The Dispatch Podcast - The Double-Hater Voter | Roundtable

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Sarah, Jonah, Steve, and Mike dive into the latest punditry—Ohio’s primary, Trump’s trials, and the Middle East—before veering off into an Abraham Lincoln and 1619 Project cul-de-sac. The Agenda: —Bernie Moreno wipes the floor —Jonah pushes back on reveries of self-congratulation —Who are the double-haters in the 2024 election? —An update on Trump trials —The worst “win” you can have as a prosecutor —Sen. Chuck Schumer’s speech on Israel —Abraham Lincoln, worth our time —Happy birthday Jonah! Show Notes: —The Collision on Fani Willis —Original Jurisdiction on Judge Aileen Cannon's clerks quitting —The Remnant with Allen Guelzo —Lincoln’s second inaugural address Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isker with Mike Warren, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes in a sort of roundabout kind of way. And you know what, guys? We're just going to do some potpoury news of the day. See where the spirit moves us. And Mike, I'm coming to you first, because we have primaries this Tuesday. I mean, in a technical sense, people were allowed to vote. Did you learn anything from those primaries? Yes, which I guess is definitely. I should say I learned what I already knew. So maybe I didn't learn anything, Sarah. I learned that Republicans really like Donald Trump and will follow his lead when there's

a question about where Republicans should go. I'm talking mostly about the Ohio Senate primary in which polls suggested going into the race on Tuesday that there was a race, that there was some common. competition between Bernie Moreno, who was a businessman, ran for Senate two years ago, didn't win the primary, didn't survive through the primary, and Matt Dolan, who's a moderate conservative state senator, who's kind of not a Trump-type leading Republican. So it got kind of interesting that Mike DeWine, the Republican governor had endorsed Dolan, Donald Trump had endorsed Bernie Marino, and it was sort of setting things up for like, ooh, this may tell us some interesting things about the Republican party in very red, very otherwise pro-Trump Ohio. And then, of course, Bernie Moreno, like wipes the floor with Dolan and Franklin Rose, the other candidate, gets over 50% of the vote in a three-way primary and, yeah,

and confirms what I should have already known, which is that it's Trump's party and And when voters will take their lead from him, Trump says jump, and the voters say, how high, Mr. President. Can I tell you what was interesting to me about that in particular, was that in a bunch of the other states where we still had presidential primaries going on, there was a, I don't know, a healthy, whatever you want to call it, not Trump vote. You know, around 20 percent in a lot of these states, whether they were still voting. for Haley or in Florida there was a little bit of a DeSantis vote, et cetera. But the way that I think about this moving forward and why I don't read nearly as much into it, I think, as others, is because you're not controlling for the denominator, right? Fewer people show up when the primary doesn't matter. So who's more likely to show up when the primary doesn't matter? Well, the very people

who want to have their voice of protest heard. So the Trump people should be feeling quite complacent. Their guy is the nominee, no question about it. And that's what makes Ohio interesting to me is that we didn't see that complacency in Ohio at all. In fact, it's the inverse of what I'm talking about. You know, why was there not a bigger, you know, quote-unquote protest vote if Trump is so clearly the nominee, et cetera? So that was interesting to me.

And I'm curious what you think of my concept that people are over-reading the quote-unquote protest. vote against Donald Trump because actually turnouts just so low in a primary that doesn't matter that the protesters turn out more than the Trump voters. And so when you say half of those people say they're going to vote for Joe Biden or they're not going to vote for Donald Trump, it's like, okay, well, first of all, I don't believe all of them will actually do that in the end. But even so, we're really talking fewer and fewer people and self-selecting people who show up to a primary that won't affect the outcome. Right. You're a Republican primary vote.

voter in Florida or Ohio, and you're really ticked off about Donald Trump taking over the party, you're going to be sure to get to the polls even, and maybe even especially because it doesn't matter. I agree with that assessment. Ohio had this competitive Senate primary, lots of competitive House primaries on the Republican side. There's also a lot of early vote in Ohio, So there were a lot of people who voted for Nikki Haley in the presidential primary before she had suspended her campaign because of the early votes. So I do think you shouldn't read too much into that protest vote. It's there. It exists.

I do think there is if Donald Trump has a problem, his biggest problem from a raw vote standpoint going into November is that there are people. who lean Republican, who if it were pretty much any other Republican candidate, would be voting for the Republican presidential ticket in November, who will not? The question is how many of them, which states, will it be the key states of Georgia and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Arizona, whether that matters. It's all about the margins, baby. Yeah, so I'll just, go ahead. Yes. Jonah, my dear, Jonah.

Okay. Is this going to be a race of the exhausted majority? Is that how we're going to remember this the way that we remembered soccer moms in the 90s and security moms after 9-11? That this will be a race among the people who hate both candidates, the lean Republicans who won't vote for Donald Trump and the Democrats who reject Joe Biden? Or is that us being too dispatchy and thinking people all think like us? okay so just i want to push back a little bit on you guys in your your your your reverie of self-congratulation about how you actually understand all this stuff um i'm not saying you're wrong right but when when mike when you say uh we shouldn't over read it or we shouldn't read too much into it i think you're right at the same time we should read something into it. And, um, you can, you can look at the fact that, particularly in closed primaries, Republicans. So these are actual Republicans. These are people who didn't switch their party ID to vote in the Republican primary, right? These aren't people who voted as independence

or registered same day or anything. Like a big chunk of them are actual real Republicans. I agree that the most motivated people who don't like Donald Trump, just, the most motivated people who do like Donald Trump are going to be overrepresented in a meaningless primary at this point. At the same time, the fact that even some Republicans are willing to come out and vote against the guy when they know they're going to lose anyway might be also indicative that there are other people who feel the same way who didn't bother, right? I mean, so it can cut both ways. I don't think it's like this proves automatically that there's a tiny number of these people

I think it proves that there's a weird diversity of these people and but you're absolutely right it matters at the margins. On the question of, I don't think we at the dispatch are projecting

upon the double haters dispatchian mindsets because I think at least in my case there are many people out there who I think for whom are editorial about how this is no way run a railroad and that this election stinks, who very much are the high-minded, discerning

quality people that we have in mind when we write our editorials and when we do everything as servants of our readers and subscribers here at the dispatch. But a lot of double haters are low propensity voters, we're not following the election at all, who, you know, it's funny I've had these kinds of conversations with a bunch of people who are shocked to find out that they know people who don't care about politics and don't follow politics. And they're like, you wouldn't believe it. I was talking to somebody and they're asking me like, who is Robert F. Kennedy? Like, how do they not know that?

And I was like, and that's because they're a normal human being. And there are a lot of those people who actually qualify as the double haters. There are a lot of those people who are like, you know, the Biden team was telling people in um earlier in the primaries earlier this year um i talked to several journalists who went to these briefings about it that but hey look when we do focus groups a lot of the people who say they don't like joe biden um they also say wait a second you're not serious the republicans aren't going to actually renominate Donald trump again and um if you'd been paying any attention at all you'd know that, yeah, they were going to pay, like last month, you would have known that they were going

to re-nominate Donald Trump again. They're just not paying attention. They're not tuned in. We've seen the traffic of a lot of right-wing sites plummet. Traffic in sort of news interests in general is plummeted. And those aren't dispatch readers. Those are like more normal Americans, no offense to the lofty and angelic dispatch subscribers. Um, uh, And I do think they are the soccer moms of this cycle, and they are going to be the decisive people. And I kind of prefer that they are versus a lot of other bogus artificial demographic handles that we've used in the past. I don't think we're that far off, Jonah, by the way. I really do kind of agree with you on the broad strokes of what you said.

By the way, it puts me in mind, Sarah, of one of my favorite quotes of all time that I'll paraphrase, which was from Ed Rendell, I believe, during the 2008 Democratic primary, which in which he said that, you know, you don't get an extra vote for enthusiasm. If you are unenthusiastic Biden voter, you're still a Biden voter. So that's important to keep in mind as well. It's so funny. I was actually using that quote with someone else this week because, you know, the different numbers that you can parse the Trump protest vote in the primaries was larger than the Biden protest vote in these primaries. Trump's was about 20 percent and Biden was about 10 percent. But then in the polls, when you ask Republican primary voters how enthusiastic they are about Donald Trump, that number is much higher than Joe Biden's number in the Democratic Party. And I was like, yeah, that number doesn't matter as much as you think. What you're trying to get at is sort of who's going to stay home. But at the of the day, the Biden campaign doesn't care if you're sad about voting for him, if you're voting for him. Your happiness is not their primary concern or else we wouldn't have, you know, negative campaigning for the last ever, all of it. Negative campaigns work, even though voters hate them because they still vote the way that you want them to based on the negative campaigning.

Mike, I thought we could do a little update on some of the Trump trials, the, well, just all of it going on, because there's been some weird little updates, and I just think it's worth a quick nash, if you will. All right, so first up, the update coming out of the Georgia January 6th case, Fannie Willis not removed as the prosecutor, but the judge writing a scathing opinion about her tremendously poor judgment though noting that a prosecutor who does bad things even repeatedly, as he said,

does not necessarily warrant removal, even noting at one point she had acted unlawfully, but that that had not risen to the level of removal. Mike, it was sort of the worst win you can have as a prosecutor. Yeah, it reminded me of when James Comey announced that they were not going to be prosecuting, Hillary Clinton, which just made things even worse for Hillary. Yeah, that was really bad. That was a bad assessment of Fannie Wilson's behavior. And in my estimation, it was correct.

She behaved really, really badly by making some really stupid decisions, hiring her boy toy as a special prosecutor, whether or not they, They were romantically involved beforehand, before she hired him or after she hired him. It was just a bad look. And I will say that the judge's assessment also extended to her testimony in the hearing. And we cover that in the collision. And I watched that hearing live. And Fannie Willis is really performing, trying to really – in fact, I spoke with some people in Georgia afterward in which they said she's not performing.

for the benefit of the judge. She's performing for the benefit of her constituency. She's an elected official in Fulton County. It's a very Democratic county. And it was a good thing she wasn't performing for the judge because he was unimpressed with her sort of flippant performance there. What's fascinating to me is, and people have largely glossed over this, he found that she acted improperly when she gave her speech at that AME church

where she said that her critics were using the race card because he found that it was clear in the context that she included the defendants in that and that therefore she was potentially tainting the jury pool by calling the defendants racist and that that was improper for a prosecutor. Now, he said, it was not so prejudicial as to rise to the level of removing the prosecutor,

which is an extraordinary remedy. But he said, it will be up to the state bar of Georgia, the state legislature, and the voters of Fulton County, what they may want to do about that. You know, a finding from a state judge that you acted improperly for the bar, I don't know what else they're going to do with it other than have to do something. Though, again, people rarely get disbarred, certainly not for something that she wouldn't even get removed from. Being disbarred is even bigger penalty. But Steve, I just think this has worked out as well for Donald Trump as if he had written him himself, because if she had been removed, it's sort of to use

the Jim Comey example. If DOJ had simply indicted Hillary Clinton, she then would have been able to fight back at that being, you know, them after her, she's the victim, et cetera. The worst case scenario for her was she had nothing to fight against. They didn't indict her. They just said she was reckless, et cetera, et cetera, and all these horrible things about her. Same thing for Fannie Willis here. If she had been removed, it would have sort of made it more of this like, well, okay, Donald Trump, and now you're going to get prosecuted, and, you know, now they've got you dead to rights. Instead, he's got this limping prosecutor in a trial where even if he gets convicted, I just don't know that anyone's going to lead it a lot of credence because of who's prosecuting

it. Yeah, I mean, it's a built-in argument for Trump, right? I mean, he can make that case regardless of what the outcome is here. And look, I mean, we've talked about this before. He's just unbelievably lucky on this stuff, whether it's overreach by some of the prosecutors, whether it's misconduct or, you know, if it doesn't rise to the level of misconduct, bad conduct, improper conduct, conduct that's easily criticizable. However we want to describe it, like, this gives him the argument that he wants. And look, whatever happened in the course of these cases as they unfolded, we could be certain of one thing. And that was that Donald Trump was going to attack the prosecutors. He was going to claim that this was all illegitimate. And he was going to sort of

throw up his hands and fight back as hard as he possibly could. And if in that scenario, if you had the squeakiest clean district attorneys and prosecutors and judges, Trump was going to cause some damage to sort of perceptions of the judiciary, kind of regardless, they have helped him do that. They have helped him make his case. I mean, you know, I haven't, I will full confession, I have not paid attention to every single detail of what's happened in the Fannie Willis case other than reading the collision, which everybody, of course, should do. But I did watch some of that hearing live. And it was, you know, you saw the divide. come down basically to politics and whose side you were on. And that is the opposite of what we should

want. I mean, just from that point alone, that's the opposite of what you should want in a case of this potential import. And, you know, he was going to frame it as political regardless. And she sort of confirmed that framing by the way that she answered the question by performing for the television cameras by making arguments that felt political. So continuing around the horn, you've also got the state criminal case in Manhattan, in New York. That was supposed to go to trial March 25th, but oops, it turns out there were tens of thousands of documents that hadn't gotten to be reviewed by the defense. So even the prosecution has suggested they need at minimum a 30-day delay, the Trump team asking for a 90-day delay, check. Then down in D.C., of course, the Supreme Court has that immunity argument that they'll be hearing about a month from today. Check. And down in Florida, what was really in many ways, what I've certainly always thought is the strongest legal case against Donald Trump, the classified documents case and the obstruction case. The judge down there issuing a bizarre order to the judges, sorry, to the two legal cases.

teams on a sort of choose your own adventure jury instructions i'll go into way more detail about why it's very strange uh in advisory opinions but she's behind in ruling on several motions in front of her then she's doing this weird order on jury instructions all is not well in the state of florida there was then a news story that came out from david lat over at original jurisdiction saying that multiple clerks have quit. So we're going to be finding out more about what's going on in Florida, but that doesn't look good either.

Jonah, I do start, I don't know, I do start wondering, like believing in a different higher power than I think the one that humans have believed in all along. Like, this does feel scripted.

Yeah, I mean, maybe Ball is feeling his oats, right? He's been dormant for long enough, enough. And he's he's got a plan. I will make a strain. I don't know if we're planning on talking about it. It seems like it's a dead story now, but in rightfully so. But I kind of feel like, well, one way to think about it is like Trump is the millionth monkey who actually manages to bang out Shakespeare on a typewriter, right? The law of large numbers says that, that, you know, someone throwing darts at the stock pages can pick the three best stocks, right?

Because someone's got to be able to, just, that's how it works. His entire life, he has done things that are ill-advised, that presses luck, that people say you're not supposed to do, and he's been lucky with a lot of it. Not always, you know, not lucky in the, according to the narrative that he tells, but he's been in fact, lucky is he's this outlier. And one of the reasons, one of the things that has aided him, particularly since he's got into politics, is he does so many things that you're not supposed to do that it causes the system to screw up. That he, that the system works to a certain degree on good faith. I know people like to make fun of me for talking about norms, because

you're not supposed to talk about norms. People talk about norms are just mad at Trump because He has mean tweets, right? And that kind of stuff. But it's like no one in major league baseball knows how they would how they could deal with a baseball team owner who said, you know, the refs, the umpires, they rig this, the scoreboard lied. We actually won that game, right? No one has any kind of like muscle memory or understanding about how to deal with

that kind of thing. And it's similar like that with politics. And so he forces errors on people all over the place. And what I was going to say earlier was compare it to this stupid bloodbath thing, where I don't think anyone is shocked when I say, Donald Trump says stupid and irresponsible stuff all the frigging time. But that doesn't mean that everything that can be interpreted is stupid and irresponsible or evil or inciting violence is inciting violence.

It could just be a word that he used, and the media just jumped on the opportunity to say he's calling to foment violence where I just don't think a fair reading of the thing says that people can disagree about it, but it's just not obvious that this was the hill to die on on this argument. Similarly, the Brad case, you know,

the Fannie Willis case, so many of these legal arguments and legal efforts, they are not the best arguments and the best efforts to go after Trump, but the system, his violence to the system, elicits people to overreact and over respond and screw things up in desperation. And I think that's what we're seeing in the justice system right now. 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

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Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Mike, there was an interesting article today from a law professor that you and I might be writing about in the future about whether Donald Trump should and would declare bankruptcy based on these civil rulings against him and what looks to be his inability to liquidate the funds fast enough. Set aside all the legal reasons that it would be very good for him to declare bankruptcy. lots of, there's lots of sort of immediate things that come into effect to protect you when you're shielded by the bankruptcy courts.

By the way, this article was kind of funny because it was also speculating at where Donald Trump would file. And it speculated that he might file in Houston because there's a judge, a bankruptcy judge in Houston whose daughter worked for Donald Trump. Perfect. There was like the first comment. was from a dispatch member that is like, are you kidding? Do you know who she is? I don't think so. It could be so much fun, though, Mike. I mean, if these are really good script riders, that's exactly what will happen. Would your dad have to recuse themselves from that? Do you think? Is there a conflict there? I am not going to speculate on the podcast as to what the legal

requirements would be. There's obviously like actual financial interest and like real conflicts, but there is this sort of catch-all on appearance of impropriety. I don't know what anyone thinks about what the appearance of impropriety would be. Obviously, some people think that I'm, quote, in Trump world and other people think I'm never Trump, so maybe it's just the appearance of both sides. I don't know. Of course, I'm his daughter. I'm not him when Supreme Court justices don't recuse just because their kids have

opinions on things. So there's all sorts of stuff, again. I have no idea what any ethics person would advise. in that case. But Mike, I'm curious about the politics of this. Like, let's assume it's good for him financially and everything else to declare bankruptcy. He's declared bankruptcy before. And his voters, I would assume, would say something to the effect of, well, I mean, they went after him just to make him do this. So, you know, but those are his hardcore voters. A presidential candidate with four criminal indictments who just declared bankruptcy, I don't.

know at some point the pile gets high well this has always been my theory about about the general what i say the criminal cases like the general idea of the criminal cases that for indictments that at least a trial going on um you add all of these uh all of these civil uh findings uh and and penalties that he has that this this is something speaking to the voters who aren't really paying that close attention. When it gets close to the election, like, we're going to be hearing a lot more about this. For no other reason, then, there's going to be a lot of Democratic money paying for ads that could potentially bring all this stuff up. I certainly would go against Trump's own image as a sort of very successful businessman if he's got to declare bankruptcy again. On the other

hand, like you said, he's declared it before. That's never stopped his image, you know, from him from sort of creating this image of himself. I don't know. I do think that this is in our latest issue of the collision is there's a new poll from Ipsos that looks at kind of Americans' viewpoints on all the criminal cases. And what I was struck by is Ipsos did this poll six months ago, and they went back and asked again, essentially asking, how much do people know about these cases each of the four? do they think he's guilty or not guilty or they don't know?

And across the board, first of all, it's about 60% of people say they're familiar with the details. I would really like to dig down how familiar they actually are versus how familiar they say they are. And it's something like around half of the people say that they believe he's guilty of each of the four in each of the four trials with a quarter. mostly Republicans saying he's not guilty, and the rest saying they don't know. That has been consistent for the past six months.

I think things have the potential to change on that front as the general election really gears up. I know Biden himself doesn't want to get into this because it's his Justice Department that's prosecuting Trump in two of these trials. But I do think there will be a lot of democratic, pro-democratic ads and groups that will be trying to target voters and remind them that, like, as Nikki Haley like to say in the last few weeks of her campaign, this guy brings chaos. You know, this chaos follows him wherever he goes. You know, we act as that that's a known thing about him, but I do think a lot of people need reminding. Voters need reminding of what they supposedly know. I think that's

true. And I'll be interested to see how much Democrats really use that. this stuff. Steve, I have a real sense that most Americans, like more than most, a lot, a lot of Americans just are not tuning into this. And going in both directions, meaning some Americans have never tuned into it and they'll probably tune into it the closer we get. They'll start tuning in more. And some Americans were tuned in and have been so fed up with the whole thing that they've started to tune out. And we're certainly seeing that some of the media numbers. And I was wondering if you had thoughts on the sort of media consumption side of this campaign.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right that most sort of normie Americans are not paying attention to every twist and turn of any of these things. I mean, I would say, you know, it's March Madness. Go to 10, yeah, go to 10 Americans who you could say pay careful attention to the news. and ask them to give you a one-sentence description of each of these cases. I would wager that one in ten could maybe come close, honestly. You know, I work at a news outlet. We publish, you know, your terrific newsletter that follows this stuff carefully. I try to keep up with the news.

I pay attention to this to the extent that I can. And I'm not sure I would do that very well, honestly. Yeah, I think people aren't paying attention to every twist and turn of this stuff. And, you know, for many people, they just, you know, divide into their camps based on what they thought coming in. Do you think the justice system is going after Donald Trump, as he says at every turn? And as his primary opponents echoed in the campaign that they were waging against him or with him. I suppose. Or do you believe that he's guilty of these things and should be prosecuted for them? A lot of people, without respect to a careful look at the facts, have those answers. All right. Let's do a little around the world. Chuck Schumer, obviously, the highest-ranking Jew in the history of the United States, gave his speech criticizing B.B. Netanyahu saying that he was one of the impediments to peace, not the only. only one. He also reiterated his strong support for Israel. But because Netanyahu is one of those impediments to peace said that there should be calls for a new election and that he should be replaced

in Israel, Jonah, this has been met with many reactions, whether it's appropriate, setting aside the appropriateness, whether he's right. Give me your reaction. So actually, I want to react first to the way you set it up. You're following in good fashion a great number of people. starting with Chuck Schumer himself who often say Chuck Schumer is the highest highest ranking Jew in America and I think it's a garbage term

that he puts out there he's the one who tells people this all the time he brags about it all the time I don't know I mean like we've had Jewish governors is it really true that a majority leader is who's not in the constitutional order

right he's not the Senate pro tem right he's not in line to be president he's a high ranking, politically high ranking official in the Democratic Party in one branch of the legislature at one level of government in the United States. And I say fe, which is a term of my people, on this, this, this, this, this braggadocio from him that he is insepted into so much of the media. I think you're right, Jonah. I'm fully convinced. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a. It's a. It's a. It's a schmucky thing for him to constantly say that, and I will stand by that. Now, more broadly, I think if we're going to talk about schmuckiness, his speech was even worse.

It is wildly inappropriate for an American politician who claims to be a very close friend of Israel to call for the change in government, for the toppling, the depositorial. whatever we're supposed to call it, of a prime minister of a Democratic ally, particularly during a time of war. Imagine the blowback, if B.B. Netanyahu said, it is really time for Republican leadership in America today. The gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth would be biblical. New Testament or Old Testament? The, the, the God of smiting in wrath. um not your lovey-dovey turn the other cheek bible um and uh and so it's the punitry is not hard on this he's running interference for joe biden it's pretty obvious that he is doing that um i think that the that on the merits it's a really dumb argument because b b nanyahu's not in fact calling the

shots in israel he is part of a triumvirate of a unity government the stuff that he is doing fighting in Gaza has to be approved by Benny Gantz and the other guy, which just kind of reminds me there was an old Saturday Night bit about how they change Siskel and Ibert to the fat guy and the other one.

Regardless, the idea that BB Netanyahu is responsible for all of the badness that is happening, however you define the badness, is just scapegoating nonsense. And I'm not a fan of Bibi Nanjahus. But I think that Schumer did not anticipate the blowback on this because a whole bunch of very moderate, pretty liberal Jewish organizations were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a bad move to start doing this, to start talking about how the United States officials are going to be calling for the, calling for the toppling of governments in Israel. And it also, it's also a bad move because it reinforces this.

mythology that, in fact, Israel is a colony of the United States of America, that it follows our orders. And when the, you know, this is the Elon Omar argument about Israel, is that when the Jewish string pullers in America pull their strings, the Israeli marionette, the little Satan, does what we want. And it's, it's a grotesque effort that I think is going to politically backfire. In fact, I don't get it. Maybe you guys have an answer. Like, Biden wants to still get all the credit for backing Israel while telegraphing to his base that he's not backing Israel.

And I just don't know why anyone would sort of just, everyone would give him the credit that he wants for both positions rather than, like, be mad at him for taking the opposite position than the one that they support. I just, I don't understand the political, you know, calculation. Hey, Steve, I don't want to put you on the spot to solve the Middle East. for us, but I guess I'm pretty confused on what anyone thinks the endgame here is. They don't want Israel to, you know, have a military operation in Rafah. They do seem to want them to wipe out Hamas. But even if they wipe out Hamas, they're saying that because of the way they do it,

then there won't be a peaceful solution. I'm confused what any person of good faith thinks that the endgame here can be at this point? Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty confused. If you're Chuck Schumer, I think, and you want to address this on substance, the question is, will what I say make it harder or easier for Israel to wipe out Hamas, which Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and other Democrats say that they favor? there's no way you answer that question in the affirmative and then go ahead and say what he said. I mean, it obviously makes things harder. And I think the problem with this, the

difficulty I have with this is that it's hard to come up with any other explanation other than politics, right? I mean, I think Jonah's right about that. That's what this is. That's what this is. Joe Biden has done everything he can to bring back the progressive left, not just the sort of, you know, Rashida Tlebe contingent, but others on the progressive left who have adopted this cause as their own. And whether it's in his public statements, whether it's in things that, he has said and done that I think really approach moral equivalency, or whether it's the steady stream of leaks out of the White House about how tough he's being with Bibi Netanyahu. They're trying to recover at a point where he's at 38% approval. And part of the reason

is at 38% approval is he's lost some people on the progressive left. They're trying to get that back. Like, this isn't that complicated. I would say on Chuck Schumer specifically. Has Chuck Schumer ever called for regime change in Iran? I mean, is it the case that Chuck Schumer is calling for regime change in Israel before he's calling for regime change in Iran? And I'd say that like half facetiously, but there's a point there. I mean, it's pretty obnoxious, I think, to do that. And to take on whatever you think of BB Net and Yahoo, to challenge an ally in the middle of a war and a war that, you know, not only the Israelis, but I think a lot of us believe it is potentially an existential war. I just think

it's really bad form. Mike? Yes. The world. Well, can I say something quickly about this Chuck Schumer thing? I think it's a great example of how Chuck Schumer is extremely clumsy when it comes to these kind of political efforts. It's almost as if he thought that only the progressive left would hear this speech that he was giving on on the floor of the Senate as the Senate majority leader and highest, well, okay, I won't say highest ranking Jew in America. Like, it seems, it seems that this is kind of a, like, this is not the first time that Chuck Schumer has done something, has attempted to sort of thread some kind of political needle and done it in a clumsy manner. And at the end of the day, I don't understand.

understand why the Biden White House, why Chuck Schumer and the rest of the sort of the Democratic leadership feel that they have to do this. I get that they're hearing a lot. They're getting a lot of guff from the progressive left on this issue. I think a more confident Biden would recognize that these are voters, these are constituencies that don't have anywhere else to go. you don't have to put a thumb in their eye on things, but you don't have to coddle them either if you're concerned about them not coming home in November. I just think that that's a concern that is going to be out of your hands. And if you're looking at this from a gross, just kind of pure political standpoint,

you gain a lot more by tacking to the center on this issue than you do by trying to play this weird political game. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project,

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and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash, dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right. We're moving on to not worth your time. And I want to talk about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, of course, is always worth our time. We could have a whole podcast just on Abraham Lincoln. I'm curious if any of you have watched

the new Apple series Manhunt about the hunt for John Wilkes booth after Lincoln's assassination? No, I have not. I have not,

but I'm intrigued by the teasers. Have you? So first of all, Manhunt, the book by James Swanson, for a long time has been my favorite book.

It's, you know, during the pandemic, I published my like top 10 or so, I think, favorite books for dispatch listeners. And that was definitely on the list.

High, high praise. It's a real thriller, Page Turner. So this is a series loosely based off the book. Of course, they're going to take some liberties to make it even more thrillery and fun. Thrillery? I like that. I like it.

I like it. Some would say thrilling, but Sarah says thrillery, and I like that. But one of the things that I love most about it is that, in my opinion, they have tried to do Lincoln correctly, meaning he's kind of awkward. He has a high-pitched voice. It's like a little bit jarring. It doesn't sound very presidential, quote-unquote. He's sort of gangly. And I think it's really great.

And they're also doing a series about Ben Franklin with Michael Douglas as he tries to win France over to the American cause after the Declaration of Independence. And it just feels like the musical Hamilton has opened up this whole world where people are interested in revisiting what we think about our own history. and obviously the fight over the 1619 project and just school curriculum in general and our pop culture.

I wonder whether we will look back at this era as being pretty miserable in sort of a 1968 way, but that what comes out of it is something good, which is it's actually not a bad thing for us to take a renewed interest and really fight over what our history is, what our narrative is, what we're going to tell ourselves is like what we stand for as a country

because every other country doesn't really even have to ask that question because they weren't founded on an idea. We did start to run an experiment of self-government. And I'm curious, starting with you, Steve, if you think the conversation is going well. Yeah, in a word no.

In part because of things, like the 1619 project, you know, I'd say even if you believe, but really probably, especially if you believe in teaching a 360 degree sort of picture of U.S. history, the good, the bad, the ugly, the complicated, the awkward, the difficult, all of it, you don't want it to be sort of the the axe grinding of ideological interests in the present day. And, you know, we've seen, we've certainly seen a lot of reporting about the excesses of the kind of revisionism that asks us to sort of ignore context in history, you know, asks us not to honor people who are complicated but deserve to be honored anyway, right?

I mean, we all, the extremes of this are the, you know, people who want to remove George Washington from all public appearances and people who are taking names off of buildings of founders who've done great things, but we're slaveholders. Our ability, it seems to me, is just in terms of a national dialogue to address complicated issues in nuanced and meaningful ways. We're not doing very well on that right now. Do you disagree with that, Sarah? I think I might. Because in order to have any conversation, you're going to have to have people on the extremes or else it's not really a conversation. Meaning, you know, I see this in the media setting all the time. You sort of have this thing that we all then talk about. But if there's nothing that we're even talking about, then the conversation itself never happened. So you needed the 1619 project to start the conversation to begin with. But I think by and large, it's being rejected. And if it weren't controversial... It's not, though. It's not. No, I don't think it is. I think it's being rejected. It's being rejected in our circles, and we've run pieces about it at the dispatch. And I think people who have taken a serious look at the project, have pointed out its flaws in great detail. Yes, most history professors. Yeah. Most history professors wait in and said it's bogus. That doesn't mean it's not being taught in schools. It is being taught in schools. Right? I mean, there's a whole campaign. There's an entire effort to have the 1619 project taught in schools. School administrators that resist are bullies. You know, the implication is that, and sometimes it's not just an implication, is that they're racist for not wanting to teach 1619, the New York Times were stood by. The project, even after all of the flaws were pointed out, I'm not sure. If you believe that it's sort of bogus history, they're succeeding in just sort of bowling over critics and teaching it the way that they want to teach it anyway.

I don't think they will in the end. I agree. But again, I don't think we'd even be getting to have the conversation if it didn't gain some traction. And so in that sense, I'm almost grateful that they put that out there

so that it could be this thing to reject, in a sense. And at the same time, you have Hamilton is the most popular musical of all time. But the 10th graders who are getting it aren't rejecting it. Oh, yeah.

I'm already acknowledging that this generation, we've screwed them over in any variety of ways. That's like maybe the least of it. But, yes, that sucks for them. But Hamilton is the most popular musical. We've now got shows about Lincoln and Ben Franklin just on, like, Apple TV for pop consumption.

I don't know. I think that that exhausted majority, silent majority, whatever we're calling them these days, might be more into America than Twitter would have you think, Jonah. Yeah, I'm more sympathetic to your point than Steve is. I also think... What else is new? A la Adam Smith, there's a lot of ruin in a nation. And the 1619 project really is garbage and has done a lot of damage and harm. And there is an effort to teach it in schools, which I think is absolutely terrible.

Fortunately, I was just looking at some of the reading proficiency results for Newark for some reason. and like the best district in Newark was only getting 9% of the students reading in a third grade level. So they're not reading the 16-19 project either. But, hey, I'm looking at the upside of educational dysfunction. No, but I do think you're right that you need a reacting agent

to get people to run to the defense of some things. and, you know, let us not forget that, you know, Charles Beard a hundred years ago, you know, he wrote the economic interpretation of the Constitution, which was this sort of soft Marxist thing that the founding fathers were solely interested in their own economic self-interest, and it elicited it a massive intellectual project to debunk Charles Beard and that whole analysis. And I think we're going to see a generation of similar about the 1619 project, I will say that when you brought up Lincoln at the beginning of this, I just assumed that you were joining the remarkable chorus of people who say that my conversation with Alan Gelzo, who has a new book, Our Ancient Faith, about Abraham Lincoln, is probably the dean of Lincoln scholars, Lincoln historians, that you were just trying to plug what a wonderful conversation that was, because a lot of people, people are saying it was maybe the best remnant ever, and it's not. This is so Trumpy.

And it's not my, well, that was the joke. And Abraham Lincoln is getting recognized more and more these days, I think. And I also, when you were talking about Abraham Lincoln and they were doing the Abraham, the real Abraham Lincoln Wright, I was reminded of the old weekly standard cover about whether Lincoln was gay. And then you called the show Manhunt. And I was like, oh, my God, Sarah is going there. But that's a different conversation.

Have I ever told you all my Lincoln bedroom story? Is it appropriate for this podcast? I don't know. Not really. Not safe for pods. I'll skip over some of the details, but the West Wing was... This is going to get a rating. The West Wing H-back system needed renovation. And so all meetings with the president were being done in the residence.

And so I was in a meeting with President. Trump and the attorney general, the FBI director, the chief of staff, and the national security advisor. I was the only woman in the room. And as the meeting wrapped up, the president looked at me and said, do you want to go see the Lincoln bedroom? Yeah, I do. I will tell you, in the back of my head, I thought, yeah, there's no downside to this. And I said, of course, Mr. President, and you've never seen old men jump up faster in that room to also go on this tour

of the Lincoln Fet room. And it was actually really cool and I got to see the mirror and the desk and like all the things. It was a weird day. It was a weird one. But yeah,

I'm very into Lincoln. I think there's a real debate to be had over who the most important leader of the United States has ever been between Washington and Lincoln. I think Washington setting the norms, Jonah, and in particular, of course, stepping aside, you just can't really beat that because without that, you know, the country's first transition for the history of any country in the world is always so significant and really lives or dies by that first transition. But even so, Lincoln, man. Lincoln. That's second.

second inaugural. Gets me every time. And for listeners, if you have not visited the Lincoln Memorial at night just to read that second inaugural with sort of those like, I don't know, the misty lights and everything at dark and to see the other Americans who've brought their children who could go to Disney World or Mall of America or some other concrete palace and instead they've taken them to learn about their country's history, I don't know, Steve. I'm feeling pretty optimistic. But, Mike, last word to you as a father of boys and who loves America. How much do you love America today, right? Defend the 1690 crime, Mike.

I feel like I'm being set up in so many different ways. No, well, I'm actually going to ignore whatever quasi question you just asked me and take issue with the premise of your initial question, which is that only now pop culture is sort of interested in history. I mean, literally 12 years ago, there was a movie called Lincoln in which one of our greatest living actors, Daniel D. Lewis, portrayed Lincoln in a portrayal that was deemed very much, much more accurate than past cinematic portrayals. He had a thin, reedy voice, you know, talking about the passage of the 14th Amendment. So that happened. He won award, you know, Academy Award for that. A few years before that, there was, the John Adams miniseries on HBO. So I do... There's also... I can't believe no one's mentioning

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, which was awesome. Did it really even need to be mentioned? I mean, I think we're all thinking it. By the way,

I'm pretty sure the movie Lincoln was about the 13th Amendment. I'm sorry. The 14th Amendment, which is a little bit relevant to my overall point because another way to read that was that that movie was

about the passage of the 13th Amendment ending involuntary servitude and slavery, maybe less about Lincoln, right? Okay, but your point, my point is that, It's about history. And I do think, like, Americans are and kind of have always been very much interested in our myths. I mean, I do have the entire Ken Burns Civil War documentary memorized from the number of times that I listened to it in my father's car and at our house.

And that would have been in the, what? Those in the 90s, yeah, yeah. A Shoken Farewell was the name of the song. I can play it on the viola. It was my audition song. I can play it on several instruments. It's a great, it's a great. Name them.

The trumpet and the piano. Okay, two instruments. But look, so I think, I think everything is fine. I'm not a doomsayer on this stuff because, lest we not forget, there was an effort to rename the schools in San Francisco that were named after Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington a couple of years ago.

Those failed the people on the school board who were trying to get them to change those names were turned off of the, you know, were elected out of their positions there. So I think it's all fine. It's all a big mess. You just got to, you got to teach your kids, you know, teach the children well, as Crosby Stills and Ash said. And that's all we can hope for.

That's my, that's my position on this strange topic. And with that, listeners, we'll look forward to hearing all the instruments that you can Ashken Farewell on in the comments section of this podcast. That's the only thing we want to hear about from this podcast, someone who can play it on more instruments than Mike and more obscure ones than the viola like me, although my viola is downstairs right now out of its case. Like, it's ready to go, Mike.

So we can, like, let's see if you can still play it on trumpet. Because I think you might be talking a big 1996 game here, but not much of all. Steve, what are you showing me right now? That's a violin It's a fiddle right there You should know what that is If you've seen

If you play the viola Is that a sleeping bag on the floor? I didn't know if that was like a What's on the floor there that you were showing me? No, that's my jacket But up there is you know That's what I thought you were showing me This is a violin

Steve, do you play the violin? You know I know he doesn't play the violin It's because there's a violin By itself on a shelf Without being in a case And on its side That is not great for violins. This violin is pretty well trashed. It was my high school rental violin. I did not. I rode my

10 speed to school with it every day. So it got pretty well banged up. If it's a rental, why didn't you have to return it? We bought it at the end. We had paid so much in rent that we sort of, it was like rent-to-own options. So we bought it at the end because we were optimistic about my ability to continue to play. I loved playing the violin. I wasn't quite. great. I didn't practice much. I can't play your Shokin, Shoken, whatever. A Shokin farewell. But I can play widespread panic. I've played some widespread panic. They have a great song with a

violin solo. I taught myself that. But I don't play very much anymore. Jonah, what can you play? I play no instruments whatsoever. None. This is the one thing in which you have failed to be this Renaissance man that I think of you is. Oh, I've failed. and many others. But no, I... What languages do you speak, Jonah? I speak no languages fluently, except English.

And even that's question. I'm the one who said, what was the word, thrillery? I was, you know, I'm trying, ever since the state versus government thing, and then the highest-ranking Jew, I'm trying not to, like, do my picky-un, nitpicky stuff, but, like, I was going to pick a fight with Steve

for using the phrase regime change, but I decided just let it go. it's because in part it's big of you well no it's caught on it's caught on now to mean something that it doesn't mean but like regime is supposed to actually mean the system of government and not just like one administration or another and it has been so used and abused now that people just think that like every four years america has regime change um you know when an election and it just doesn't do you know what you're doing right now jonah that is a perillipsis it's

a perillipsis you said I'm not going I was going to do this I'm not going to do it we're not and then you did it this isn't going to be in the show is it I thought that we're sure it's going to be in the show 100% that was that was the most interesting thing you said over the last hour

I thought we were done well then all right let's let's have the argument no this was a this was a test show now let's actually do the real show and with that we'll see you next week and thank you for all your wishes everybody really it was touching i knew it was good i knew it was the podcast is it's going out

tomorrow it would be it would be dishonest to say happy birthday today uh for a podcast all he's doing is trying to elicit more birthday wishes that was the play any like he there weren't enough someone else said happy birthday and slack and i added so did not i clicked the cake emoji what more do you want i clicked an emoji too which one did you pick mike i clicked the parrot i clicked i clicked the parrot I clicked the head going around. That's just how I was feeling. So we even took different emojis, Jonah? I appreciate it.

It's touching. It's so thoughtful. I'm now as old as David French. We'll play Ashton farewell for you. Yeah, you're two years older than I am now. It's freaking ridiculous. As of today. That's not how that works.

That's not how math or the earth going around the sun. None of it. None of it works. What? Okay, we're really done now. Bye. All right. Goodbye.

Asshole. You know what I'm going to be. Thank you.