The Dispatch Podcast - The Long Road to Peace

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

On Tuesday, Israel signed two historic peace agreements with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in a major step toward greater diplomacy in the Middle East. Though the Trump administration played a crucial role in brokering both peace deals—with the signing ceremonies themselves taking place in the White House—media coverage of the deals has been scarce, begrudging, and dismissive of the president’s involvement in the negotiations. How much credit should the Trump administration get for facilitating the deal? And more importantly, will other countries follow suit in normalizing relations with Israel? “The UAE is like a beta test of the bigger deal with Saudi Arabia if it is to come,” David explains on today’s episode. “This is sort of dipping the toe in the waters.” As we inch toward November 3, will this deal be a major selling point for Trump’s re-election campaign? According to Sarah, probably not. “Our politics goes in cycles of foreign policy having domestic policy relevance, normally when we’re talking about having our people overseas,” Sarah explains, “This is not one of those elections.” Much to the Trump administration’s chagrin, this deal is simply not getting the coverage it deserves and many Americans who are more focused on domestic issues may never even hear about it at all. After a foray into the foreign policy world, our podcast hosts discuss The Big Ten’s return, the conspiratorial trajectory of American politics, many Republicans’ conviction that Joe Biden is nothing but a cardboard cutout for the progressive far-left, and … Grover Cleveland! Show Notes: -The Remnant episode with Ken Pollack, yesterday’s Dispatch Live, and “Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID” by Adam Rawnsley in The Daily Beast. -Make sure to take advantage of The Dispatch 30 Day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to The Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgird, joined as always by Steve Hayes, David French, and Jonah Goldberg. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch, and right now, you can join free for 30 days at the dispatch.com. See our full slate of newsletters and podcasts and subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. But we have tons of content that's available to members only. And we'd love to have you try it out. 30 days, no commitment, no downside. Try it out. and get all of this member content. Plus, join us after the debates for members only for special Dispatch Live episodes.

And you can sign up for your free 30 days at the dispatch.com slash 30 days free. All right, today we'll hear a little later from our sponsors, ExpressVPN and Keeps. But first, a little on the Middle East peace deal. Then we've got Joe Biden. Is he a vehicle for the far left if he gets elected? And if Trump loses Trump 2024, plus conspiracy theories and chores.

Let's dive right in. Steve, Middle East peace deal, Nobel Prize. What do you make of it? Is this a good deal? Yeah, I think it's a very good deal. It's a legitimate accomplishment by the Trump administration. The fact that you now have the UAE and Bahrain, and I think the president is right when he predicts that others will likely follow,

saying in public, in effect, what had been private relationships, talking about them publicly in the way that they had been conducting them privately, is a huge positive for the Trump administration. for the United States, for the world, for the Middle East. And I'm struck by a couple of things as we've seen the coverage of this. The coverage of this has been, I would say, scarce and grudging. The lead-in to all of the coverage has been, you know, to downplay this, rather than just explain to people what has happened here and why it's significant,

so much the coverage has been almost dismissive. of the accomplishment. Well, President Trump was close to Benjamin and Netanyahu beforehand. Well, these were relationships that were taking place in private out of the site of public, so it's not really that big a deal that it's now happening in public. I guarantee you to use the formulation that we've used before, if this were Barack Obama, this would be announced as world historic peace, but it's not. So the media have been, I would say, the grudging, acknowledging the existence of this, not playing it up very much either. The second point I would make about it is this is a, I think a pretty strong rebuke of the Obama administration's

policies in the region. You'll remember that when Israel said it would not go along with the Obama administration's Iran deal and, in fact, criticized it publicly, the language that you heard from John Kerry and others was Israel will be forever isolated. The region is going this way. We will see a new era of peace led by a peaceful Iran, and Israel is going to be left behind. In fact, what was happening at the time is the Gulf Arab states, our traditional allies in the region, had been aligned with Israel and had been communicating that to the Obama administration. But the Obama administration thought, I think, that they could just will peace into existence, by pretending that Iran was a would-be friend or would-be partner rather than the enemy that Iran

had repeatedly demonstrated that it was. Having said all of that, I think the question I would ask to the group, I would flow to the group, is how significant is this? We haven't seen something like this for three decades, but you've had Middle East hands who have said, look, it's a good thing. It's not a huge deal. So that would be my first question. The second question is, do we have others follow suit and who will they be jona i have hot takes um i know we try to keep them at a minimum around here but uh i think historically looking back on this say 50 years from now the and you got to hear me out the person most responsible for all of this is baroque Obama. And the reason for it is the Iran deal was so bad and so stupid in so many ways

that it freaked out the, and not just the Iran deal, but also his general policy towards the Middle East, this transformational stuff, and also Donald Trump's failures to respond to all sorts of provocations properly from Iran, so freaked out our smaller Arab allies that they were like, well, since the superpower that we've relied on for their umbrella of protection is no longer predictably reliable, we might as well look closer to home at Israel, which at least has the same enemies and the same existential threat that we do. And I agree with you entirely. Presidents get credit for these kinds of things when they happen on their watch. The Trump White House pursued this. It's good that they pursued it. It's a good deal. It's not

quite a peace deal, right? It's the beginning of a peace process, essentially, and an economic process. And I tuned in at 5 o'clock last night to CNN because I wasn't going to watch the five's coverage of it, and I wasn't going to watch Nicole Wallace's coverage of it. And then there was Wolf Blitzer, and Wolf was fine, but Jim Acosta, who was the White House correspondent, literally the focus of his coverage was that this was another scandal that the participants in the signing ceremony weren't social distancing and weren't wearing masks. And there was no substance of the foreign policy whatsoever. I mean, it was really pretty amazing. And But, you know, I had Ken Pollock on the Remnant a week ago, and he was talking through this.

And he's in favor of the UAE deal, and I think the UAE deal is a good thing. But it's the real cause of all of this is the inconstancy of the United States, the power vacuums that it helped create, and Iran's desire to be the regional hegemon and ultimately get control of Mecca. And I think that's what's really driving all of this. And because of that, I think Saudi Arabia probably will. eventually come on board on this when it does i don't know um but this idea that all of these little arab states love the trump administration because he's got they have these great personal relationships with them is just not true when you actually talk to people who know stuff

about what's going on on the ground out there they're freaked out that they think that america is no longer reliable ally um i there's so many there's so many things going on here uh one is the collapse of the Arab-Israeli conflict as an Arab-Israeli conflict. I'm not saying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Arab-Israeli conflict. So you have all the way going back to the Camp David Accords, you have the end of the conflict between the two principal military powers. The Egyptian army was the principal military power of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Then you have the collapse of the secondary military power. So it was as recently is the 1980s when the Syrian military and the Israeli military went toe to toe in Lebanon.

So Syria now torn apart by civil war is collapsed as a power. It wasn't super long ago that Iraq was sending troops to fight in the Arab-Israeli wars. Iraq is not what it was. I mean, Jordan hasn't really been a factor in their Arab-Israeli conflict for a generation. So you have a total collapse of the overarching Arab-Israeli conflict that dominated the Middle East for 25, 30, 40 years after the founding of Israel. So that's just collapsed. And then you have the rise, corresponding rise of Iran, that, you know, when you're talking about Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States, is going to be more physically threatening than Israel ever was. in the context of the very real and imminent and present danger

of a threat from Iran a fight with Israel almost feels like a you know like a it's like a distraction it's it's a luxury that you can't have and so I think what has ended up happening is this is a ratification of a reality that's kind of behind the scenes existed for a while

of a closer connection between Gulf states and Israel. And I also feel like the UAE is like a beta test of the bigger deal with Saudi Arabia if it is to come. This is sort of dipping the toe in the waters because the Saudis are far more powerful than the UAE. And I think those who say, well, it's not really a peace deal because Israel and the UAE were not at war with each other. okay yeah it isn't the camp david accords we can say that it's it's not the end of a conflict that

not only you know dominated the middle east but brought the u.s and the soviet and soviet union to the brink of war is not the camp david accords but it is signifying a realignment a very important realignment and it's you know also a vindication in many ways of the israeli strategy of just we're just going to consistently be the strongest, we're going to be the biggest boy on the block constantly. And so if you are, if you're looking for protection from Iran, where are you going to go? And I don't, you know, the United States isn't a reliable partner. We flip back and forth, depending on the administration. But Israel is going to be reliably anti-Iran. It's so long as that Islamic revolution is still in place.

since 1979, it's going to be reliable. And it's also going to be the most powerful in the region. So there's a lot of sort of geopolitical logic pushing the Gulf states into this position. And I think that this ratifies some of it. There could very well be more to come. But I don't disagree with anything that either one of you guys said about Obama. In the presence of weakness, people look for strengths. And if Israel has been one thing, it has been quite strong.

for quite a long time. Steve, can I ask you a question? Yep. Last night during the White House ceremony, Palestinian rockets were launched into Israel. How will this affect the Palestinian relationship? Well, it's a very good question. I mean, you know, you've seen this fracturing

among Palestinians now going on for years with the Palestinian Authority. really not looking, not nearly as strong as it had been in years past when it was leading these negotiations and broader, I think, in wider divisions among Palestinians themselves. What's really sort of been striking about this to pick up on David's point is how little that part of this conflict, that part of these dynamics, ultimately mattered, right? I mean, this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of agreement, the ceremony that they had at the White House yesterday, that if we had suggested that this was going to happen 15 years ago, there would have been nonstop talk about the rise of the Arab street and Palestinians, you know, conducting a series of terror attacks. I suspect we'll see some of that, but we haven't seen anything like that.

It's been met in the region with basically a big shrug from the people who are. were supposed to be most inflamed by this, which I think tells you to David's point that there was a basic recognition that a lot of this stuff was happening, that relations were a bit warmer, and that this sort of blame the Zionists, blame the Jews playbook that the Palestinians and other had relied on for so long, just wasn't nearly as effective anymore, particularly in the context of a growing threat from Iran. Sarah, can I ask you a question? Sure.

How much does this matter, in your view, in terms of domestic politics? I mean, we're seven weeks before the presidential election. I think despite the lack of media coverage and the lack of seriousness of the coverage that we've seen, it is a pretty big deal. And it's certainly something that President Trump can tout for all of the people. people who doubted that he could get this done, who thought it was silly that Jared Kushner was going to somehow help create or take a significant step toward Middle East peace. And I will acknowledge being skeptical. How much can he campaign on this? You know, our politics goes in cycles of foreign policy having domestic policy relevance.

normally when we're talking about having our people overseas, this is not one of those elections, right? This is just such a wholly domestic election. You know, I think that there's going to be a lot of people out there who won't even hear about this. That's how not a big deal. And maybe the role that the media plays that we don't talk about enough.

It's not how they cover something. There is still the basic, did they cover it? And this is not getting a lot of coverage. So, no, I think the theory would have to be that there were some skittish Republicans who don't like Trump but have come home because he wasn't as bad as they feared he would be in 2016. The number of people who, that covers, I think, is really small. The number of people who didn't vote from in 2016 and have been, you know, pleasantly

surprised and therefore new voters, I think is even smaller. So, you know, yeah, are there going to be some anecdotal people who you could find for sure, but are they changing the tide in any of these battleground states? Really unlikely for them to think this is the issue and to have heard about it. Yeah, but, okay, question back to David or Jonah, perhaps. This felt sort of quaint to me, right? There was no China, no Russia. America back as the superpower brokering peace deals in the Middle East.

Like it could have been, you know, the 90s. Where is everyone else? And is this a good thing? Where is everyone, where are all the normal bad guys? Yeah. No, I think it's a good point. I think that basically, you know, I think it's a, Andy Ferguson who tells this story, I can't remember, but there's this great story about

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City, who spent almost his entire career as Manhattan Borough President. And Manhattan Borough President only has one real power, or at least back in the old days, which is he gets to rename street signs. So, 84th Street, where I grew up, is now also known as Edgar Allan Poe Street. That's a Manhattan Borough President kind of game right there. And so if that's your only ability, you love photo ops and ribbon cuttings and that kind of thing. And there's this great story about how Dinkins had visited Rome towards the end of his mailty when he was running for re-election. And he has a meeting when he gets back with the editorial board of the New York Times.

And they want to ask him about taxes and crime and all this kind of stuff. And he just keeps ripping into them about how the photo of him with all the guys with the big hats, at the Vatican, the Cardinals, wasn't on the front page in the New York Times. And he's like, did you see those hats? Did you see, how could you not put that on the front page in the New York Times? Those guys in those roads with those big hats, whatever?

I think that Donald Trump grew up in that New York City, and he actually understands the value of these photo ops really, really well. And just doing it straight as a sort of the geopolitics version of a mall open. ribbon cutting was very smart. And it plays into one of the few sort of, I think, real instincts that Donald Trump has about how media and politics works. And so that's my assumption about why we didn't hear anything about China and all that and why it was at the Robeck. Because he wants

to look like those pictures. He remembers seeing of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. And that makes him look presidential and it's good for ads. Well, where's, you know, where's Russia? The answer to that's pretty simple. It's right now sitting there in Syria, having thrown in with Assad and the Iranians and is arguably in the dominant military position in Syria, or at least helped Assad achieve the dominant military position in Syria. So Russia is more active in the Middle East, certainly than it was a decade ago.

It's really revived its position in the Middle East, but it's definitely on one side of this divide. And so it would have no place at that table because one of the reasons of that table existed was because of Russia and because of the enhanced power of Iran by allying with Russia and the revival of the fortunes of the Assad regime. All of that's sort of a fallout. And again, this goes back to the Obama administration again.

I remember when Russia intervened in Syria. And the response was quite dismissive. Well, Russia just bought itself a quagmire. Well, it turns out that Russia bought itself a military victory. Yeah. And that, you know, a lot of smart observers of the Russian military have come away from it pretty impressed with what they were able to accomplish, especially as contrasted with their performance in the war in Georgia in 2008, Georgia, the country, not the state, of course. And it was, so Russia has, Russia's there in the Middle East, stronger than it's been in a decade, and ironically enough is one of the reasons why that whole, that table was set up. the way that it was because it's creating this

by you know this sort of bipolar world in the Middle East again and one thing about the Israeli Palestinian conflict it reaffirms a truth that has been a truth forever and that is that the Arab-Israeli conflict was never ever really motivated by the plight of the Palestinians. The Palestinians have always been an exploited instrument of the larger conflict against Israel to be used and abused as convenient. I mean, if the Palestinians were of

central concern from the beginning, why is it that Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank? There was no move for an independent Palestinian state. And why are they so easily sort of tossed on the side when the emerging existential threat of Iran becomes quite obvious to everybody? And I think that's one of the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. as the Palestinians were always viewed by the larger powers in the region as more of a tool than a cause. Can I offer one very quick, non-secretorial irrelevant thing that I think is sort of interesting? What would this pod be without your non-secretorial relevant things? I think there are a lot of people who, when they see, you know, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain doing this,

they think that these are major Arab players, and they are definitely very powerful in terms of economics and their oil and all that kind of stuff. But it's always been a bit of a gripe of mine when people talk about the Israel-Palestinian issue. First of all, Palestinians, Arab Israelis have the right to vote. They're about 20% of the population. And they never, you know, they like to rhetorically side

with the Palestinians across the border, but they actually are never all that supportive of actually doing the things that the Palestinians across the border want to do because they have a pretty good deal compared to the rest of the region. But anyway, the standard argument is that Israel is an apartheid state because it has this, you know, other population that is not incorporated into society. We can have the arguments about the fairness of all that. Meanwhile, the population of Bahrain, just to throw it out there,

Can anyone guess what share of the Bahraini population is Bahraini? 15%. Small, yes. 73% South Asian, for the most part. And it's basically the same ratio in the United Arab Emirates. It's a little more complicated there. These are tiny aristocratic states where one ethnic group basically imports their entire working population. in. And it's just one of these things that just gets left out of these conversations about the region where we hold Israel to these exacting Western standards. And we don't hold any of the other states in the region to the same Western standards, even though they, you know, almost with this racist, woke, cultural, progressive notion that backward countries have, that's their culture and they should stay backward in that regard.

And treats them, Jonah, like indentured servants. Yeah. The population. I've got stories from my time in Iraq about that unbelievable disregard for human life that some of these folks show to the workers that they bring in from, say, Bangladesh and elsewhere. It's not quite slavery, but it is indentured servitude in a lot of cases. Pretty close. Yeah. Changing topic.

So, Steve, I told you that I did not think this would be a factor in the upcoming election. But there's one other piece of late breaking news that I think has a much bigger chance of being a factor in this election. So mini topic, the Big Ten is back. Yeah. This is. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This minor league football, college football is very boring.

in irrelevant? David immediately goes for the easy cultural play again. Also, does he think that insulting Northwesterns football team is going to hurt my feelings? I've been insulting it for far longer than you have, David. But it's coming from me, your arch nemesis. It's true. So, yeah, there's an announcement likely Wednesday that the Big Ten is going to resume football. and it looks like going to resume football on October 24th, which is good timing for the president.

Yeah, all jokes aside, I think this actually could matter, particularly in an environment in which we mix our politics and culture and culture seems to matter more than actual political accomplishments. The president was publicly very tough on the Big Ten for canceling the season, encouraged the Big Ten to, get back to the negotiating table to come up with a way to play football in a way that having spent a fair amount of time in the Midwest in August as a lot of this was unfolding really resonated with a lot of people in the Midwest that they were sort of despondent about the fact that football was not likely and particularly as we were potentially heading back into challenging times with coronavirus if the If the flu season is as bad as some people fear on top of the coronavirus, the idea of going

without Big Ten football was a problem. So I think people will look at this as a Trump accomplishment and not at all minimizing this, I think, pretty significant accomplishment that we just discussed. In terms of actual politics, if I had to guess, I would say this will matter more. David, should we move on to your topic? Yeah, but can I say something about the football real? No. Yeah, please?

No. I use my time on Bahrain, so whatever. I'm not even going to note that this is just going to, you know, what the practical effect is serving up the sacrificial lamb to Alabama or Georgia or LSU or Auburn in the quarter in the semifinals. But it was, after a while, wasn't it? kind of weird that the Big Ten wasn't playing. Here we had the NFL starting. The SEC is going to start on the 26th of September.

You've had bubble basketball. You have baseball. You have NHL hockey. After a while, it just seemed implausibly out of step with essentially every other major sports league. And you had Ohio, for instance, threatening to sue the conference. Right. And Nebraska, you know, threatening to join. threatened em bolt.

But I agree with Steve, regardless of reality, Trump will get credit for this. And he was, he, he's the one who potentially raised it to a national level of badgering. Badgering is a good way to put it. It was. Badgering can work. Badgering, the virus doesn't work,

but badgering the Big Ten can. I will note that there is a new similarity between David French and Donald Trump that I had not noticed before. The act of saying, I'm not going to say something so as to bring up something that you're claiming not to say is called apophasis. And both Donald Trump and David French are quite good at it. And Jonah's quite good at bringing up ways to say he knows words that nobody else knows. Me like big words.

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You just fire up the app, click one button, and you're protected. ExpressVPN is the world's number one-rated VPN by, CNET wired at the verge and countless others. So if you believe in closing your door when you go to the bathroom and that you want to keep your online activity, your business, secure yourself by visiting expressvPN.com slash freedom. Use my exclusive link, EXPR-E-S-V-P-N dot com slash freedom, and you can get an extra three months free. That's expressvpn.com slash freedom. That's expressvpn.com freedom. All right, David, your topic. Yeah. So I want to explore a bit this sort of conviction that exists. And it's a very firm conviction on the right that Joe Biden is a cardboard cutout,

that he is sort of the empty suit, the vessel for the far left. And we've encountered this a ton. It was an element of sort of the Daniel Pletka essay in the Washington Post about why she's going to support Trump, that the mainstream Joe Biden, in this phrase I've heard it or an argument I've heard several times, the Joe Biden of 10 years ago, or the Joe Biden of 20 years ago would be one thing, but this is the Joe Biden of now. And the Joe Biden of now is too old, doesn't have the will or the intellectual and moral coercion. courage to stand up to the squad, to the Bernie wing, to his own vice president, who's more to the left than he is, and that the Biden presidency would be a Trojan horse for the far left. And I've always found that a little curious for a couple of reasons. One, when it comes down to concrete policy positions, so far, the evidence indicates that the Biden campaign is not a Trojan horse. It ran specifically against the Bernie engine.

And it has rejected Medicare for all. It is rejected deep on the police. It has rejected the BDS movement. And also, if you read the progressive left, they're not saying this is our guy. They're saying hold your nose and vote for him. But at the same time, I do believe that it's the top, while the top line policies, it feels like mainstream Democrat, the area where I feel most concerned about a far left. element of the Biden presidency is deep down into the regulatory agencies, where you're going to staff the agencies with people who are probably going to be predominantly to the left of Biden.

But I'm curious about y'all's thoughts. Is there a really true cardboard cutout concern, or did Trump gear up to run against Bernie and AOC, and he's going to run against Bernie and aOC no matter what? I mean, I would just say, Steve. Yeah. I would just say it'd be awfully clever for the Bernie progressive left to achieve victory by having Joe Biden defeat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. I mean, that's pretty sneaky. We've seen some bank shots in the past, but that would be sort of new.

You know, I think I fall sort of in the middle on this one. I don't think it's the case that Joe Biden is. is a Trojan horse for the progressive left. There's no doubt that you'll see progressive if Biden is elected. Do everything that can to influence him and to shape his presidency. And I think he's likely to put in some pretty important positions

people who are very close to that progressive left or part of that progressive left. If Elizabeth Warren is Treasury Secretary, there's a lot that she can do to advance that sort of left wing vision of the country from that position. But I think he's, to me, the more compelling argument isn't that he's some Trojan horse. And, you know, if Joe Biden is elected president, you know, all of a sudden Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to really be running things, she's going to be the puppet master. To me, the bigger problem, the bigger concern as

somebody believes in limited government, is that Biden himself is running as a pretty far left-wing Democrat. And I think that's being responsive. The Biden that we saw in the primaries who was a moderate was still a very progressive Democrat relative to the way Hillary Clinton ran, relative to the way Barack Obama ran. He's running on a far more left-wing agenda. We had, I thought, a very good piece about this. We're doing this series on the dispatch website called the Biden agenda, which basically are deep dives into various policy areas, looking at Biden, looking at his past, looking at his time as vice president, his time in the Senate, and the way that he's campaigning now to try to suss out how he would govern on these particular issues. And we had a

very good one from Brian Redell at Manhattan Institute looking at his spending proposals. And it's, he's not proposing to spend slightly more than Democrats have proposed in the past. We're talking orders of magnitude more, a sort of wish list for the progressive left. So I think it's wrong to suggest that he's going to be a tool of aOC, sort of with a secret plan of the progressives to manipulate Joe Biden. And the right way to see it is he's running as a pretty progressive Democrat out in out in the open. Jonah, can I ask you a version of this question, which is if the polls were all correct, let's just assume for a second they are and if the election were held today and all those

caveats, there's not much question that Joe Biden, A, would get elected, but B, would be elected by a lot of people who are voting against Trump, which is sort of a zero governing mandate for any of Joe Biden's policy ideas. Will that matter to the Democratic Party as they think about midterms or re-election for Joe Biden? Or is it like, eh, once you get power, F it, take it for a spin. Yeah, if, it's a good point. If history's any guide, it's the latter, right?

This has been one of my bang my spoon on my high chair's points for a very long time. Barack Obama's number one mandate, the top two reasons, the top two mandates that Barack Obama had were accomplished on day one, to not be George W. Bush and to be the first black president. And he interpreted his top mandate to be fundamental transformation of America, and we know how that story kind of played out. Donald Trump's mandate was to be not Hillary Clinton and to nominate conservative judges. Those are the two mandates that got him elected. And he, in the beginning, Steve Bannon took it as a mandate to revivify European notions of blood and soil here in America, which was a very weird interpretation of things.

And so I suspect that Biden, that either Biden or Biden's people will have the same reaction that JFK had when someone said, well, you know, a lot of Americans think that you stole the election and that you should probably govern from the center because of Nixon, you know, blah, blah, blah, and he says, yeah, well, I'm here and they're not. And once you're there, you think about all the things you can do, how to get in the history books and all the rest. Biden's probably not as power hungry and power mad as as some younger people are because, you know, the allure of nap time is very strong at that age, and I encourage it. But, you know, to sort of answer David's point about this, too,

I think that part of the problem with the Trump messaging or the Trump world messaging on this, because I think one of the problems we get into is we think the messaging, we often talk as if the messaging comes from Trump and not from Trump-friendly media, when in fact Trump-friendly media often polishes and hands the messaging off to Trump,

and then he runs with it as if it's his own. There's all these stories about how he picked up themes and ideas that were given to him through Fox and Friends and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of this weird feedback loop. Regardless, I think there's a problem with the competing messages about Biden. One is he's sleepy, right? Sleepy Joe Biden doesn't have the energy.

And he will be the frontman for the Bolsheviks. And the problem is that you cannot successfully be a great, frontman for Bolsheviks, if you're sleepy, you got to actually believe it, you got to sell it, you got to work at it. Presidents to get their agendas across have got to hustle. And the idea that you can get Biden to hustle at all, never mind hustle for an agenda he doesn't actually agree with, strikes me as sort of not yet proven at the very least. And so, and it's the same, you know, the same disconnect with sleepy and dangerous. right? He's like this wild-eyed radical who also is really tired and doesn't want to leave his

basement. I mean, the, Sleepy is not a scary word. And, um, uh, and so I just think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance going on on the messaging and trying to figure out what hardcore thinking goes into some of it. I think is a, it's a way to look for, you know, cheese that isn't there in a mouse's maze. You know, you're just going to run around forever and you're never going to find it. All right. Let's move on to my topic. My topic is Grover Cleveland. You know, we just, he doesn't get enough credit for being Grover Cleveland. So Grover Cleveland, as I'm sure everyone knows, but certainly Jonah would tell us he knows, was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. That was ice cold. A sharp elbow.

in passing. It's amazing. The knife moves so slowly and yet I could not knock it out of the way. I wish people could see the video that we're looking at because Jonah was taking a sip of coffee and I think I saw it come out of your nose. It came very close. That was like one of those prison movies where somebody's walking through the yard and without even breaking stride, they just shanks, just shanked Jonah, just shanked him. And so gratuitous and uncalled for it. Totally, totally deserved. Totally deserved. As I was saying about Grover, Cleveland, our dear friend of the pod.

Right. So he ran for non-consecutive terms. Steve, you and I were having a little bit of a green room, TIF. And I want to continue our TIF in public. I'm for it. I said that if Trump lost in 2020 and ran again in the Republican primary, in 2024, that primary would be over. He would win it in a landslide. Whether he would win the general election in 2024, I don't have any particular thoughts on at this point. But concentrating only on

the primary, I think he would win it and it wouldn't be close. Why do you think that? Oh, you want my reasons. Oh, boring. A few reasons. One, 2024 is not so far away. We know who the Republican options are for 2024, and there are none with his name ID and brand. And he has remade the Republican Party in his image. And so the people who are most likely to like his brand and associate with his brand are at this point the most likely to be Republican primary voters. And the ones that are, let's call it Ted Cruz's brand, have shifted around. The majority of them are still Republican primary voters, but some of them have left. Some of them may just not have a lot of interest in participating in a primary.

Ted Cruz never, you know, had the enthusiasm and brand that Donald Trump did. And then if you look at sort of the newcomers, let's call that the Nikki Haley bucket, why have someone who was going to run on sort of continuing Trump's policies without Trump's downsides when you have Donald Trump yourself, what primary voters coming out for that? And just in general, the difference between general election voters and primary voters,

I mean, it's huge. Like, the people who vote in a primary do not look like general election voters. And I think Donald Trump has a really good grasp on who those people are. So I think you make a very compelling case. And I think particularly when you consider

the dynamics of Republican primary voters, it's very clear that Donald Trump has some of the most enthusiastic, fanatical supporters of any elected official we've seen in recent memory. I mean, his core base, the people who love Donald Trump really, really, really love Donald Trump. They want Trump. They wear Trump T-shirts. They wear the MAGA hats. They are as in on Trump as they are. on anything the i think where i disagree with you is that you underestimate the effects of

a one-term presidency and the rejection that that would be in the minds of sort of the broader republican electorate if if he loses and he loses in a let's say a reasonably convincing fashion let's just say there's not any serious dispute about whether he lost. I think you're likely to see a flood of Republican elected officials who have held their tongues for four years immediately say, look, this is really, this is a time for a new Republican Party. This is a time to take the party in a different direction. We have to learn lessons from Donald Trump and what he taught us about what voters wanted that Republicans hadn't been speaking to before 2016. But we're looking to move up.

on. And importantly, I think you'll see some of the people who have been the president's biggest defenders and allies who also have presidential ambitions in 2024 immediately shift their support. So I wouldn't expect in the aftermath of that kind of election, if Donald Trump made his intentions known right after the 2020 election if he were defeated, I wouldn't expect an enthusiastic reception from people like Ted Cruz, from Tom Cotton, from Nikki Haley, from others. I think there'll be a challenge to sort of walk the proverbial tightrope of having supported him enthusiastically in the past and not wanting to support him in the future, but I have little doubt that they'll find a way. And I think you'll see pretty quickly the turn of a lot

of Republican elected officials to offer criticism publicly that they've been offering privately for quite a while. All right. David, Jonah, who has the better case? Oh, Steve. Like, if Trump loses, he's D-U-N-D-D-N done. A lot of his following is built around his victory, around the fact that he won. that's what cemented.

They're going to say it was stolen from him. Well, I mean, if it's if he, let's put it this way, I think that the one qualification I would have to the DUN done is if something completely unexpected happens, which would be he loses, he wins the popular vote, but loses

the electoral college. But if he loses the electoral college and loses the popular vote, even if it's reasonably close in the battleground states, I still think he's done because there is a market for president own the libs there is not a market for president lease the libs for only four years and it is i i think at that point a lot of that hold is gone um the aspect of him of his power over the

gop which is built sort of around the sheer bullying of the fear of him 90% of that is gone um and he would be left with you know the rally crowd some of it maybe most of it some of it um But I think that if there's one thing that modern history teaches us about these one-term presidents is they're kind of cast in the outer darkness and it takes a while for them to come back and be sort of the elder statesman of the party. And I would see that happening with Trump, perhaps even with more emphasis because of the simmering resentment that so many people have towards him. So, normally I would be reluctant to lend aid and comfort to Sarah, given her vicious and unprovoked attack on me earlier, but I will say I'm more sympathetic to Sarah's case than you guys are, and here's why. First of all, if Trump loses, there is no way he concedes that it was fair.

That's correct. I think that's true. Yeah. There are also enough people, and this is going to lead in a little bit to my topic, but there are enough people who already right now are laying the groundwork as best they can that any Donald Trump loss will be illegitimate. How much of the Republican electorate will hold on to that belief afterwards? I don't know.

No one does, right? But I think it is a safe bet that at minimum, what Trump says, after he is, whether he's escorted from the White House or not by the military, that he will not say for a long time whether or not he is going to run again. Because he understands quite rightly that pretending that you're going to run again is a great way to stay in the press. And it turns out that Donald Trump really likes to be in the press. He will still get good ratings for a while,

which means he will probably be back on Fox in France. He will probably still get any talk radio show that he wants to be on. He will probably start his own media empire. And with that in mind, if he can hold on to 25% of the primary electorate, we have the exact same Belling the Cat problem that we had in 2016, where everybody knows that he's bad for the party and bad for the country and bad news and shouldn't do this, but no one can get a plurality. that's larger than that 25%

that will vote for him even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. I mean, it will be deja vu all over again. I'm not saying that's all going to happen. I mean, Donald Trump's health is a question mark. It'll be very interesting to see how quickly the GOP establishment, particularly those centers of power

that want to run for president themselves, how they figure out how to distance themselves from Trump early and see what kind of blowback they get. There's going to be a whole Belling the Cat problem there as well. But I don't think it's at all improbable to think that if he doesn't, that if he loses in, in 2020, that he will at least try to run again. And the trying is just really unpredictable. Steve, I think you make a pretty good case, but I think my case is better. I think that the lifestyle of being a Trump supporter is a large enough percentage of primary voters that he could carry it.

Are you willing to place a friendly wager? I am. Well, I'm very willing to place a friendly wager. I will give you a very nice bottle of Spanish red wine. Such a thing exists? If. Shiven again. Shiven him again. Do you know one of the questions I didn't ask on Dispatch Live last night, which was super fun, guys.

I enjoyed it, was, what's everyone drinking except Steve? Nice. And the crazy thing is the answer was. not Spanish wine. Okay, so you'll get a bottle of Spanish wine in June of 2024. If Donald Trump runs and is not the nominee, he does have to run in order for this. Otherwise, the bed is just moving. I would like a homemade pie of my flavor choosing, but it'll probably be a berry-related pie,

and I would like you to make it. You want me to make a pie? I want you to make me a pie. The way I look at it is you. You lose either way. I mean, that's not real upside. I could grill you something. Maybe I could grill a pie.

I mean, I'm pretty, pretty average, above average in a grill. I want to see Steve with the apron measuring some flour, rolling, rolling pins, the whole thing. And I was to post the video. Yeah, I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming. All right, I'm in. Let's do it. Okay.

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Jonah, up to you. Yeah, all right. So we talked about a little bit about this on the super fantastic dispatch live hour, which is how we're marketing it in Japan. And I, you know, I'm used to feeling like I am taking crazy pills. that's been my steady state for the last three and a half four years. But it's getting to the point where I'm actually starting to wonder what the hell is going on in terms of the contagiousness of not weirdness,

but outright crazy stuff. What sort of sets this off in my head is the story, Mark Caputo, who's the head comms guy at HHS. Michael Caputo. Michael Caputo, sorry. Mark Caputo is a very capable reporter for Politico. Yeah, I met one Caputo, you met them all. No, anyway, I take that back.

Sorry to Mark Caputo. But, you know, he said in some Facebook live thing that the scientists at the CDC are in effect treasonous, that cannot be trusted, sort of deep state. operatives. He says that, um, that patriotic citizens need to arm up and, uh, get ammo because the left is running these BLM antifa things are drills, preparing for the inevitable insurrection when the left steals the election from, uh, Donald Trump. You have, as, as Steve mentioned before, Mike Anton writing hardcore crazy stuff, being emulated at the federalist, being tweeted out by Mark Levin and others, there is this, I've been a long-time critic of claiming that the paranoid

style in American politics, a phrase that was invented by Richard Hofstadter, applies solely to the right, and I still don't think it's solely a right-wing thing. There are resistance porn versions of this on the left, to be sure. But what is amazing to me is how, and Steve and I have talked about this before, about various sources that are people that we used to know who worked in government, who now sound like Twitter trolls in casual conversations. And then you add in the Q&N stuff, the contagiousness of that, the permission structure that gives people to say, well, if I don't believe the full-throated Q&ONN thing,

that makes me reasonable. I'll just believe that only some children are being harvested for their hormones or whatever, but not all children. You know, I mean, that kind of thing. It really does seem like, I mean, not to get all, you know, for the time being here, but, you know, it does kind of feel like the worst have all the passion and intensity, and normal people are just left out. And there is a contagiousness of conspiratorialism here that I don't think is simply

attributable to clever strategy by anybody, but that it's like legitimately in the water. I think people are losing their minds. What do you guys think? David. I mean, the things that I have heard from college friends, from folks I interact with on a daily basis, people I've known for years are remarkable. I mean, and unlike anything I've heard in previous presidential administrations,

you know, the pan, I mentioned this on Dispatch Live last night, hearing just a couple of days ago, the pandemic is going to go away after the election if Biden wins, like literally go away. The lockdowns were engineered for the purpose of depriving Donald Trump of the election. The idea, widespread idea of that the vote is absolutely going to be stolen. And, you know, part of it has, I think, you know, we forget words have meaning. You know, we've become so accustomed to political hyperbole and so used to it and maybe so marinating it in Twitter that when you keep saying words that are sort of the extreme description, the most extreme possible description of what your opponents could be up to, people will start to believe the words. You know, you consistently use the term coup.

There's an attempted coup. There's an attempted coup. Well, if this is a coup and an actual, what do you call an actual coup? Is there a word for a, is it a super coup? I mean, I don't know. I mean, we keep using these words that have meaning in the real world and spewing out there, this incredibly over-the-top rhetoric. And I think what's happening is that this over-the-top rhetoric is layering on top of pre-existing

enmity and anger and grievance because it wouldn't work if you have even the slightest regard for your political opponents. Like if you think they're even decent human beings at all, the idea that people would engineer a pandemic to defeat a presidential candidate or completely collapse the economy voluntarily to defeat a presidential candidate or they're prepping for a military coup after 2020, if you have any regard at all for, people, you're going to be resistant to that in the same way that you're resistant to negative news about a neighbor you might respect or a, you know, a business leader you might respect. But we have so little regard and so much grievance that all of this extremist language

washes over people and for a certain percentage, it worms in, it embeds, and it's just there festering and spawning more anger and hate. Steve? I think this is actually, there's a pretty clear explanation here and it has a couple different really important parts. One is the democratization of information. The fact that so many people can get their information from so many different sources and there are basically very few sources that are seen as authoritative anymore. In the past, if you had conspiracies like this bubble up, you know, you have somebody knock it down. Maybe they would be a story on 60 minutes. Maybe there would be an authoritative look in the New York Times,

what have you. But as we've seen those mainstream media institutions lose credibility over the years, and I think for good reason, as we've discussed before, there are reasons that so many conservatives are frustrated and distrustful of the mainstream media, there are very few places to go and find out what's actually happening in a way that crosses through these information silos. So that's number one. Number two, people who would have, you know, 30 years ago developed these conspiracy theories on their own or read about them in, you know, printed newsletters or talked about them with a neighbor were largely living under the impression that nobody else really believed what they believed.

There was a small group of them who might have believed that the moon landing was faked or pick your conspiracy. Today, it's very easy to find, to either create your own silo or to find an existing silo where you can go and you have conspiracies fed to you that seem on the surface to answer a lot of your questions. They impose a structure and organization over the chaos that we're seeing unfold in Washington and around the country. country and provide easy answers for people. And if you don't go elsewhere and test those answers, or you've just invested so much in the people who are bringing you these kinds of explanations, you don't see what else is out there. And you don't trust the debunkings when there are debunkings. And then the third primary factor is Donald Trump. Donald Trump peddles conspiracy theories with great regularity.

And, you know, I think there's an inclination among some people to dismiss this and to just say, ah, that's, you know, that's Trump being Trump. Yes, we're on week three of Donald Trump pretending that Ted Cruz's father may have had a role in the Kennedy assassination. And people tend to shrug it off. And I don't think that one really stuck. But I think he's what he's trying to do. is create an information environment in which people just don't know what to believe.

He said this at one point, as it relates to media coverage of himself, before an interview with Leslie Stahl, after she scored an interview with him for 60 minutes right after he was elected in 2016. And before the cameras were rolling, he started in on his media bashing. And she said, why do you do that? Why are you doing that? And he said, I do it so that when you publish negative stories about me, when you produce negative stories about me, nobody believes you.

Nobody knows what to believe. And he has obviously, I mean, that has been, I would say, a primary or the primary characteristic of his presidency is this war on the media and creating this environment of mistrust. He is now on a regular basis so much that it doesn't even, it's not even remarked upon very often anymore, pushing manipulated media, pushing conspiracy theories, pushing nonsense stories out into this information environment that I think mainstream media types, some of them take the time to debunk them, some of them take the time to fact check them. a lot of times they're just shrugged off, but for his hardcore followers, the people we just talked about who would be his primary voters in 2024, this stuff resonates. So this morning, he retweeted a segment that was posted by a prominent Q&N Twitter account, a couple hundred thousand followers. The segment was with Tucker Carlson and Dr. Mark Siegel on Fox News.

sort of just asking questions segment about a theory that citing a Chinese virologist who's claiming that this coronavirus was manufactured or asking questions about whether it was, whether it could have been manufactured, claiming insider knowledge. The Daily Beast reported that this, the organization that sponsored this has ties to Steve Bannon, and Steve Bannon was on its board. So there are reasons to be very skeptical of what it's purporting to share. But this is getting out there. This is getting into the bloodstream.

And the more that the president is involved in this, the less people know what to believe, particularly if people are staying in their information silos by choice. And with that, we will move to our last question of the day. which is always my prerogative. So having a baby has made me really appreciate my spouse more than ever before. And all these things that like rom-coms tell kids about, you know, I don't know, Princess Prince stories and love at first sight and all of this. And there's some really practical things that make a marriage awesome. And it happened this weekend. I was doing yard work and Scott came out and he said, I feel about yard work the way you feel about loading the dishwasher. And it was this great epiphany because I don't mind doing yard work at all. It's outside. It's good exercise. You know, it's a little sweaty, but like good.

I'm dirty. Yeah, I'm doing something. I feel a sense of accomplishment. I hate loading the dishwasher. He loads the dishwasher. He doesn't mind loading the dishwasher. He hates yard work. So loading the dishwasher is my least favorite chore.

And I have found someone to be my life partner who will do it for me. every time. What is your least favorite chore, Jonah? I got to say, by leaps and bounds, cleaning out the cat boxes. And it's not just because of the obvious parts about it that are unpleasant. It's also that we have, under the stairs in the basement, we have a very nice built-in cave where the litter boxes are. So it's like way, under the stairs and with my back I got to like lean in and pull these things out and then I got to get them back in there and it kills my back the problem is uh my wife also hates doing the litter boxes so we can't do this trade off where I do X if she does Y about that kind of thing

instead we just have to passive aggressively wait for the other one to do it or because she does so much more work than I do and various things I just have to wait to be be told to do it because I have to follow orders and she is the mater-familius. So, catbox. Steve, I'm very curious about yours. Yeah, mine is sort of boring. It's unloading the dishwasher. I don't mind loading the dishwasher.

One of the best things we did when we remodeled our... But they're clean when you unload them. They're gross and dirty when you load them. Yeah, I don't mind doing the dishes. I really don't mind loading the dishwashers. There's a place for everything. One of the best things we did when we remodeled our kitchen was create space for two dishwashers.

So there's, it's like mind-blowing how much more enjoyable that makes doing the dishes because there's always a place for it. And the inverse is true in unloading the dishwasher. We have two little space for the stuff that we have, the dishes and the utensils and everything. So I'm constantly, you take this. This is so silly, but it drives me nuts. You take the stuff out of the dishwasher when it's clean and you go to put it away and it doesn't fit. Like there's not room for it in these places. So you're constantly trying to wedge it into something and get the door to shut and just doesn't work and highly unpleasant. You know, Marie Condo has something

to say about that, which is everything needs a home. And if it doesn't have a home, then you either have to make it a home or it's got to go. I mean, we just had a conversation, a family-wide conversation about a moratorium on stuff. And that was one of the best things about moving to Spain for a year was you're so limited on what you can bring. So we really did just have, because we didn't, I think we may have shipped like a box or something. But we basically only went with the stuff that we had and bought very little. And it was glorious to have only the essentials and nothing else. On this Maria Konda thing, I mean, she also says, doesn't she say that if it doesn't give you joy, get rid of it? Yes.

Like, most of my possessions have a much more utilitarian function than joy giving. You know, it's like, oh, look, my heartburn medication. It doesn't give me joy, but, you know, I mean, my wife's cat, not that much joy. I'm not going to throw it away. Definitely get rid of it. No, Jonah. It's like my cutting board, it is a cutting board. It's a functional cutting board, but I do love my cutting board because it's the perfect cutting board. It looks nice. It cleans easy. That cutting board, to the extent any cutting board could give me joy, it gives me joy. So it's not that

it needs to like inspire poems for you. It's that for the purpose it serves, it's not like every time you see it, you get this like tense in your stomach feeling of like, oh, I've got to use this cutting board that gives me splinters every time, then you get rid of that cutting board. Yeah, no, I get the reverse. I mean, I get, if something gives you joy, don't get rid of it. That makes total sense to me, right? You know, that's why I keep my kid around. But the idea that something has to give you joy or you get rid of it, I think is a pretty high bar. I think most of that applies, at least for me, applied to books and clothes. Like, there were books I was keeping around that did not give me joy every time I saw them on

the shelf. They're gone now. The clothes thing was hard because as a woman, like, I have tank tops that I need to wear under another outfit. So I like the outfit, but no, the tank top doesn't give me joy. Then I decided to Marie Condo asteris and say that if the tank top was an integral part of the outfit that gave me joy, the tank top, therefore, gave me joy. Okay. I think we should have this policy applied to interns from now on. If they do not give us joy, they're gone. Bad news, James.

All right, David, what's your least favorite chore? So we have three dogs. Two of them are Labradoodles. Sorry, Jonah, just the very existence of the doodle genre of dog. Doodle proliferation is a problem. That's all I'm saying. They're delightful, amazing, fantastic, very, very good dogs. that Jonah hates.

I don't hate you. And so they're great, but we have an old dog. He's almost 14 now. And he, if he's going to write his autobiography at the end of his days, it would be called All I Wanted was Everything. And among the things that he wants is to get up and go outside, one, two, three, four times a night. Whoa.

Yeah. And so that is a source of constant tension as to who is going to be the person who is going to get up and let the dog out in the middle of the. The brisket needs less maintenance than that dog. It's an old demanding dog, Sarah. It is. And he's also prone to dislike me of late. And so I have to say that my least favorite chore is getting up at 3.30 in the morning to let out a dog that seems perpetually mildly annoyed at everyone in the family except for my wife. And yet I'm the one who hates your dogs?

You only hate my Labradoodles, my good boys. My good boys. And that's our show. Thank you so much for joining us. Quick update. After the debates, which start on the 29th, we will be doing a. flash dispatch live directly after each debate, including the vice presidential debate. You have to be a member to join Dispatch Live, but that's the good news because we're doing a 30-day free trial. Steve has assured me that will cover the debate. So try your 30-day free trial.

Join us for Dispatch Live right after the debates. Should be a good time. We'll see you again next week. Thank you.