsel to the president, and in some cases more than counsel, right, basically ignoring orders or delaying orders in order not to do something that they thought was outrageous, like

bombing Mexico, for instance, they hid from the American people what a true Trump presidency would have looked like, but for all of those people who weren't willing to do those things. As a result, I think a lot of people don't really know and won't ever hear this stuff. Yeah, true. And that it allows the pro-Trump people, both within the administration and who are just sort of like elite talking head types, to say, yeah, what Donald Trump wanted to do when he was annoyed at another country, when they weren't doing something he wanted them to do, he would tell the Pentagon to draw up bombing plans. He never intended to bomb them. The point was to have the Pentagon go through that

exercise, because why should that be off the table for too long? We've had a weak foreign policy, but look, Trump didn't start a war with Iran. Trump didn't bomb Mexico. And again, I think in the Trump administration, the people like me who served in the administration should take some responsibility for that talking point being feasible. And it makes me very nervous for a second Trump administration because the people like me won't be there at all. And so it will be the full experience of what a Trump presidency is. And maybe those people who say he never would have bombed Mexico anyway, he wouldn't have

started a war with Iran, maybe they're right. Maybe we're about to find out. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.org. Okay. Last bit of news that we need to discuss. I made a grievous error, as many members pointed out in the comment section, when I defamed the people who'd been attacked by the Capitol Hill Fox and said that it was some of their responsibility not to get bitten by a fox that then turned out to be rabid. And presumably these people all had to go through rabies treatment, which is very painful. And I had made light of it. However, it remains the case that the fox and all of her babies had to be put down because of this. It appears that a fox heard about this news and took it about as well as I did.

Maybe they didn't know all of the information like I found out about later, chewed through the fence at the National Zoo here in Washington, D.C. and killed 25 flamingos injuring dozens more. I can't imagine, by the way, what it looked like when the zookeepers came in that morning. That must have been really rough. You know they just killed one and moved on

and played with it a little. It wouldn't like consume them. Yeah, because like, right, you want to like kill everything so you can take it away later. Like you don't want to like leave flamingos walking around. So that was bad.

But, uh, then it turns. out a turkey, a male Tom turkey in Anacostia, heard what the fox had done to those flamingos and in a, you know, foul revenge. A murder most foul. As attacked dozens of people in a park, a walking trail in Anacostia, I will put the video in the show notes of a woman using her bike as this turkey goes after her.

And the bike is her soul means of defense. One person has had to seek medical care to get their tetanus shots updated because the puncture wounds were, in fact, quite deep on their legs. I just feel like the animals, it's a tit for tat. You know, this is base politics, and it's the birds against the foxes, and I don't know how this ends well. Well, have we done a dispatch fact check for the animal community to show that there was not unprovoked acts of aggression against the fox? I know. I think that's what we need to do. This is the product of misinformation right here, right here. We're living the first. And I contributed to it. I think we need to do an extended metaphor analogy grease board work about Lebanon circa 1981, 82 with the different animals. You know, the Druze are sort of like the turkeys and they're taking it out on one group that really wasn't responsible for something, but they're more vulnerable target. Because it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not. not even doggy dog. I should tell you,

like on my block now, every night foxes wake us up screaming, in part because they get into an altercation with our neighbor's cat, Chester. And if you've ever heard a cat, a big tough tomboy cat versus fox argument, it is a lot like people fighting with chainsaws.

And it sets off, it sets off my dogs. It's bad. It's just, the whole place, it's the animal kingdom helter-skelter. Can I just put in a plug for Tennessee for a moment? Well, your animals are all living in harmony.

Are they just cuddling? In a state that knows its guns that you never hear about that turkey because it's just a pile of bloody feathers in seconds. So interestingly, David, that is, in fact, why the turkeys are there is because hunters in the Maryland area got licenses to hunt turkeys and reintroduced turkeys. and it's like one of those hunting conservation stories that now the turkey population has boomed. I had a Tom Turkey in my backyard just the other day. I thought it might be the same one

because he was quite bold. But I guess it's just that season for Tom turkeys. As a Texan, did you shoot him for trespassing? Castle Doctrine. Stand your ground. I have had to go out once to defend my cats from the fox. my cats not having Chester's disposition had no clue what was happening. And you know what?

It was a little scary, but my cats very bravely ran behind me. As they should. As they should. I am bigger. All right. Thank you so much for joining us, even though Steve wasn't here.

I think things were actually more or less steveless than they normally are. I think that's fair. I think we behaved ourselves pretty well, other than the shape of Carly Fiorina. She's got like a long face, like the ear buns would work. I think she could rock them. I totally agree with that. I agree with that entirely. Thank you for joining us.

If you have any comments on this podcast, you become a member of the dispatch and hop into the comments section. Unlike so many comments sections, it's significantly less toxic to the point of being totally not toxic and really, interesting and fun. And we jump in there pretty often to answer questions or give our own thoughts, criticisms, maybe not appreciated, but taken to heart. Nevertheless. Interesting distinction. That's a good way putting it. And with that, we will talk to you again next week.

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