The Dispatch Podcast - Thanks, Noam Chomsky

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

This morning, Trump told Jonathan Swan from Axios that he has never confronted Vladimir Putin about Russian bounties that were paid to the Taliban to kill American troops, partly because the president doesn’t believe it happened in the first place. But we know from several credible intelligence reports that the president was briefed on the Russian bounties months ago. On today’s episode, Steve reminds us, “It’s been weeks since this was first reported, it’s been months since this was first briefed, and the president of the United States is officially silent on the fact that Russians are trying to kill our troops in Afghanistan.” In other news, a fledgling theory has taken hold among Trump’s staunchest acolytes: that the president is falling behind in the polls because cancel culture has made MAGA supporters afraid to publicly profess their support for the president. But are there enough SMAGA supporters to sufficiently account for Biden’s double digit lead in the polls? Jonah suggests that this “silent majority” rhetoric has simply become a coping mechanism for the GOP to keep Trump from losing his mind. Tune in to today’s episode to hear our Dispatch podcasters discuss the Burn It All Down Wars, Biden’s veepstakes, and what they’re all reading at the moment. Show Notes: -Axios interview with Jonathan Swan and Donald Trump. -Charlie Sykes’ Bulwark piece, “Burn It All Down?” and David’s Tuesday French Press, “Another Salvo in the ‘Burn It Down’ Wars.” -Monmouth poll on secret Trump voters, Jonah’s Wednesday G-File, “Are Silent Trump Voters Real, or Just a Myth?”  and Sarah Isgur’s Monday newsletter, “The Sweep.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isker, joined as always by Steve Hayes, David French, and Jonah Goldberg. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit Thedispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts. Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. And we'll hear later from our sponsors, Gabby and the Bradley Foundation.

Today, we are keeping with our new format. Each of us has brought a topic for discussion. Steve bombarded us with angry emojis this morning about the president's interview with Jonathan Swan, during which he said he hadn't asked Putin about the bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. I am kidding about the emojis, but not the angry text. David wants to debate the burn it all down post-GOP crowd

who wants to flush out all Republicans this cycle. And Jonah is bringing his best arguments against smaga, the secret Trump voters. And I want to talk about Biden's VEP announcement coming next week. Plus, we'll end on what we'll end on what we all read before going to bed last night. Spoiler alert, it gets kind of out of hand at the end, per usual. Let's dive in, Steve, some breaking news. It might be the way to refer to it as of this morning. Interview with the president and Jonathan Swan of Axios, in which

the president said that he did not raise the reports that Russia was paying bounties for the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers. Yeah, this was an extraordinary interview, or at least clip of an interview that's going to air on the Axios on HBO show over the weekend. This was sort of a preview clip. And the president said a number of things that I think were interesting, alarming, and many of them false. he first was asked by Swan if he had raised this interview in a recent one-on-one

conversation that he had with Vladimir Putin, whether he'd asked Vladimir Putin why Russia was supplying these bounties or offering the bounties to the Taliban for the killing of American soldiers. And the president said that he had not asked Vladimir Putin about this. And he then said he didn't ask, in effect, because he didn't believe it when Jonathan Swan asked him about it. And the president went on to claim that they said that it was fake news, made an allusion to some Bush administration people who he claims said it was fake news, suggested the intelligence, said the intelligence they didn't think it was real. And then curiously, at the end, said that if it had reached his desk, he would have done something about it,

despite the fact that moments earlier he had claimed it was fake. And he capped this all off by answering a question from Swan about why the president didn't push Vladimir Putin on the fact, the fact, that Russia has been arming and supplying the Taliban more broadly, irrespective of the intelligence on the bounties. And the president said, well, you know, we did the same thing by supplying the Taliban in the 1980s, making sort of ultimate moral equivalence argument. There are many places to go with this conversation. I'll give my brief summary and toss it to you all. The intelligence is not fake.

The intelligence is real. There were some disputes, as we've discussed earlier on this podcast. There were some disputes, not even disputes. There were some differences in how the collection of the intelligence went. The CIA brought in the main. reporting on this question. DIA was unable to corroborate it through its independent sources, through its own sources. NSA had some reporting that backed it up, but didn't have a separate stream that allowed it to come to this conclusion that the CIA did, that it was, it made these assessments with high confidence.

The president said it never reached his desk. It absolutely reached his desk. It was in his presidential daily brief, whether he read it or not is another question. He said the intelligence didn't think it was real. The intelligence community absolutely thought it was real and continues to think it was real. And then, of course, he said, if it reached my desk, I would have done something. There are all sorts of reasons, external reasons, additional reasons, to understand that this was not fake. The National Security Council convened a series of meetings about these bounties and in discussions later, briefings later for members of Congress touted their response to the intelligence. The United States made force protection changes in Afghanistan as a result of the reporting.

That's something that Mike McFaul, chairman of the Homeland, or a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, said in public on the record. Other countries had similar intelligence. The Belgian defense minister has testified in public that he saw intelligence about bounties. And this follows reporting, as I mentioned, that Russia had been doing. this for years. This was not new. It might have been a new way offering bounties of trying to get Americans killed, but they had been supplying arms to the Taliban for years. So this is not fake news. This is real news. The intelligence is good. The president is lying about it. And I think the

moral equivalence cherry at the end of this interview is making many people, not just Republicans on Capitol Hill uneasy, but will infrequent. infuriate the folks in the intelligence world who have done the hard work of airing and surfacing this to the president. Let me push back on something you've said. Please. First of all, full disclosure, there's a real danger. I don't know if you guys remember the old S&L skits from SNL news where John Belushi

would come on to give a reasoned and dispassionate commentary. And by the end, you would be like, and don't even start with the Irish and their mothers and then just fling himself to the floor in a rage. This whole thing really pisses me off. So I'm glad that Steve did this dispassionately. But I think he mischaracterized one thing when he said that Trump said that he didn't ask why the Russians were doing this. He didn't ask Putin why the Russians were doing this.

I think in Trump's defense, to a certain extent, hold on, he doesn't have to say, he doesn't have to ask why they're doing it. If he didn't believe the intelligence was real, he doesn't have to go to Putin and say, why are you doing this if he doesn't think it's real. What he does have to do is ask, are you doing this? Right? I mean, it's just, it's this idea.

He tried to use this excuse by saying, well, it never reached my desk. So it's sort of like, you know, I mean, I'm sure David and Sarah can talk about this, but are these insane sort of courtroom made for TV movies where there's some, like, weird rule that just bars doing anything reasonable where, like, Trump is falling back on this idea that since it didn't reach his desk, and because many people, meaning like Janine Piro or something, said it was fake news, that therefore he shouldn't even be curious enough, and I think eight phone calls with the president of Russia to say, hey, is this happening? Are you really doing this?

Here's my question. It's a real question. If he asked Putin that, Putin would say no. and then the president would say Putin denied it, which is what he did with Russian interference. So why not ask? What's the downside of asking that I'm not seeing? I don't think there is any downside. I mean, there's no downside to asking. And I also think we really...

There's no world in which Putin would say, yeah, come at me, bro, right? I mean, there's no world in which this, in which the call is being recorded and transcribed and documented that he would say something like that. But, I mean, you know, look, we're in a situation now where this standard talking point that we've heard from the beginning that this administration has been tougher on Russia, we really need to rethink that, I think, at this point, you know, when you're talking about documented evidence, strong evidence that there have been bounties paid or attempted, that they've been offered for the killing of troops, arming of the Taliban has been going on for a long time. And then you combine it, and I'm going to harp back on this again. I'm sorry I'm to bring it up all over again.

Combine it with this announced plan withdrawal from Germany of NATO. I mean, that's a long-lasting, enduring victory for Putin. And so on the one hand, you have no real pushback when he's trying to kill our soldiers. You have an actual reduction, planned reduction and strength of the forces arrayed against him. at a time of his heightened aggression, and we're still saying, well, regardless of Trump's rhetoric and tweets, he's been tougher. It's time to really reevaluate that.

And then, as I said in our little green room before we started recording, you know, when you hear this stuff of, oh, well, we armed the Mujahideen, so they armed the Taliban, it's all okay. I mean, the first thing that went through my mind is like, thanks, Noam Chomsky. I mean, this is the kind of stuff, the rhetoric you'd hear during the Cold War when we would be, you know, condemning Soviet atrocities and then somebody in a classroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts

would say, well, what about the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam? You know, this constant moral equivalence between the U.S. and one of our chief geopolitical adversaries, this isn't, there's nothing America first about that. What's nationalist about that? It's just, it's just actually weird to me. It's just weird that he does. Where are the nationalists, by the way, on this? I mean, And shouldn't this be infuriating to them that he's once again kowtowing in public to Russia? I think that, Joanie, you make a fair point about the question. Let me rephrase it. I wouldn't ask Putin anything.

I would say to Putin, we have credible intelligence that Russia is offering bounties. How dare you do this? And there will be repercussions if you do. That's what a normal president. Or if you're doing this, if we can confirm what these initial intelligence shows, you're going to pay a heavy. price for something like that. Exactly. I agree with you entirely. Yeah. And then and then not just say it in private. I mean, here's the amazing thing. The president at the end of at this, at the end of this interview says, well, you know, if, if I were told that I would do something about it. I'm notwithstanding

the fact that his administration internally did a number of things about it, as I mentioned, the president still hasn't come out publicly and said, this is the intelligence, cut it out. And Jonathan Swan gave him two opportunities to say that both about Russian bounties and about arming the Taliban generally. And instead, the president chose denial and moral equivalence. How hard is it for the president of the United States to say, if you are trying to kill our soldiers, cut it out? It's amazing to me. It's breathtaking that he cannot say that. It's been weeks since this was first reported.

It's been months since this was first brief. And the president of the United States is officially silent on the fact that Russians are trying to kill our troops in Afghanistan. It's appalling. It's one of the most disgraceful episodes of the entire Trump administration. That might have been our first Steve rant. It might be. I do want to say something I very rarely say in defense of Noam Chomsky. Dave's one is a good one, but Noam Chomsky, like, no one expects Noam Chomsky to be in America

firster, right? I mean, no, that's not his rep. He is a cosmopolitan, Marxist, globalist, whatever, right? I mean, he, or whatever the hell he is, he's not an American patriot and nationalist. That's not his frame. The, the clowning of the nationalist, as Steve suggests here, of the whole, I mean, the whole point of America first. is that it doesn't matter what your egg-heady moralizing is. It doesn't matter what your theoretical framework is. We're going to put the interests of America ahead of everybody else. I mean, that's just a.

That's what other, that's what real countries do. That's what manly countries do. And here you have a circumstance where the obvious, the only intellectually coherent and consistent America first response to the nonsense about funding the Mujahideen in the 80s when it was a, when Russia was a different country, by the way, is that's the past, who cares? This is America.

I'm not going to let you kill Americans. I'm putting America first. Screw you. And instead, it's this deference to, you know, foreign hegemon's because Trump likes their musk or something. Okay, set aside the consistency issue. Can anyone make the argument for why this would be... what the strategy would be.

Strategy of Trump? Yes. Go, David. I'm so sorry. I even asked that question. That's right. You ask, and now you get to answer. I can I don't know what it is.

I can't possibly know what it is, but I do have. But this has been basically his strategy overall with Russia is, you know, not confronting Putin because he has said, and he said in the interview, if we can reset with Russia, this is a good thing. And so don't push him on this stuff where he's just going to say no and be somewhat offended that you ask and push it all on China?

Like, and try to get Russia on ourselves. That's what he tried to do in the interview. But here's the best defense of Trump in this context. He does this with all authoritarian. Right. I mean, he loves authoritarian. Like, this is what he does. He admires authoritarian.

We saw it during the campaign. Not, we saw it now. Not a strategy. Not a strategy. No, but let me ask. And not Iran. In the president's defense, not Iran. Not Iran.

But this is what he's done. But is it a strategy to not, you know, again, I'm not saying this is a small thing. It's a very, very big thing, if true, but Putin's going to deny it. So assuming that Putin will deny it, is it worth, you know, harping to Putin about it when, in fact, you want to get this other stuff with him and move him, at least not all the way onto China's side and isolate China more? Is that an option? I would be, I would find that more credible if Trump wasn't often wrapping his arms around China and the Chinese leadership when he wants to. And you know, John Bolton had a op-ed in New York Daily News recently about how much Trump had appeased China in the effort to

sort of put together this, you know, the trade deal to end all trade deals. So he is cozyed up to Chinese dictatorship. He cozies up to Russian dictatorship. So that kind of undercuts the strategy point. But there's something else I wanted to bring up here. Okay. There, I think this stuff has an effect on the military and on the military's view of him, which was degrading rapidly. The military times does a poll of military attitudes towards presidents once a year. And at the very end, the most recent that I saw was at the very end of 2019. And these are eye-popping numbers. And I don't think this helps. In December 2019, Trump's very favorable view with the military was 24%. It's very unfavorable in the military, 45%. Does that break out by officer and

enlisted? This is overall. And so it was, the overall was 42% approval when you include the somewhat favorable and a 50% of unfavorable and you know this is something this is this is a group of people that for a while he was like considering hey these are my guys um and now they're just a smidge or at least as with the last poll just a smidge behind the rest of the public in their view of Trump and i don't think this kind of stuff helps at all um and and i think that you know he's losing he's certainly done a lot of things recently that have caused senior leaders in the military to blanche. But this is the kind of thing that reaches down well into the ranks when you're talking about people's lives at stake in Afghanistan. So who does Trump think is our biggest geopolitical

foe? Fake news. Fake news. Yeah. Mika Brzynski. And his heart of heartards. No, I mean, literally, look, Brad Parscale sent a tweet last week. making the claim that easily the greatest enemy the United States faces is the American media. He said that. And Donald Trump has said things like that in the past. I don't know whether that's a reflection of what he actually believes

or whether he thinks he's just being cute rhetorically. But he's much, much, much tougher on the U.S. media in the New York Times and CNN and others than he is on Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and anyone else. Okay, but set aside that. looking just at his foreign policy, what country do you think this administration

has been toughest on in the world? Yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah. Shall we move on to our next topic? Yes. Steve says with a sigh. David, you're up.

You had written a column last week discussing the burn it all down strategy of folks like the Lincoln Project. and got overwhelmingly negative responses from dispatch members. So you took it on again last night. And you noted Charlie Sykes had written about your original column. And he made a really interesting point about your thoughts on Marsha Blackburn back when she was running in 2018. Expand. Tell us about your topic.

Okay. Well, you know, you got to give Charlie credit for bringing some receipts there. But in my defense, in my defense. It was impressive. In 2018, I made the argument that voters should vote for good conservatives, good Republicans. And I was in Tennessee, or I am in Tennessee. I was in Tennessee in 2018. And the race that was unfolding there was my representative, Marsha Blackburn, was going against former Tennessee governor, Phil Bredesen. And I described Representative Blackburn as a good, solid, faithful conservative, who,

has been before Trump and will be after Trump, and I'm going to support her over Governor Bredesen. So then the impeachment happens a year and a half or so later, or yeah, a little over a year later. And she launches this unbelievable crusade against Alexander Vindman, calling his patriotism into question what Politico called this multi-month, multi-prong campaign against Vindman that was really gross, quite frankly. really disgusting to watch. And then, so now, I mean, every single time I urge that people vote for

good Republicans. People pop that article right back in my feed. Fair. Fair. But I still stand by the underlying point, even though I do not stand by Marshall Blackburn any longer. And then that is, I think it is counterproductive to try to burn down the GOP, especially the Senate GOP. I do not think if you're wanting to rebuke trumpism in the party well i think you try to rebuke the elements of the conservative movement that are most responsible for trumpism beginning with donald trump and then also let's remember the the engine of conservatism this sort of conservative media entertainment complex of you know primetime cable news hosts combined with talk radio combined with bright bart they all view a lot of these senators who are more you know you're more normal

GOP senators as the enemy. They don't like those guys. Their view of burn it all down was, guess what? Those guys and replace them through primary challenges, et cetera, et cetera. And so my point of view is, look, and Sarah, you asked a key question. I thought it was a great question in our advisory opinions podcast, plug, that, okay, is it more of a rebuke for Trump or less of a rebuke for Trump? if in Texas in 2020, if he loses Texas and John Cornyn loses, or if he loses Texas and

John Cornyn wins? And I thought that was a great illustration of my point. I think if Trump loses Texas and John Cornyn wins Texas, the message is really super clear. And that is Donald Trump is so bad he cost us Texas. Yeah, but I don't know that I agree that that is the message. or that that is the best outcome for those folks, right? Because if John Cornyn loses and Donald Trump loses, the message is Donald Trumpism is repudiated and those who didn't stand up to him are punished as well. If Cornyn were to win,

then the message would be, you know, we liked that you went along with the base and did what the base wanted. We're just a little tired of Donald Trump himself. I think the message if Donald Trump loses Texas and John Cornyn loses Texas is not. Trumpism is repudiated. It is the age of the Republican is over. The age of the Democrat has begun.

And that is, of course, a shout out to a very similar line in both the Lord of the Rings movies and the Hobbit trilogy. I thought it was a querious. Of course. Of course it was. Okay. I burn it all down or salvage the scraps, Jonah? Yeah, I got to say there's, let me just do a quick full disclosure on this. I find the debate a little uncomfortable, and it has to do in part with my own weird,

I've been on a spiritual journey of sorts, if you might have noticed, and, or maybe not spiritual. We can see your hair. But political journey. and I people have heard me rant often about how I I think one of the biggest problems that's a fall in the conservative movement is how it's become a it's internalized this idea that part of the job of being a conservative thinker or intellectual proponent advocate whatever is to also be kind of a political consultant and no offense to political consultants but they're different lanes and when

you know, when you listen to a lot of this debate unfold, one of the things I don't like about it is it still, I've been saying for three and a half years, look, I don't care very much about my vote. My vote isn't the issue. You know, me and Charlie Cook talk about this all a time about how, you know, we'll hear from people who's saying, you're not supporting the president enough, right? Or you're not supporting the president. And I always, like, what is, What is the support supposed to mean, right? Is it supposed to mean that I lie about what I think about the president of the United States or about the arguments that he makes?

Is it that I lie in favor of conservative Republican positions? Or is that I focus entirely on democratic misdeeds, even when the Republicans are guilty of the same deeds? It's an internalization of sort of what's good for the team thing. And there's a stream of that going on in this. debate on the right, which says, you know, should we tell voters to vote for this Republican, but not that Republican? And I'm just, there's something about it that bothers me. I don't, I don't think I'm a purist on this. I certainly, you know, I'm delighted to say that, you know,

any of the slate of, or was delighted to say that any of the slate of the Steve Bannon guys in 2018 that were racists, it's like, no conservators should support these people. You shouldn't vote for them. I've said stuff like that. I believe stuff like that. I don't think it should be quiet about it. But at the end of the day, I think the key question here, and it's why your question today that was a good one, is this is ultimately just a prudential question, right? It is not a philosophical question. It is not a moral question. You can come down on either side of the question and still be, without compromising any of your principles or any of your convictions, you just might be wrong.

And what worries me is that it could be shaping up to be one of these things where disagreement over a prudential question gets transmogrified through some sinister alchemy or perhaps some dream sex with demons into a philosophical question, which I just don't think it is. And so I think some senators should be punished.

Frankly, if I lived in South Carolina, I would not vote for Lindsey Graham, but I can't condemn people who say they will vote for Lindsey Graham, because I do think there's a lot at stake if Democrats have unified government and run the Senate too. And so you have to sort of make prudential judgments based on where you live and what you think the best outcome is. So that is the Jonah Goldberg, Romeo and Juliet, some shall be pardoned, and some shall be punished.

That's exactly right. My dad used to have this thing where you said, you go to the United States. through any Fortune 500 company and just put Post-it notes with A's and Bs on the desks, flip a coin and just declare all the Bs are fired, and you would improve the company? I kind of have, I kind of want some of that kind of arbitrary justice as well, but anyway. I mean, I agree completely with you that this is prudential. This isn't philosophical. And as I wrote in my latest newsletter, it's not just, it's not just prudential. It's hard. This is a hard thing to figure out.

think one of the things that I've been heartened by is at least amongst the main sort of participants in the debate, it's been carried on with a really good spirit overall. Like, you know, I, you know, people who want to burn it down believe it strongly, but they're not sitting there saying that you're some sort of, you know, whizzling if you want to keep more GOP senators. I mean, it's a hard call. And one of the things that ends up happening often in life is that when bad things happen, the solution is hard to figure out. And I think that's the state of the conservative movement right now. The solution is sort of hard to figure out politically. And there's a lot of prudential X as an O's here. But I do, one

quick thing, I do not, I think the example of 2018 is kind of instructive in that I do not think the House Republicans have gotten better and more responsible as a result of their route, in part because what was left is the reddest of the red the trumpiest of the trumpy and that has influenced my prudential calculus Steve, we haven't heard from you. Steve's still smarting from the topic number one.

No, I think this is an interesting topic. I'm less passionate about this than I am about the president in Afghanistan. The, I think it, I look at this as somebody who cares about restoring the country. I don't care about the Republican Party. I do not give a wit about the Republican Party and have it. Other than it being a convenient vehicle for limited government conservatism,

the kind of limited government philosophy that animated the founding and I think has stood up well over the course of the country. the country to something that looks like that, shrinking the government returning power to states, all of those things. And so I look at this debate in that context. And I think the question and David raised it extraordinarily well in his newsletter yesterday, the question for the burn it all down crowd is, doesn't this in fact make certain that what's remaining of the Republican Party, for this center-right vision of smaller government sometimes and however imperfect one. Right. I mean, I think that's, by the way, some of the problem for the people on that team,

exactly what you just said. That it hasn't been? Yeah, like, what's the point of keeping this? It's sort of the equivalent, David, of what the legal conservatives? Like, what's the point if this is the result? But returning to something that would more closely resemble a smaller government conservatism. I mean, this is a Republican Party without really much of an ideology. This is a Republican Party of grievance and anger. That's it. I mean, they don't believe.

There's no, the Republican Party will have a platform. It'll be shaped to a certain extent by this meld of old school conservatism and Trumpism. But there's no real through line. There's not really much of a belief. It's a party without an ideology. Knowing what you know now, do you actually think they believed in deficits in small government before? Or was that just what they were saying to stay in office?

I think some of them did. I think a good number. of them did or came to, maybe fewer of them than I thought at the time. You know, you look at what the Tea Party Patriots group has done from the Tea Party years to hosting the Demon Seaman doctor. But we learned so much about incubus and succubus, Steve. Yeah, I mean, that's it. Those are different things. We made it almost 30 minutes without demon seamen. Congratulations, team. Those are different things. You know what they say. It's not a party until, never mind. Go on. So, back to my point.

So if you look at this, if you look at this, if you look at this from that perspective, I think that the burden is on the burn it all down crowd to make an argument as to why having a sort of rump, trump heavy Republican Party is going to be the best first step to this restoration of small government, limited government, conservative. I find that very, very hard to believe. The second point is, I think, closely related to the one that Jonah makes. This is all a line drawing exercise, right? I mean, it's all a practical matter. It's all prudential. But what I haven't heard other than in Charlie Sykes' piece in the bulwark, Charlie's an old friend. I think he's an incredibly smart thinker. Very few of the

burn it all down crowd has actually then drawn the line, right? It's a line drawing exercise. They can say, boy, we should get rid of these Republicans. You've had Steve Schmidt of the Lincoln Project say, in effect, that they all have to go other than Mitt Romney. Everybody other than Mitt Romney. And Charlie Sykes in his article says, everybody other than Mitt Romney and maybe Ben Sass. We stop and think about the practical implications of that. I mean, it can't happen. They're not all up for election at the same time. But does that mean that mean that somebody like a Liz Cheney to take somebody who's been in the news who has spoken out repeatedly, and I think pretty forcefully, against the president in the areas where she philosophically

disagrees with him, she gets tossed. She wasn't strong enough on impeachment. Is that the implication there? Or a Mack Thornberry, who has worked his tail off behind the scenes as a committee chairman and then ranking member of a House Armed Services Committee to do what he thinks is best, I happen to agree with him to maintain the United States' strong defense posture. He hasn't been one to answer questions in the hallway. He hasn't been one to get involved in repudiating the president's tweets, but on a few occasions. But he's basically kept his head down and done what he can do to maintain what he thinks is a smart thing for the country.

Should he be tossed? I mean, he's retiring, but should he be tossed? What about Republican senators who have like Pat Toomey, who I think is sort of in the same mode or Rob Portman? They've spoken out when the president said something that they strongly disagree with. They haven't answered, you know, the CNN reporters in the hallways every single time they're asked about the president's tweets. I personally wish that many of them had spoken out many more times than they did. but they get tossed for this. I just have a hard time understanding how that's sort of the bottom line case, number one

and number two, I have a hard time understanding how a step towards a strongly Trump-heavy Republican Party is better for the long-term restoration of limited government. Well, there's also, I mean, and you made slight reference to this, there's also just the sort of ethereal quality of this. I mean, it's sort of like a robust debate in Liechtenstein about whether or not Soviet aggression will be allowed to stand. You know, it's like, Lichtenstein has no ability to do much of anything about any of it, right? And they're like, I mean, the Lincoln Project has some power because it has money, mostly from, apparently from Democrats. And I will just say, as a matter of full disclosure, one of the things I resent the most about this entire. moment is the expectation in some circles that I am supposed to defer to Steve Schmidt as some frickin modern-day Cicero when I just don't, I don't think he's the conscience of

conservatives. I don't think I think he is a mercenary political consultant ad guy who was never, never was like a big champion for like the moral center. He was the guy who was the attack dog, the counterpuncher guy. He would have been a good Trump campaign guy, even though he disputes that he was ever seriously considering it. And so there's a lot of mercenary posturing going on in all of this. But if you want the faction, I mean, Steve Tell us at Niskanon and a few other people have been making this point for a while that we may be entering into a more properly Madisonian period of party politics where factions within parties can exert force and power And when I said I reject the idea that I'm going to be part of that process, he says, well, it doesn't matter whether you reject it.

You're going to be because that's just the way politics works in factional, coalitional politics. And he's got a point there. And it seems to me that if you actually want to have influence within the Republican Party, just saying, all I need to know about you to set your career, to end your career, is that you're you had an R under your name over the last five years is a really dumb strategy if your actual goal is to improve the Republican Party. Now, I don't think that the Lincoln Project's goal is to improve the Republican Party. I think it's something else. I do think the Republican voters against Trump guys and Bill and those guys, they actually would like to improve the Republican Party. I may disagree with them prudentially, but they're just important

distinctions to be made here. And the fewer distinctions you make, the less seriously I think I need to take you. You know, one thing to last word to David, it's your topic. Super fast. One thing that I think demonstrates the truth of what Steve was saying about how the Republican Party doesn't have an ideology. It's almost becoming purely

reactionary is think about how much energy has been spent online in the last three months, supporting a particular medicine and opposing masks. Like, where did that come from? What, what principle

underlies all of that. I mean, and, and yet we've had all of this energy poured out. But Sarah, so you came up with the hypo that proves my point definitively. But what sayest thou? Forsooth. Oh, I've. I guess my question to Steve betrays what I actually think, which is the idea that the party stood for something at all,

I think is undermined by what has happened for the last few years. And therefore, I don't think it particularly matters whether you burn it all down or keep some around. The party, and Joan has made this point a lot, has become so weak, both parties. You know, party quap party. The party is largely meaningless.

So to that extent, David, sure, voting for good people makes sense. But to the extent you're doing it to try to reconstitute some former glory of the Reagan Republican Party, first of all, and I've made this, you know, there's like chittering laughter when you talk about Reagan to anyone under 40 because we don't, we didn't know Reagan. And yet we have all the old folks talking about how we're going to go back to the Reagan Republican Party and the three legs of the stool. Like, eh. So whether you burn it all down or start from where it is and built, there will be something. new coming, and people of sort of moral courage, whether you agree with their courage or not, will kind of lead the way on that front. But I don't think there's any going back. And so to me,

the discussion is somewhat pointless, I guess. There, that was pretty bleak. It's a good way to end a discussion that took 15 minutes. Wow. Yeah. Waste of time. We've wasted a lot of your last couple newsletters, waste of time. Okay, quick break. Let's hear from our sponsor today, Gabby. We're all looking for ways to save money, especially now. When's the last time you looked up how much you're spending every month on car insurance? Homeowner's insurance. Now's the time to check out Gabby and see about getting a lower rate for the exact same coverage you already have. Gabby takes the pain out of shopping for insurance by giving you an apples-to-apples comparison of your current coverage with 40 of the

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so no annoying spam calls or robo calls. It's totally free to check your rate and there's no obligation. Take two minutes, right now, or after the podcast, to see how much you can save on your car and homeowner's insurance. go to gabby.com slash dispatch. That's g-a-b-i.com slash dispatch. Gabby.com slash dispatch. Jonah, your topic is smaga, which I am very interested in. The New York Times must have read all of your stuff

because they had a whole piece on the polling around smaga. That's secret make America great again voters. and can I just read this, like, little part of it. In the last New York Times poll of six battleground states, respondents who voted in the 2016 election said they voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 2.5 points, which, of course, is far more than Trump's actual margin of victory, meaning if anything, they're oversampling people who said they voted for Trump

or people, which we've also found, will lie and say they voted for the winner or misremember that they voted for the winner. Mr. Trump's problem, therefore, wasn't the number of people who said they voted for him last time in the polling, they mean. It was at only 86% of those who said they voted for him last time said they would do so again. Perhaps there's a way the poll could have been, could have had the right number of voters who said they voted for Mr. Trump last time, but not this time. But it would have to be an awfully specific form of polling era. Error. so Jonah tell us your smaga theories yeah so i mean you're probably more qualified to talk about the actual

mechanics of a lot of this stuff um which is what i kind of wanted to write my column about but i figured i had to clear the air about the the actual mythology of this stuff before i could get to what i wanted to talk about and then i was at 750 words so i screw it i'll save this for another time but so the the gist of it is i've noticed a lot always all of a sudden, in the last 10 days or so, a major sort of theme emerging, particularly at Fox on the opinion shows, about the secret Trump voters, they're out there. And some of it came in response to this, one, a Monmouth poll that asked in Pennsylvania, that asked Pennsylvanians whether they thought other people in their community are lying

about who they're going to vote for. And 57% of respondents said they think there are other people in their community who are lying about who they're going to vote for, presumably mostly for Trump. And, you know, the guys at 538, a bunch of people thought this, you know, that Mammoth is a good polling company, but this was a dumb question because people are not very good at reading the minds of other people in their communities. And for other reasons, it's methodologically problematic. I think it was Nate Silver who said his take on that was it was a way to to take the edge off of such devastatingly good Biden findings by including a little sort of signal, hey, maybe this poll is a little bit of an outlier and not entirely right or something like that, which I think I just...

Well, everyone in the media, by the way, also has an incentive to keep this a close race. It's not interesting if it's not close. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, David Broder said years ago that the job of a political reporter is basically to be a fight promoter. And if the other guy in the ring is turning to putty, you've got to sort of stand them up a little bit. And so I think that's part of what's going on.

But there's a lot of mythology out there that says there were a lot of secret Trump voters in 2016. And it turns out that, you know, the American Association of pollsters or whatever they call themselves, they did some huge, you know, post-mortem on all this and basically found no evidence for it. Pew did their own experiments on this at the time, during 2016, found no evidence for it. Because look, if you're afraid to tell people because of cancel culture that you're voting for Trump, presumably at least some people would be less afraid to say it to a robot, all right, or to say it in an online survey. And there's statistically almost no difference between the responses to live human interviewers and to machines.

So it can't be that big. I'm sure that there are secret Trump voters out there. But you know where most of them probably live is in blue states that Trump is going to lose anyway? Yeah, I thought this was actually your best point, that the only secret Trump voters that matter would have to be in swing states. And why would you be a secret voter if it's basically split 50, 50. Right.

Or if you're, but the place where you'd be most, most likely is like in Santa Monica or the upper west side of Manhattan, right? Or park slope. And your vote really doesn't matter there. So go ahead and vote for Trump. You're still going to be outvoted like 16 to 1. But I'll, you can ask the questions about the mechanics if you want, but I'll turn it to the thing that I wanted to talk about.

I think that the reason why this is taking off is, A, partly to do the fact that Trump is doing so badly. That's obvious. And the media desire to keep it a live race. But B, it is an essential argument, first of all, to keep Trump. Trump from losing his mind, right, is that don't worry, don't worry, the polls, they're fake, there's a massive silent majority out there, and they will show up in time, particularly if you fuel this domestic strife and antagonism to a fever pitch with things like the Lafayette Square thing, things like Portland, where the silent majority.

is forced to choose between, you know, a president that they may not love, um, but does good things or these barbarians at the gates. And so it seems to me that part of the problem with the secret Trump voter stuff is not just that it's bad polling, but it's giving permission structure to really bad politics. Anyway, I throw that out there for my colleagues. Okay, here's one piece of evidence against your thesis. So four secret voters, I guess, in swing states. That they exist. Since the 2016 primary election, Republicans have added 165,000 net voters in Pennsylvania, while Democrats have added only 30,000. That's interesting. Okay. Right. And then the polling shows Biden up, you know, an average of whatever it is,

roughly seven points. And yet, you know, that's odd that you would go register as a Republican, you know, take the time to do that. And then Biden would, be up seven. It's not particularly, you know, it doesn't prove anything, but it certainly is evidence on the other side. Yeah, and I'd be curious to know how much of that is due to the fact that they actually, I vaguely remember reading something about how actually the Trump people have actually put effort into voter registration in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And so maybe the Democrats haven't. I mean, I agree. Look, again, I think they exist. But the vast bulk of people who were so-called secret Trump voters in 2016 were actually just people who were undecided until very

late, and the undecided, partly because of Comey, broke very heavily for Trump. Now, some of them might have been secret Trump voters, right? They might have not been undecided, but they didn't want to tell a pollster that, yeah, I'm going to vote for Trump, so they said I'm undecided, which is a way to signal. But they weren't telling a pollster that they were voting for Hillary. But they weren't telling pollsters that they were voting for Hillary. And the problem that Biden had, are that Trump has this time, is that there's just a lot fewer undecides this time around, and an undecided tend to break against an incumbent. So there's that. You know, coming to you from the, as the resident Red County, Red State resident,

Smaga ain't a thing around here. I mean, people are MAGA. If you're secret anything, you're secret Biden in a community like this. You know, I've had people say to me who go to church and are, you know, part of that core suburban evangelical Trump demographic whose whisper, I'm voting for Biden. People will shout that they're voting for Trump around here. And so one thing that's a little bit

inconsistent with the whole smagathesis is it's so terrifying to support Trump and yet look at these huge parades of boats. And look at the enormous pride and the rat. Well, that's not quite as operative as it used to be. But you kind of can't have it both ways like look at this overwhelming proud public support for me

that and everyone's afraid of cancel culture and yeah look I mean the polls in 2016 were more accurate the national polling was more accurate than in 2012 it was the national polling and yeah there were some swings and misses in some of the states but the one thing I have not seen in my experience. Now, again, I'm in a red state, is I have not seen a lot of reluctance for anyone to say that they're for Trump. There is an enormous amount of Trump pride, particularly in his base. It's less ostentatious in the suburbs, but the suburbs are just less politically ostentatious in general. I mean, you know, somebody's thinking about putting a sign in their front yard in the suburbs, and they're thinking, what is that going to do to the whole ambiance

of the shrubbery, you know, so there's just a little bit, a little bit less intensity here, but, you know, and just coming to you is from, from Red Country, Smaga is not a thing. So I think there's another reason, and it's a little more related to what Jonah said about wanting to make this argument for the sake of Donald Trump. so that Donald Trump hears that there's this secret MAGA vote out there. I also think this is primarily a base play. A senior Trump campaign official held a 90-minute conference calls from talking about the secret MAGA vote

and laying out the case that there was one, that it would be important and maybe would be decisive. I think the argument and why you continue to hear it from the Trump campaign is aimed as much or more at the base of the Republican Party and Trump world generally as it is at these potential secret MAGA voters. I mean, on the one hand, you can imagine them wanting to make the argument so that if you're a, if you are a sort of Trump leaner or you're open to Trump, you're Trump curious, you could say, oh, there must be other people out there. Like me, the campaign probably has some data to support that. I think far more, the campaign hopes to keep energized and enthusiastic its base as they read news accounts, even if they discount them as fake news and Trump campaign attacks them as made up polls, you get one story after another day after day of Trump down 15, of Trump down 12, of Trump down in all the battleground states, of Trump. At a certain point, I do think his base starts to say, oh, to hell with it all.

And maybe some of them say, to hell with it all, this is obviously going to be stolen from him, as the president has suggested him 20 times. But others might just say, to hell with it all, he has no chance, I'm not turning out. And they have no chance if they start to lose even a fraction of that sort of core Trump constituency. there is no chance that he wins. So I think this is designed as much to energize that base as it is for any other reason. It's a one-to punch also. I mean, on the one hand,

Trump's enthusiasm of his supporters is higher than Biden's right now. And so absolutely, you've got to keep that up. But on the flip side of that, there's this mail-in ballot problem. There's the messaging problem coming from the president undermining whether mail-in ballots work. But then there's also plenty of evidence

coming out of New York and other places, Michigan, by the way, just said that if you are holding onto your absentee ballot, the elections in six days, just go ahead and turn it in person because they don't have confidence that the Postal Service will get it there in time six days away. And we still don't have the primary results from New York, and that was more than a month ago because of all of the absentee ballots, one in five are getting thrown out. So, you know, when you have that enthusiasm problem and you need your voters to go in person because the president has told them to, that's, you really need to gin up those numbers. Yeah, I had two other points.

One, I mean, I think Steve's right. That was one of the other things I wanted to get to was that, I mean, remember when Dick Morris got fired from Fox because he admitted that he had been lying? He could, his weird ego wouldn't let him admit that he was misreading the polls. So he admitted to lying about what the polls really said so that he wouldn't discourage down-ballot candidates. And Fox was like, it's sort of like that episode of Seinfeld where he admits he's returning the garment for spite. And they're like, he's like, okay, I'm not returning to that.

I just don't like it. Nope, you said spite. You're out of here. You're like the second Morris said he was lying just to do fan service for the viewers and the voters, Fox fired him and rightly so because Dick Morris is a problematic carbon-based life form. And but then there's the. Um, the, you know, my friend Luke Thompson, uh, who I had on the, on the remnant the other day, plug, uh, he, he was a little more tolerant of the secret Trump voter thing, but he agreed

that it was statistically irrelevant for the presidential race, but it might actually be relevant for down ballot candidates who, um, like Cory Gardner and a lot of the guys, they have to overperform Trump. And so if there's even a half percent in some, districts or some states, that could be significant for some of those races. But ultimately, it is just, it's just something, it seems to me, it's just something you, it boils down to something you say to viewers and radio listeners to say, there's every reason to stay tuned in. And beyond that, there's just not a lot of seriousness to it. Well, speaking of plugs, I will plug the sweep, our new newslet.

for the last 100 days of the campaign that we're putting out on Mondays because this coming Monday will be how campaigns take a conversation like this and actually actualize it. They don't just look at polls and say like, okay, well, let's do something for our base

or let's increase enthusiasm. There's voter scores and targeting based on that. And so we'll do a deep dive on that and the Senate races. So it's like basically Jonah's comment broken out into campaign speak coming Monday. All right. Last topic is mine. And Joe Biden is set to announce his VP, finally. I feel like we've been talking about it for a while. And the time has come. It will most likely happen before our next podcast. So I wanted to talk not about who he'll pick, but about whether it will matter. Is there a VP he can pick that will matter positively or negatively? Have VPs. Can you think of one that has mattered positively or negatively in recent history, recent-ish history? And, and I get this question a lot in the comments section from our members, will it matter more this year because of the issues that people have attributed around Biden's health?

So you answer your own questions first. Why? No. That's no fun. You're the host. You can tell us what you want to do. I'd be very interested to understand. I know that you, I mean, you share the skepticism of people who think it matters. you had a very good item about that. I can't remember if it was in the sweep or if it was in a morning despite the other day. It was. It was sweepish. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, well, I'll go first then. I think it could matter more. There's a lot of polling. You're right. There's a lot of polling that suggests it doesn't really change anybody's vote. I think there's an argument to be made that it changes people's votes more than they recognize

just by the sense it gives them about the strength of the ticket overall, without them saying this is now the reason I'm voting for candidate X for president. But I think you're right. I mean, the polling speaks with one voice on that issue. I think this year could be different. Joe Biden, you know, for all that the Trump campaign has gone out of its way to, you know, make Joe Biden sound like you can't ever put a sentence together, which, as Jonah has argued, is a mistake because then when he does, he looks even better on a

relative basis than he might otherwise. There are problems there. He has trouble. He struggles there. And I think sane people, normal people, even people who wish Joe Biden well, have pause about that. I've talked to some of those people, some of them elected officials, who will no doubt vote for Joe Biden. I think that you have a candidate like that, a would-be president like that, and there will be additional scrutiny placed on his vice-presidential candidate, the person who would potentially take office or have maybe outsized influence in shaping the policies that his administration implements because of that. You know, we don't, I don't think we're not in the meetings.

We don't see him 10 hours a day. him in little snippets. I think there's enough that we see to cause us concern. And I think other people will see that as well and place a little more emphasis on his VP this time than otherwise. My instinct on that is that actually the only people who are thinking about Biden's VP because they think that Biden won't survive a four-year term are people who are definitely not voting for Joe Biden. Interesting. Jonah, you're making disagree face.

Yeah, well, I just don't, I mean, I think, like, Biden's going to enter, would enter office older than Reagan was when Reagan left office. It is not unreasonable to worry about his successor in his, his longevity, not to be discourteous in any way. I think, I'm of two minds about this. I think, I've long believed that it's really dumb for people, or it's, not dumb, that the benefits of being vice president are wildly overrated. People think it's this great path to becoming president. And it's become more of one in recent history, but

let's put it this way. George H.W. Bush was the first sitting vice president to be elected straight to the presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1832. We tend to see vice presidents as betas, right? They just, they, by definition, they're hat holders. And, um, and so I, I think that they matter, that the people who invest in them is a lot of importance are often making a mistake. That said, I, I go back and forth on whether they matter as a candidate. I would, I would certainly concede up front the days of them mattering in terms of carrying electoral, votes for their state are gone, right? That was a function of back when parties were strong and machine bosses were strong and state machines were strong. That's gone. And state identity

was stronger. And state identity was stronger. And but I do think that they can, first of all, they can definitely hurt, right? I mean, yes, can Biden pick anybody that would hurt his chances? We can come up with a very long list of people that would hurt his chances, right? I don't know. Jisleine Maxwell would be a bad kid. Okay. I think you know what I meant. I know, I know. But just a little argument at absurdum to make the point. So I think that, you know, Bill Clinton's pick of Al Gore was textbook of the modern use of vice presidents of picking a vice president as a marketing signal more than anything else.

And on this, I think what Biden really needs to do is practice the first do no harm thing. Don't be this really aggressive, pick some revolutionary who has their own agenda. So Kamala Harris, I think, is out. You want someone who can work within the team that owes their place to you bringing them inside the administration. and I think that's why you're hearing a lot more buzz about Susan Rice these days is because she would be a team player for Team Biden without an independent power base within the party and she would definitely be a governing pick

because whether you agree with her foreign policy stuff and fine talk about Benghazi but there's some brilliance and trolling Republicans to talk about Benghazi during a pandemic she sends a signal that Biden's taking the third things seriously while also checking both the female and the African-American boxes at the same time. And they have a very close, a trusted relationship. Yeah, which apparently matters to him, right? He keeps saying how he needs to be sympathetico with the person and work with them well and blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I've thought the same thing, Jonah, that I think that to the extent it matters at all, the smart play for him is the governing pick, sort of almost like the Dick Cheney pick for Bush, because, you know, it seems like a long time ago, but people wondered, is Bush up for this thing? And the Dick Cheney pick was like a governing pick. And then the Obama pick for Biden was interesting because it was a kind of a sort of a calming type pick that here's the first term senator with the guy who basically defines the Democratic establishment by his side. And I think that if the governing pick is the pick, I would agree with you that the Susan Rice pick has a kind of hidden troll to it as well or not so hidden troll because we all know we've the

the conservative world in general has talked about Benga has not paid enough attention to Benghazi and that just needs to be talked about a whole lot more and it will be now you're just goading Steve Steve is literally squirming in his seat you guys I could easily see that happening. And, you know, but, but I do agree that there are people that for whom there is a downside. I think Kamala Harris is a downside. And I think some of his Elizabeth Warren is a downside. And I, I particularly liked, I think it's Ross Dothet in the argument who was talking to Michelle Goldberg, who was advocating for the positives of Elizabeth Warren. No relation. And Ross said, haven't we seen how little appeal she has?

in the campaign context. Isn't that an argument against? I mean, she finished, what, third in her own home state in the primary? So I do think there's some with some marginal downside, but I think a governing pick has some marginal upside. Last word to you, Steve. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm a little surprised that my fellow discussants here would so fully and openly embrace a known and proven liar.

Embrace? But, you know, that's okay. That's okay, you know. Look, joking aside, I mean, I do think it seems clear from all the reporting that Biden is comfortable with Susan Rice, that they have this rapport. She's certainly well respected inside the Democratic Party. I think in part because of Benghazi. You know, she was a strong defender of President Obama on those issues. I don't understand.

And I think it would be a mistake to pick her in part because she did lie. She lied repeatedly. She knowingly misled the country on numerous occasions in a way that actually matters, not if you embrace the crazy conspiracy theories that grew out of Benghazi on the right. But if you're a sane person who knows how to determine truth from falsehood, Like she said things that were untrue repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, and then never actually showed any indication that she was sorry for having done something. I love how you began by saying, just joking, you know, you guys embracing a proven liar and then make the issue about vice presidential picks all about her lying on the Benghazi thing. Well, I was joking, I think, I hope I was joking that you guys were embracing her.

I understand. Not about the line. You know, I'm quite serious about it. I know you are, but I thought you were saying it as a way to say, look, to signal to our listeners that you're not Benghazi obsessed. And if that was the intent, it kind of failed. I'm just putting it out of Benghazi obsessed. I maybe gave you guys credit that you don't deserve.

I suppose. I thought you were jokingly embracing her. I mean, I was joking and saying that you were embracing her. Look, I don't think you need to be a Benghazi obsessive to have problems with Susan Rice. and what she did. I think in that sense, maybe it's the case that because you would have these arguments made against her by Donald Trump and others who have embraced a lot of the conspiracies that grew out of actual serious Benghazi reporting, that they wouldn't have kind of the sting.

I guess to me, if part of the argument against Donald Trump is that he has been such easy, comfortable, and frequent liar as an occupant of the Oval Office, you wouldn't want to bring in somebody who allows you to be accused of doing the same. Maybe it's a matter of degree and it won't matter that much. But the question is, does it convince anyone, sort of like my health issue with Biden, which I take y'all's point, does it convince anyone who was not already voting for Trump, basically, which I think is y'all's Benghazi troll point? Like, yes, there will be so much harping on Benghazi, and people will talk about how important it is and how much it matters, convincing the very people who were never going to vote for Biden, regardless of who

was second on the ticket. And so, yes, to your point, Steve, like, yep, that will really annoy people, but will it annoy the people who are going to vote for them? Because this isn't going to be a persuasion election. It's going to be turn out your voters and who turns out more of their voters. And to some extent, really, just can the Trump campaign turn out their voters? I'd say probably not to address that question directly. I'd say probably not or probably not a huge impact. But I do think if you're talking about, you know, people who are sort of had it with politics are frustrated with all of this, who look at Washington and say, man, those people all lie.

I can't trust anything anybody says. Why the hell would I come out to vote in an election where I'm choosing between really bad choices on both sides? I think the serious arguments against Susan Rice in that context might make somebody like that stay home. All right. I have some trivia for you, though, Sarah, if you're doing this thing about vice presidents. I love trivia.

I believe you can check me on this. Sort of like in Apollo 13. Check me. With the exception of Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic Party has picked a senator as the vice presidential candidate, every election since Henry Wallace. Wow. They're bought into this idea

as a governing pick. I believe I am right about this. Interesting. Well, that might be a signal towards, I mean, just, you know, for what it's worth, Tammy Duckworth, someone we'd hadn't talk about at all. Yeah, I mean, I'm still pretty high on Tammy Duckworth.

Yeah, she doesn't have the season right. That's the obvious pick for Biden. Yeah. Yeah. No real downside, a lot of upside. A quick break. Let's hear from the Bradley Foundation. Making sense of current events during this extraordinary time can be trying.

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So come back often and subscribe to their YouTube channel to be notified whenever a new one is posted. Okay, it's a flash fun question. And don't lie and don't try to make yourself sound cooler, neater than you are. David, the book that's by your bedside that you put down last night to go to sleep. Oh, the Splendid and the Vial,

which I have only been working through very slowly. I was going to say, David, I have a six-week-old baby, and I finish the book. I know. But here's the problem. My Kindle, okay, so that's not actually correct. So what happened is my Kindle won't load the back half of the Splendid and the Vial. And I've restarted it multiple times.

And so yesterday, I gave up on it and I downloaded Bomber Command by Max Hastings. And I started rereading that. So you lied when I asked you. And I simply said, don't lie. about what you just put down last night. Yeah, no, I put it down and then downloaded Bomber Command, so, which is a very, very good book.

All right, Steve. I mean, what's right next to me right now is Pond Life. This is an amazing look of like a 19706 illustration in color, $1.25. It has a raccoon, a duck, A Guide to Common Plants and Animals of North American Ponds and Lakes. I'm at my brother's house and I'm sitting at the table and that's what happens to be right next to me right now.

The actual book that I'm reading right now is David Sanger's The Perfect Weapon, War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age. And it is absolutely fascinating. and for somebody who's been, you know, paid pretty close attention to cyber threats over the past several years and is worried, alarmed about them, this makes it harder to sleep at night. So really weird that you'd read it right before bed. Jonah? So I am going to be fully honest and tell you that I am not reading a book right now. I did not read a book right before I went to bed.

Thank you, Jonah. Thank you for your honesty. My wife and daughter are out of town, so I'm mostly eating cold chicken over the sink, drinking alone. And I fell asleep last night after finishing the final episode of Mythic Quest on Apple TV, which is fantastic. I'm so glad you brought that up, Jonah. It is almost as good as the best of Silicon Valley and better than some of the worst of Silicon Valley, the TV show. But I've also gotten into the bad habit of. watching things on my iPad to fall asleep. Because if I read, I will stay awake. And because I have

a brain that is thinking X percent at the time and X equals 100. And so sometimes I need to turn it off. And I usually do that by dowsing it in scotch and then watching TV shows. The visual, by the way, of Jonah eating chicken. It's the over the sink. That's what really did it for. Because we've all been there when you don't want to use a plate. And so you just eat directly over-the-sync. For years, I've been talking about eating over-the-sync, because I'm a big over-the-sink eater. But the reason I first started talking about is, like, 20 years ago at an National Review event, I gave a talk, and somebody came up to me and gave me his, and people gave me their cards all a time. And this guy gave me his card, and I look at it. And I believe it said he was the

international vice president, it was the vice president of the international association of men who eat over the sink. and I've always wanted to be a member. So there's that. There's a whole bunch of, there's a Sex and the City episode about the secret single lives of women and like what we do when men aren't watching

and what we pretend, you know, and the Sex and the City episode is Charlotte looking at her pores and like absolutely that's a thing when men aren't around. I do think women do look at their pores quite a bit. But one thing that definitely I think we do

is eat over the sink and then never tell you guys that we don't use a plate. Like it's a secret single. thing that we do. Okay, my, I just, so I finished Splendid in the Vial, David, been really looking forward to talking to you about it. So hurry up. Okay, sorry. And then I started Hero of the Empire, the Boer War a daring escape and the making of Winston Churchill, which is about his early 20s. Because I like being on a theme for my reading. And also the brisket kind of looks like Churchill. And I don't just mean, because as Churchill said himself, all babies look like Winston

Churchill. Like, he actually kind of does look like him. Uh, his, he had, there's like this little boy picture of Winston Churchill when he's like, maybe six or something. And like, boy, I don't know, something about the mouth. So, in honor of the brisket and my, just, you know, indulging my Churchill reading for this summer. That's what I just started. And, uh, Churchill, by the way, it's by one of my favorite authors, Candice, um, Millard. So she's fabulous and read everything that she writes. But, um, you know, I'm only a few pages in and, Churchill kind of sounds like an ass. He was cocky.

Yeah. Like he's that kid at 22 that like I did not want to hang out with in college. So, you know, he, when he finished his fifth book, I think, he says, I have now written more books than Moses and at a younger age or something like that. Oh my goodness. Like he sounds like the president of college Republicans, and I don't mean that as a compliment, you know. But Jonah, I'm so glad you said something about Mythic Quest. I started it. I'm halfway through.

It's so good. It's so good. I was curious about what you would think about it because it's obviously based of World Warcraft, right? I mean, that's sort of the... Yeah, it sounds great. No, no, no, but it's about the Silicon Valley computer company that makes it. And they're besieged with, like, HR issues and woke stuff.

And it's very well done. Yeah. Steve, do you play board games? That sounds amazing. So it's about a science fiction company, gaming science fiction company and the, gosh, Steve, Steve, do you play board games? I do. Okay. Do you know pandemic?

No. Okay. My household is freaking out because pandemic season three, which is actually going to be pandemic season zero, it, they just announced, they made a trailer for it. and it is happening in October, and we are setting aside, like, guys, I didn't miss this podcast for the birth of my son, and I am going to take a day off if it comes out on a Tuesday. I will not be here on Wednesday. I will be taking personal leave to play a pandemic. So it's a board game? That's a board game or a show? It's a board game. Season three? Yeah, how do you have seasons of board games? You need to, you have to lay this out a little better. Oh, my God, y'all don't know this. You're talking about trailers for board games and you make a ton of our. nerdery. It's like when you made fun of us for liking fantasy novels and then said, my

favorite's Miss of Avalon. Okay. Y'all have never played legacy board games then. So normal board games, you play over and over again and you just take off all the pieces and then you can play it again later. Legacy board games, it actually affects the board. So pandemic is a board game. It exists. But legacy pandemic is a season and there's 12 episodes and each time it's going to change your board, et cetera. So if you want to play it again, you have to rebuy the whole thing. And it takes roughly 24 hours to play. And so we have two friends that we invite over.

And we basically sleep for like three or four hours that night. And we otherwise just play through the whole weekend pandemic legacy. And so the new season is coming out in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, do you get it? It's amazing. I get it. I'm not judging you in any way. But from this point forward, I refuse to be judged by you.

Yeah, I think that's right. Judging. I'm judging. Also, also, I just, for your own sake, I want you know that we know we're still recording, right? All right, listeners, thanks for joining us on this mythic quest to the end of our podcast. Yes, thank you. Please subscribe, leave comments, send comments. We also gave several plugs for other things.

that we do, Jonah's Remnant and his LA Times column on Smaga this week. David and I's awesome, amazing podcast, advisory opinions, which I think we're going to do

some DACA this week. We've got some good stuff lined up. And Steve oversees all of it. So just subscribe to Steve. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. We're going to be able to be.