The Dispatch Podcast - The Lamest Showman on Earth | Roundtable

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Steve Hayes is joined by Kevin Williamson, Jonah Goldberg, and Mike Warren to discuss the gathering of generals at Quantico earlier this week, debate who is to blame for the government shutdown, and dive into the controversy surrounding a comedic festival in Saudi Arabia. The Agenda:—Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's performance—Blame the Democrats?—Kevin and Newt Gingrich are kindred spirits—Saudi Arabia: just for laughs?—NWYT: Grilled cheese and comfort foods 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

Introducing Dispatch Energy. The Dispatch's newest weekly newsletter diving into the politics, policy, and innovation shaping America's energy future, presented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Featuring a rotating roster of contributors who are experts in their respective fields. Each edition will feature incisive analysis on everything from oil and gas and permitting regulations to renewables, climate, and the grid. Head to the dispatch.com slash energy to sign up. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we'll discuss the odd made-for-TV military show featuring Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth and President Donald Trump. Also, the government shutdown is here. How much does it matter? A comedy controversy, a Saudi laugh fest, and a comedian battle royale. And finally, for not worth your time, with the beginning of flu season upon us, what were the go-to feel-better foods our panelists ate when they were feeling sick as kids. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues,

Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Kevin Williamson. Let's dive right in. Gentlemen, welcome to this week's dispatch podcast. I want to start by talking about this made-for-TV military show that we saw earlier this week at Quantico, just outside of Washington, D.C. We first had a speech from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He would ask us to call him Secretary of War. And then we heard from President Trump for more than an hour. I want to start with a comment

from our colleague Nick Catojillo, who wrote about this in his newsletter yesterday, summarizing the whole thing and whether it was more cringy or more menacing. Nick writes, I'm pleased to report that the assembly was somewhat more cringy than it was menacing, a case of two men who radiate neurosis about their own toughness, lecturing a room full of actual tough guys about how to be tough. It had the feel of Pop Warner players scolding a group of NFL linebackers about the importance of hustle. If you weren't paying close attention, you might have even missed the menacing part. arts. The audience, Nick refers to, were the top military brass, uniformed military brass,

assembled in this auditorium to hear from the Secretary of Defense and the president, traveled from throughout the world to be there. Let me start first with Pete Hegseth and you, Kevin. As I listened to Hagseth, part of me liked what he was saying. If I could sort of strip away the theatrics and the showmanship. It was kind of Tony Robbins meets Sergeant Slaughter affect to him. Some of what he was saying, I think, was, you know, not only welcome but overdue. The U.S. military shouldn't be a place for social experimentation. The purpose of the military is, in fact, to win wars and to win them decisively. That's what we want from our uniform military. And it probably is time.

to reverse some of the silliness that we've seen over the past several years. At the same time, he went well behind that and invoked many of the kinds of things that we've heard from Pete Hegseth before, the kinds of things he has written about in his book, and the kinds of things he knows, as our colleague Michael Warren wrote for the website this week, the kinds of things he knows will please the commander-in-chief. Kevin, what did you make of Pete Hegseth and his speech and why he said the things he said? Well, I think the key to understanding Pete Hegseth is to have a deep appreciation for the fact that he's a dork. You know, I did eight years in school newspapers between high school and college. I know a dork when I see one, and Pete Hegseth is a dork.

He's a guy who, as you say, has obviously got some real issues about his own masculinity and his coolness and toughness and all that. So he brings all these generals and admirals back to lecture them about, among other things, dress standards and grooming standards in the military, as though these guys wouldn't just implement whatever orders they got on this stuff to do it. Well, because he's Pete Hegstaff. He does it while violating the one presentation standard that's actually written into federal law, which is, of course, the flag code. There's no, there's no penalty for violating, but it is a federal law, and you are not supposed to wear the flag as a garment. He has these dorky suits with the flag lining on the inside, and you're specifically not supposed to use it as a handkerchief,

which Pete Hexeth does every day. He's got that, you know, little flag pocket square he wears every day. So I'll start believing that he believes this stuff seriously when he starts acting like he believed it seriously. But I really don't believe we needed to pull these guys back in to lecture them about fitness levels for senior military officers and grooming standards and those sorts of things. But for guys like this, this kind of superficial, you know, shallow presentational stuff is really what it's all about. And it's kind of a tough guy way of talking. If you don't mind me, I know you said you wanted to undo the dramatic and theater stuff, but I'm going to put my theater hat on and put it back in for a second. You know,

setting the stage up like the opening scene of Patton, of course, was not accidental. This is his whole thing is making these kinds of after-school special television, you know, kind of statements about various sorts of things like this. And the kind of performative aspect of this is really dorky. So if he had wanted to change policies about things like DEI in the, in the, military, or grooming standards, or whatever else, or any of these other things that they might want to actually change policies on, they can do that. You know, some of these things they can do on their own, some of them have to go to Congress to do. And it's not like there's going to be some tsunami of outrage and pushback from the generals if they say, hey, we're going to make sure

that we use, you know, kind of old-fashioned, you know, standards for grooming and presentation and things like that. Although I will note, for the record, you talked about, you know, we don't have these, you know, talking about beards specifically, which I know is a sort of subject on this podcast for some of us. But you said, you know, we don't have Nordic pagans fighting in our military. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure that we do. But that aside, particularly in the Marine Corps. But that aside, we've had Sikhs fighting in the American military since at least 1914. And they went to war wearing turbans and beards. And this is something that's been part of the Army for a long, long time. And they are famously great soldiers, particularly

in World War II. When the Japanese tried to invade India through Burma, and they ran into the Sikh infantry, they got massacred, and the last thing a lot of them saw was beards and turbans come in their way. I have a theory about this type of person, which is what Pete Heggseth does at night is he pours himself a glass of cheap scotch, like Chivas Regal or something like that, and he watches either Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, Patton, or Boiliver. There's like three movies that they just sort of watch over and over again, and they talk like characters from these movies, because they think that's what tough guys talk like. And Anthony Scaramucci was the great example of this, where he talked like he was auditioning for like a knockoff community college

performance of Glengarry, Glenn Ross. And but all these guys talk that way. It's got to be galling for the generals to sit there and be condescended to in that way by Donald Trump, of all people, who not only is a draft dodger, which has specifically got to be offensive to them, but it's also such an obvious manifest physical coward. You know, this is not a guy who's a tough guy. This is a guy whose idea of, like, you know, sort of kinetic action, it's golf. And he's not even particularly good at that, and he cheats at it. So I imagine these guys were exerting some real manful effort to keep their eyes from

rolling back in their heads so far that they fell out of their chairs. You know, it was an embarrassing spectacle for everyone involved. And most embarrassing, I think, for the officers who were there and having to say to themselves, we work for these guys, this former game show host and this knockoff Fox News, you know, Saturday morning guy. Yeah, I mean, he was in the Army at one point, sure. And he had a perfectly honorable career there as far as I understand it. But it's not like Pete Hegseth is some guy who had some, you know,

great, you know, metal of valor, uh, military career or something like that. You're kind of an average soldier with a, you know, nice background in a elite education and all that stuff. But he wasn't, you know, swinging on ropes with a booey knife in his teeth and, uh, and, you know, taking out machine gun nest single-handedly. Uh, he wasn't, um, anything like that. So, Mike, to Kevin's point about Higgs'est affect and the way that he trained, the movies that he may have, have watched to, to put on the sort of, tough guy bravado on stage, your piece this week suggests that that's all on purpose and that while obviously a lot of people beyond the Beltway and beyond the White House were watching

the speech and have commented on it, beyond the people in the room, he was talking to one person or trying to impress one person and one person in particular. And in that case, the kind of training that Kevin imagines Pete Hague Seth might have undertaken and would be beneficial, no, because that's really one of the reasons that we know Trump picked him. He looks good. He looks like a tough guy. Trump said it himself in his speech, you know, central casting. That's his mantra about whether somebody belongs in a job or not. I mean, it's no great insight to say that somebody who works for Donald Trump at a cabinet level or below that their audience, whenever they say anything

or do anything publicly is Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone, they, their entire, you know, position and career is, is in his hands. But it, it did strike me watching, and I, and I watched in real time the entire speech, the entire gap of time as these 800 plus general and flag officers are sitting in this auditorium in Quantico, it was like a good hour before Trump showed up. It was a little early because it was his, you know, he was supposed to speak before nine. and that's a little early in the morning for Trump. But he did get there.

He started talking about 9-10. And so it was like a good three and a half hours that these generals were sitting there. And I was sitting in the comfort of my house. And it was uncomfortable. And so I can't imagine what these extremely important... Have you thought about redecorating? I mean, it was uncomfortable for you in your own house. Maybe that's the problem.

I'm going to look into, yeah, some new furniture. But just sitting through all of that as somebody, with, you know, real responsibilities as these officers did. And to hear something that really wasn't for them, I said at my piece, you know, it really could have been an email, which is kind of a kind of a joke, but it is true. I mean, Kevin, you're, is right about that, right? These are directives that could have been delivered in all sorts of ways. So my question is, what's the point?

Well, the point is really for the show, for the performance, and for Donald Trump. to sort of feel as if, you know, he and I guess Pete Heggseth and through Pete Heggseth, he, Donald Trump, can sort of command all of these very important people to show up and listen to them. I would say the one thing I've been thinking about, and I didn't write about it, but I've been sort of noodling in my head is the nature of Hegseth's kind of talking down. to these generals who served in the same wars that he did, Iraq and Afghanistan, and really served in ways that got them to the positions that they are in now, in lots of combat positions. What is sort of the mindset going into this? And I do think there's a kind of microcosm of the

way Trump operates, which is Pete Hegsef thinks of himself as a grunt. And he's sort of speaking to the to the officers, maybe the way he imagines the grunts wishes, and probably truly the way some grunts wish they could speak to their officers, you know, and, oh, your PT standards, your grooming standards, well, how about everybody follows those? But I think it's kind of a caricature of the way that, the way that sort of officer and enlisted relationships are. But it does, it is a sort of version of the way that I think Donald Trump, an elite himself, you know, Ivy League educated you know, born into wealth and having wealth

sort of thinks of himself as being a tribune for the people against the elites of Washington. In some ways, it's true, but it's a kind of a farcical a farcical scene. That was what was going through my mind

this entire time. Hexeth thinks he's speaking truth to power here. One just quick aside, you started off saying that he looks like a tough guy. I don't think that's actually true. I think he looks like a middle-aged, Ivy League CrossFit dork, which as it turns out is what he is. When he talks about these things, he still positions himself sometimes as if he were a Fox News

host. It's for Pete Heg-Seth against the elites. I think your point, Mike, is a good one, sort of the grunts speaking to their commanding officers. And that, you hear that throughout, and at one point in the course of his discussing, you know, not focusing as much on minor mistakes that people have made that senior officers have made, he's, you know, he's a really, on this sense that everything is seen as toxic now in the U.S. military because it's also woke and it's all so politically correct. And he said, if that makes me toxic saying that, then so be it, sort of tough guy standing up. But Jonah, take everything that Mike and Kevin have said about the performative stuff, about sort of the way that he messaged what he had to say. But isn't it really

the case that some of what he said is refreshing, that we actually do want this. Like, as I say, I listened to it and I found myself nodding along at some of the corrective things that he was prescribing. Even if I didn't like the way that he said it and I didn't like the flashy stuff and there were the cringy, there was just one cringy moment. I was telling a friend about this who follows the news sort of casually. And I was just describing this moment where Hegseth sort of looks direct to the camera and kind of points his finger in a menacing way and talks about how the new policy of Donald Trump is F-A-F-O. He says, to our enemies, F-A-F-O, and kind of waits for this applause that never comes.

And it was probably the cringiest moment in a speechful of cringy moments on the style. F-A-F-O, by the way, stands for F-A-R-R-Round and Find Out for... I mean, that doesn't actually stand for... around and find out. As much as we're devoted to explanatory journalism year, I'm not going to explain into the details of what it means, but I appreciate your attempt at that and keeping it clean. But, John, doesn't he have a point on some of the substantive stuff? Isn't it time that we end all this experimentation and the silliness that we've seen over the past decade? So yes and no. I talked to, I've been in the CNN Green Room a bunch for the last couple days,

and I talked to a bunch of former military people, and they said, and the military people that they talk to said, you know, there's stuff in there that they're welcome to hear because a lot of the stuff did go too far. I go back, again, it's not about the military, but I remember the head of NASA in the Obama administration who was asked what the chief mission of NASA was, and it was all this stuff about, I don't want to be unfair, but it was something like communicating to people of color that STEM professions are valuable and that NASA is inclusive. I mean, there was something like that.

And it's like, what about like that whole space exploration thing? Isn't that sort of your mission? And there is a similar kind of stuff going. There has been similar kind of stuff going on in the military. And pushing back on that is good. My problem with it is it was the political incentives that had him do this more than anything else than the sort of merits. I'm not saying he doesn't believe it, but, you know, he was, he's sort of on the outs.

He's been sort of on the outs inside the administration, and he was trying to get back in the good graces of Donald Trump. And so he decided to do this thing that was a massive waste of resources. I learned from John Podorts the other day that apparently the NPR, you know, upfront report in advance of this gathering said that, you know, this has never happened before. and the only historical parallel is to, when Hitler convened generals in 1935 and made them swear loyalty to him instead of to the Republic or the Constitution, there's been a lot of hysteria about this that I think was unwarranted. I have no intrinsic problem with, like, getting a bunch of generals together in a room to have a meeting. If you talk to a normal Americans and you said, do you assume that the general?

generals get together once a year to have a big meeting, they say, sure. I mean, that's the way it works in industry. I mean, whatever. The problem is, is that the reason for doing this was so shabby is to have a televised thing where, like, half the time I expected Pete Hegseth to say, and if you order in the next 10 minutes, you get a second sham wow for free. And on the other hand, look, I mean, it's sort of like my point I've been making for 30 years now about political correctness or now wokeness or whatever. There's some irreducible part. of political correctness that is entirely defensible, right? This idea of treating people with respect, of showing good manners, of using the terms

for people that they want to be called, that's just good manners, right? It's the other pick your percentage, 90, 85, 75 percent of it that gets all crazy and turns into Orwellian and stuff. And there's a lot of stuff that the military, which is an institution that has been better at doing real diversity stuff than any other institution in American life by far. The idea that all of it was bad is sort of ridiculous. I was talking to someone whose spouse is a senior NCO doing like cyber intel stuff in the military. They were getting drenched with competing different memos about what all these new policies were going to mean.

You know, part of the, part of the objection was, like, I get. wanting people to do more PT, right, physical, you know, physical training, right, you know, working out and being able to do push-ups and stuff. But, you know, a lot of the guys in, like, the cyber command space, they're computer dorks who play Dungeons and Dragons at night. I mean, that's what this person was saying to me about their spouses, you know, the world that they live in. If you, if, let's put it this way, if you required, if Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and

all those guys required tomorrow that everybody who codes in Silicon Valley be able to be able to do 10 pull-ups, the values of those companies would plummet, right? And the idea that you have to have, like, a manly man being a drone operator in Scottsdale, Arizona is sort of ridiculous. And so it kind of depends on how this stuff is implemented. It sounds super macho. And super across the board. I mean, he didn't, he didn't caveat it with any of those exceptions. I mean, it sounds like this is the way that things are going to be for everybody, everywhere. There are people in the military who feel, I'm not saying they're right. I'm not saying excess of the racist or any of that kind of stuff. But, you know, a big part of the shaving thing is

going to disproportionately impact African-American soldiers or military because they get ingrown hair. It's a condition that disproportionately affects people with that kind of hair. And they get dispensation not to shave as often because they don't want the irritation and that kind of stuff. It is going to be perceived by a lot of those people as disparate impact on them that I'm not sure is worth the ROI right of having everybody perfectly clean shame and so doing this stuff the way he did it I can agree with a lot of the things that they said I'm certainly very sympathetic to the idea that the physical standards for people you know for the 10th mountain division that is out there you know on the front line that they have to be able to hit certain physical standards that

a lot of women, maybe all women, are going to fall short of, and I'm not sure that the ROI on having the one incredibly physically impressive woman in one of those units is worth the problems of unit cohesion that comes with that. So, like, I think those are all legitimate conversations. I just don't think it was grounded in like a sincere approach to the policy issues. I mean, there are people talking beforehand about how this is so important because we're going to have the quadrenial defense review and it's going to be this big important announcement. Instead, it was sort of of a Fox and Friends special to impress Donald Trump that just wasn't worth bringing all those people together and making them sit there.

Some people think I was sympathetic to this, that it was about Heggseth running for president in 2028, and this is sort of getting on the radar. Maybe. Some people think it was just purely trying to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, probably. But part of it is also that he's not a really great bureaucrat. guy doesn't really know how to run an institution. I mean, when they first appointed him, I remember saying on this podcast, look, about 80% of the job of Secretary of Defense is figuring out how to get 10,000 pallets of

toilet paper from St. Louis to Dubai in 24 hours. There's an enormous amount of like manpower and logistic stuff. He doesn't know how to do any of that kind of thing. He doesn't know how to run a bureaucracy, but he knows how to look sharp and do an infomercial kind of thing that seems like it's all raw, raw, you know, you know, America, F. Yeah, kind of stuff. And so he was leaning into his competency at a point where he is politically on the ropes inside the administration. It's one thing. It's also a solution in search of a problem. You know, all this talk about lethality and all that. Even if you think that

the social justice stuff and the alleged wokenness in the military is way out of hand, the American military does not have a lethality problem. Conventional forces anywhere in the world that have stood up in the field in a firefight with the U.S. military are all dead. They are corpses. I mean, if you think about one of the reasons there's so much terrorism and unconventional warfare tactics in the world is because no one's want to fight against the U.S. military in 35 years or 40 years or something like that. They are simply unstoppable. I know that it used to be true, just to back up Kevin's point. I know it was true is at least of 10 years ago when an Air Force colonel told me this that the last time an American soldier

was killed by an enemy aircraft was like 1966. Like, it just, it doesn't happen very much. Whatever problems the American military has, whether it's, you know, logistics or requisitions or any of the rest of that stuff, lethality is just not one of them. They're super good at killing people. The only reason we lose wars for political reasons, because the American people don't have the kind of attention span and commitment to long-term projects that it would take to do nation-building in Iraq or something like that. But it ain't because we don't have soldiers and military units to go out there and do whatever we ask them to anywhere in the world and basically treat every military they've encountered in my lifetime as though it were, you know, a Cub Scout troop from Topeka. All right.

We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. Halloween is on Disney Plus. Hello. So you can feel a little fear. What's this? Well. Or a little more fear. I see dead people.

Or a lot of fear. Mom. Or you can get completely terrified. Choose wisely with Halloween on Disney Plus. Introducing Dispatch Energy. The Dispatch's newest weekly newsletter diving into the politics, policy, and innovation shaping America's energy future.

presented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Featuring a rotating roster of contributors who are experts in their respective fields, each edition will feature incisive analysis on everything from oil and gas and permitting regulations to renewables, climate, and the grid. Head to the dispatch.com slash energy to sign up. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together, in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires

zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in.

So I want to get to a discussion of the function, the purpose of the U.S. military, which we're touching on sort of lightly here. But I want to go first to Trump. So Donald Trump, as Mike pointed out, showed up a little late. The uniformed military gathered there, had to wait on the president for a while. And when he showed up, he gave what I would describe as a mostly disjointed rambling speech. she felt like part teleprompter, part impromptu, kind of a lot like the ones that he gives at his political rallies. He said a lot of things that weren't important, sort of throw away, a few things that might

have rub people the wrong way, things that you wouldn't have heard from other commanders and chief. But then he said some things that would be striking coming from any commander in chief, but I would submit are alarming coming from this commander in chief. And I want to just read, or a couple of the things that Donald Trump said. He said, quote, this is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. Trump said, describing his desire to use the U.S. military domestically. And he said to those gathered, it won't get out of control once you're involved at all.

Trump also said that he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the U.S., quote, should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. As I said, if this were just theoretical, it would be, I would say, concerning from any president, whether it was Barack Obama who said it or George W. Bush who said it. But it's not theoretical. And we know from some of the things that Donald Trump has done in the past, proposed in the past, and is currently doing right now that he means this. This isn't hypothetical. This is not theoretical. Donald Trump wants to do this. I think we can say after listening to speech yesterday. He intends to do this. Former Trump defense secretary, Mark Esper, who served at the end of the first Trump term, talked about how seriously we should take Donald Trump when he says these things and told 60 minutes in an interview that Trump once said to him

asking Esper to use the U.S. military to quell the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, quote, can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something? And Esper then added for context, he's suggesting that that's what we should do, that we should bring in the troops and just shoot the protesters. Donald Trump said this in his speech at Quantico. We currently have the U.S. military effectively policing cities across the country with Donald Trump promising to send them to more cities across the country. And I'm struck by the lack of alarm about this.

You know, Joan, I'll go back to you on this. Am I just joining the hysteria here? Am I just overreacting? Because I'm pretty freaking alarmed at that. I think that's a really bad thing. Yes, I think it's alarming. How alarming I think people can debate. One of the things in a weird way in the Trump administration's favor,

is that it is so obvious that there was zero coordination or planning about what Trump was going to say after Hegg Seth spoke, right? I mean, there's no way a bunch of people sat in the room and said, okay, then let's get to the part about how the paper in the Oval Office isn't good anymore. And I don't want to use cheap paper. Let's use the really good paper, right? Which was actually something. The reason you say that is because that is something that Donald Trump complained about in his life. Yeah, we went on for about it for a while. And he mentioned gold and all these kinds of things.

And so a serious White House, regardless of ideology, regardless of whether I agree with them or not, Republican Democrat, serious people would have gotten together and used this speech to a bunch of the highest ranking military people in the country, in the world, for America purposes, because so from all over the place, and said, let's, what is the message we're trying to send both to these people and to the, to the American public and to the world and all this kind of stuff? And about 85% of the crap that was in Trump speech would have been cut out. And one of the things that you wouldn't have done is, I put it to you, is you wouldn't have had the Secretary of War, rah, rah, rah, chest, um, say, lethality is our calling card over and over again and talk about killing people as if it's a great and honorable thing to do, which I, don't get me wrong. There's a argument that militaries should have people who think that way, and that's fine. Right. And I want the, I take Kevin's point very well. It's a good thing that the military is lethal. But then have the President of the United States, the commander in chief, get in front of these guys and say, and oh, by the way, we just talked about the lethality being the focus of our military. We're now going to train people in American cities. I mean, those things are in profound tension.

And if it was deliberate, then it would be even more concerning. But I don't think it was deliberate. I think it was just sort of stupid riffing. stuff. But let me go, let me come back at you on that specifically because I think you're right. I take your point. Who knows why Donald Trump says the things he says most of the time, right? It may not have been deliberate, may not have been planned, made out have been in the teleprompter. But it's something he has said consistently. Before the 2024 election, he gave an interview to our former colleague at Fox News, Maria Barter Romo. And he said, quote, I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think they're the, and I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.

So you have this consistent record of Donald Trump saying, we should go after left-wingers with the U.S. military. That's what's alarming. No? Yeah, no, it's worse than that because in his talk, you said, in some ways, the enemy within is, worse because they don't wear uniforms, so they're harder to find, right? Which is historically the argument I would make about terrorists, right? Like the rules of engagement with terrorists are laxer precisely because they don't follow the rules of war because the rules of war require you wear a uniform and conduct yourself in certain ways. He is basically making the argument

that these people are terrorists and therefore not even protected by the rules of law, Rules of War, never mind like the Posse Cometatis Act or the Constitution or anything. It's incredibly irresponsible. I think it's dangerous. I also think there's very few people in that room that would act on his impulses. And so the last thing I wanted to say about the Trump thing is I only had two points. One was the Lethality, American Cities thing. But then the second point is it was remarkable how badly that speech seemed

to go over. It's sort of like, you know, like Trump feeds off of audiences' positive feedback. And the fact that there was no applause, there was no cheers, there was no call and response of any kind, it's sort of like Superman being deprived of the yellow sun, right? And it was just this sort of droning on thing that I think the optics of it, if you actually watch this thing, you did not come away with this perception of this very strong guy. He's kind of slurring his speech, it sounded like. And he seemed very old. And the contrast with Heggseth, I'm sure he's only being told it was great and it was awesome. And I'm sure he's

only reading the press that says it was great and awesome. But I don't think this actually checked boxes that he wanted to check with this thing. No. So, Kevin, actually, that was a point that I was going to make. Watching Trump deliver this speech, you know, whatever you think of Donald Trump's speeches that he's been giving, you know, in the political context for the past decade, this one was worse, I think. He seemed off. And I'm not somebody who typically buys the argument that you hear from some Trump critics that, you know, he was all fine before and this, we're just now seeing a new Donald Trump and the new Donald Trump is worse somehow. I think he's the same guy. I think he's always been the same guy. But he really was.

slurring his words. He will, it was, I think, in some ways, more incoherent than he is at most of his rally speeches or that he is at his press conferences. And for me, it was precisely that combination. The fact that he seemed so off and it was so rambling. And I mean, the speech that he gave last week at the UN General Assembly had some of those same characteristics, but to me looked like the Gettysburg Address compared to this thing. And it was, that in combination with what he's saying about deploying U.S. military to cities to go after the enemy within that makes it particularly scary. And I'm just, I guess maybe I'm alarmed in part because I look around and other people don't see as alarmed, seem as alarmed as I am. And

I'm always open to the possibility that I'm overreacting or that I am part of the hysteria choir that Jonah's talking about, but it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels like this should be an alarming moment and this should matter more to people than it seems to. Yeah, I don't want to get involved in policing Jonah's language here, but I think when Trump goes on, when Trump goes on and on about things, we're going to have to come up with a verb different from droning because that's about to become ambiguous, I think. So, okay, two points. One is that no one's allowed to be shocked. I absolutely hereby forbid anyone in the world to be shocked by this. Donald Trump tried to overthrow the U.S. government the last time he was in power.

No one's allowed to be shocked by the fact that he's an authoritarian creep. Secondly, if you want to understand his sort of context, you know, Trump calls himself a nationalist and the movement that he leads. They call themselves nationalists, but they're a really weird kind of nationalist because their enemies are all in New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Los Angeles, and their friends are all in Ankara and Budapest and Beijing and Riyadh. They're a very, very peculiar kind of nationalist. Trump's basic politics, his basic mode of politics and the mode of politics of his followers

is driven by the hatred of Americans. Certain Americans, sure, a majority of them, the ones who live in the cities where the people are and the states where the people are and where the GDP happens and all that stuff. Trump is weirdly enough and perverse thing enough and he is a perverse guy. the most anti-American politician of our generation, by a long shot. There's not a close second. And he is the Make America Great Again, Make America First guy, but he is the most anti-American politician in our country.

And the movement that he leads hates everything about this country that works, the universities, the businesses, the Ivy League, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the cities, all of it. Their view of paradise is one in which everyone in America has been reduced to working as truck stop attendants and cotton farmers in mule shoe texas which is the only legitimate authentic kind of american life they can they can imagine trump did sound a little a little more incoherent than usual i think on that could be just decline he is about to be 80 years old after all and he's not exactly you know peak physical specimen i would say but we should never ever ever underestimate the fact that this man is profoundly lazy and extraordinarily stupid

and he does not do his homework. He doesn't prepare for these things. He just shows up and starts riffing and doing his like, you know, his little comedy act. And that's just what he does. He's a guy who's just been sort of winging it through the presidency. And because we live in an unsurious country full of unsurious people who have not had a real national challenge in a long, long time to focus them. He gets away with it because he's entertaining because he's a game show host. Yeah, let me, Mike, we got to move on because we have two other topics to get to. But I want to make just an observation as we wrap up this topic, sort of moderator privilege. The other thing that struck me about the two, almost two and a half hours of rhetoric that we heard from the commander-in-chief and his secretary of defense was how little it was focused on our actual enemies. When the U.S. military exists to protect us from external enemies to fight wars for people who present in countries who present. and genuine threats to the American populace. And, you know, Donald Trump mentioned Vladimir Putin in passing. There were sort of broad and vague discussions about enemies and threats,

but there really wasn't much focused attention on the actual enemies that the United States is facing and the role that the U.S. military ought to play in keeping us safe from those threats. I thought it was a pretty significant reveal in. two and a half hours of rhetoric. Okay, we're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no, no contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS.

Here's why saying yes to making the switch and getting premium wireless for $15 a month is a great step. With Mint Mobile, plans start at just $15 a month, all with high-speed data, plus unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network, and there's no need for you to buy a new device. Simply bring your own phone, keep your number, and start saving right away. If I needed this product, there would be plenty of good reasons that I've already mentioned to go for it thanks to its many great features and benefits. Ready to say yes to saying no, make the switch at mintmobile.com slash dispatch. That's mintmobile.com slash dispatch. Upfront

Payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 per month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow to above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra. Seament Mobile for details. I'm Chris Hadfield. I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth. Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world. Real conversations with real people who are shaping the future.

of energy. No politics, no empty talk, just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome and the possibilities that lie ahead. This is on energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Before we return to the roundtable, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere here at the dispatch. This week on the remnant, Jonah Goldberg speaks with parenting guru and dispatch contributor, Emily Oster, to discuss Tylenol and autism, the allure of trash. bad wives and the battle over household divisions of labor. I don't think Jonah will mind me sharing what he posted in Slack after he finished recording this episode.

BTW, he wrote. I love Emily Oster. She's very cool. Had a great time recording with her. That's high praise from someone like Jonah not typically inclined to give it out. I hope you'll give this episode a listen. Search for the remnant in your podcast app and hit the follow button. Now let's jump back into the conversation.

When I sent this topic to the panel as part of the things I wanted to discuss today, I got all sorts of, especially from Jonah, who loves to use emojis. I got all sorts of happy emojis, fire emojis, go America emojis. Okay, that didn't really happen. I literally don't know what the topic is going to be. The topic is the shutdown, the government shutdown. We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about this, but I do think it's worth at least. Noting and going around quickly once, the government shut down at midnight Wednesday, October 1st, Republicans and Democrats complained about each other a lot. They pointed fingers at one another. They blamed one another. They raced to the cameras to make their cases that each of the others was at fault.

Mike, can you give us just a general understanding of why the government shut down? you something wrong, Steve. Did I, did I offend you in some way that I was given this task? You always, you always offend me in some way. I'm doing my job then. All right. So, you set it up pretty much what most people need to know, right? The government ran out of money because, ran out of, you know, appropriated by Congress funding because the last continuing resolution, again, not actual appropriations, but another big giant bill. that kept the government open at basically current, you know, levels ended. It was passed in March.

It ended at the end of September, and neither party could come to an agreement. You may be wondering why Republicans have both the Senate and the House and the White House. Why Republicans couldn't do it? Well, it all comes down to the Senate, and the Republicans have a majority in the Senate. They don't have a supermajority in the Senate. So they need Democrats on board. Democratic senators have been holding up a Republican proposal to continue funding the government for a couple of more months.

And it seems to boil down to a health care debate. It boils down to extending these certain subsidies under what we call Obamacare to extend those. Republicans were not willing to extend those. those in their funding. And so Democrats sort of have used this as, as a point to say, you know, this is our line in the sand. If you want our support, you know, people are starting to go through open enrollment for

health insurance for 2026. It's like I'm boring myself just talking about it. But this is, I mean, these are the stakes. These are the stakes that. You're boring alone. No, this is a good explanation. Like, this stuff does, it matters on a certain. I think your explanation is a good one. Look, it matters in the sense that, you know, you're talking

about real money that affects real people. But the sort of, when you think about some of these past shutdown fights, the one that I remember most clearly covering myself as 2013 when Ted Cruz, then a new senator from the state of Texas, declared that a shutdown could stop the implementation of Obamacare. It didn't. He knew. He knew. it didn't. The government shut down anyway. Republicans got a bunch of the blame and eventually Republicans caved and the government was funded after that. Democrats seem to be sort of taking a page from the Republican kind of Tea Party era playbook, which makes me wonder sort of who's in charge up there, like who looked at how Republicans did during the Tea Party era when it comes to shutdowns and

said, yeah, we got to run that. We got to run that. But let me jump in. Let me jump in in in their defense. So I think, and I was going to ask this question, Kevin, I'll come to you next. If you look back at the 2013 shutdown, one of the reasons for it, I mean, much of the reason for it was because you had a couple of people who wanted to do performative politics and wanted to make a name for themselves, tech crews in particular. And this was the vehicle for doing that. The other reason, to the extent that any of this thinking was strategic, and I do think some of it was, I was reporting on it at the same time, I was talking to a lot of the people who were involved in the shutdown. And what they would say back then in terms of strategy was, look, Obamacare is really unpopular. Barack Obama is not terribly popular.

What we're doing here is making abundantly clear to the American people that we are putting everything behind stopping Obamacare. Of course, we understand that Barack Obama is not going to do any. thing that weakens Obamacare. It's called Obamacare. But what we are doing for people who don't pay attention to every twist and turn of American politics and follow these, you know, detailed policy fights is we are making abundantly clear that we Republicans are not on board with Obamacare. And we want to make sure that Democrats are the ones who are blamed. And if you look actually at how Republicans performed in 2014 in those midterm elections, I mean, you can make an argument that they could have done better. But it wasn't the catastrophe.

that many political prognosticators said, Rogans did pretty well in 2014. I get the sense in listening to some Democrats talk about what they're doing now. They're just trying to throw it on a marker and say, like, look, this guy's president. He's unpopular. A lot of the things he's advocating are unpopular. And we want to be seen as the party that is not Donald Trump. And nothing does that better than to have this high profile fight and say he wants to do these things. He wants to continue to cut Medicaid. He wants to cut these subsidies, et cetera, et cetera. And we

oppose that, and we're not him. Why couldn't that strategy work? I think it could work, which is part of what concerns me. I actually think that the lessons that Republicans took from those fights, particularly in the second half of the Obama administration, the lessons were that we need to keep fighting harder, the more, like the more feudal. the fight, the harder we should fight. And I think you're seeing, I'm getting, to use a phrase we used a lot last year, I'm getting a lot of Tea Party vibes, but from the left on this, that the leadership within the Democratic party is, uh, is fearful of their base. And they need to show their base that they're willing

to fight. But I have to say that, you know, what I just described about the certain subsidies for health insurance, uh, under Obamacare and the question of sort of who's, who's defined as lawfully in the country. We don't even have time to get in and all that. It's not the sort of apocal fight that the implementation of Obamacare was 12 years ago. So I find it hard to believe that this fight will give Democrats anything more than a more agitated base who see that their leaders in Chuck Schumer and Hakeep Jeffries are weak. and what you're going to end up with is probably a more radical Democratic Party than where it is now once that party gets back into power. It's smelling blood here.

It's not really getting a lot. And by the time this publishes, by the way, we may have, the shutdown may be over. There's already talk that Democrats are sort of coming around and trying to figure out a solution to this where they can get on board. But I think the sort of downstream political effect of this, it's eerily similar to sort of my formative years in a political reporting, which is sort of the rise and decline of the Tea Party movement. And that does not bode well. Kevin, when you look at what happened in March where Chuck Schumer, House Democrats wanted to fight, fight, fight, Chuck Schumer initially signaled that he too wanted to fight, fight, fight. this was all taking place. These debates were taking place in the middle of sort of the doge hysteria, the doge euphoria, I guess, depending on what your perspective was.

And initially, Shuba wanted to fight. And then he, in effect, caved and said, ah, you know what, we're not going to fight. We can't give Donald Trump this tool to further cut the U.S. government. Therefore, we're going to be behind it. We're going to go ahead and fund the government. He was absolutely shellacked by the left wing of his party. It called him a sellout. I mean, I think there were very obvious and pretty serious tactical mistakes that he made throughout. You saw that when Hakeem Jeffries, the leading Democrat in the House, was asked publicly, you know, should Chuck Schumer remain the center minority leader? And he kind of bounced to the question, didn't really answer it.

But the left wing of the Democratic Party, which is still the center of gravity, in the party was furious. Is Schumer today, like the Tea Party, as we were talking about in 2013, is she just giving the left what they want at this point? And how much of this is tied up in Chuck Schumer's sort of self-preservation instinct? The last time I said, the sentence I'm about to say, I had a full head of hair and AOL was sending out discs to people still in the mail and that kind of thing. But New Gingrich had a good observation about this.

And he had a piece It was in the Times or the Washington Post. I can't remember which one. Gingrich's argument is this, is that a party in Congress can have a shutdown and get some political juice out of it and certainly not be crucified for it.

If that shutdown happens in the context of communicating some larger, more coherent political program and policy program that both appeals to that party's base voters and make a lot of,

sense to some share of the wider electorate. And that's his argument for why Republicans under his leadership didn't get just crucified after the shutdown in the 90s. And that's part of what I think you see with the Tea Party one that you were alluding to earlier. So the Democrats don't have that right now, I don't think. They've got some picky unpoints to make about some subsidies that people do care about. And everybody loves subsidies. And the truth is Republicans love subsidies too. But it's not as though Republicans under Trump are looking to gut the welfare state. And Republicans and Democrats are making a big stand against this.

In fact, Republicans under Trump are co-opting the welfare state. You know, it's a sort of European form of politics, sometimes known as welfare chauvinism. It's kind of social conservatism plus nationalism plus welfare benefits for people who are the right color and religion and all that. That's essentially where they are. So if the underlying political strategy here, which is we ain't Trump, and we're reminding you of that, we're good enough, Kamala Harris to be president. I think there's one thing we know about our country right now is that a lot of people don't like Trump, and I'm marching at the front of that parade, but not Trump is not enough to win the political debate at the national level. It just isn't. Democrats don't have any kind of fresh agenda.

I got into this a little bit recently because the Democrats are in a bind because the party is, well, I would say emerging, but they've really already emerged as being the party of educated, college educated, upper income, affluent, suburban professionals and urban professionals. That's who they are. But they're also a party of, you know, low income people in cities and also to a larger extent than you would think, still a party of low income people in rural areas. You know, a third of rural Americans voted for Biden and a third of rural Americans voted for Harris. That's not a huge number, but it's not the, you know, 0.2% you would expect if you're watching the news and all that. So they can't go one way and they can't go the other. You know, there are people out there who are kind of, you know, people who went to Haverford and have an economist subscription who believe in free trade and multilateralism and things like that, but are also socially liberal and care about abortion and gay rights and those sorts of things. And that's the sort of party that the Democrats probably need to evolve into because that's kind of where the middle is for them, the middle that they can reach. But they still very much desperately want to hold on to all the rest of the coalition as well for obvious political reasons, but you can't really be both. It's going to be really, really hard to be the party of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia and the Board of Google.

You know, you've got to be one or the other, really, in some ways. And some of the social justice stuff kind of papered over that for a while because there's that kind of, you know, that messianic sense that it's easy to provoke in high-income people. The environmental movement provided that job for the Democrats for a long time to give them this sense of, you know, this transcendent important cause they could all subordinate certain interests in favor of. But that step is really fading away. And without, you know, environmental hysteria, with abortion, effectively having been taken off the table as a national issue because of Dobbs. they're having a real hard time figuring on what they believe. So this shutdown is not going to be in the service of some really persuasive agenda or even a coherent agenda that people could disagree with in a way that's that's substantive. It's just a little bit here, a little bit there. It's maybe 1940-style coalition building, which worked in the 1940s, but it doesn't really work now. Yeah, John, I mean, you could say the defining characteristic of the modern Democratic Party is that there is no defining characteristic of the modern Democratic Party. I mean, they don't really have a policy agenda.

Trump's sort of non-ideological embrace of bigger government because Trump likes it here, he likes it there, he wants to give something away here, takes a lot of the arguments away from Democrats. These are things that they were used to doing for years. Is that the challenge? And if that's the challenge, is Kevin Wright? Is Kevin, are Kevin and Newt Gingrich, kindred souls that they are correct, that without this being tied to something bigger, it's just not going to work? Yeah, so I think Kevin's point is a very, very good one. I've been saying lately, actually, I said it on the Remnant podcast earlier this week, that both parties have identity crises. The Democratic Party's identity crisis is the one we're describing is like, what would you say you do here? Like, what are you for?

What is the Democratic Party about? What's the theme to the pudding, right? And no one really knows, including Democrats, which is the problem. The Republican identity crisis is that has only one identity, and it's Donald Trump. And it is an incredibly narrow but clear, definable, understandable thing. It's a cult of personality. He has a ironclad grip on the party. You can dissent on literally any issue in the Republican Party and probably be okay, except

about Donald Trump himself, in which case you are a heretic. And that's going to last pretty well for Donald Trump for a little while, but then the Republican Party post-Trump is going to have a major identity crisis problem. In the context of this government shutdown stuff, all I'll say is I think I agree entirely with Warren that this is very much just sort of like flipping the going shirts and skins and flipping sides on the 2013 thing, right, is a senator is trying to force policy changes on health care for his own narrow political interest to save his butt and remain the leader of a faction of his party, Chuck Schumer, instead of Ted Cruz.

And the Democrats are forcing a shutdown to that end. It probably won't work out for them, but it might work out for him. We don't know yet. The only place where I, and I think one of the, Matt Contented, he was. making this point recently. It is interesting how the media tends to think it has a hard time letting go of the fact that Republicans aren't necessarily responsible for a government shutdown. That's one of the only things they're holding on to from 2013 is that, well, since Republicans don't like government, the government shutdown must be their fault, right? The place where I disagree

with a lot of people is that, and I'm not saying 100% prediction about this, but we know a lot of people a lot more than in the first term are just tuning out politics. They're tired of it. I don't want to argue about Trump. They don't like the headspace. They get it. They know Trump is a known quantity. He is the GOP. Yada, yada, yada. If you are tuned out, if you're one of those suburban voters that Kevin is talking about, and you've made sort of peace with the fact that Trump is the chaos agent defining our politics for the last nine months and probably for the next two and a half three years, telling people that this latest round of chaos is actually not Donald Trump's fault. It's the Democrats' fault might not be persuasive to people who are not too plugged

in. And you add in the fact that, like, Trump could snatch this blame game, a blame game victory. He could snatch a defeat in the blame game thing, which he should have, because the Democrats are forcing this, because he's talking about all of these things that he gets to do if the government shuts down and about rescission of money, firing all these people. And if he's got, if the body language of this administration is celebratory about so using the shutdown to sow more chaos, I don't know that necessarily you get a clean win on the blame game thing. At the same time, I think this thing probably ends not long after people are listening to

this thing. So it may all be moot. But like, I just don't, in an era of norm violations and unprecedented things, to constantly say, well, this is how that always works, doesn't work anymore. And so we'll just got to see what happens. It is, it is comical to me to hear Republicans. I mean, I think you're exactly right about Donald Trump. And the more that he says these things, I think the more problematic it is for congressional

Republicans who are in elections in, you know, in a year could be a problem for them. But it's comical. I heard an interview with Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, talking about how this, Democrats are sort of unwittingly giving Trump and the Republicans this opportunity to further cut government. And, you know, Republicans really care about the size and scope of government. Republicans don't care about the size and scope of government. I mean, they might want to make some trims. I'm actually sympathetic on a policy level to some of the Medicaid changes that Republicans are talking about here. I think they make a lot of sense, actually. It's probably

long overdue. But that's, I think, unlikely to be down to their benefit. And there are splits in the Trump White House about this, where you have his pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and others saying, eh, approach this tentatively. And on the other hand, you have Donald Trump out there saying, yeah, we're not only going to furlough these guys, we're going to fire them all. And I do think that that has the potential to create some problems. So sorry, I'm going to have the last word on that subject, because I want to hit one more topic relatively quickly before we get to not worth your time.

And that is this controversy that came up over the past week. about a comedy show in Riyadh, and while a comedy show in Riyadh almost feels like its own punchline, that's not the punchline. There's a comedy show in Riyadh from September 26th to October 9th featuring dozens of comedians traveling to Saudi Arabia, many of them Americans, apparently paid a tremendous sum to participate in this comedy festival put on by the Saudi government. that came with restrictions on what they were able to say, what they're able to say in their performances. They are not able to criticize the government, the sponsoring government, the people who are cutting them checks. You had other comedians speak up

and offer some pretty brutal criticisms of those who have accepted the money and are traveling to Riyadh to participate in this. David Cross, who was in Arrested Development, wrote on social media, people I admire with unarguable talent would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for what? A fourth house, a boat, more sneakers?

You're performing for literally the most oppressive regime on earth. They have slaves for F's sake. So actually North Korea, I think, is the most oppressive regime on earth. But his point, this broad point, I think, is a good one. You have other comedians. The comedians who are participating Bill Burr, among others, say, hey, look, we're going there. We're starting a dialogue. I think this is

likely to help lead to positive change. Arguments that I think are, maybe they mean, not entirely persuasive. But Jonah, I want to go to you on this. You're, you sometimes get paid for speeches and you're occasionally funny. Is there a number that the Saudi would give you that would get you to go and participate in this kind of a comedy festival it's a tough question um no it ain't um um i could i could cobiashy maroo the thing a little bit and like give a you know a totally harmless camels am i right kind of thing and then the second i get out of Saudi Arabia just unload on them. So I don't know.

But look, here's the thing. I take David Cross's point. He got some stuff wrong. And, you know, he talks about, like, caning women still is allowed in Saudi Arabia. It was banned in 2020. I think it is worth noting. I'm not a big fan of the Saudis and historically particular. But Saudi Arabia is, in fact, getting better.

That doesn't mean it's a great country. and it doesn't mean it does things that I would condone. And I think the issue for me... Wait, did you actually get an invitation? No, but the thing is, I'm auditioning. You're going to finish your answer and announce that you're going. If you're going to be a comedian and bill yourself as some speak truth to power political dissident and do a lot of political stuff about how terrible it is in America because of X, Y, and Z,

and we're in a dark night of fascism is falling on America and in the tradition of you know George Carlin and Lenny Bruce we're a you're the paladin of the First Amendment then go to hell if you then go to Saudi Arabia and take their money under these restrictions right if on the other hand you're just someone who says I tell jokes for a living I can't get that worked up about it particularly given that we give all this grief given the devil's standard that we have about how look, I mean, I'm a broken record on this. China is an apartheid country. China is a Jim Crow country. If you are not ethnic Han Chinese, you are a second class citizen. They are committing cultural genocide and in some cases actual genocide in their own country. And all the people

who talk about how Israel this and Israel that got zero problem with what China does. And big corporations, Disney and all that, they all play footsie with China. And then we're supposed to say to these individual comedians, you're the sellouts. There are a lot more sellouts out there. And so for me, it's how you bill yourself, how much I'm going to condemn you. No, I wouldn't take money from Saudi Arabia to go do one of these things. I think there's a lot of selective moral outrage in this story. So, Kevin, one of the people who is going to take the money is Pete Davidson, whose father was a firefighter and was killed in the nine

11 attacks. And there is certainly evidence that we've seen publicly, I think evidence that we have not yet seen about the Saudi regime's potential foreknowledge, maybe participation in, at least tolerance of those attacks. And yet Pete Davidson has made the decision to go and to participate in this. And when he was asked about it on a podcast, he described seeing the amount of money on offer and said, quote, I get the routing and then I see the number. And I go, I'll go. I mean, I guess credit to him for not making it complicated. But that's a pretty striking thing to say, no? We've got to get Glop there, by the way, just because Goldberg, Long, and Padoritz in Riyadh is like two Jews and Episcopalian priest walking to a bar in Riyadh. That's the best

joke ever. It's going to be there by itself. Glop, just for the five of you who don't know, Glop, is this, when Jonah cheats on the dispatch, he does it with Glop. It's a podcast that he does with old friends that is actually pretty darn funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. Sometimes when people want to belittle someone, they say, I don't even know who you are. I didn't know who David Cross was, but that's, that's more about me than him, I think. But I did look him up. And if he really got strong objections to Saudi involvement in this sort of thing,

then he's got some paychecks from Disney and DreamWorks that he needs to send back, because Disney is partly owned by the Saudi government through its sovereign wealth fund. DreamWorks is as well. If you're talking about people doing business with the Saudi state, sure,

Bill Burr, okay, but also Boeing and GE and every large American corporation. We've got Saudi state investments in farmland in Arizona. They've got an alfalfa field out there. So it's not as though the people who are criticizing these comedians for going out there have clean hands in this. They're just, you know, one step removed or two steps removed from actually doing that.

The thing about the current Saudi regime is that MBS is a tyrant, obviously. He is not a good guy. But he is a tyrant who does not want to be the Arab Lenin or the Arab Stalin. He is a tyrant who wants to be the Arab Likuan Yew. He is someone who is trying to push his country in the right direction, in a direction of normality or normalcy has the return to normalcy. And I think that should probably be encouraged. I think that our relationship with the Saudi government was profoundly mishandled during the Biden administration. That hostility was amped up to 11 to no particular end.

We should certainly put pressure on them for a lot of things and there are things we want out of them and things they can do for us. But in the long term, if you want to build rapport between countries and open up a country like Saudi Arabia to a more liberal, Western-informed kind of culture, actually sending dopey stand-up comedians there to do a show is how you do it. I mean, that's a big, big part of it. You know, we all know the stories

about, you know, the Soviet government thinking it was going to get some big propaganda coup by showing either, like the film version of the Grapes of Wrath or the television showed Dallas in the 80s in the Soviet Union to show the decadence of American capitalism. And the Soviets all looked at that and went, these Jodes are the poorest people in America and they have their own car? And the servants of this family in Dallas live a lot of lot better than we do. Um, yes, let's have that cultural exchange. And, um, let's let's let's let's let's let these people go and do it. Also, I just think that trying to hold dopey comedians up to great big high moral and political standards is just foolish. I know, you know, some of these

folks in this world and, um, they are not saints. None of them was like going to be Mahondis Gandhi if he wasn't a comedian. You know, they're just entertainers looking for a paycheck. Fine. Um, I really don't care how a guy gets paid. I'm Don Corleone on that one. It might be a dirty business, but I don't judge your man for how he gets his money. Bill Burr, who appeared on the opening night of the festival and performed, described it as, quote, one of the top three experiences I've ever had describing it on his podcast and said it was basically he gave sort of Kevin's argument and said, like, hey, if anything,

this is going to lead to a lot of positive things. And he told a story about performing in Bahrain and seeing some people getting drunk and enjoying his show. Is there any truth to that argument? Yeah, he felt really good as he was counting the money that he had just received about what a fantastic experience it was. And, hey, if they ever want to have him do it again, he'd be, he'd love to do it. I don't know. I mean, so much of this is, I think you have to understand a little bit of what's going on in the standup in the broader comedy world. Over the last few years, there has been this dividing line, which is not strictly a political dividing line, like we might think of it, those of us in Washington who cover politics.

It does sort of fall on a left-right spectrum, but it's like orthogonal to our politics. But it has to do with the sort of cancel culture and the backlash to cancel culture, the question of, you know, what is stand-up comedy? Is it about telling jokes, maybe jokes that sort of our comedy? culture finds offensive, but, you know, are kind of weapons in this fight that's kind of happening within comedy, you know, alternative comedy, which is sort of left-wing tinged, left-wing-coated, sort of now on the wane as people like Dave Chappelle, who's also invited, and in some of these other comics, sort of willing to say, you know, taboos that offend liberal sensibilities, progressive sensibilities of the Biden era. All of that stuff, I feel like, is what's going on here,

it's complicated by the fact that there are people on different sides of that divide within comedy who are on different sides of the Riyadh Comedy Festival debate. You do have sort of, I mean, Pete Davidson is not a anti-cancel culture comic. He's just a regular mainstream, you know, progressive liberal comic who's going there, along with your Dave Chappelle's and some of the kind of lesser folks on that who are getting, I think, a really good payday. On the other hand, besides, you know, David Cross and Mark Maren very much outwardly spoken liberal comics, you have Shane Gillis, one of the hottest stand-up comics right now, who is on that side of the, he was canceled. He was fired from Saturday Night Live before he even started for some of the things that he said that were politically included. correct. He said, I'm not taking this money. I don't, I'm against it. So it's, it's interesting in

that way to me. I, I sort of err on the side of the Saudis while they're getting better or still bad. I didn't like to live the LIV alternative to the BGA tour in golf. That was Saudi-backed. I thought it was the same kind of thing. It's sort of, it's MBS, Bahama bin Solomon, the, the, the crown prince of Saudi. It's like buying into respectability. And I just, I find that gross. And if I were a comedian, I couldn't take this money. If I were them, I would just say the last thing I'd say on this point is it's really rich for David Cross to be making this when he was involved. And what I would argue is one of the, maybe the biggest war crime ever, which is Alvin and the Chipmunks three chipwrecked. One of the absolute worst movies. And I can verify that because my kids had it on

this summer. And it's just awful. So when David Cross apologizes for chip wrecked, then I'll listen to his criticisms. And crime against humanity. Like you may have, yeah, you may have a future in comedy yourself. Okay, we need to do not worth your time quickly because we really don't have much time. But as you may have heard, as we have been talking through this podcast, some of us here have the sniffles. And as we are arriving at flu season, I think, thought it would be interesting to ask the panel, when you were growing up, were there things that you could eat that were particular comfort foods? When you felt crummy, when you had the flu, when you were nauseous, that could make you feel better. Mike, I will start with you,

anything that, you know, your mom prepared that could make you feel better when you felt crummy. A grilled cheese sandwich and a sprite was like the sick day food. And we rarely had soda when I was a little kid in the house. So it was almost a treat to get sick because I... Is that true even if you had like the flu where you were nauseous? Like you're throwing up, you'd have a grilled cheese sandwich or not? Yeah. I mean, I think like the carbs and was good. I mean, I guess if I'm really sick and I'm really throwing up saltine.

crackers. I mean, what do you want for me, Steve? Like, I like, yeah, when you had projectile vomiting, what did you eat? Exactly. Look, look, hey, look, I can defend eating cheese in any context at any time for any reason. But I'm just thinking, like, if I'm sick and I'm like, you know, hunched over the toilet bowl, I'm probably not thinking, like, give me some cheddar. I mean, I'm always thinking give me some cheddar, actually. But like, at that particular moment, that's when it's least appealing to me. I'm not judging your. I can't answer your question, Steve. I just, you know, I feel like you're moving the goalposts on me.

But definitely Sprite. Jonah is giving quizzical looks. Jonah does not like this, not worth your time at all. Giving quizzical looks. Seems like he's perturbed even having to answer the question. So I'll go to you next, Jonah. Yeah, so first of all, I'm totally on Warren's side here in that you can't take his answer and then say, so you're saying when you were nauseous, you would still eat that?

I mean, like, come on, dude. I'm just trying to, I'm not criticizing. I'm trying to clarify my job here. So, and I'm also with Warren, I would say when I was a little kid, if I had a cold, so not, you know, dengue fever or a gastrointestinal crisis of some kind. Jonah, when you had Ebola, what would you, I'll tell you, chicken and stars soup and a grilled cheese sandwich was my thing, was my grind. When I got a little older, because I mean, my mom was actually shocking, people are often surprised, but she was an amazingly good. and she made all sorts of things that were great. But, like, the only other thing I would say is I, there was a Chinese restaurant near my

house, my apartment on the Upper West Side, that made these cold sesame noodles. And it was just simply known that this is, this was my comfort food beyond anything else. And so often she would go get me something like that. But other than that, it's a sort of standard, you know, grilled cheese, chicken and stars kind of soup. That was it. Kevin? First of all, the word nauseous means causing nausea. The word you all are looking for is nauseated.

Sorry. But I say, I say, I say, include that in your words. I say that mainly to filibuster. I don't think I've ever had the flu or anything like that, and I was very rarely sick as a kid, which is good because I was raised by wolves. My parents would not have done anything

to try to make me feel better, probably. We had a lot of fried spam sandwiches. That was a kind of go-to thing. Although what I do remember from having like a cough or something was, do you remember a creomulsion, which was a cough syrup they gave to kids? It was kind of a thing. I think it kind of started in the 30s and 40s. Creo?

How are you spelling that? Creoleumulsion? C-R-E-O, I think, and then mulgeon like emulsion. I think it comes from some tree bark or something. I literally have never heard of it. And, yeah, it might have been a kind of regional thing. But if I do have a little cough or something, I don't take it anymore because it's a children's thinking it may not exist anymore, but I can remember the taste and smell of it every time

I feel a little bit like scratchy in my throat. And not unpleasantly. It was just, it was a very just distinctive kind of thing. So I have an obvious one. My mom used to make, she made a bunch of things and she'd sort of test things out and see what worked, but I had sort of a go-to, and it was soft-boiled eggs. Do you ever have soft-boiled eggs? Phenomenal, just with a ton of salt, soft, like we'd mush them up um and put a ton of salt on them and i my problem is i would i'd want to eat like eight of them and that's not conducive to getting better if you're nauseated why not it's protein and stuff i actually good for it is but just too many like i just didn't have the i i never felt full as a kid i never in my basically for most of my life i've never gotten full so that was one and then the go-to

drink was always just regular coke and we too did not drink I mean, my family, I think it was, we went to a church family camp once a year for one week. And that was our time to have soda. And we bought this old school soda called Ting. And I could have Ting sodas as many as I wanted for that one week. And then our block party, we had a kid at the end of the block whose dad worked for Pepsi. So we had like a fountain Pepsi machine at the block party. And every kid in the block drank like 17 gallons of soda that day.

But I didn't have sort of otherwise. So when I got to have a regular Coke, when I didn't feel, it was usually regular Coke and saltines with those soft-boiled eggs. And I don't really have that unless I don't feel well now. But there's no reason it couldn't be just a regular meal or regular snack because it's so good. I vote that this topic was not worth our time. You know, Steve, I had a job when I was when I was little that you would have loved, I think, that I worked for the Coca-Cola bottling company,

and we were a little crew of people who filled up trays of cups with Coke for Texas Tech football games. And so it was pretty good money. They paid us like $10 an hour back when minimum wage was like $3 or something like that. So it was pretty generous, but also, of course, all the Coke you could possibly want to drink. And there was quite a bit of that. But I had the strangest job that there was this shoot

that ice would come out of and go into this big bin, and there was a hole, and I had a shovel. And my job was to shovel the ice from the bin into the hole and I could never figure out why they didn't just move the shoot over to where the hole was and cut me out of there entirely.

Sounds like a make work project. Yeah, it really does. You were not alive during the Great Depression, were you? I was not, but they were good people to work for. This should be renamed the Tell Me More Grandpa segment of the... Yes, you're welcome. Hey, we could do that as its own podcast.

All right, thank you all for joining us today. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can rate review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And we hope you'll consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes

and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join, and if you use my promo code Roundtable, you'll get one month free and help me win the ongoing, deeply scientific internal debate over which dispatch podcast is the true flagship. And if ads aren't your thing,

you can upgrade to a premium membership, no ads, to all episodes, exclusive town halls with our founders, and more. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones, from people who can't determine whether to use nauseous or nauseated. That's going to do it for today's show.

Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Victoria Holmes and Noah Hickey. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. Please join us again next week. Introducing Dispatch Energy, the dispatch's newest weekly newsletter diving into the politics, policy, and innovation shaping America's energy future, presented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Featuring a rotating roster of contributors who are experts in their respective fields, each edition will feature incisive analysis on everything from oil and gas and permitting regulations to renewables, climate, and the grid.

head to the dispatch.com slash energy to sign up.