The Dispatch Podcast - The Eunuch Congress | Roundtable

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Steve Hayes invites David Drucker, Michael Warren, and The Hill Sunday host Chris Stirewalt to perform an autopsy on the remains of the two major parties. The Agenda:–Big picture of American politics–Not a good time to be a Congressman–Midterm elections and future projections–The Texas Senate race–The parliament of pundits–J.D. Vance’s 2028 election chances–Renaming the NFL The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish. for Assembly or Council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he,

quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch Hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day. without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two

with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called Party Fowl with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like, it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane, normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run

your junto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local hoonto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. That's J-U-N-T-O. The dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we go deep on American politics. First, we'll take a big picture look after the 2025 off-year elections and 11 months before the midterms at the two parties in who is better positioned for success

next year and beyond. Then we'll look at the GOP heading into the 2028 presidential elections. Is Jady Vance a shoe-in to be the Republican nominee? And finally, why does Donald Trump want to rename the NFL? I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues Mike Warren and David Drucker and dispatch contributor Chris Steyerwalt, anchor of the Hill Sunday on News Nation and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Let's dive right in. Welcome, gentlemen. Glad to have you here. Thanks for joining us. Big picture discussion of American politics at this moment. Chris Steyerwald, I want to start with you. and go really big picture, and then we're going to sort of work our way through the details over the course of the next hour.

We're speaking on the morning of December 8th, 2025, thinking ahead to the midterms in 2026 and the presidential election in 28. And just considering electoral prospects nationally, Chris, would you rather be Democrats or Republicans today? Oh, come on. Come on. That's the ridiculous question. That's it. That's it. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, Mr. Hotline, you, Mr. Veteran, you know, you, you, you, you are a thought leader now and all of that stuff. But you're, you're a, you're a, you're as much of a grubby rat as the other three of us. So you can't pretend like you don't know about the midterm purse. I guess I would say I would rather have been the Republicans in July, uh, than the Republicans now. How it will be next July, I don't know, but right now, I guess you'd say with the House is the best indicator because candidate quality matters less in the House. You'd just say that we were once in a 10 to 15 seat range for Republican gains and now we're in a 15 to 33 seat range. We're in a Republican losses. Yeah, for Democrats are now we're looking at 2006. We're looking at 2018. We're looking at there are 57 seats, I think, that are in the R plus 10 to 15. And then there's another like 37 seats that are in the 37 seats that are in the 15 to 20, R plus 15 to 20 range. Democrats will not win. Those are all Republican held.

Democrats won't win all, certainly they won't, they probably won't win most, but now we have to start looking out in those seats where you typically say, no, well, now you say maybe, and this is why the Republican, and the number of Republican retirements is material, because the thing that makes an R-plus 15 seat not worth Democrats' time is that incumbency is really powerful. You take the incumbent out of that equation and the map expands. So we have reporting, I believe, this morning from Leanne Caldwell at Puck, who's smart, well-sourced on Capitol Hill, good reporter. 23 Republicans so far have said that they are not returning. She reports that in discussions with Republicans on Capitol Hill, we could look at as many as an additional 20 retirements coming in the next several weeks.

Chris, to your point on incumbency, why does that matter as much as it matters? So, incumbency retention rates are always in the 90s. Some cycles it's 92, some cycles it's 98. But people keep it, if you're an incumbent, you have less to worry about in the primary. and when you get in the general name identification and consistency, just, you know, incumbency is really powerful. It's a, it's a axiomatic for a reason. Americans don't like Congress. They like their member of Congress. There's a fairly high satisfaction with individual members. You can have 15% approval for Congress as a whole, and then you can have a 94%

incumbency retention rate. And those two things seem contradictory, but they, they harmonize because people think that it's the other party that's the problem or those other members that are the problem. So I guess the way I think about what's going on with these retirements, this is where the way the body functions or does not function has material consequences for the election. If you are a, you know, they just had this special election down in Tennessee. The reason they had the special election down in Tennessee is that Mark Green, the incumbent, decided that he'd rather do whatever, basically, than be a member of the House. That, and we've seen people leave for mid kind of jobs, right?

Like, not, oh, wow, I understand why you left Congress to do that. We've seen people say, like, well, the Wolf Snout Chamber of Commerce is looking for a new director, So I'll be heading back. I'll be heading back over there. That's going to be great. Because it's so bad to be in Congress, it's hard to keep the incumbents who are keeping those seats that are double-digit advantage for your party. It's hard to keep those guys and gals stay.

Yeah. I want to spend some time on why it's so bad to be in Congress. But before we get there, Mike, let me follow up with you. If you take what Chris said, of course, there's the historical advantage for out parties in the midterms, as Chris. suggested. But looking beyond 2026, let's say that, that, you know, Democrats outperform sort of historical precedents by a couple of points or half a dozen seats. It's a good year, more or less for Democrats. Looking beyond that, looking to 2028. And we are very purposely

being highly speculative here and sort of talking about this in the big picture. Given how Congress functions or doesn't function. Democrats have the majority in the House and let's say a very narrow majority in the Senate, which is making big assumptions. Does that put them a significant disadvantage looking ahead to 2028 because then they're in charge of this? No. I mean, there's no sort of historical trend that would suggest that. I mean, just if you go back to all of the most recent midterm elections, you don't see any kind of pattern, right? So the 2022 midterms were not as good for Republicans as Republicans thought they would be, as frankly as Democrats thought they would be. And Donald Trump won in 2024 anyway. In 2018,

Democrats did really, really well, really the last kind of wave election in the House. And And then Democrats won in 2020. Go back to 2014. You know, Republicans finally take back both houses. They had the House for a few cycles. They take back the Senate in 2014. And they win the, then they win in 2016. But then you go to 2010.

The biggest Republican wave since 1994, you would think that maybe that helps boost Mitt Romney. No, Barack Obama wins reelect. So like there's no, there's no pattern here. But I do think it is, it's worth thinking about not just, you know, who's in control, who's in charge, but what the size of that majority is. And we're increasingly in a world where those majorities, it doesn't matter if Republicans or Democrats are in the majority. It's going to be a small majority.

There are fewer of those districts. Where we sit right now, given what we know about the way these districts are constituted, there are fewer swing districts that are swinging one way or another. If you go, for instance, through the American South, there, you know, besides the majority minority districts, the ones that are essentially there to elect black Democrats for the most part, there are no other Democratic seats to be gotten. The last ones disappeared in 2010 when Republicans won in, you know, across Tennessee and South Carolina and a bunch of North Carolina. And so there are just fewer

seats to be won. And I think that changes not just how big those majorities are, but kind of the nature of how those house races and ultimately the national elections play out. It's becoming increasingly as if, you know, what really only matters are the presidential election. And in the midterm elections are going to change things. A lot of Democrats take over. They're going to make the last two years of the Trump administration living hell for Donald Trump. But it suggests to me that it's at best a setup for the 2028 election. And that could go either way, depending on all these other factors.

David, let me share some polling numbers with you and then I ask you about them and get Chris and Mike to respond. just basic sort of big picture polling numbers. President Trump job approval, these, I'm getting these from real clear politics. President Trump job approval, 43.2 percent direction of the country, 36.3 percent, President Trump favorability, negative 9.1. But here are the three that I want to focus on. Republican Party favorability basically minus 13. That's really bad. Democratic Party favorability minus 23. That's considerably worse. But here's, I guess, a bright spot for Democrats.

Generic congressional vote. Would you ask people, would you rather vote for a generic Democrat and generic Republican? Democrats have a five-point lead over Republicans in that generic congressional vote. Can you help us make sense of those numbers? Why would that be? Because the Democratic parties, poor numbers are reflective of the fact that Democratic voters do not like the Democratic Party. But it doesn't mean that they don't hate Donald Trump more and aren't going to show up in 2026 and in the midterm elections. Two things here.

If we recall all of our coverage of the Republican Party's wilderness anti-establishment years, their approval numbers were regularly in the tank. You'd talk to Republican voters, and they'd complain about the Republican establishment. And my party's led by a bunch of rhino squishes who were afraid to do anything bold, and they've turned their back on me. They showed up in droves in 2010 for a historic Republican gain in the House and huge gains in the Senate. They just didn't win the majority.

Finally, in 2014, they pick up nine seats, win the Senate majority. And so throughout all that time, Republicans, were not happy with their own party, but they continued to show up. Why? Because they hated Barack Obama, the Democratic president, a whole lot worse. They hated Democrats a whole lot worse. A negative partisanship really drives our politics these days. The second thing I wanted to point out is amid these horrible, favorable numbers for the Democratic Party, driven by their own voters, we now have a demonstration of my theory. They showed up in these key off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, Georgia, across the country to support Democratic candidates.

And so we saw that even though they were unhappy with their party, they were happy to vote against the Republicans. I'd also remind all of us that when you're fielding candidates as a party, those candidates are often the kind of, you know, either in this case Democrats, but that's the kind of Republican and I want in Congress. So I hate my party. He or she's going to do things differently, right? So you're able to vote for an Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or a Zoran Mondani in New York City or unnamed members of the Public Service Commission regulating utility rates in Georgia and say to yourself, these Democrats or these Republicans are not like those that I hate. One more thing I just wanted

to point out here, I reported for the dispatch earlier this year. I think it was early September. The Democrats did have to be careful because if you looked at independent voters, they were more sour on Democrats generally than they were on Trump. And independents will tell you what's going to happen in a midterm election, often in every election. But particularly, if you look at this past 25, 30 years, you look at the independent vote and I can tell you what happened in the midterm elections. For instance, Democrats won independence by two in 2022, and therefore, we're Republican gains were minimal. But what did we see in Virginia, New Jersey, and those other races I just mentioned, independence in droves for Democrats, and the demographic shift that had gone

toward the Republicans in 2024 just went back the other way for Democrats. So these approval numbers are important to understand for particular strategic reasons, but Republicans in this case cannot hang their hand on them and say, therefore, things aren't going to be so bad. Yeah, Chris, does that make sense? I mean, you look at, I mean, it seems like every other week whenever we get a new national poll, the headline is something along the lines of Democratic Party at its least popular in history. You know, in the history of polling, Democrats are at least less popular than they've ever been, and yet they do seem to have this advantage on the generic ballot. Do you buy David's explanation for why that's so?

Yeah, only you can make your party unpopular. It's like only you can make your president a lame duck. Donald Trump won't be a lame duck in the purest sense until Republicans decide that he is. And I think for Democrats, and there are all of those polls, that spade of polls that came out that showed how unpopular Democrats were it. You just had to peel back one sheet. And there was the number is that. 80 whatever percent of Republicans felt good about the Republican Party, and then 40 percent of Democrats felt good about the Democratic Party. And to David's point, that doesn't mean they're going to vote Republican. What are they angry at the Democratic Party about? They're angry at the Democratic Party for not doing more to get back at the Republicans. Their anger at their own party is rooted in their perception that their party is ineffectively battling what they view as a civilization threatening a multi-generational nightmare for the nation. They are deeply alarmed, and then they look at Chuck Schumer and

Keem Jeffries and whomever else, and say, why aren't you more upset? Why aren't you doing more about this? That's what they're angry at them about. And the consequence, I agree with Mike very much, when we look at the relationship between the midterms and the quadrenials, the midterm electorate is about a third smaller than the quadrennial electorate, right? So it is voter intensity and voter propensity matters a lot more in the midterms because you're just not getting that last third of lower propensity voters who are very much Trump voters.

And we can talk all about how the higher your educational attainment level and the higher your income, and the older you are, the more likely you are to vote. That's why Democrats did better in 2022 than they were, that's one of the reasons why Democrats did better in 2022 than they were expected. You bump the electorate out by a third and you bring in a lot of weird voters, right? You bring in a lot of cross-pressured voters. You bring in a lot of low partisan affiliation voters. You bring in all of these folks. but who your core primary voters are have been with you the whole time. So that's a very long way of saying. It doesn't matter what happens in the midterms as it relates to the presidential year.

It matters what you think happened in the midterms, right? It matters what your voters believe happened in the midterms. Democratic voters in 2024 believed that Bidenism had worked and were therefore willing to be riding with Biden longer than they should. There's a lot of reasons. But part of what Donald Trump would not be president today, if Democrats would have gotten the ass whipping, the booty whipping, that they deserved in 2022, right? If Joe Biden may not have run.

Yeah, he made out of running. Exactly. And whether he wanted to run or didn't run, if the Democrats would have gotten the appropriate comeuppance for their bad governance, people would have said, I don't know what we're going to do, but we're not going to do this anymore. But then they got away with it, right? And it was like, well, that wasn't actually that bad. Maybe it's still working. Maybe just anti-Trump is enough, and maybe we can just limp by on this. So we can go back cycle after cycle after cycle. And we can see how in the 21st century, the story is, a thing happens in the midterms,

Dummies like us, sit around and talk about what happened, then I will shut up by saying this. The parties are weak, but there is still a party. It's just, it's a couple of few million people, right? The party apparatus is now loosely connected through social media, loosely connected through cable television, loosely connected, and there's a hive mind out there, and it comes to a conclusion. So the effect on the next quadrenial comes from what do those millions of Democrats conclude the lesson of 2026 is going to be? And if they conclude that the lesson of 2026 is that Graham Platner was a bad idea, if they conclude that radicalism zap them, then maybe they will want Josh Shapiro. But if they have a really

good year through no fault of their own. And they say radicalism works, then they're going to be more likely to pick a radical. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. Every holiday, there's one gift that quietly steals the show. This year, as in past years, I'm confident that will be an aura frame. The hidden gem that becomes a favorite long after the wrapping paper is gone. If you've listened to this podcast before, you've heard me talk about the or a frame that I got my parents. It allows them to see pictures of all of the things that their kids and grandkids are doing as the kids and grandkids upload pictures from every aspect of their lives, from dance recitals and basketball games to hockey matches, school dances, what have you.

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shop Mint Unlimited Plans at MintMobile.com slash dispatch. That's mintmobile.com slash dispatch. Limited time offer, upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra initial plan term only, greater than 35 gigabytes, may be slow when network is busy. Capable device required, availability speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Hey, everyone, Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Honto, though some people pronounce it, Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Hounthos, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members,

each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch hoontos without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social. social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics.

The dispatch has hosted events across the country, and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm. I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called Party Fowl, with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like,

it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your hoonto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member, of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local hoonto, head to the dispatch.com slash hoonto. That's j-un-t-o. The dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to

build this with you. We're back. Let's return to the discussion. Mike, picking up on something that David and Chris mentioned earlier, isn't it potentially a risk? for Democrats, if they take the House and the Senate, precisely because their party base is so disenchanted and frustrated with their ability to get anything done, if they have majorities in the House, which I seem historically seems more likely than not, Senate is a much bigger question, and then they still can't do much in the final two years of the Trump term, doesn't that risk exacerbating the Democrats' problem with their base? Maybe, I suppose.

I don't know. It's hard because this is not a perfect parallel. The years and the timing doesn't quite line up. But this is not some brilliant insight for me to say that I am getting quite a bit of Tea Party feeling on the left side of the political spectrum. this feels like the Democratic Party and the left are having their own Tea Party moment, meaning, you know, there is a sort of populist and, I would say, yeah, a populist, but also a far, sort of farther left than the average of the Democratic Party kind of internal revolution happening within. And I don't know if we can say for certain that that means that Democrats are going to. to hurt themselves in a national presidential election if that revolution is allowed to work

its way, if they are frustrated with the way things are going, let's say in a Democratic majority in the House and the last two years of Trump administration, again, to sort of build off what others have said on this podcast, that just might be more motivating for Democratic voters to actually elect a Democratic president. And it might not be the Democratic president that everybody thinks is the most electable. Again, the sort of end of the Tea Party movement was the election of Donald Trump in 2016. As somebody who, you know, for eight years of the Obama administration, you know, the Republicans were both too extreme, we were told, and also kept winning. I mean, yes, they lost in 2012, but they kept winning otherwise.

and I could see the same thing happening for the Democrats in the Donald Trump era and the end of the sort of resistance is what used to be called the resistance in the first term of Donald Trump is we get a more radical but electable Democrat in 2028. I don't think that's crazy. But of course, you know, caveats, it can also be that, yes, it does, they do get too extreme. It all, of course, depends on who Republicans nominate in 2028 and how Republicans respond to a Democratic majority in the House. But I think we should open our minds a little bit to possibilities that we might have thought impossible just a few years ago. No, I'm all for that. I mean, I think one thing that we learned and should have or should have learned is that straight-line projections these days are very difficult to make and surprises are sort of everywhere.

David, let me ask a little bit about that as it happens. As I said, we're recording this Monday morning. Colin Allred in Texas announced that he is no longer going to be a candidate for Senate in Texas. He ran in 2024, lost, but was regarded, I think, as a reasonably good. If you are looking for a moderate with statewide name ID, reasonably strong candidate, and he announced this morning that he was not going to be running for Senate any longer, that he was instead going to be running for Texas House District 33, and that leaves Democrats in Texas likely with a choice between young, progressive James Tala Rico,

and Jasmine Crockett, who is precisely the kind of hard left, Democrat Tea Party plus person that Mike was describing there, you know, what do you make of that development and the fact that Allred wasn't even, I mean, this is somebody who had lined up endorsements. He had a pretty good head start on fundraising. This was somebody who looked like a pretty formidable candidate. And I think when he announced, most people assumed that he was likely to be the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.

now he's out yeah you you read my mind and and to mike's point about the democrats having their tea party moment um you know the tea party era for the republican party was defined in part by their habit of nominating unelectable candidates in swing districts and you know democratic states who gave them the feels and the vibes they wanted you know who gave them the catharsis they wanted but simply weren't a good fit for the statewide electorate um or the district electorate, depending on what we're talking about. But, you know, as Jim DeMint, then a South Carolina senator famously said during the 2010 election cycle, I'd rather have 40 Marco Rubio's than a working majority. And the point he was trying to make is he wanted all of those that were

pure of heart. Marco Rubio was at that time, considered very pure of heart. Obviously, did run a successful campaign, was elected to the Senate. And so I was thinking about this this morning, Steve, because here you have in Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic elected official who gives her party all of the feels and all of the vibes they want. She's a fighter. She's going to take it to the man. She's a good, you know, rhetorician. If I'm getting that word right, I mean, she's good on the stump. She's quick with a quip. And she fights. She, and I've got some experience reporting in Texas and spending a lot of time in Texas. She can't win there. I don't care. she couldn't have won there she she maybe maybe might have had an outside shot in 2018 when

ted cruz was weak and all of those suburban voters were in the texas suburbs of dallas and houston san antonio and austin were flirting uh with the democratic party in a particular way and the rgv the real grand valley hadn't gone red yet uh that's where a lot of Hispanic voters are um but here you have i think Colin all right now i haven't done any reporting on that on this yet this morning, but I suspect he was looking at pressure from his left from Talarico, who is running as a sort of, you know, progressive but culturally in-tune kind of Democrat, right? He's a pastor, if I'm not mistaken, he can talk religion and talk about the Bible. And I don't mean this in any flippant way, right? So the theory behind James Talarico is that he's progressive,

so he satisfies the wingers, but he'll be a good sell in the suburbs. and he's just good on the good on his feet right in that and being authentic i mean good on your feet is a good thing uh but now you're going to have jasmine crockett and i just don't think that she presents other than being a talented politician generally presents as the kind of democrat that can make inroads in texas and flip this seat even in a tough uh year for the republican party if that's how it continues to play out uh but but i do predict she will raise boatloads of from Democrats and progressives across the country who look at her and say, that's the kind of Democrat I want in the Senate.

I'm a believer. She'll suck up a bunch of money that could go elsewhere, and that could be a problem for Democrats. Let me turn back to Republicans in Congress these days and spend a moment there before we move on. We talked a little bit earlier about the already shockingly high number of Republican retirement. and reporting that suggests there may be double, almost double as many yet to come. Why is that? Why are Republicans bailing? They have the majority.

Donald Trump is a president. Republicans seem to like Donald Trump. They're, one would think, able to get what they want. Why would Republicans leave when they have a majority, especially when they have a narrow majority? Chris? Oh, would you like to be in Congress? How would you like to serve? No, but I would never have wanted to be in Congress.

But there's a world in which you might have once upon a time that if you could be appointed, right, and you wouldn't have to go through the indignities of running that you could go and you'd say, well, gosh, if I could be on the Intel Committee, and if I could do this and there's some legislation that I'd like to draft and there's stuff. that I'd like to do. There's a world in which Steve Hay says, yeah, I'll, I'll take a term, right? In the, in the Paul Ryan mind space, there's like, I can see that. I can't imagine it now. I cannot imagine, you know, when you talk to people both in the House and in the Senate, and this is not new, it's heinous, right? Look at the brain drain in the Senate over the past eight years, right? Ben Sass, Roy Blood, Rob Portman, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, all smart guys. Roy Blood should be the, like, there's an argument to say Roy Blood should have been the majority leader in the Senate. He's a guy who knows how to legislate, he knows how to operate, he's good

at it, he's very experienced. They all left, right? They all left. And we talk about, the value of regular order, having the committee. Look at poor old Bill Cole, right? He's the last guy who knows how to do anything in the Republican conference, almost. In the Republican caucus, he's like it. I can't ever remember. They get mad. One of them is a conference.

The other is a caucus. They get upset when you mix them up. But you know what I mean. So you have these people who are trying to govern. Right? They're like, okay, this is how we do it. And we're going to get these pieces of legislation through. Just take Bill Cole. Here's a guy. I think you mean Tom Cole, Chris. Or Tom Cole. Tom Cole, who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And what he has been doing is saying, okay, here's how we build appropriations. This is what we do. We're going to do this. And he was doing pretty well. And in the old standard by which you're supposed to do stuff, they were right on the 10-yard line. It wasn't like it was one. upon a time, but they were so close to a bunch of stuff. And in a normal world, you would have had a short-term continuing resolution. They would have built out the rest of those bills. And we would have had full year funding with bipartisan buy-in. Everything would be done. They couldn't let it

happen. They just simply could not allow it to happen. And I will not go on one of my usual diatribes about the pernicious weakness of our legislative branch. But we have castrated, Congress has castrated itself bit by bit over time. And then we wonder, why don't people want to stay in the Unic Congress? Why are people not interested in being members of the Unic Congress in which they, when you have to have a discharge petition for Jeffrey Epstein files, right, which is, speaks to so many problems on so many layers. But when this is a matter that consumed lots of time and energy in the house over whether or not the FBI would give Congress. Like, in a real Madisonian system, the FBI would have had that over there

Pronto, right? Because the Congress would have been a credible threat to say, when we ask you for something, when the Judiciary Committee asks you for something, you are going to bring it over. Now nobody even complies with congressional subpoenas. It's just like, we don't care what you think. Come and take us. And the, as the members of Congress, as the quality of the individuals in Congress gets worse, which is happening, as that gets worse, Congress will continue to emasculate itself because it's a catch-22 problem. Who would submit themselves to it? And once you're there, why have you come? Why have you come? And this is a Goldbergian point. Jonas term is the Parliament of pundits. That's what, that's why they're, they're there to wear their dumb lapel pins.

They're there to have a bunch of 23 year olds walking around behind them, telling them how fire their last post was. That's what they're there for. They're not there to do the serious work. And therefore, Congress gets weaker. And therefore, the, the idiocracy deepens because the, the good ones leave and that's the ones who want to run are dumb. Yeah.

I mean, this, I think you've, you've nailed the problem and talk about, reasons. I mean, there are plenty of reasons to be discouraged about the state of our politics. This may be among the greatest, because you get what you incentivize. And the people who wanted to go to Congress to do serious legislative worker came because of ideas and policies that they wanted to implement, who ran on, you know. Or even ambition to power. Just give me ambition to power. I'll even take people saying, I want to be powerful. They don't even want to be powerful. They just want to be famous. They just want to be well-liked. Yeah. And if you look, we mentioned some of the members of the Senate who have left, who were sort of, you know,

workhorses in a showhorse town. The same thing is true in spades in the House of Representatives. I mean, starting with somebody like a Paul Ryan, Mike Gallagher, also from Wisconsin, Anthony Gonzalez from Ohio, Patrick McHenry, Jeb Henserling before. of all of these people who came to Congress with ideas, with a purpose, with conviction, with principles, have just decided that Congress isn't a place for any of that any longer. And it is, as you say, the 23-year-old walking behind the boss saying the latest post was fire. And the funny thing is, you know. Steve, you make our cup reporters do the same thing for you.

Don't pretend like you do. No, they mean it, Mike. They're sincere. They're sincere. I want you, Mike, I want you to keep. saying that my posts are fired, even though you're beyond it again, El Caputon. You've done it again. But, I mean, it really is this, you know, and I have to say, you know, for somebody who covers this, and is do, I'm doing more reporting now than I have been sort of at the beginning of the dispatch

when I was working more on the business side, the idea of going and sourcing up with some of the clowns in the current Congress is just not like, this. isn't why I got into the business either. Like, I don't know, I'll sit down with an interview with somebody who cares most about whether their TikTok post is viral and has never given thought to sort of, you know, wouldn't know who Friedrich Hayek is or wouldn't have any understanding of what the founders thought about limiting government or, you know, distributing power. It's, it is, it is discouraging.

Is there any, Drucker, back to you, is there any, at the risk of really, sending us into sort of depression level conversation here. Is there any hope that this changes around? Like, what could change these incentives? You've been doing this forever. You were at Roll Call 140 years ago, I think. What, how does this change? I don't know.

I'm thinking if I live another 140 years, we'll eventually get there. Look, I don't really have a good answer for you, but let me see if I can provide some informed speculation. First, I have to say, when I saw Lee Caldwell's. reporting at Puck, my first thought was, wait, 20 of them are going to resign early? And I was like, oh, no, they're just going to retire. So it didn't seem quite as bad, right? Like, they're going to, they're going to finish their job for the election cycle, the job that they were elected to in 2024, then they're going to leave. Okay, not so bad, but that just tells you

where things are. That majority is so thin. I mean, just a few retirements and a few resignations and Democrats are in the majority before the election. I don't know, Steve, what turns this around. I mean, I've been, you know, like Chris and like the rest of us on a rant about the Article I branch, basically turning itself into the Article None branch. And I don't know why. That's pretty good. That's pretty good, Drucker. I'm here all week. Tell your friends. Put that on a T-shirt. Look, and it's really hard to explain this to, you know, like regular people who don't have to live in our bubble. Being a member of Congress, whether you're a senator or representative is actually hard work and it's not easy um you know unless you live in the dc

suburbs or you're in a close in house district or you're you know maryland senators virginia senators you're leaving your family and your home and your hometown uh four sometimes five days a week um and you're not seeing your kids you're not seeing your spouse of course if you move your family here so you don't have to do that you're accused of going Washington and you lose touch with your home district and they can come after you. And then when Congress is on recess, everybody says, why are they taking a six week summer vacation? I don't get a six week summer vacation. And I don't know how to explain this to people to get them to believe me, but like that's when I go to the district to cover members of Congress often because they're

working. They're going into their district office. They're glad handing. They're meeting with, you know, local elected officials. What do you need for me? They're going to the Chamber of Commerce to find out what business leaders need. So it's just a really thankless job. And after taxes doesn't pay all that much, you don't get a housing stipend, which is why a lot of members of Congress live in their office or are self-funders and everybody complains about why do we have all these wealthy people here. I have one solution that maybe would help Congress get back to some modicum of like, you know, as Jonah likes to say, what is it that you would say you do here? And that is, I think in retrospect, the worst thing that ever happened was

Newt Gingrich, the incoming Speaker of the House, after the big 1994 Republican Revolution, term limited chairman, committee chairman. And all of the power since, and especially as the years go on, becomes more and more centralized in leadership. And so you don't have longstanding powerful committee chairman that have jurisdiction over major policy questions that can actually. outlast leaders, can outlast presidents, and therefore can distribute that power to members of their committee. So if you were on, you know, in the House, if you were on energy and

commerce, or if you were on appropriations, if you were on armed services, and your chairman was powerful, you were powerful. And then everybody was invested in the legislative process. Everybody had power. Everybody wanted to exercise power. Although I'm very critical of House Republicans in particularly these days, but House Democrats are no different, and this is even true in the Senate, just less so, of everybody just willingly abdicating power to the presidency, as long as it's their guy. Part of the thing is, part of the problem is they don't really have power to exercise. The only power they have is getting on cable news or going on a social media platform and sounding off for likes and clicks, but give these guys some real power. And maybe over

time, combined with just getting sick of this whole thing, you'd start to see a redistribution of the power back from the present. Maybe they would just take some of their power back that is there for the taking, I guess is my argument. If somebody was showing them, see, you have power to use. I think especially for the newer members, they're like, what power? Everything happens in leadership anyway. So I need to play this other game. the house. Expand the house. Hear me. Hear me and believe me. Expand the house after the 2030 census. We need another 218 members of the house. We've got to increase it by 50%. We have to bring down the value of individual house seats. It has to happen. I agree with David wholeheartedly, completely,

that we have to reempower the committees to do their work. This is essential. Committees are supposed to be important. And having this game where the leadership pulls out the bill at 1159 p.m. and says, vote for this or die. And by the way, the leadership as instructed by the president, if it's their own parties in charge, that is essential. But a million people is not the right number of people to have in a House district. And we do not have an appropriate outlet for populist sentiment in the United States because popular sentiment is supposed to flow into the House of represented, and we've turned it into a mini Senate, and it's a problem. All right, I've done her own thing. So, no, I'm with you. And this will be, I'm going to also credit Jonah for having

made that argument for many years now. And then this will be the last reference to Jonah. We've had 12 references to Jonah on this podcast. He's not that great. Come on, guys. Nah. It was just good journalism. I had to credit it. How would, how would that happen if it were going to happen? And it seems to me that there's no incentive whatsoever for, current house members to do that. In fact, the one thing I want to touch on before we move to David's piece on 2028 is where we are in redistricting, which is precisely the opposite of that, right? It's further consolidating power and making these districts even wackier. Is there any realistic prospect for expanding the house in the way that you talk about? Well, the, you know,

the even worse thing that the Gingrich Republicans did other than cutting the legs out from underneath the committee process. Why did Newt Gingrich's predecessor, right, what was the biggest issue for the previous Democratic majority, term limits, right? That was, it was not Mark Foley, it was Tom Foley. I won't get, I won't get those, I won't get those two mixed up. But the style of the case in the state of Washington was Tom Foley versus the people of the state of Washington because he sued to undo the state's term limit state amendment. Term limits are still popular. Americans, whenever they are asked, do you like term? Yeah, we like term limits.

We're for term limits. The Republicans who were the energy that helped drive them into the majority, they say, You know, term limits? I don't know. We've got other things to do. We've got other things to do. The populist energy, we have to start amending the Constitution again. And whether or not it is possible to create enough public pressure on the House for term limits, I don't know. But I will certainly say that a lot of ideas, to quote George will. We'll switch it up from Jonah, is that history is made by intense minorities, right? A small group of people are the ones that make the change. We are closer now. Ranked Choice voting didn't have a good run in 24. But primary election reform is something that 10 years ago is like, yeah, but how do you get people to engage on? It's happening, right? It's happening in fits and spurts in different ways in different places. I just, I know that there, there is a potential coalition. Conservatives are

a kind of liberal, right? It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a flavor of lowercase L liberalism that loves the Constitution and the founding, and that's what it's trying to conserve. There is a coalition of people who are, have different ideas about what to do with government power, but believe in the way that the Madisonian system is supposed to work. And the pressure from the both ends of the horseshoe. Parties argue between each other, parties argue over ends. Within each other, parties argue over means. What are the appropriate means for us to pursue in order to achieve the ends on which we agree so that we can then go fight with the other party? Whether or not we can expand the house, whether or not we can have meaningful reform of our heinous, destructive primary

election system. Whether or not we can do these things depends on whether the coalition can occur where people say, I disagree with you about the ends to which we would use these powers, but I agree with you about the necessity of preserving the system and restoring the system. Is that possible? I don't know. Weirder things have happened. It feels like this very people who are walking away from Congress and these positions of responsibility are the ones who care about the means and the process and the things, which is another reason potentially to be discouraged. Not that we need to keep giving people reasons. Speaking of, speaking of, sorry, we all came into this podcast in a great mood.

I spent a long time talking about my avocado toast breakthrough. It's the most wonderful time of a year. And I feel like we're in the middle of this spiral. And that's before I ask Mike to give us a quick summary, before we get to David's piece from last week, a quick summary about the state of the redistricting battles and discussions, which I think are, at least for me, reasons for further frustration. Mike, what's going on with that? Just real big picture. We don't need to get very detailed about it. What's going on with that? What did the Supreme Court decide last week? And who's at an advantage today looking ahead to

So we should first sort of put into sort of give that big picture where where did things go when it you know where did things start I should say when it came to redistricting which was there was a big push and it started in Texas but it expanded to other states that are red states that have Republican governors and it was pushed from the top from Donald Trump to encourage those states to do a mid-decade redistricting, just, you know, as a standard operating procedure, it's after that census, that 10-year census every 10 years, that reapportionment happens and redistricting happens as a result once we know who's in and how many people are in each district. And these Republican governors, again, starting in Texas, tried to do exactly that,

tried to get a more favorable for Republican district map. And there were efforts to do this in other red states. And in response, Democrats in blue states tried to do this as well. There was a referendum on the ballot in California in 2025 in order to essentially undo what had what was threatened to be done in California. And so this was. this was what was happening. It was sort of blatant. It was sort of obvious. Yes, we are basically all trying to fix the rules, change the rules in the middle of the game in order to advantage us. But, you know, there was some, by the way, there were some interesting pushback

from places that you might not expect in a place like Indiana, for instance. There were a lot of Republicans in the state legislature there who were opposed to this. They didn't like that they were sort of being strong-armed into doing this. And so the combination of some of those kinds of surprises plus the pushback from Democrats, I think ended up putting us in a place where the effort to kind of redraw maps and states to give Republicans a better advantage so that they could maybe even avoid getting wiped out in the 2026 midterms was that it was, and it was, up being a wash. And yes, okay, so that brings us to the Supreme Court decision, essentially allowing Texas to do what it was going to do. And I think sort of letting states make these decisions

and letting states make these decisions in the way they're going to make it. But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, it's going to be kind of a wash. We have not been talking about how the midterm elections are going to go in the Republicans' favor because of all this redistricting because it turns out that it's not so simple. It's not so easy to kind of remake the map and help to help your party keep a majority. And am I right, Mike, to suggest that the reason that we're having these conversations is because Donald Trump very openly just said, I want Republicans to have more seats. like this is what we're doing. Oh, there was, there was no hiding it. There was no, there was.

Nakedly political, right. And we should be, we should be very careful to make clear that while Donald Trump, I think, was the most candid and open about the political motivations here, the political motivations themselves are not new. I mean, this, that's what redistricting has been for decade after decade after decade. It's what gerrymandering is. Jerry mandering goes to the beginning of the country. Right, right. Let's take a quick break. to hear from our sponsors.

And we're back. Okay, I want to turn in the time that we have left, I want to turn to David to your piece last week, which I found fascinating for about 20 different reasons. You wrote about 2028, and in particular about J.D. Vance and his prospects. And first, just to set the table, it feels really early to be writing about 20,

28. And in fact, it's not at all early to be writing about 2028. This stuff is happening behind the scenes. The people who are going to run are preparing to run. They're talking to consultants. They're bringing on additional staff. They're doing their own polling to test viability. All of this stuff is happening and we're three years out from the election. So I'll defend your decision to report and publish this piece because this stuff is already happening. The question at the top of your piece is fascinating. I'm just going to let you describe it, and then I'll push a little bit on it. But the question that you posed is, will Vice President J.D. Vance have a 2028 primary challenger. What did your reporting tell you? Well, the reporting was not necessarily conclusive on the answer to the question, but it was conclusive, I think, on the dynamics surrounding how that question will be answered. And like you, initially, I thought, you know, it's a little early for a story like this.

And then I thought to myself, these things really get underway the day after the midterm elections, which is when you have a president that's, you know, leaving office. And the midterm elections are less than a year away. And so a lot of the prep work. Wait, do you know that the president's going to be leaving office? Are you breaking news here? I am sticking with the 22nd Amendment. of the United States Constitution.

Did you interview Lindsey Graham about this? He's pushing Trump. Could be. Sorry, never know. By the way, I think, I think, let me just leave Trump out of it. And I'm going to, I'm just going to assume that the sun is going to continue to set in the West and rise in the east. Let's just put it that way. But so I thought, you know, it's not actually that early.

And particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle where they, you know, don't know who they are yet or what they want to be when they grow up, is really happening in a more happening in a more overt way. But what I wanted to know was this, given what happened in 2024 in the Republican primary, even understanding or stipulating, if you will, that President Donald Trump will not be on the ballot in 2028, J.D. Vance is vice president, I think, is sure to get his endorsement, is sure to get the endorsement of key members of his family, including Donald Trump Jr. is sure to have the back. backing of his MAGA political machine. He has his own growing political machine. It's known as the Rock Bridge Network. There's been some good reporting out there from the Washington Post and the New York

Times, which I'm very jealous of. And as I discovered in reporting the story, J.D. Vance's favorable numbers with Republican voters are sky high. They're super sky high with people who define themselves as MAGA Republicans. And with the 40 percent of today's primary electorate on the GOP side that says backing and a Donald Trump endorsed candidate is important to them. He's like just as high. His numbers are great for a vice president. So I wanted to know will a substantial viable Republican, not just some Republican, but somebody who we would categorize as they're going to be able to mount a great, a formidable campaign. They're a substantial person, they're the kind of person that could be president and theoretically win

the nomination, will that kind of person run against Vance with all these challenges stacked against them? And ultimately, what a lot of my sources told me was that if 2026 isn't so bad, Rick, it's a loss for Republicans, but it's not horrible. They expect fewer of those people to run, if any, but that if 2026 is particularly bad, right, it's just a blood-backer. and then you have hardening dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, the economy is still struggling maybe because of the tariffs. Then you're going to see more of these ambitious Republicans, and they're out there willing to go through the exercise, willing to take the risk, right?

Because it's something they want to do anyway, but they're going to then feel like, all right, I don't know if I'm going to win, but I could win. And of course, the environment for some of them will mean, of course I'm going to win, because J.D. Vance is weak. He's never really run, you know, a real race. He won a primary for Senate in Ohio because Trump endorsed him. He won a Senate campaign in a red state. And he had to be helped out a lot by Mitch McConnell's Super PAC, et cetera, et cetera. So 40 million dollars. Yeah, that horrible establishment, Rhino Cuck. I wonder if J.D. ever sent a thank you note. So anyway, this is the dynamic. And that's why there's a lot riding on the 2026 midterm

elections more than just the Republican majorities. And those conversations that you just talked about, the polling, the staffing, I don't know for certain, but my sources are telling me it's just going to be a lot quieter over the next year than it would have otherwise would have been. The circles that these discussions happen in are going to be tighter, smaller, because nobody's going to want to get out in front of President Trump and elicit a nasty social media post that then causes them problems with Republican primary voters. So that's where we are. But I thought to myself, somebody's going to ask this question. It's not actually too early,

and I wanted to get there first. So, Chris, let me take that headline to you again and just tell you that I see this potential, I see the 2020 Republican primary field evolving in almost precisely the opposite way of many of the people that David talks to, where it feels to me like this is as close to a sure thing as you're going to see for a total free-for-all, a total scrum. And it is in part because Donald Trump is not going to ride to the rescue of J.D. Vance early if other people are toying with a bid or openly contemplating a bid or there's lots of speculation because I don't think Trump wants to do that. Every time he's asked about this, he volunteers, as a potential candidate along with J.D. Vance. And you have so many people, I think, at the end of what, you know, at least as the Donald Trump era, I don't think it will be the end of the MAGA era, but at least as we near the end, potentially, of the Donald Trump era, it sets up for the kind of big, bloody fight that many of us thought we were going to see in 2024 before Trump, you know, regained his state.

am I crazy? No. David is very right about and this goes to the thing about it's not what happens in the midterms. It's what people think happened in the midterms. And that will have an effect on the first. So year one of the cycle will be,

that will be very, that will have a heavy. influence on the first year of the cycle, right? Where people say, okay, am I really going to do this? Well, if the Republicans get pantsed, they will say like, oh, okay, like maybe the, so this is your Ted Cruz. This is your Ron DeSantis. This is who have, like, this is Glenn Yonkin. Like, well, the Republicans are in trouble. Maybe there's going to be an appetite for change. This is, this is where they're thinking. There's another factor, though, which is, which is a question of how valuable do the potential candidates believe the nomination will be, right?

So we think of the 92 phenomenon. Democrats concluded that the 1992 Democratic nomination was worthless. So why am I going to put myself through this and just go out so I can get my brains beat against Iraq by an incumbent George H.W. Bush with a 90% approval rating. No, thanks. I'm not, I don't need it. And that's technically. you end up with President Bill Clinton because Paul Songus was not going to feed the bulldog. And when the nomination became valuable later in the cycle, the market pressures changed, and it was too late for a Mario Cuomo. And it was too late for these other people to try to get in. So, yes, stage one, those perceptions will matter.

Donald Trump's approval number in the Gallup poll that everybody talked about, he's down to 36% in Gallup, and that's only two points better than it was right after January 6th. It's bad. It's a no good. But the more significant number, potentially, Natalie Jackson wrote a good piece about this. He went from 93% approval with Republicans to 84% approval among Republicans. I don't imagine that Donald Trump is going to allow the Republican Party to choose its next presidential standard bearer without some involvement. If he won't let a merger go through without getting his pound of flesh, I can't imagine. imagine that he's just going to say, well, I'm for JD and we're just going to, we want an orderly smooth transition here. I expect he will want to be asked to seek a third term, whether he actually seeks a third term or not. It will be important to him that the people who are running

begin by saying, I wish President Trump could remain. It is important. I want him to be there, but if that Peskeld Constitution prevents it from happening, I guess I would do it if we could not keep our sovereign. So how he plays this will at a minimum be to extract, to continue to extract from the contenders, promises, assurances, and all of this stuff, which decreases the value of the nomination itself. But the biggest question is,

Let's say Donald Trump is, I don't know, 15 points more popular with Republicans than J.D. Vance. I don't know. Is it 10? 15 points? So you tell me in January of 2028, what is Donald Trump's approval rating among Republicans? If it's over 90 percent and he is allowing J.D. Vance to proceed unmolested, then it's J.D. Vance's. The perception among Republicans is that Trump is, that Trump is, has failed. And to David's point, the midterms are an input on that, on the psychology of those millions of people who make up the broad Republican elite. That will go into it. But also we'll go into it is, how's it going? Right. If you had a three-month run that was like the three months that the president is going to conclude the 2020, the year 2025 with, good luck, J.D. Vance, kiss off. It won't happen. So it's not too early to talk about this. David Drucker's reporting on the machinations of the powerful inside the parties is always essential. It's not too early to report, but it's way too early to say, you tell me what the GDP numbers look like. You tell me

what the public sentiment is, and then we'll know. Yeah. Mike, just real quickly on the question of Trump's approval. There was a very interesting poll released by the Manhattan Institute this past year looking basically at the future of the Republican Party potential candidates, the makeup of the new coalition, new Republican voters. Fascinating poll. We'll put it in the show notes for people to dive in on their own. But one of the things they asked about was favorability of figures on the American right, both with U.S. voters broadly, with Democrats, with Republicans, with independents. Among Republicans, Donald Trump's is plus 73, which, as Chris suggests, is strong, but could be stronger, certainly. J.D. Vance is plus 68. So five point difference right now, but that's probably, that's pretty good for J.D. Vance with the core Republican voters. They actually ask about what they call core Republicans, which are old school traditional Republicans who have voted for Republican presidential candidates back to 2016 and before that. And Trump is plus 91 with those

voters. J.D. Vance is plus 85 with those voters. So I do think there's sort of enthusiasm around Vance, likely because of his association with with Trump, the fact that he's Trump's vice president. Having said that, I would say J.D. Vance is, to me, is not. not a very likable potential candidate. As David pointed out, I think it was David, maybe it was Chris, he was not a very strong Senate candidate. He had to be sort of pulled over the finish line by Donald Trump in the primary and then funded over the finish line in the general by more establishment-minded Republicans. He's, I think, presents. often as abrasive. He has embraced this kind of post-liberal, in some ways, anti-democratic,

small-de-democratic view of the American project and in some ways the philosophies that led to the American experiment itself. He last week praised several socialists or socialist adjacent members of the Democratic Party because he likes that they're being creative on affordability, including Zoran Mamdani, Mayor Elect of New York City. Is this really the guy who's going to lead the Republican Party in 28 without a serious challenge? That seems insane to me. I agree with you.

I'm 100% with you, Steve. a number that I think about a lot, going back to that 2022 Senate race, which again, the only race that J.D. Vance has won. I don't consider the 2024 race, a race that he, okay, maybe in a technical sense, in the, in the, you know, playbook or the scorebook of it all. He was on the ballot. People voted for him. But it's only the 2022 race for Senate in Ohio that he won. It's the only one, he's won. Six-point margin of victory. In that same year, the incumbent Republican governor of Ohio, yes, Mike Dewein, who was not just the Republican, the incumbent governor. He has held, I think, every office in the state of Ohio, except for dog catcher. And he has this

impressive career of winning Ohio. And when Ohio was a swing state, and when Ohio was a red state, He won by 24 points, okay? From six points, the margin of victory for J.D. Vance, in the same year, same electorate, Mike DeWine wins by 24 points. That, to me, says everything about J.D. Vance's electability or his skills and talent as someone who can actually win an election on his own. He had to be pulled across with money and support in this. primary and in the general election. So I agree with you. Look, I think Drucker's reporting is

terrific and fantastic. As he notes, as Chris has noted, there are so many factors that things that will happen between now and the selection of the Republican nominee in 28 that will change things. I just look back, again, I sort of think about this big picture narratively. If you think back to what happened in 2024. Yes, Donald Trump was dominant in that primary election. Yes, at a certain point, very early on, it was very clear that Donald Trump was going to win the nomination again. And yet, and yet, there were challenges. There were challenges in the form of Ron DeSantis, which didn't turn out very well. That was a problem for him. I think there was a Ron DeSantis problem chiefly. There was the challenge from Nikki Haley, which did better than anybody thought. And

really, she did better than she should have in those circumstances. And that was with Donald Trump on the ballot. That was with Donald Trump, the guy who had lost four years earlier, said he hadn't lost, and had basically been brow-bading Republicans into agreeing with him on that lie for the previous three years, and who was being prosecuted and in his mind, persecuted by Democrats across the country. I look at that scenario, and there was still a market, a small market for Republican challengers. 2028, it seems to me, is going to be wide open. And I don't see how anything short of a complete and utter turnaround for Donald Trump in the

final three years of his presidency is going to change that. I want to wrap real quickly with some discussion on something that I think could be a real problem for Donald Trump, were he to try to run again in 2028? This past week in news that you might have missed, Donald Trump received the FIFA Peace Prize, having been overlooked by the Nobel Committee, the head of FIFA, which is the international soccer. organization bestowed upon Donald Trump a new prize. I mean, everybody has known for a long time that Donald Trump wants a peace prize because Donald Trump keeps saying he wants a peace prize. The Nobel Committee, which gave Barack Obama a peace prize very early on in his presidency before he had done anything, arguably the most undeserving peace prize ever bestowed by the Nobel committee, overlooked Donald Trump, FIFA stepped in, created a new prize so that they could give

it to Donald Trump, which I think is all interesting and all worth noting. That's not what I want to ask you about, though. If Donald Trump were to run again in 2028, and we should be clear, this is not currently constitutionally possible. This seems silly and fanciful. And yet you have people, erstwhile, somewhat serious people like Lindsey Graham, using everything. opportunity he can to push Donald Trump 2028. Donald Trump said something when he was receiving that

FIFA Peace Prize that I think could collapse his candidacy. And it was not just his comment that this is truly one of the great honors of my life winning the FIFA Peace Prize.

It was something much, much more controversial. And I'm just going to read to you what These are Donald Trump's exact words, and then I'm going to ask the panel to react to it. When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, which soccer is in the United States, we seem to never call it football because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called this is football? There's no question about it, he said, referring to soccer. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it.

Donald Trump has proposed the United States American football abandoning its name as football. One of the previous politicians who have sort of had missteps related to football, made bad comments about. football. I think of John Kerry when he called Lambeau Field, Lambert Field in Wisconsin, if I think led to his loss in Wisconsin that year. Chris, isn't this risky for Donald Trump to propose renaming American football? There's a third setting you need. There's literally, seriously. And then I don't know what we should call the third setting. But, But this is, if, do you remember when Rick Scott went down to Florida and gave Donald Trump a prize in the hopes that Donald Trump would go away and went down to Mara Lago? It was like the Defender of Freedom Award.

It was a silver bowl. And just made up an award, made up a trophy, and went down and gave it to him. Trump loved it. in that moment on that stage. Can you imagine what TV producer Donald Trump would have said if they had brought to him the idea, we're going to have a fake selection process, and you're going to stand behind an ugly little cube

like you were on an Italian game show, and we're going to have a fake drawing, and you're going to be the same as Canada and Mexico, right? Every American president would have said, absolutely not. I don't want anything to do. I don't want anything to do with soccer, number one. We don't want anything to do. No, thank you.

No soccer over here, please. Number two, I will not be treated the same as Canada and Mexico. No offense, Canada and Mexico. But Dwight Eisenhower is not like, yeah, we're all in one boat here. That's fine. and then the fake little drawing. Television producer Donald Trump would be like, that's not right.

You can't put the U.S. president in that setting. But if you give him an award, right? Right. If you say, you get the award, he would have said, if they would have, if the head of FIFA, whatever I assume like, Hattari-owned weirdo is the head of international soccer,

whatever, if he would have said, and do you think also that American football should be abolished. Well, I think we're looking into that very strongly. I think we're very strongly looking into that. And many people are saying that there's a lot of reason to do that. And I would say in two or three weeks, we're going to have an answer for you about what we come up with that.

Is Drucker, is this the most prestigious award that Donald Trump has received since Rick Scott awarded him, as Chris mentioned, the NRSC, quote, Champion of Freedom. Champion of freedom. Little bowl. Yeah, by the way, Chris, I think literally seriously an idiocy. That's what I'm going to do with you. Yeah, there you go.

You're on a bowl. By the way, so in my in my book in Trump Shadow, I actually reported on that Freedom Bowl. Full disclosure, my wife is Rick Scott's fundraiser with a business partner. but what I noted from a political aspect in that in my book was that it was purely a bribe to keep Trump out of the primaries. Sir, by the way, didn't help enough, as it turned out. It helped in some states. He just wanted the president, Senator Scott, did to stay out of certain Republican primaries,

all Republican primaries if he could get him to do so. So he came down there with a peace offering. And everybody knows that this FIFA Peace Award is the please don't shut down whatever American City is supposed to hold our World Cup match peace award. It's just we think you're great, sir, leave us alone. And Donald Trump will say almost anything nice about anybody, as we've learned over the years and recently with New York mayor like Zora and Mondani, if you're nice and cordial and polite to him and say nice things. And that's all this is. And that's all this stuff will ever be. And so it's, you know, it's funny.

I will say that Trump can get away with bashing American football. The vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, cannot. And that will be the difference between the two if Vance ends up as the Republican nominee next time around. I'm having to resist the temptation here to do my own bashing of American football after the larceny. That was Notre Dame's exclusion from. Oh, my gosh. The college football playoffs, enough. But you beat the Bears, Steve.

I mean. I was happy that the Packers beat the Bears. But Notre Dame being in the college football playoff from November 2nd until they suddenly weren't for, no real. Tell Pope, those guys have gotten away with stuff for years. Tell Pope Leo to send the Swiss guard, okay? Like, you got an American Pope. Tell them to send the Swiss guard.

Yeah. But we're not going to, we're not going to, you know, I'm not. I shouldn't tolerate this anti-Catholic bigotry that we're seeing right here from the panel, but we're going to move on because I want to give Mike a chance to weigh in on Trump and this award. What, Mike, is there anything that somebody could say or do? We've talked about Rick Scott's NRC champions and Freedom Little Bowl that he gave Trump. Freedom Bowl. We've talked about the FIFA.

Yeah, Freedom Bowl. We've talked about the FIFA Peace Prize. we've had NATO chief called Donald Trump Daddy. Is there anything that would be too low for these public figures to do to get themselves in Donald Trump's good graces? And do you have any predictions about the kinds of things we might expect to see? I think this is supposed to be a family podcast, so maybe I should withhold what I'm really thinking in terms of what we could see. No, I think I think the answer is no. There is nothing

that is too low. I think the one big difference when you're talking about sort of international organizations and countries and those sort of things is from the first term that Trump has had to to this current second term is that they have all figured out what it is that Trump likes and this is what he likes you know this is what he needs this is how to get on his side and so I there's a there's a certain amount of I respect the game here you know like they figured out what to do to say to provide for him

whether it's you know McDonald's in the Middle East or you know or this award from FIFA which by the way I should say I was personally shocked that FIFA such a above board an incorruptible organization would do this? It's shaking me to my core

and challenged everything I know about FIFA. Exactly. Exactly. It's worrisome. But I want to say this one other thing about Trump and football, which is we should know that Trump has a very complicated relationship with American football. The United States Football League,

which was one of several attempts to provide competition in the professional football world to the NFL that Donald Trump was invested in, invested in the New York area team. He was involved with that. It was a failure, by the way, I should say, we are not talking about the USFL these days. You know, we can go back to what was happening a few years ago with the kneeling at the national anthem that was happening in NFL games and the way that Donald Trump sort of used that to his. political advantage. He doesn't really seem to like football. I mean, he likes that his people like football. He shows up to SEC football games in Alabama or Georgia, where he knows that a lot of

the people there will, again, praise him and salute him. But I don't think he really likes football. And I just think we should appreciate that fact. And maybe it again, explains what we heard. This really, I think, and I'm joking, but also not joking, like, a truly anti-American viewpoint that he spouted here in front of FIFA, it disturbed me. Propose the metric system? I mean, it really is sort of like outrageous. It's along those lines, Steve. And I'm very pro-European. Yeah, it seems a bit of a miss from Donald Trump. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me in this fun and interesting and informative. discussion about the state of American politics 11 months before the 2026 that terms.

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We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Steve Hayes with some big news from the dispatch. I want to tell you about dispatch hoontoes. Dispatch what? Hoonto, though some people pronounce it, Junto, is the name Ben Franklin gave to the small gatherings he organized in Philadelphia taverns, starting in the 1720s. Franklin's Huntoes, Spanish for assembly or council, consisted of 12 members, each of whom was required to pledge that he, quote, loved truth for the truth's sake, unquote, and that he was dedicated to

personal growth for himself and improving his community. These discussions at those junto meetings would contribute to the ideas that built our great country. We launched dispatch juntoes without quite the same ambition, but with a deep conviction about the need for a place where people can get together for civil and sane conversations about the issues of the day, without the kind of nastiness and posturing that's so prevalent on social media and elsewhere in our polarized politics. The dispatch has hosted events across the country, and I've attended many of them. I've been blown away by the turnout and the enthusiasm.

I've enjoyed having a beer or two with our members at each of these gatherings, and I think the real value for them has been the opportunity to meet one another. I remember Nashville lingering at the bar at a great wing joint called Party Fowl, with dispatch members after our hour-long program ended. Our group talked for another hour at least, and they were so happy to have met one another, nobody even noticed when I slipped out. I can't tell you how many times I heard something like,

it's so great to be reminded that there are other sane normal people out here. We're looking for dedicated dispatch members to organize regular meetups in their communities at a local happy hour, restaurant, or coffee shop. We'll help promote and convene the group, but you'll run your honto your way. And if your gatherings grow large enough, we'll prioritize your town or city as we plan our next regional event or live podcast taping. So if you're a member of the dispatch and you're interested in leading a local honto, head to the dispatch.com slash

junto. That's J-U-N-T-O. The dispatch.com slash hoonto. And if you're not yet a dispatch member, this is a great reason to join at the dispatch.com slash join. We can't wait to build this with you.