The Dispatch Podcast - The First 100 Days

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Today’s episode starts off talking about every political junkie’s favorite arbitrary threshold, a presidential administration’s first 100 days. Hear what everyone thinks are the Biden administration’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. The gang debates what’s the most important aspect of the John Kerry leaking info to Iran story and how the U.S. Census will affect our politics and our country going forward. Then, stick around to hear if everything has gone to [BLEEP]. Show Notes: -Vice President Joe “put y’all back in chains” Biden -President Joe “worse than Jim Crow” Biden -Biden likes the FDR comparisons -Iran’s Foreign Minister, in Leaked Tape, Says Revolutionary Guards Set Policies - New York Times -U.S. Census Report -TMD on the census -Advisory Opinions podcast page -The Remnant podcast page -Stirewalt’s latest from The Dispatch -The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worse - David Brooks -Latest French Press -New York Post reporter claims she was forced to write fake story, resigns Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey listeners, the dispatch is now offering you a chance to experience a full membership for the next 30 days risk-free. There's a lot of information chaos out there. And with the Biden administration on the move, Democrats in charge on the Hill, and Republicans going through a wholesale realignment, the dispatch is here to help you make sense of what's really important and worth your time. During this 30-day trial, you'll have access to member-only editions of all of our dispatch newsletters. There's more from Jonah, David, and me, of course, but so much more two. Plus, you'll be able to join our members-only dispatch live virtual gatherings. It's our sincere hope that you find a dispatch membership to be valuable and something worth sticking with

after the 30-day trial. But if you don't, you can cancel it any time. Join today, this offer will expire after April 30th. To take advantage of this offer, go to thedispatch.com slash free 30. That's the dispatch.com forward slash free and the number 30. Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. Lots to talk about today. We're going to start with the first hundred days of the Biden presidency, the New York Times story revealing news out of Iran, the census results, and finally, is everything as bad as they say. Let's dive right in. Jonah, it's your favorite.

It's an arbitrary metric, the first hundred days. Yes, it's a totally meaningless benchmark, but it's the benchmark that we've all come to agree with. So we're going to talk about the first hundred days. And I will reserve my thoughts about it and just go around the horn on this. two questions really what kind of grade does he i don't want to you don't have to answer it mclaughlin style but how has his first hundred days been and has it surprised you like is this what you expected from biden or is this different and how so compare and contrast in your blue books

steve what do you say so on grade the criteria i'm choosing to use is um is he more or less doing what he said he would do, which fits in nicely with the question about whether I'm surprised. And on the one hand, here's somebody who came in, he said he would make us not have to think about the presidency as much. We wouldn't have to wake up on Saturdays wondering if a tweet would blow up the weekends. He wouldn't be doing the kind of things that we had grown accustomed to Donald Trump doing over the previous four years. And in that sense, I think it does feel like a return to something normal. On policy, you know, we talked repeatedly on this podcast about how Joe Biden was running as

somebody who would return things to normal and therefore didn't seem like the sort of liberal socialist of the Republican critiques, but that on substance, if you looked at actually what he was proposing, he was running to the left of Hillary Clinton in 20, 16, Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008. I think that's basically where he ends up. So I'd give him a C for following through and for basically doing most of what he said he's going to do. Now, most of that, I disagree with. I think the spending is absolutely out of control. There seems to be no indication from almost anyone in the Biden administration that they're concerned. concerned about rates of spending or debts and deficits.

Foreign policy, I think we have to sort of wait to give them an incomplete at this point because there's a lot that we need to learn. But as we'll talk about soon, he's clearly eager to get back into the Iran deal. He's withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. We're starting to see the shape of a Biden foreign policy emerge. I'm going to save Sarah for last because she's going to have the dispositive answer. David, are you surprised by it? What kind of grade do you give them?

You know, I think that there is a relief to go from culture and nation cracking bad to normal bad. And that's how I describe the difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration. Like, this is not an administration that in normal circumstances I would want. And it is performed in a way that I would expect under those circumstances. There are a lot of policies I don't like. I don't like the spending. If I didn't like the spending under Trump, I like it less under Biden, even though I do understand and do see COVID relief when it is actually COVID relief

as something sort of outside the norm to be treated more as almost like disaster relief than say economic stimulus. I'm not going to say there are things I don't like about. the Biden administration, I do think that he has a much more, while I dislike trying to enter the Iran deal, I will acknowledge that the Iran problem is a problem. It is hard to figure out what to do about Iran, but I do feel that we are moving back towards a greater emphasis on alliances and a better relationship with our allied partners, which I think is very important in an increasingly tense world.

I think he has been gratuitously culture warring. You know, some of his executive orders, the Hyde Amendment removal from the COVID relief, these kinds of things, I think, are gratuitous culture warring, although they don't really move the needle very much at all one way or the other. But I will say this, I mean, presidents tend to be judged by big stuff. They tend to be judged by how did the economy do? Or if you are sworn in in the middle of a raging pandemic, what happened to the pandemic? And I think on the big stuff that really matters, as 2021 rolls on, we're going to see the pandemic continue to ease, assuming we can get over these last hurdles of vaccine hesitancy.

And the economy continue to roar back. and the bottom line is when we look back at that history and the other big task he had was doing something to turn down the temperature even a little bit and I think with most of the country he has accomplished that you know he can't really do much about Republicans and Dr. Seuss but with most of the country he has turned down the temperature with one exception and that is Joe Biden

in it is worse, which calls back to the, put y'all back in chain's rhetoric of 2012, was the Georgia worse than Jim Crow, which I thought was particularly inflammatory and excessive. And as I said, you know, sort of gratuitously aggressive. Okay. Now, Sarah, do I want to make one quick point? There was a thing in the Times today about how this double mutant, which is a misnomer, all those variants of COVID are mutants of one kind or another.

But the one they're calling the double mutant out of India, it's apparently making people who've been vaccinated sick, like really sick. And like the progress that Biden's made that we have made on the pandemic could be reversed if something

comes out of India. And I just you know, that's one of the reasons why the first hundred days is almost a meaningless thing is that events could change all of this. And in retrospect, we're like, why didn't they do more to stop this thing in India, but that's a topic for another day. Sarah, what's your take? And then I will give you all mine and explain why you're all wrong.

I'm grading Biden on what voters wanted from Biden and what people who approve of President Biden want from Biden. And they're the same thing as it turns out. And it's by a wide margin. And he gets an A plus. Does anyone know what that thing is? Boring. Not Trump.

And he has been not Trump from the day he was elected to the day he was sworn in in all of these hundred days. He is really good at not literally being Donald Trump. So truly, if that's what people voted for him for, and that's what people who approve of President Biden are most pleased with,

which makes sense, if that's why you voted for him, that you're most pleased. NBC had a poll and they had a word cloud of the things that people said about why they approve of President Biden. I mean, it's a landslide, not Trump. The like much lower, honest COVID-19 vaccine, compassionate, climate change, trustworthy, good cabinet. Okay, fine. I think, though, that post-100 days, look, you guys are obviously right about major events overtaking all sorts of stuff. stuff. But I think there's a non-major event that can also overwhelm his presidency. And that's a

repeat of what Barack Obama did. Barack Obama comes in. His first 100 days are great. He has an approval rating higher than Reagan, higher than Clinton, you know, who are pretty popular in their first 100 days. He's in the mid-60s. He signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He expands the state children's health insurance program, all very popular moves. And in February's, when he gives his joint address to Congress, and he announces that he wants to pursue changes in the American economy in three areas, one, energy, two, health care, and three, education. And I just wonder if this podcast in April, well, his speech was in February. So let's go, February 2009, could have guessed that the middle one of those, health care,

would be the thing that hung around his presidency and cost him 63 seats in the House of Representatives, puts John Boehner in control, and ends his legislative agenda pretty much. And the reason that that happened, in my view, I think Republicans were incredibly consistent, focused on the message against Obamacare. But the reason they were able to do that

is because of the economy. But what's interesting to me is they didn't run on the economy. The economy's bad vote for us. They ran on the economy's bad and look what this guy did instead. He took away your health insurance. He's hurting religious folks. And they focused that message on Obamacare. With so much going on between COVID, these massive spending bills,

Biden is opening himself up to a similar message if Republicans... had the wherewithal to do it, which is not COVID is bad. Don't vote for those guys, but COVID is bad and look what they're doing. And I think the speech that we're going to hear tonight has the possibility to not make the same mistakes that Barack Obama did. But to y'all's point, the first hundred days, totally pointless. If there's something as deeply unpopular at the beginning as Obamacare was that the Republicans turned unpopular, or if there's a major foreign policy, attack, some other, not even black swan, a white swan event at this point that will define his presidency. Now, Jonah, tell me why I'm wrong. No, you're actually right. You're, I mean,

you're, I mean, your lack of bitter biting cynicism at the idea that the Republicans are going to be able to do that kind of messaging on COVID, I think is unfortunate, in part because they can't say COVID is bad. I mean, they got, I mean, like every single. single day. They got someone out there saying, you know, you know, I mean, like right now, we got Jim DeMint talking about how 20-something shouldn't get vaccinated and, you know, and how COVID is overblown. And, you know, all the people who said that COVID is no big deal, or COVID is just like the flu, they've paid no price. But the last thing they can do is now say, oh, it's really serious because Biden's in office. I mean, so, but I take your larger point.

and I think your larger point is right. I think that the odds of them replaying the Obama mistakes are not just like really strong. I think they're literally replaying the Obama mistakes. I mean, it's like it's a difference between predicting something and describing something unfolding before your eyes. And Axio set a piece today or yesterday about how Biden is more committed than ever. to these FDR analogies and that he really wants this New Deal thing. And

part of the problem, as my former colleague, Ramesh Pooner, has been pointing out, Biden can get away with these incredibly ambitious, big spending things on COVID relief and infrastructure because of the way of the

political climate we're in and the desires of voters. But the left who thinks they're going to get this big new, progressive era are kidding themselves, precisely because Biden can't deliver what the progressive left really wants, which is like packing the Supreme Court, you know, defund the police stuff, getting rid of guns and all that kind of thing. There aren't the votes. There isn't the political will. Biden is really underwater on almost all the divisive

issues about handling immigration and all these kinds of things. But they're reading the wind at their on on big spending bills and infrastructure stuff and they think it is translating into a different climate than it really is and I think it could really bite Biden in some part of his anatomy below his chin at some point fairly soon because as you say he was voted he was elected I mean I've always said his mandate was to not be Trump and he fulfilled that on day one and he's fulfilling it every day since but no one voted for him to be FDR I mean, even the progressive left didn't vote for him to be FDR. That's why they didn't like him because they didn't think he could be.

And so it's nice that AOC says he's exceeding their expectations. But at some point, if if things go off the rails and they will in some way and somehow, the fact that he's blown our credit limit on this stuff, which gives him very little bandwidth to do anything else financially. And in, you know, the future changes the past. significant ways. You know, the point I always use is that no one, you know, for most of the 20th century, 1917 was like one of the most important dates. It started the Soviet Union. This is the, you know, the World War I was like the beginning of modernity in some ways in the 20th century.

Then the Soviet Union dies in 1989 and that date loses its significance in our memories. And then you have 9-11 and all of a sudden the year the Wahhabis took over Saudi Arabia becomes like the most important date of the 20th century. Things that Biden is doing now could change in in public estimation really quickly, if things go off the rails, which is just an long-winded bloviated way of saying that the first 100 days, things is meaningless. The Titanic looked great in the first 100 hours. It just doesn't tell you the whole story. Two points.

One, I think it's also worth noting that whereas Obama actually had a fairly healthy Democratic majority, both in the House and the Senate, going into those midterms, they could imagine losing 63 seats. They did not lose the Senate in that first midterm, but they did at the next midterm. But that's not what Joe Biden has. He has a five-seat majority in the House going into this midterm and a zero-seat majority. You know, they lose one Senate seat and the ballgame's over in the Senate. I think that's a difference that makes this worse when Biden says he wants to go bigger than Obama. Second point, I think that November 9th, 1989 should absolutely be a day that we recognize

and that November 9th moving forward should always be a national holiday. And I have no personal reason why that should be the case at all. So don't look into that any further. But the day the Berlin Wall came down, we should have that as a national holiday for sure and not just my birthday. I see what you did there. So I think there is a lot to learn in the first 100 days, actually. I mean, I agree with your narrow point that it's a sort of made up construct by the media. It's like media outlets come up with the first 100 days to mark something so that they can do this kind of retrospective and kind of take stock.

And in that sense, of course, it's just made up. on the other hand, you know, the most, the period the presidents are the most effective in implementing their agenda is this early stage of their presidency. And Joe Biden has clearly made these massive spending packages his priority. And he's not, he's not backed away from them at all. I mean, you would have thought that maybe after the $1.9 trillion in COVID relief, which really is COVID relief plus, you know, several hundred billion dollars in other non-COVID related things, that he would have been more modest in his asks for infrastructure and then these additional spending packages. He didn't do that at all. And I think it's notable that

he's embracing so much of this FDR comparison. You know, we, I think said, as a group, that we thought that he would govern, that he would be sort of a big government, old school, big government liberal. I'm not sure I would have said on inauguration day, I expect that he is going to do everything he can to be FDR. That seems to me notable 100 days in. You know, one thing about the first 100 days is,

in hindsight, you might go back, And if he remains relatively popular, I mean, he's been pretty stable in his numbers. But look, if you go past like 2010, Obama was stable in his numbers, Trump was stable in his numbers the whole time. I have a feeling that Biden's going to be pretty stable in his numbers, barring something completely unforeseen because that's the way the world is now. But I think if you, in hindsight, one thing that might be interesting is, is, How much some of the most contentious culture war stuff, like the Equality Act, you know, massive voting reform with HR1, these sort of culture war type bills that are or anything defund the police, how much in hindsight Joe Biden's going to be able to look back and say thank you to Joe Manchin because all of this debate, all of these debates about court packing and ending the filibuster, they're just academic Twitter stuff.

now because so long as Joe Manchin isn't going to go along, they don't even have the 50 votes to bring in the Harris tiebreaker. And a lot of this stuff should start to sort of recede into the rearview mirror as it becomes increasingly clear that it's just not even going to be brought up for a Senate vote. And what that's going to leave is Biden dealing with this big spending stuff, which as much as many of us, as much as we don't like all of this money being spent is probably kind of his sweet spot in the extent of being able to build any kind of popular majority, because if there's one thing that we know that their number of people who are actually deficit hawks in the United States of America is pretty small, you're going to see

some small partisan increase in that number, but it's not going to be overwhelming, and that's going to land him into one sweet spot of governing, I think, where he's going to be able to do stuff that is going to be pretty popular with an awful lot of Americans, and a lot of this culture war stuff that is not popular with as many Americans is just going to keep going in the rear of your mirror. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is, the consequences of not having life insurance

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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. All right. Steve, let's talk Iran. So earlier this week, the New York Times reported on a leaked audience.

a recording of Iran foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. And a discussion that he had had in an internal setting, it was supposed to be for an oral history of the current Iranian government, an interview that he gave a friendly interviewer who's an economist. And Zarif, pretty plainly, according to the New York Times report, was speaking openly, pretty candidly, and sharing his views on his job, on the regime in general, on the United States, on a number of other issues.

Two big takeaways from me on this, and I will kick it to you all for a bigger discussion and pin you down with my difficult question. Zarif described an Iranian political system in which the Supreme Leader and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC are in charge and suggested that he wasn't particularly powerful at any given time, that his rivalry with General Qasem Soleimani left meant that Zarif didn't actually have the power that many people had attributed to him.

The second question concerns a report that John Kerry had disclosed to Zareef 200 Israeli strikes in Syria, which Zerif described to the interviewer. as causing astonishment for him. I think these are pretty significant developments. And my question to you is, should the revelations on this leaked audio recording cause the Biden administration to rethink its approach to Iran?

Are these significant enough that they should sort of take stock and reevaluate what they're doing? Or will they plot ahead? David, go to you first. Yeah, the one thing that I found, though, is interesting about the astonishment of the strikes is not that carry would leak something, and this is something that is a matter of hot dispute right now. But if I'm told, if I'm a

high government official and I'm told that my forces have been struck 200 times by my principal enemy, if I'm in the loop, I'm not astonished. You know, if I know what's happening, Oh, wait. You mean, we've been attacked? What are you talking about? Really? I mean, that's not a revelation. I mean, there's been a serious Iranian presence in Syria, for example, for a very long time. And the presence of relentless, I mean, the knowledge of relentless Israeli airstrikes, I mean, that's, while the total numbers weren't put out necessarily until maybe what, around 2018 or so, the, we were, We knew about him. I mean, I knew about them in Columbia, Tennessee when I was living there, that Israel was striking Iranian positions quite regularly in Syria. And, you know, that one of the things that's always been an issue in dealing with Iran is when are you dealing with the actual power brokers?

When are you dealing with the people who make the actual relevant decisions? And I think of the fact of the matter is if you're not dealing with and if you're not, not reining in and you're not restricting in a real and substantial way, the IRGC, you're not dealing with Iran. And so I think, you know, one of the things that, one of the smarter things takes that I've seen in response to sort of the Trump actions was that what Trump was essentially doing was gambling. What he was doing when he broke the deal with Iran was fulfilling the prophecy made by the IRGC factions in Iran when Obama and Iran entered into the deal. And the prophecy essentially was, America is going to break this.

You can't trust America. Why are we dealing with America? There were hardliners in Iran who were opposed to the deal. Trump breaks the deal. And so those hardliners say, we were right all along. We were right. Absolutely right. You do not and you cannot count on the United States of America to make or keep a deal.

And that strengthened the hand of the hardliners. Now, that gamble was only going to pay off if the pressure created the outcome that the Trump administration wanted. It did not. They didn't have two terms, for example. And so now where are we? It looks like Carrie is trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. But that same hardline factions are going to say, really, really?

To the point where even if Iran does ink some sort of deal, the idea that they're going to count on us complying, and therefore we can count on them complying, seems to be a fiction. It's just an absolute mess right now. Steve, I have a question. On the one hand, it's hard for me to express how little respect I have for John Kerry and his leadership skills. On the other hand, why in the world would I believe an Iranian official over someone from my own government. And Blinken, today, Secretary of State, Blinken said, quote, it is utter

nonsense. It's really unfortunate that people will continue to try to play politics with this. Like, this guy basically through the rest of the interview, is talking about how he lies all the time. Now, I understand, like, well, if he's saying he lies all the time, then in this interview, he must be telling the truth. I get that theory. I don't know why I would buy into it. So why why should I believe that this is anything but a guy sort of spinning his own version of events? And I will also

note, for instance, the Russian diplomat Sergei Kisliak, like we know he lied all the time, privately, not in public, to his own people. That's what these guys do. They live in dictatorships where lying is what keeps them alive sometimes, and we're taking this to

like redo our whole foreign policy and to fire John Kerry and to make a whole cycle out of it instead of just saying like, huh, that Iranian guy said something that we have no reason to believe is true. So we do have lots of reasons to believe that it's true, and I think we have little reason to believe that it's not true, in particular because of the environment in which he was speaking. This was an internal interview meant as part of a broader oral history project. To make himself sound good and to... It doesn't make him sound good. It doesn't make him sound good.

It doesn't make him sound good that he was clueless. It makes him sound like a feckless pawn who has no control and an influence at all. Right. And he's saying inside the regime, he has no power, that he doesn't have any power. So I understand you guys don't think that makes him sound good, but let me just disagree for a second. That was his message, whether you think it makes him look good or not. That was his line. He was trying to come up with evidence for that narrative that he had about himself.

And one of his pieces of evidence was that Carrie told him, this thing and he had no idea about it. So if it fits his narrative, this narrative that he carried on for whatever that interview was, hours, right? It was like two hours. Three hours. Three hours.

Then this is just one other thing that he was trying to say to complete this narrative that he clearly wanted to get across that he's out of the loop. John Kerry was telling me stuff I didn't even know. And to David's point,

really, you didn't know that? Everyone knew that. Certainly, like, if you read a newspaper, you'd know that. But really, you just had no clue until John Kerry told you that? Well, no, no, no. We need it back up.

Just as a factual matter, we don't know when that conversation took place. And it's unclear what the news reporting, what the status of the news reporting was at the time about Israeli strikes. Everybody knew that there were Israeli strikes in Syria. I don't think that's really the question. I think the astonishment likely grew out of the claim from Kerry, if you believe this, that there were 200.

That's a bigger deal. that, I think, changed his understanding of this. I think the reason, look, and this is not directed at you, but it is directed at people like Anthony Blinken and others who have been long-time defenders of the Iran deal. I welcome their newfound skepticism of what Zarif is saying. Would that they have been as had been as skeptical back when he was lying about Iran's involvement in terrorism, about what they would do on nuclear weapons, about their military use of nuclear technology in the past. I'm glad they're skeptical of them. I think the context in which this discussion took place, even if I allow your assumption that he was trying to

make an argument that would have been helpful for him inside the regime, the fact that he was doing this in a format where he did not expect this to go public, suggests to me. that this was not some, you know, this was not some big power play. He is admitting throughout the interview that he didn't have power that the IRGC and the Supreme Leader run things. And that basically he's been a figurehead. Now, he may have been complaining about that. That may have been part of the narrative that he wanted to communicate. But given the context for the interview, I have little reason not to believe him. I feel like people lie in private all the time. And in fact, I might argue that it is more common to lie in private when you're trying to make an argument,

when you know you won't be fact-checked, you won't be held to account for it. Again, Sergei Kislyak was lying in private to the Russians. I mean, we have to think pretty frequently. And what came out after? Like, we're not like, oh, he was clearly telling the truth because he said it privately. No. And if it's a he said, he said between John Kerry and Zerif, I got to take John Kerry. Yeah, so let me just chime in real quick.

First of all, it's, you know, I'm trying to be a more mature political commentator these days, but any day where John Kerry is saying that New York Times is full of lies is a good day. And I think the more interesting question that no one is talking about here is not whether Sharif is lying. He's perfectly capable of lying. I agree with Steve that he's lying against self-interest. He's supposed to be an honest broker in these new Iran talks, Randale talks, and he's caught on tape saying that he has no power and that he's a fig leaf for the Republican Guard

is not the kind of thing that is in his self-interest if he's trying to convince the American Americans that he can deliver. If it turns out that he can't deliver, if he sent him the single- That's why he wasn't saying it publicly. He was clearly, you wanted that message to get across. My point is the interesting thing is who leaked the tape, right? Whether he's lying or telling the truth, very interesting, worth finding out all that stuff. But the more interesting part is, how did this tape get public?

Because I don't think, I personally don't think Zareep is leaking it. So that would, because I don't think it helps him. And, you know, and I don't think it's in Zareef's interests to leak a tape that makes the editor of commentary magazine, Eli Lake, Steve Hayes, and that whole crowd seem absolutely right 10 years ago. You don't, you know, you don't, it's like that is not the kind of, that is some four-dimensional chess there by Zareef. It's like, I'm going to prove that all of Obama's critics were absolutely correct about saying this whole deal is a bad idea because the, the regime is really the mullahs and the Republican Guard and this hardliner thing is a myth,

moderates, yada, yada, yada, that's a weird thing for Zarif to want to do. And regardless, I'm with you. At the end of the day, if it's just a he said, he said, I don't necessarily trust John Kerry. Although I got to tell you, we need a better transcript at this thing. Because when I first read it in the Times, and the quote is, you know, something along the lines of Kerry told me that Israel struck these vital targets 200 times. I read it is that Kerry said it to Zerif 200 times. Like he made 200 separate phone calls saying, hey, did you hear about the latest one?

But I do think at minimum, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the House foreign affairs, whatever they call it, they should subpoena carry or ask him to come down and explain himself and walk it through and say, you know, what's true here? What's a lie? How do you explain this?

You know, he's on tape talking about how he talked both in and out of office to the Iranians and he did screw with the Trump administration behind the scenes. He owes it to at least set the record straight and it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, hey, come on, this is weird. Come on down and explain yourself.

Because if it's true, you should be prosecuted if the worst version of events is true that actually he was back channeling classified information about an ally to the Iranian regime. That's a big deal. And it's not comparable to what Trump did when he like screwed Israel by releasing classified information because the president, by virtue of being the president, can do it. So we need to know like did Obama say you can tell you can write out the Israelis to Zerif? Or did he freelance this? Did he do it while he was in office? Did he do it while I was out of office?

These are perfectly nonpartisan, legitimate questions to ask him. And I think the stonewalling and smoke screening that the administration is doing to protect Kerry is a sign that they want this to go away as fast as possible. You know, one other thing to Sarah. And just I say one other thing, to me, the most likely version of events that kind of puts all of the pieces into place if you just assume Zerif lies for a living. And so he lies when it's, you know, very easy and convenient for him. is John Kerry said something

to the effect of, well, look, you know Israel has attacked your positions before and they'll do it again. You know, like something that's, to say something like that is not classified, it is something he should have known. He never used the number 200 most likely, you know, things like that. And so I absolutely agree,

Jonah, him testifying and then saying that he said something like that, I would find quite plausible compared to Zareef's version which I find, again, there's just no particular reason to believe it. Sorry, David. I think Zareef and Kerry should have trial by combat. And whoever wins, they're the one telling the truth. Endorse.

Endorse. To put this in sort of advisory opinions speak, I think what is happening here is that the burden of proof now is shifting way in a very negative way towards those who want to argue that in this long argument about Iran that, hey, look, there are these moderate factions that we really need to strengthen through dealmaking. And the argument that I've made, that Steve's made, that the commentary guys have made, that lots of people have made is this moderate faction thing is a fiction. Not that there aren't people who are more moderate in Iranian government and society. It's just that they don't run the place.

And in many ways, they're just tools of those who do run the place to dupe gullible people. And so I think that what you're talking about is a further move of the burden of the burden of proof here to those, if you're going to be telling me that there are really, truly moderate factions that we can deal with, you've got to come to the table with a lot more proof that that's actually the case to overcome my presumption that that's a fiction. Now it's been a fiction and it's basically been a fiction since 1979. and that's how I view this. Not that Sharif is definitely telling the truth, but the things that he says are quite consistent with

a lot of other things that we know about Iran about who actually has the power. And for him to say it out loud, I agree, Sarah. I'm not going to necessarily believe everything that comes out of his mouth, but when things come out of his mouth that confirm a lot of other things that we feel like we know about the country, we take it a little more seriously. And I think that's particularly true when most of the admissions are admissions against interest. You know, we can't be in his head.

We don't know every reason he said the things that he apparently said in this three-hour conversation. But I think Jonah's right. I mean, a lot of them are things that if they were to emerge publicly as they have, diminish Zareef as a figure in his own government, diminish Zaref as a figure on the international stage, diminish Zaref as an interlocutor with his U.S. counterparts. This is really bad for Muhammad Zerif, and you've got elements of the regime,

the hardliners in the regime, now turning on him. So, again, the idea that he was saying things that weren't true to somehow enhance his standing, I just think it's hard to see where those incentives lie. Final point, just for me, I think that David's exactly right. I mean, the Kerry-Zareef thing is interesting, and I think it should be thoroughly investigated. We should try to get to the bottom of it.

The far more important piece of this is what this says about the way the Iranian regime is run. It is the case that people like Zerif don't have power. They've never had power. They are doing the bidding of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC that's been the case for decades. And when you think back at what the regime was up to in the years leading up to the 2015 negotiations of the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, actively seeking to kill U.S. servicemen and women in combat areas, targeting U.S. interests and allied interests in the region, carrying out a campaign of terror not only against the U.S. and its allies, but throughout the region.

This is a regime that's dedicated to that kind of aggression and provocation as a matter of statecraft. And the Obama administration made a decision to decouple all of that behavior from the negotiations on the Iran deal. It's like knowing a bunch of horrible things that speak to the character of, you know, someone who would be a friend of yours and then saying, well, I'm going to trust him on everything else anyway. Didn't make any sense of that, and I think this gives further confirmation that it doesn't make sense for the administration to be as bullish on returning to that deal as they are now. Can I try one more attempt to convince Steve about my lying theory? So let me use the Trump administration. Donald Trump did incredibly controversial things that were deeply unpopular. And publicly, people were like, the president knows what he's doing. He's doing a great job. And privately, they were giving interviews to reporters saying, I had absolutely nothing to do. it. I didn't even know about it until after it happened. If those conversations

became public, it would diminish them in the eyes of the president. They would probably get fired by the president. But it doesn't mean that it wasn't serving their interest privately to diminish their own power or access, et cetera. And the things that they then said within that conversation as evidence that they had no power and access were in their interest, even if they wanted very much for it not to be ever said publicly, which in this three-hour tape, Zareef says multiple times how important it is for this never to become public, this conversation. So which things should we believe? In your Trump analogy, I think it's interesting. It's worth talking about. Which things should we believe the things that they said publicly when they

weren't telling the truth or the things that say they said privately when they were? Both are self-interested statements. Neither one is by itself any more believable than the other. They want to tell reporters that they have nothing to do with it and they'll make up evidence for that. Publicly, they'll say that they totally back the president and they'll make up evidence for that. It's not that one is more believable than the other. It's that neither is if your job and your track record is to lie. All right, we're moving on to the census. This week, we now know that we have 331,449,281 people who we have counted in the United States. That's up 7.4% from 2010, which is essentially tied for our lowest growth rate ever.

The last one, and by the way, we started doing this in 1790. So it's been a while. We've been counting people every 10 years. It's in the Constitution. The slowest growth rate was the 1930s decade. It was the Great Depression, and that was 7.3%. So like I said, essentially tied. But there were lots of surprises in the census.

people thought that Texas would probably get three new congressional seats. They only got two. Arizona got none. Some of the states that only lost one seat or didn't lose seats were really surprising. Basically, everyone who does polling or studies human populations in the United States found these numbers unusual. But the bottom line is this, the net gain. of Trump state electoral college votes is three,

and the net loss in Biden states is three. There will be some lawsuits. Andrew Cuomo in New York has said they're going to sue because Minnesota got to keep their congressional seat, and it was a difference of 89 people, which just goes to show you something. I won't make crass comments on this podcast. I thought that the morning dispatch had a great write-up of this,

But my question to each of you, and I'll start with you, David, the political ramifications of the census are one of the many things that come out of the census. Will the electoral college shift, and therefore the House seat shift, make a difference in the midterms, and will it make a difference in an upcoming presidential election? I would say,

given the narrowness of the House majority, that it's going to be very interesting to see the midterms. Now, you know, I was listening to Jonah and A.B. Stoddard on The Remnant. Notice I have plugged all of our dispatch podcasts in this podcast. I was listening to Jonah and A.B. And I was really interested that both Jonah and A.B. seemed to sort of view it as a foregone conclusion that the House, or nearly foregone conclusion, the House is gone for the Democrats in 2018.

I think this just makes that a little bit more likely. I'm also going to be really interested to see the redistricting decisions. Like how do they draw these, redraw these districts? If New York is going to be down one, I don't know. Maybe this is just rank speculation, but a lot of people are kind of impatient with AOC's outsized influence in the Democratic Party. There's possibility for some real mischief there. But yeah, when you have a house that's very narrowly divided and you're going into a midterm and one team red has gotten a little bit bigger and team blue's gotten a little bit smaller, yeah, it could be dispositive. I'm less convinced about the electoral college for the presidency, although it does, again, assuming these sort of realignments, the way they've been moving the last couple of years, assuming these realignments hold.

It does maybe slightly increase that Republican ability to win while losing the popular vote by even a little bit more than they've been able to lose the popular vote by and still win the presidency. But I am interested for 2018. If it's close, this could, or 2022, sorry, if it's close, have I been saying 2018 the whole time? You have. And I let it go the first time. And I just like, I couldn't, I couldn't stand by. What is wrong? Not on my watch.

Yeah. Gosh. 2022. It is, it's, if it's close in 2022, then obviously, yeah, this could make a big difference. Steve, Republicans have the final authority to draw congressional lines in 187 districts as compared to Democrats, which only have that authority in 75 districts. By the way, this is not including. you know, these nonpartisan commissions or states where the parties are split in terms of the House and Senate, stuff like that. But certainly Republicans have a huge advantage just in pure

gerrymandering control. I mean, can gerrymandering get worse? Yes. I think it can always get worse. It's one of these things that if we were more serious as a country about getting back on the right path, we would make a much higher priority than it is right now. I think Republicans clearly have the huge advantage that you suggest. The question, I think, and it's raised very well in this analysis from Aaron Blake at the Washington Post in the fix, is whether they shot themselves in the foot could have had a bigger advantage. Remember, the Trump administration pushed pretty hard not to include illegal immigrants in the counting. There's speculation, I think, speculation backed by some data, that this may have kept some, that effort was defeated.

There's evidence that that effort may have kept some illegal immigrants who would have otherwise reported for the census from actually reporting. But if you look at the places where that may have affected Republicans most, it was in states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas, which didn't gain an extra seat despite lots of projections for a long time suggesting that they would. So one of the questions, and I think we don't yet have a firm answer, but as we have demographers dive deeper into this, we'll get one, is whether that push could have had that effect and ultimately hurt Republicans. Setting aside the question of whether illegal immigrants should be counted or not counted, just as a practical matter, did it have that effect? I think it,

If I were betting on it, I would say the answer is probably yes. Sort of like losing two Georgia Senate seats. The winning just keeps on happening. Jonah, let's assume for a second that the numbers are absolutely correct. And some of the senses people are pushing back on this idea that the projections are more correct than the actual counting of the people. And they have, you know, some reasonable arguments. What does this mean for the future of the country that our growth rate is slowing down so much?

you know, a lot of people are pointing to young people, millennials, Jen, Ziers, basically having this either delayed adulthood or very, very long childhood. What does that mean for our politics, the future of the country, sort of these cultural things that you are such an expert on? I start from the proposition that babies are good and that babies are good for society and more babies are better than fewer babies. and I think our politics would be better if more Americans had more babies. I mean, I honestly, I think our society would be better.

I think it just, and I can defend that at great length. I used to work for Ben Wattenberg, who was like the most famous pro-natalist of the 70s and 80s. I can bust out my TFR talk if I need to. But I think, you know, I do think there needs to be a little pushback on this idea that seven percent growth over a decade is in and of itself calamitous. I mean, I can't do the math in my head, but I think if you, if you go at seven percent per decade, you know, it doesn't take you that long for the population to double. You know, seven percent is a, is a big number. And it's just a small number in the historical context for the United States. I think the

the real political impact of this, I mean, I think there's a political impact in all sorts of ways because the people who are having lots of babies are going to have more political influence in the United States than the people who aren't over time. And, you know, Mormons have above replacement level, you know, fertility. Some Hispanic groups have above replacement level of fertility. And so we're going to see them have more influence. And I think that actually will be net positive for America because the people who, um, See politics as something to protect families and large families and having kids, I think have better political ideas than people who think they just want to extract what they can from society over their lifetimes without, you know, contributing something back. There's worse politics.

But I think the real bite just comes from economics. The more people you have, the more you can at least delay paying off your, you get more you can delay the fiscal reckoning of retirement, of tens of, of millions of baby boomers and not far behind them, Gen Xers. And, uh, you know, the, the, the, the new deal retirement system that we still basically live with was set up when we had something like 13 workers per retiree. The original 65, uh, retirement age, which was, uh, we borrowed from Otto von Bismarck, um, was set because life expectancy was like 64. And you're like, okay, if you can make it to 65, you kind of deserve retirement.

And so I think the demographics of all this are more obviously affecting the debt crisis stuff that eventually will come to before more than anything else. Or at the very least, the cultural politics that this kind of thing creates is just impossible to predict. You know, Chris Darwold had a great piece on the dispatch website this week talking about how, you know, the census in particular. and this is something I've written about a bunch over the years, the census in particular is bought into racial categories that are increasingly irrelevant to the real-life experiences of most Americans or lots of Americans. And so much of the cultural politics that we have these days,

the left's notion of the coalition of the ascendant, you know, and that non-whites are going to take over is based on a bunch of assumptions of how Asians and Hispanics are going to self-ID and that, you know, it basically subscribes to a one-drop rule of racial, identity, which when it was a factor of Jim Crow, everyone thought was evil, but when it's, you know, padding the numbers of non-whites in America, it's seen as wonderful. I just think it's terrible in both circumstances. But those kind of cultural politics are really hard to predict

in a straight line projection from a bunch of census data. The math is really easy to predict about not being able to pay for the retirement of a bunch of people. And that's going to get really bad. If we have fewer immigrants and fewer young and fewer babies, we have fewer people to pay for this stuff, and maybe we will need robots to take care of the old people. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. Slash-y-anx. All right, David, last topic to you, depress us. Yes. So I don't know if you all have noticed this, but it seems like an awful lot of the right is believing that we are living in a time of unprecedented crisis. I like the way David Brooks put it in an article over the weekend. This is a short paragraph. What's happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swaths of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before. and they are in the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country

as they conceive it. I'm going to go to Jonah on this to start off, even though he just finished talking. Jonah, is this, is Brooks right that what we're seeing, that this is a phenomenon that we're seeing, or is this just something very online that we don't really need to worry about? do we actually have a cultural problem and even post-Trump with flight 93ism and

catastrophism and all of that um first of all i should say that if you listen to sarah i never truly finished talking so um but uh um you know in some ways i think the answer is it doesn't matter or both because it's it's sort of like uh i know It uses analogy about something else on the AB podcast, but it's kind of like the shadows in Plato's Cave, right? I mean, the only reality that we see as a common political culture on the right is the stuff we see, the some of the garbage that Tucker and other people are spewing on Fox, the stuff we see on Twitter, the stuff we see on Facebook, the echo chamber of right-wing talk radio and a lot of, I mean, you can name all the sources that we all know, right? And even if that's still only describes a tiny slice of the right that actually believe all of that stuff, that's the slice of the right that defines popular perceptions of the right and that educates and informs people on the right about what they're supposed to take seriously

in politics. And so it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then you add in the fact that since, you know, topic we've all talked about a lot on here, so many Republicans care more about their primaries than the general election because of polarization and gerrymandering all yada, yada, yada, the way you, the voices you care about if you only care about winning a primary are Fox and the other, you know, right-wing cable things and talk radio and the usual suspects who dominate on social media, and so the politicians bend their behavior to fit that very loud quotient of people

and all of the the signals that are sent out across the right to young people to hold people whatever is oh my gosh these very smart intelligent people who I've trusted all this time they're saying that it's the end of America they're saying that it's all this stuff and they convince them and so I agree it's louder and more intense and disconnected from reality in these echo chambers that we all pay too much attention to. But, you know, paraphrases Richard Weaver, echo chambers have consequences because if there's nobody pushing back against it, if there's no contrary voice saying, shut up, this is stupid. A lot of sincere, good and decent people think it must be true. And they internalize it. And then they act on it.

And that's how you get, like, it was the quote in Politico the other day that I just could that was jaw-dropping. It was some rally for some Trumpy rally in Ohio. And the reporter talked to this guy who said he's not getting vaccinated because he knows that the vaccine is going to kill people. And that's you think why Trump isn't telling people to get vaccinated because all the Dems are going to get vaccinated. And then 50 million of them will die.

And the righteous show inherit the nation again. And that's the kind of stuff that you say to like prepare. for genocide, right? And, of course, on the one hand, it's crazy. On the other hand, that stuff is bouncing around all out there. And the perception can become the reality really quickly. So it's a stumbling way of saying it's both, I guess.

So, Steve, you've been in the heart of conservative media for a long time. Just this past week, we've seen concert. I know. That's true. Very true. You've got the gray hairs and the thousand-yard stare. We've seen multiple, just fake reports racing around conservative media, everything from reports dealing with math curriculum in Virginia to immigrants being handed

out Kamala Harris' book as part of a welcome package. This comes after an election contest where there's just a firehold. of BS coming out of a lot of conservative media. Is this an institution that's irretrievably broken right now, this right-wing media ecosystem? Do you get any sense from inside of it that it's open to self-reflection and reform in any way? I mean, it's such a great question,

and I'll build on several of Jonas' points. Let me start with a preface by saying, It's not only the right-wing media, of course. I mean, we know this. We talk about the problems with mainstream media, too. USA Today had an episode this week where they allowed Stacey Abrams to go back and stealth edit a piece that she wrote before the boycotts without disclosing it. That's a problem. We've seen other problems in reporting in the mainstream media up front in the last several weeks.

But yes, this past several days has been particularly bad for the conservative media. I mean, I think to pick up on Jonah's point, stop and think about the conservative media outlets that you either follow or purposely ignore or know that exist and ask yourself how many of them have at the center of their enterprise seeking outrage. like how many stories that you read in the conservative media or that you see on conservative television is the primary point of the story to get the people on the receiving end of the news you should be outraged about this I mean would I be crazy if I said 75% I think not I think that's what you're getting you know obviously I will skip the the dispatch advertisement right in the podcast, but we're doing something different. I mean, we're, you know, some things are genuinely outrageous and we don't shy away from saying

that they are when they are. But, you know, we see our mission is to say, is this stuff true? Is this is what we're reporting? We're talking about true and does it sort of deepen our understanding. Certainly we won't do that all the time. I'm sure that we'll make mistakes and veer into outrage sometimes, but it's not at the core of what we do. And for so many of these outlets, That's what they do. And in this, I think, it leads exactly to what you're saying, David. I mean, people, you create this impression that everything is going to shit, that this is the country's irredeval, that these fights are existential, and you see people react and behave

accordingly. Nobody should be surprised about this. And it is literally the case in some of these outlets that that's the point. That is the point. It's not actually making sure that people understand more that we're better equipped to have these debates or have, you know, big policy debates with people we don't agree with and then work it out on the other end. It's just to make people outraged and to monetize that outrage. And that is what we're seeing. And I think, you know, Joe, I love the Richard Weaver paraphrase. Richard Weaver wrote a book called Ideas Have Consequences. Great book. Highly recommend it to anyone. your use of that, you know, sometimes just to let people in sort of on the dirty little secrets of these media organizations, since we're already talking about it, sometimes somebody says something and it's the perfect headline. And then you just say, okay, write a piece to fit the headline. That is the perfect example. You should just write a piece that's that's paraphrase,

using that paraphrase as the headline, just come up with the argument and we'll run it. Sarah, bring us home. I'll take it under consideration. Bring us home. Am I too Pollyanna-ish? I mean, I'm looking at a Supreme Court that looks to be set to extend Second Amendment rights. It looks to be set to extend First Amendment rights in both the free speech and free exercise clauses. American liberty in a lot of ways seems more secure than it was five, 10, 15, 20 years ago.

And yet, am I missing the story that's right in front of it? in my face that the Titanic has already hit the iceberg and we are just bailing right now to see how many people can get to the lifeboats. David, I think it depends whether you think this whole conversation is more like gravity or more like inflation. If it's like gravity, there's truth and it doesn't really matter whether you believe in it or not, you will fall down. But if it's like inflation, what you believe actually affects the outcome. And so if everyone thinks that things are bad, it affects whether, in fact, things are bad. And I think this is more like inflation than gravity. So, and that's the case, then yes, you're being far too polyanish about

the whole thing. Just because you think things are okay is not irrelevant. It's just not that relevant to the actual question of whether things are okay. So, yeah, that's my thought on that. You know, Sarah, that's actually a great analogy. I would change. inflation to a bank run, right? Sure. Like a bank, a run on a bank can be started with a lie. That's actually the easiest way to start a bank run is with a lie. And so you take like, Tucker the other night said that if you see someone, if you see

kids playing outside with face masks, you should call child services on them, right? Incredibly dumb idea, incredibly unconservative idea. profoundly unlibertarian idea. Let's assume, I mean, I don't know if it's going to happen, but let's assume it does happen somewhere or it happens in some number. And it creates a huge problem, right? Where someone's kids are, cops show up,

bad things happen, who knows? That then becomes a story. And then the reaction to that story becomes a story. And it's the inflationary, you know, bank run problem. you put out enough bovine excrement into the universe, it's going to metastasize somewhere in some way. And there's, I mean, I love the New York Post. I've been writing for the New York Post for a very long time.

I've been reading the New York Post for much longer. But if it's true what this reporter is alleging that she was told to write a false story, that's a really, that's a new level of badness that we've got. I mean, I know that the MAGRA crowd who loves to talk about corporate media and propaganda media and legacy media, whatever the term of this week is, about the New York Times and how they always lie and all that kind of stuff. Most of the time, newspapers and media outlets get stuff wrong. It's not from lying. It's a product of group think or something's too good to check.

That kind of thing. They get stuff wrong all the time. But like knowingly lie is a different thing. if the post legitimate seriously and I withhold judgment until I hear more this could be asked covering by this reporter but if the post straight up told a reporter to write a false story so that it could go into the the bloodstream of right wing media just for the clicks and stuff that's terrible and you know someone should be held to account for that and it's a terrible sign of how much worse things can get can I can I just had

Right on top of that. I mean, part of the problem is we do and have seen this in the mainstream media. And I think, you know, David, what you wrote about earlier this week or last week is an example of that. I mean, when you look at the shooting of the 16-year-old girl in Ohio and the 30-second clip that the New York Times distributed on Twitter, you know, was there an active lie in the 30 seconds that the New York Times put out? There wasn't. But they left out the fact that this young woman was lunging in. another young woman with a knife when she was shot. And it's very hard. I've given this a lot of thought. It is very hard for me to come up with a scenario where that happens by accident.

They had clips of the video. You had to make the edit. You decided to cut out the video of this young woman trying to attack another young woman with a knife. And then you put that out to the world from the largest media company in the entire universe. It's so irresponsible. And, you know, when you look at why people, particularly on the right, make the complaints that they do and demonstrate the skepticism they do and are open to the kinds of crazy that they sometimes get from right-wing media, this is where it starts. And it's hard to see a video like that and not think why would I believe this why would I see this and see what seems to have been a willful you know willful F attempt to to deceive and then believe stuff in the other parts of the

newspaper there's a great there's a great um Michael Crichton passage have we talked about this before the the gel man annesia amnesia effect and I'll read it very quickly. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and you see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often the article is so wrong, it actually presents the story backward, reversing cause and effect. I call these the wet streets cause rain stories. The paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement, the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page and you forget what you know. So much of this starts with the misreporting. And I think in cases like this,

the malintent of the mainstream media that it's helped drive us to this point. And I do think it's sort of a crisis of noise. Well, you know, one thing, as I'm not going to dispute one bit about, as I wrote in that piece, that some of the commentary and coverage surrounding that Columbus shooting was terrible in two ways, terrible one, and that it seemed to be deliberately downplaying some of the facts. And I could have had other examples. So there were subtle ways that did it. There were news stories that said, they showed a video that police said, showed a knife in the girl's hands. And then would later on say the video showed a knife on the ground. So wait a minute. Yeah. Hold on here. It's subtle, but it's meaningful. And then also was kind of a festival of ignorance about the use of force, about handguns, about stun guns, about, you know, people just don't know anything about guns. They don't know anything about nonlethal means of controlling individuals. And so they make all kinds of assumptions that the police could have acted one way that anyone who knows anything about this would say, no, that's probably not going to work. So there's the arrows of sins of commission and then sins of ignorance, get it.

I totally get it. But somehow the right wing and all of its outrage has built a media ecosystem that is worse. That is worse. You know, one of the things I thought you were going to say, Steve, is how much of what you're watching when it's right wing media is dedicated to outrage. I thought you were going to say how much of the core of the enterprise is dedicated to reporting as opposed to. and you know i think that's a key that's a key question for a lot of outlets there's some

really good reporters in conservative media there really are absolutely there are but the ecosystem of the whole is not dedicated to that and and one thing sarah i'd say in response to the inflation gravity point which i think is really good and the bank run analogy is really good is you know if you read my writing i am optimistic or at least i feel confident in some of the underlying realities of American life, like the state of American liberty, the state of the American economy, the state of American military strength. I'm alarmed, though, about alarmism. I do think that alarmism has an enormous ability to, as we've seen in the post-election period, and as we saw with Stop the Steel in January 6th, that it can create not just a bank run,

it can create a run on the capital. We saw that happen. And so, you know, this alarmism, this Flight 93ism is deeply threatening. It is deeply disturbing. And so, you know, in that sense, I'm not a Pollyanna. I know what we're dealing with. But one of the antidotes to this alarmism is hopefully reality. And madam, what does that giant tortoise sit on? Why, sir, it's no use. It's turtles all the way down. And with that, listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you happen to listen to this podcast, the second that it posts, we have a dispatch live tonight. But if you're listening to it in a couple days, if you are a member, we would love to have you join us for our next dispatch live. And we're going to cover Biden's speech tonight. A nice perk for our members who we love and adore and just send them kisses through the podcast. This episode, is brought to you by This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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