The Dispatch Podcast - The Manchurian Peace Plan | Roundtable

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Steve Hayes is joined by Megan McArdle, Kevin Williamson, and Jonah Goldberg to discuss the confusing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the current state of the U.S. economy ahead of the holidays, and their least favorite Thanksgiving dishes. The Agenda:—Diplomatic developments in Ukraine—JD Vance, the Vice Poster—Corruption and personal influence in diplomacy (How’s the Clinton Foundation doing?)—Household debt reaches record highs—Affordability and the illusion of affordability—NWYT: Sweet potato marshmallow pie Show Notes:—Steve Witkoff advised Russia on how to talk to Trump on Ukraine peace deal The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. week's roundtable will discuss peace negotiations over Ukraine and revelations that a top Trump advisor was secretly coaching the Russians. We'll also look at whether the U.S. economy is stuck like a deer in the headlights. And finally, which Thanksgiving dishes are not worth your time. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues Kevin Williamson and Jonah Goldberg, as well as dispatch contributor Megan McArdle of The Washington Post. Let's dive right in. I want to begin with a summary of sorts, or at least my best attempt at a summary of what has happened in the debates, discussions, diplomacy around Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. Our friends at the Telegraphs, Ukraine, the latest podcast called this arguably the most important week in diplomacy since World War II.

And if that's true, I'm afraid this has been a consequential and not very helpful week. About a week ago, it was made public a 28-point peace proposal, ostensibly drafted by Trump advisor Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, that tracked very closely with Russia's demands over the past six months. One European journalist who covers the conflict closely, Christo Grosov, said that the document was a near point-by-point duplicate of a wish list one Russian source presented him six months ago. It included limits on the size of the Ukrainian military, restrictions on what international organizations Ukraine can join. It cedes huge swaths of Ukrainian territory,

territory that Russia doesn't currently control. It rewards Russia by welcoming them back into international organizations, including an expanded G7, provides potential. upside incentives for the U.S. in the form of, quote, unquote, deals on AI and energy and other things. The proposal was so alarming that even normally reticent Republican members of Congress spoke out against it. So the administration briefly appeared to step back from the document a bit. Senator Mike Rounds, who was at a security conference in Halifax, said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators that the document being discussed in public was in fact, a Russian document and not the official position of the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reports that while Rubio was aware of the Whitkoff-Kusher initiative, he didn't know the details of the proposal until last week, shortly before it was made public. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a law school classmate and close advisor to J.D. Vance, flew to Kiev and reminded the Ukrainians that the U.S. had temporarily cut off in intelligence support, and arms assistance before, and might well do so again. The week ended with two final developments. The U.S. and Ukraine released statements indicating after some U.S.-Ukrainian bilateral negotiations that Ukraine has agreed in principle to another U.S. brokered peace plan, with only minor details to be worked out later, and a report,

an explosive report from Bloomberg, citing transcripts of telephone calls between Steve Whitkoff, the U.S. lead negotiator, President Trump's real estate buddy, and a top aide to Vladimir Putin in which Whitkoff is observed coaching the Russians on how to win Donald Trump's approval for their proposals. Okay, a long week, a frustrating week, I would say an embarrassing week, if you're an American. Kevin, let me go to you first. Do you think the telegraph is right that this was arguably the most important week in diplomacy since World War II? And if so, where does that leave us?

Well, important in that the consequences are going to be enormous. I'm not sure everyone's treating it that way. One of the stories said this deal was cooked up over drinks in Miami, and no good decisions have ever been made over drinks in Miami. I am glad that we're all still pretending that official Russian document and not U.S. policy is a meaningful statement because it seems like U.S. policy currently is more or less what we're getting from the Russians. You have at least three different schmucks working on three different foreign policies.

Rubio's doing one thing. Krishna's doing another thing, and Wittkoff's doing his own thing, apparently. which is worrisome, although the point that I would really like to emphasize about this, that I think it would be the most important thing going forward is that the business about NATO and NATO not expanding and Ukraine being prohibited from joining NATO and all that, it's one thing to allow Moscow to dictate Ukraine's foreign policy. I mean, that would be cowardly and dishonorable and all that. One can imagine some real politic reasons for doing that.

But this is allowing Moscow to dictate America. American foreign policy. NATO is an American-led organization. It was started by us. It's our thing. And we are now putting ourselves in a position where we're going to have to go ask the Russians, mother may I, every time NATO wants to make a decision at a new member or something like that. And giving Moscow veto power over American foreign policy, I think, is just indefensible. This is the sort of thing that people should be removed from office over, not that anyone's ever going to remove Trump for office. I mean, you try to overthrow the government. They don't kick you out for that. So, yeah, it's an important week in diplomacy, but a bad important week in diplomacy, which I think demonstrates that the United States government is basically run by unsurious people with their own little petty, self-interested agendas. Oddly enough, Marco Rubio seems to be the closest thing to a grown-up there is in the room, and I don't think he's very damn close. And, yeah, I think it's, as you said, embarrassing and in a worrisome time for the United States in that we are essentially looking to relinquish a portion of our sovereignty when it comes to foreign policy in exchange for what exactly, for Trump being able to say that he finally got the Ukraine war settled. And I would be very surprised if the Ukrainians accepted anything like that

original Russian proposal. And I'd be very surprised if the Russians accepted anything like a more decent, honorable and sensible proposal that actually comports with American interests, which are what the American government is supposed to be looking out for. here. You know, I care about the Ukrainian cause, and I'd like to see the Ukrainians do well, but I expect the U.S. government to look after U.S. interests. And what often is, I think, overlooked in these conversations is that we're not only selling the Ukrainians down the river, we're selling ourselves down the river. Jonah, I know from a conversation that you and I had earlier this week, that the same thing sort of jumped out at you with this proposal, that it sort

put the sort of future of U.S., Russia, Ukrainian, NATO negotiations as kind of a trilateral discussion with the U.S. serving as kind of an intermediary between Russia and NATO. Can you – how big a shift is that? I mean, I think for anybody who studied recent history of U.S. foreign policy, it would – you in the face that this is a pretty abrupt and dramatic change. But for people who haven't, for people who are out leading normal lives and aren't following every single twist and turn of these things, how big of a change would that be? Yeah, so I had a busy week, travel, Thanksgiving, so I figured I'd get my column done

on Sunday, my LA Times column done, so that I could read the week and all that. And, of course, whenever, as I'm sure Megan has had experience in Kevin, whenever you try to, like, write about the news in advance, the news screws you. So, like, this story has... Overtaken by events. How many times? So, that said, the thing you're referring to is in the original 28-point plan,

the possibly cooked up over drinks in Miami plan, also the possibly poorly translated from the original Russian plan. There was some good reporting on this that some of the clunky, idiomatic phrases in English, in the original 28-point plan only makes sense if you realize that it was badly translated done by Google Doc, Google Translate

from the original Russian. Like the phrase, it is to be expected that Russia will not invade Ukraine syntactically makes perfect sense if it was originally in Russian. Anyway, but in English, and in foreign policy speak and diplo speak, it is to be expected

is like one of the dumbest phrasings possible for like a security guarantee. right so that kind of stuff but the thing that jumped out of me that jumped out a lot of people was this thing in there that said the future status of various things will be uh negotiated later with the united states being a mediator between NATO and Russia and as Kevin alluded to NATO is our thing right NATO we created NATO we by by rule in in the internal charter, America is the first among equals in NATO, and the head of NATO is always, the military head of NATO is always going to be an American.

And it is our alliance, it's the U.S.-led alliance. And this idea of making America this sort of neutral third party between NATO and Russia is quite literally the foremost foreign policy goal of Russia. that was the last pick your timeline 30 years 50 years since NATO was created or if you want to get rid of NATO just terms of dividing the West which has been part of Russian foreign policy since the 1600s um so like this is I don't think it would ever have survived into a final document there are too many guys at on the Senate on the Foreign Services Committee on at various think tanks around Washington, who would convene in Farragut Square, pour gerry cans of gasoline

over their heads and set themselves on fire rather than go along with this idea of basically taking the U.S. diplomatically out of NATO. But what it does reveal, sort of like Pete Hegseth's signal chat conversations about bailing out the Europeans again, is that the core Trumpy people in the foreign policy sector of this administration, with Rubio, I think, think not was not not included um but the wickoffs the kushners the vanses vanses creatures in the various places um they have contempt for europe which i get but they also have contempt for nato they have contempt for our traditional alliances and they have a serious crush on russia and they know that trump has a crush on russia and trump thinks because he's still so frozen in the 1980s and he thinks

the speech at the end of Rocky 4 was the greatest single piece of public rhetoric that if we could just be friends with the Russians, because the Russians love their children too, according to Sting, that everything would be great in the world, and that's what he really wants to deliver. And so they appealed to that vanity on Trump's part, because Trump has also just as a man crush on Putin, and it is, again, as Kevin alluded to, like, I have no problem with an America first foreign policy. But the America First label is garbage because America First label is just simply what something

they slap on literally anything that Donald Trump wants to do or has done. And then they say, how can you be against America first? It's like the episode of 30 Rock where the cult that worships a lava-mouth giant lizard called themselves the reasonablests because they figured as long as they called themselves a reasonableist, no one would criticize an organization that would. was dedicated to being reasonable. No one wants to criticize a foreign policy. It's called America first, but it's just Trump first.

Yeah, Megan, let me pick up on what Jonas said there. On the one hand, I think there's a lot of evidence for the argument that Jonah makes that Donald Trump is effectively just pro-Russia and that this, what we're seeing today is sort of a natural extension of his quote-unquote man crush on Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, if you're the Trump administration, you look at the government. at what Trump has just accomplished in the Middle East, largely by force of personality, right? I mean, he basically said, I want to end this war in Gaza. I'm going to upgrade Benjamin Netanyahu publicly.

I'm going to push hard against the Palestinians. And where many people are telling me that nothing can be done, that I can't have any accomplishments, that this, you know, is a centuries-old dispute, I'm going to sort of through sheer force of will create some kind of at least temporary ceasefire and push toward peace. And I think they could reasonably say, eh, that worked, at least on a, again, on a temporary basis, on a provisional basis. And that they're looking at what's happened in Russian Ukraine. I mean, this is, in fact, what the reporting tells us is that Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, who shepherded the broker peace in the Middle East, were on a plane together and got out their pens and drafted this 28-point peace proposal that happens to have, I think, distinct and very clear echoes of the Russian demands, but that's what they were effectively trying to do.

hey, we did this in the Middle East, we can do this again in Russia. Is that wrong? No, and I think that the, you know, the inappropriate extrapolation is an issue, right? The Middle East is a kind of a special region where you have these family dynasties. It's a lot like the New York real estate world. And that is not Russia. That is not great power competition. is just a very different situation, right?

Like, the Middle East has things that they want us to give them. And Putin has things he wants us to give them, too, and what he wants us to give them is Ukraine. And that's not a popular position here, even among Republicans. It's certainly not a popular position with me. I also just think, like, look, this is... I will give them the Middle East.

I will give them that they have done a better job there than I anticipated when I was first hearing Republicans tell me about how great the Abraham Accords were going to be during the first Trump administration. But I think assuming that you can repeat that trick with Russia is lunatic. And the way it's been conducted, it's a kind of a, you know, it's like a clown show. And a lot of the performers are disgraces to whatever clown college they graduated from. And so, like, you know, you've got the conflicting, this is the deal, no, it's not, yes, it is. The Wiccoff stuff.

I think this just goes back to the Trump administration is incredibly shambolic. It has too many players working in cross-purposes with each other. They have no message discipline, and they don't really have a theory of the case other than the fact. that Republicans bizarrely reverse polarized against Ukraine, partly because during the Great Awakening, everyone fell in love with Russia where it was not occurring. And so you have all of these American kind of post-liberals picking up and moving to Eastern Europe

and saying everything's better here. And that's part of it. And then part of it is just that during Ukraine, you know, liberals went all in on Ukraine. and therefore they have to be against it, right? There is a large cognitive leap between being skeptical of the Trump-Russia stuff from the first Trump administration

where Trump's supposed to be some sort of Manchurian candidate. I always looked at the evidence for that and could not see what was making everyone so sure that we were just about to find that Vladimir Putin was issuing him orders straight from Moscow. But that does not imply leaping to, therefore, Putin should get Ukraine. But somehow conservatives made that leap, and it is bonkers. And I think you are also seeing that reflected in the administration.

Can I do my 22nd rebuttal first real quick on Trump in the Middle East, which is two things. The Abraham Accords are wildly overvalued in terms of what they mean. The only signatories of any standing or the United States. Arab Emirates in Bahrain. The major players still haven't signed up for that, Saudi and all the rest of them, and probably aren't going to. Secondly, even if you want to credit Trump for the ceasefire in Gaza is temporary and fragile as it seems to be, it's probably worth pointing out that a ceasefire is the wrong damn policy. The Israelis were very, very close to wiping out the very last elements of Hamas and we put a stop to there doing it. We should have

let them keep going. Keeping going and keeping the war going was the right policy. ugly and as much suffering as was caused by that, a ceasefire at that time was precisely the wrong policy. Anyway, go ahead, please. Kevin, let me ask you about a post from Vice President J.D. Vance. I'm going to read it because I think Vance is sort of at the heart of a lot of what we've seen over the past week. I think he's in many ways directing this policy, this vice president who has declared publicly before that he doesn't care what happens in Ukraine. We know President and Trump isn't paying careful attention to the details of this diplomacy. And I think it's fair to say Jady Vance is really pushing on this.

He wrote a long post. He was involved in a number of public skirmishes on social media with Mitch McConnell and other Republicans. At one point, wrote a long post, and I want to read it to you. He wrote, after four years of housing prices doubling and in some of years, tripling, many young people feel priced out of the American dream of home ownership. A welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota reveals that large numbers of new arrivals, aren't assimilating and are funneling our tax dollars to literal terrorist groups. An innocent woman was set fire in Chicago as the mayor resists federal law enforcement resources

to bring peace to one of our great cities. The Obamacare insurance system is buckling under its own weight and the country is $38 trillion in debt. Our administration is working hard on addressing all of these problems. But you know what really fires up the Beltway GOP? Not any of the above. Instead, the political class is really angry that the Trump administration may finally bring a four-year conflict in Eastern Europe to a close. I'm not even talking about the substance of their views. Much of what these people have said about the Ukraine war has been proven wrong, but whatever,

we can agree to disagree. But the level of passion over this one issue when your country has serious problems is bonkers. It disgusts me. Show some passion for your own country. That's the end of the post. There's a lot, I think, to potentially chew on there, but let me ask you in particular about one specific thing, and it has much more to do with what he doesn't say than what he does say. J.D. Vance seems to be under the impression that the way that this conflict is resolved is of no import to the United States.

His claim, his explicit claim in the Post, is that the war just needs to be brought to an end. And those who don't like the way the Trump administration is doing it are de facto in favor of prolonging the war. Can you explain why the United States should care? Let's, I mean, let's take his implication at sort of face value. Why does this matter to Americans? Well, if I can engage in an active imagination and pretend like J.D. Vance is not the guy who is trying to convince us that Springfield, Ohio, was full of Haitians, rampaging around the streets, eating everyone's dogs and cats, and therefore pretend like I can take something he says at face value instead of in full knowledge that he's a habitual liar and the worst person in American public life.

in an American public life that includes Donald Trump? Yeah, okay, let's pretend that we can take him a face value for a second. The best version of Vanceism, I guess, that you can really come up with is something that you used to hear a lot from Democrats when you would have Republicans engaged in something like the first Iraq War, Desert Storm, or the later Iraq War, or other American military engagements abroad, which is, why are we spending all this money,

nation building here or there, when we could be using it to fill potholes in Sheboygan? And that's basically J.D. Vance's your view of this stuff, that every ounce of attention or resources that goes into foreign policy is a deduction from things we could be using to fill pot holes in Schupewigan. As a matter of policy and economics, that's not really true. It's probably also worth pointing out that whole list of agony that Vance talks about with, you know, housing prices and all that. His administration, the administration he serves, is really working very hard to make worse. And I guess we'll get to that. here in the economy discussion here after this part. So, you know, the notion behind all this stuff, of course, is premised on a falsehood, which is the United States doesn't have any vital national, self-interested reasons to care about what goes on in the rest of the world.

And history has demonstrated to us time and time again that saving a few pennies on not looking to your national security and diplomatic relations is very, very expensive in the long run. We go through this all the time. We'll have these little periods of sort of mini-isolationism where the United States is retrenching and withdrawing from the world. And it ends up creating some sort of power vacuum into which you get a Nazi Germany or Soviet Union or currently China that ends up being a very, very expensive thing to deal with down the road. And the current situation in Ukraine, I think, is actually kind of useful to us in a sense in that it's a low-stakes or relatively low-stakes trial run for our coming confrontation with China. and here's how we do things. Here's how we make economic sanctions work

or don't make them work. Here's how seriously we take these things or don't take them. And if I were Beijing, I'd be looking at this and be real, real satisfied with the American performance and think that these guys

are going to be pretty easy to push around and that they're not going to be very serious when it comes to this sort of thing. So, yeah, I mean, there are the people who can fill potholes in Sheboygan and maybe the people in Sheboygan

can do that for themselves and Washington can look after foreign policy, which is kind of what it's there for. Jonah, let me drill down a little bit on this transcript of the call between Steve Whitkoff and a top advisor to Vladimir Putin. You know, Whitkoff actually proposed this, I'm quoting here, this is what he told the Putin advisor. Maybe he, Putin, says to President Trump, you know, Stephen Uri discussed a very similar 20-point plan to peace, and that could be something that we might, that we think might move the needle a bit.

were open to those sorts of things. He also proposed that Putin call or agreed to a question about Putin calling Donald Trump before last month's sit down between Oaldemir Zelensky and Donald Trump in the Oval Office in which Zelensky was asking for tomahawks. There were indications before the meeting that that might be something the U.S. would agree to. And then Donald Trump abruptly sort of shut that down. I don't love that, you know, there's a lot of claims of sedition, treason, being a traitor, and I don't love a lot of that talk, and I think much of it is overstated.

This might fall in that category. You have a guy who's actively advising an enemy of the United States on how to win the approval of the president of the United States and then comes forward with a peace plan that is, is, you know, in many ways, just a duplicate of what the Russians want. Am I overreacting? Maybe, maybe not, right? I mean, because, as I was saying before, part of the problem with this plan was that it is so amateurish,

it leaves itself open to the interpretation of villainous intent, right? When it actually, you know, like, we've had this debate. for 30 years on the right about Republicans where our best defenses, they're not evil, they're stupid, right? And I think there are parts of this that go more towards the amateurishness of these guys. On the other hand, it is obvious to me that people like Whitkoff, if you just look at the money he and his sons are making with Trump and his sons off of crypto, off of these various Middle East deals, it is obvious to me that these guys care about these post-piece commercial arrangements with Russia. People are putting honey in their ears about, you know,

what they can do with these joint projects with Russia and development. And Witkoff, I think, wants a piece of the action. He clearly has shares Trump's sort of admiration for Putin as a strong man. and I think that infects this stuff. And there's also, I mean, there's also just a sort of classic James Burnham-style power worship thing going on here, which is that they've all convinced themselves, Ukraine can't win. Ukraine are the losers, and we side with winners. And I think that we're not going to do the Mondami, you know, Trump pact in the White House, but that was a part of why Trump

cottoned on the Mondami's as a winner. It's one of the reasons why Trump really loves Israel is like he likes winners, and they feel like Ukraine is for losers, and Putin's a winner. I think it is a complete misreading of facts on the ground, but that's sort of the mindset that they come from. And so I don't know for it to actually be treason or sedition

or any of that kind of stuff, just legally, Wittkoff would have to buy the premise that Russia is our enemy. and that what he is doing is hurting America and aiding an enemy. When I just don't, I don't think Trump and those guys see it that way. This is not a great defense because I think they're so profoundly wrong. I mean, the idea that Russia isn't, you know, maybe enemy is too triggering a word for some people, our adversary, our foremost geopolitical opponent with the exception of China,

just seems incandescently obvious to me. and it's also enshrined in all sorts of law and government policy. But I think Whitkoff and these guys think the guys who came before them are all idiots that were these really smart guys because we know how to get a condo built in Palm Springs in six months. And look what we did in the Middle East and look how smart we are and how much we get it. And they're just brushing everybody aside and going with their instincts. And as you guys have, we've talked around here,

a bunch of times before, that approach works a little better in the Middle East than it does in the rest of the world. But I wouldn't call it necessarily treason. I would just call it acting against the best interests of the U.S. foreign policy and not putting America first, putting Mar-a-Lago first. Jonah, given the state of California's real estate regulatory environment, if someone actually could build a condo in Palm Springs in six months, I'd be very impressed. fair fair may maybe still doesn't qualify you to lead negotiations with russia on russia's war

of aggression megan i want to end with you on on this question of corruption that jonah mentioned you know one of the things it's confounding here is i think there's certainly indications both i think with respect to to russia and what's happening there but also in you know in other parts of the world in the middle east that whitkoff and trump and their sons are shall we say on the take, or at least creating deals that are very favorable to them personally and in exchange potentially for broader U.S. protection. I mean, you can think of Donald Trump is essentially offering blanket indefinite protection for Qatar while his sons are doing deals there.

The Washington Post had a really terrific report on corruption involving a pardon this week that Donald Trump gave. there's abundant reporting about this. People don't seem to care. And I wonder if you look at the context of these Russian negotiations and eagerness with which Steve Wickoff is willing to do Vladimir Putin's bidding in which Donald Trump seems to be enthrall to Vladimir Putin. There's all sorts of reporting about long-term U.S. benefits and incentives, but not a lot of details about specific deals that might benefit Donald Trump and his family, or Steve Whitkoff and his family. I guess my question to you is, would it even matter if we did

have those details? No. We are all on this podcast, very close in age, because GenX is the best generation. And we grew up in a world, right? I was, it was very funny to go back and look at my baby book when I was, you know, like in my 20s and realized that Richard Nixon was president when I was born. By my first birthday, he was not president. And that is, we grew up in the post-Watergate era where there is this phenomenal emphasis on both proceduralism and on integrity in government, for want of a better word, right? There's a lot more corruption investigations. There's a lot more procedures designed to prevent corruption. We have all of these elaborate campaign finance reforms that happen. And so,

So I think we took that for granted that, like, that was American normal. And it wasn't, it actually started breaking down decades ago. It was clear from the first Clinton impeachment, right, from the first impeachment since Andrew Johnson, that Americans do not care about procedural crimes, right? I mean, he committed perjury in a lawsuit where he had colorably abused a woman while governor of Arkansas. no one cared and that's not even counting things like Hillary Clinton's really remarkable success at trading cattle futures despite no experience in the commodities markets she made $100,000 the first time she made a trade because she read the Wall Street Journal she said remember that

was her explanation she was like because I read the Wall Street Journal yeah yeah I was thinking that too but Megan wasn't going to point that out because at the post she's not allowed to say that The Wall Street Journal is a very fine newspaper Does not exist Second or third best newspaper in America So Anyway

You know And that was also true from Trump Is that liberal elites Got very exercised About various procedural violations And to be clear I actually think these procedural violations matter a lot

I think civic norms matter a lot It's not that I don't think that the public should care it's that I think they don't care. And part of that is... So part of it is just that they don't care unless they have something that's really directly affecting them

that they think is bad, then they'll get all up in arms about the procedural stuff. But the actual procedural stuff by itself they don't care about. And second of all, there is the fact that those Watergate norms

have been obviously eroding for a long time. On the left as well as the right, I think the Trump administration has taken this to a level far beyond what any Democrat did. But the fact of like the Burisma stuff with Hunter Biden, where he is, yeah, of course, this Ukrainian energy company hired me,

I went to Yale Law School. What? What? That's not a thing. There are many graduates of elite law schools. Very few of them get these sweetheart gigs at foreign companies. And, you know, I don't think that Biden gave them a quid pro. quo, which as I say, I think is better than what Trump has done. But I think he obviously understood

what his son was doing, which was selling the appearance of influence over the vice president of the United States. There is the Clinton Foundation, which collapses the minute Clinton, it becomes clear that Hillary Clinton is not going to be president, has got all these foreign donations flowing through. What was that but an influence peddling operation? Would it have been subtler influence? Yes. Would it have been less detrimental to U.S. interests? Also, yes. Also, you're arguing about degree rather than kind. And that's actually just a very hard argument to make to the American public. I have been trying to make it for a long time. And let me tell you, it just does not fly. There is no level of persuasiveness of rhetoric that will get past the fact

that now we're just haggling over the price. And that has been a longstanding problem. I don't know if we will at some point get a kind of another post-Nixon rejuvenation of civic norms, but we definitely are not there now. And again, I think the American public should care about all of this stuff a lot. But I don't think that politically it's going to move the dial. Yeah, I mean, I think your final point is the key one. There's the sense that everybody does it.

And Trump, in some ways, because he does it so out in the open, seems to be more honest about his corruption than others. And I think he benefits from that. I get that all the time. Well, at least he's open about it and we know what he's doing. Right. Okay. Great. Right. Let's bring back hypocrisy, please.

I think we're going to look back on this. and a lot of it will be explained by the reasons that Kevin and Jonah gave in their answers. I mean, you just think sort of infatuation with Vladimir Putin, sort of broad pro-Russian positioning. J.D. Vance leading this, doesn't care about Ukraine, doesn't understand the implications for the United States, the long term. But I think we will learn many, many details about the actual personal corruption involved here that we're only getting sort of glimpses of now. and I'm sad to conclude that I think you're right that people largely will not care when we do learn about it.

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podcast. Let's jump right in. So let's talk about something that people really do care about, and that is the economy in their own pocketbooks. We have had in the past few days, past couple weeks, finally some details, some post-shutdown details from government reporting on the state of the U.S. economy heading into the holiday season. And we are seeing very mixed signals about where the economy is right now.

Consumer confidence is falling. Stock market has had a very tumultuous couple weeks. We have speculation about what the Federal Reserve, is going to do in December. I'll start with you, Megan. What do you think about this current state of the U.S. economy one month before the Christmas season, big holidays?

And what should the average American consumer think about the state of the U.S. economy right now? The U.S. economy feels to me sort of like a deer frozen in the headlights. We're not seeing super high unemployment. We're also not seeing anyone higher. everyone just kind of froze in place. And part of that is, I think, the uncertainty generated by Trump administration policy.

That people, I talk to manufacturers all the time, other businesses, retailers who just say, I don't know what to do about my supply chains. If you slapped a 25% tariff on it, that would be terrible and it would drive my costs up. But at least I would know what it was. And I would know where I could source stuff. but the kind of on and off again, now you see it, now you don't tariffs are a huge problem for people. It's also the fact that people during the pandemic

laid off a lot of workers and then they really struggled to find people in the post-pandemic boom. And so they're now afraid to fire people, but they also, because they feel uncertain about the economic future, they're also afraid to hire people. And then you have the fact that interest rates

are persistently above the Fed's target. Um, they're about, you know, 2.8 to, they're about 80 to 100 basis points, 1, you know, 0.8 to 1% above target. And I'm sorry, did you mean inflation rates? Yeah, this is the inflation rate, yeah. You said interest rate. Oh, sorry. Ah, the inflation rate is above the target, which means that about half of that is tariffs, and that's a one-time thing. Um, but the other half is just kind of persistent, inflation in the economy that we don't

really know why the Fed is having such trouble getting it down. The Fed has a really difficult job because interest rates, which were zero for a long time, real interest rates, you know, net of inflation, were basically zero for a long time following the financial crisis. And that boosted the prices of assets. I remember in 2010 when we bought our house, I told my husband, well, I'm pretty sure we're going to lose money on this house. But that's okay. we're not thinking about this is like a way to retire. We're thinking about this as a place to live. And boy, was that one of my worst predictions.

Because I did not foresee that interest rates would go down, down, down, down, down, and that would drive housing prices up. We've kind of run to the end of that. And that's another thing that I think is contributing to the sense of malaise in the economy, not just that young people can't buy houses, which is a big problem. But, you know, people are theoretically saying. sitting on all this housing wealth, that they cannot sell. They can't sell for two reasons.

One is, look, I have a 1.75% interest rate, mortgage rate. Until that mortgage is paid off, you will carry me out of this house feet first. That's the only way I'm leaving. And so a lot of people have theoretically high prices, but they can't sell because it would cost them so much to get another place. The second thing is that because of that, the prices are actually quite artificially high. The market is not clearing. You're seeing a lot of people put stuff on the market

and then it just sits there because they want to get the price that they paid for it or that they think it's worth. They don't want to sell it a loss, especially when they know that they have to go and get another mortgage somewhere. But people can't afford to buy the houses at the inflated prices they want. And so they just sit and sit.

There's not a lot of deals being done and that contributes. And so all of that, it also suppresses mobility. You can't sell. You can't move. So all of these things contribute to an economy that just feels a little frozen. And so in some ways, it's hard to take comfort when the data does come out looking better than we might have thought. Because what that means is everyone has just decided to do exactly what they were doing before and not do anything else and just sit here and wait for something to happen and hope that the thing that happens is not bad.

I do think that that's an accurate reflection of where people are. sort of don't know what to do. They have hopes. They have concerns. And it's not at all clear where this is going. Kevin, when I asked you about J.D. Vance's post in our discussion about Ukraine and Russia, you said that Trump administration policies are responsible for some of the economic challenges that he described at the top half of his post.

What policies specifically and what are they doing? When Megan was talking about the deer in the headlights, I was just thinking. to myself as a person who lives in a rural area where everyone drives an F-250, I know what happens to Deers in headlights, and it ain't good. Speaking of trucks, though, I will answer your question in the form of a story here real quick, which something I am not going to buy, but for some reason the Internet serves me ads up for, is this company called Velocity, which makes these wonderful rest of mods of old classic trucks. And they're about $350,000. So it's a car that I'm not going to buy. But when you get the ad for it, it comes with a monthly payment estimate that's really

in context, quite reasonable. And I was looking at it and thinking, how is that possible? And so I clicked on the link, because I am an idiot. And it's, you're going to get those ads for the rest of your life. Forever. I like looking at them. I like looking at them. Even if you buy one, you will get them forever. So it's a 15-year car loan is what it is. And now, if you're taken out a 15-year loan to buy a car. That's not a good financial incentive, I would say, or not a good financial decision, I would say. If you can't afford the $350,000 car, you can't afford to finance it for 15 years. And for the Trump administration, for Jerome Powell over the Fed, and other people who are in positions that straddle economic and political life, there's this ongoing contest between

affordability and the illusion of affordability. And you have the Trump administration talking about things. Well, why don't we have 50-year mortgages? That would make housing more affordable. Well, no, that would make housing more expensive because cheap money makes prices go up. Now, it makes it feel like it's less expensive because your monthly payment might be less on a 50-year mortgage. Obviously, it would be less on a 50-year mortgage than it would be on a 20-year mortgage, although you'd be paying essentially nothing but interest for a long, long time. And so pushing for interest rate cuts, which will make some things cheaper or feel cheaper in the short term, things that you finance, that you borrow money for. I understand why people who have to stand for election and deal with angry public follow

those policies. But a lot of these policies actually are going to make things more expensive in the long run. And we've done it over the years with college tuition. The reason college tuition cost so much is because we spent a gazillion dollars subsidizing financing of it and cheap money makes prices go up. That's why, you know, car payments work the way they do. It's why house payments work the way they do. It's why the National Association for realtors, which I nickname the committee to re-inflate the bubble, is always, you know, pushing for lower interest rates because that way they can raise prices and make bigger commissions. And the Trump administration is run by a guy who once referred to himself as the king of debt. He loves cheap money. He

loves to spend money however he can. And so, for instance, these daft ideas like taking the revenue being generated by tariffs and paying it out to Americans in the form of $2,000 checks to people who are not quote unquote high income. You know, you do a little back of the envelope math here. It's kind of the worst possible policy on both fronts because it won't be enough to offset the price effect of the tariffs because that includes not only the current tariffs, but also estimates of future higher prices that markets are pretty good about building in. But it would more than suck up all of the revenue the tariffs are generating.

So it would be a net financial loser without actually making people whole in terms of what they're facing in higher prices. So these kinds of policies based on what's tried to just flood the economy with more cheap money, let's send out checks to people, let's talk about having 50-year mortgages, let's see if we can bully the Fed into cutting interest rates when everyone knows it's the wrong policy right now. Yeah, I think that all that stuff adds up to making the economy worse, and it adds up to people who are smart enough to incorporate the expectations about future policy direction into

their current decisions, which is a lot of people, they're making decisions based on the assumption of these kinds of policies being in place. And, you know, more debt, in the long term, higher federal spending on debt service and all that kind of stuff. And in the short term, trying to mitigate the effects of these idiotic policies, including the tariffs, by flooding voters' pockets with money and bribing them with their own tax dollars. Joe, what do you make of the Trump administration's speaking in mixed messages on this question of affordability. Affordability is this, of course, now it's this new word. Everybody in Washington is talking about affordability

after Zoran Mamdani's win in New York City. The Trump administration, it seems to me, depending on the day, says either A, there is no affordability crisis, everything is fine, or B, we're addressing this crisis with our policies. and so you have Donald Trump repeatedly saying things that are just flat on true gas prices are the lowest in five years, grocery prices are overall down. One after another, after another of things that just are not true and suggesting everything is fine. And then on the other hand, doing things like signing executive orders that end tariffs on food and ag products.

These are the same tariffs that we were told would be paid by foreign countries, not by U.S. consumers, but now they're ending the tariffs on things like coffee and tea, certain cuts of beef, fruits, what have you, to help the U.S. consumers save money. Is there any way to make what we are seeing from the administration make sense? So I'm so glad you asked me this question. New podcast host, tighter ship. So I didn't, I just didn't want to jump in earlier when you asked a question to Kevin about that J.D. Vance post on Twitter about how we have all these problems and why do we care so much about foreign policy. But then you brought it up again. I appreciate your strength. I know.

It was difficult. But then you brought it up again. So let me just say if you read, we're not going to reread that whole post, but that whole thing about all these problems, $38 trillion in debt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these things going on, hard to buy a house. and here are all these people who care about the first land war in Europe, right? That's his basic position. These morons who care more about the first war of aggression since World War II in Europe. That's what they're distracted by. Now, go in, and anywhere it makes reference to foreign policy and the foreign policy elites in Washington

and replace it with the indictment of James Comey, right? The idea that this administration is focused on affordability when hourly, it's generating stories that show that Trump, you know, that whole, I've defended that Trump campaign ad out the ying yang of she's for they, them, he's for you. I think it's what won in the election, certainly that message won on the election. Like, this is not for the, the stuff that this administration is generating news about, like, whether or not a bunch of senators and congressman should be executed for telling soldiers that they don't have to obey illegal orders and trying to like re-enlist Senator Mark Kelly so they can then court-martial him.

Like, this is not what a whole bunch of Americans care about when it comes to affordability either. I would argue that like the land war in Europe thing is more important than a lot of the BS that is that Trump is selfishly promoting because of his own personal design. for retribution and whatnot. But that said, I think the question about the economy generally, you know, I've said for years it's not exactly original to me that we all talk about the macroeconomy, but everybody's an expert on their own microeconomy. And people don't live in national aggregate employment data and all that kind of stuff. They live in their own lives. And I think a lot of people are missing why this affordability thing.

has such cachet. You know, part of it is the transition of the economy into essentially a mass subscription economy that you just feel that by the time you get your, you look at your monthly finances end of the month, a thousand different fish from this giant school of fish have taken little bites out of you because you're subscribing to all these things.

But moreover, like, the amount of indebtedness in this country is massive. And you could have zero percent, interest rates and no inflation. And if you are constantly making loan payments, everything feels unaffordable. So the Fed came out with a report last week that said household debt hit a record high of $18.6 trillion in the third quarter. Credit card balances alone jump $24 billion, reaching an all-time high. And the share of people who are in serious delinquency, 90 days past due, climb to a near financial crisis crash level of 7.1% auto loans, people are going into mass

delinquency again. This is people not being able to keep their head above water. And there's a certain panic that comes, justifiable panic that comes when you feel like your feet are in cinderblocks and you're going under financially. And the politics of tearing down, the east wing of the White House and doing, um, um, you know, great Gatsby dinners and talking about how you're going to get James Comey and stipulated. I don't like James Comey. All of these kinds of things really signal that Trump is for me, not you in the way that Harris singled she was for they, not you. And, um, I think it's why Republicans, uh, fortunes look so bad right now. I think it's why Democrats had such a sweep in the off-year elections, and the absolute incoherence of the messaging

on tariffs, at this point, it's become clear. We've talked about this a million times. I think the reason why tariffs are hurting Trump the most, other than like the obvious damage that people think they're doing to the economy, is that people realize they're his pet theory of the universe, that he is being self-indulgent about how he runs the economy. because he's trying to settle a bet from 30 years ago. He's trying to win an argument from 30, 40 years ago. And much the same way, like, Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan, you know, recklessly because he was still pissed that he lost that argument in the Obama administration.

Trump has a theory of trade that goes back to the 1980s, and he'll be damned if he's not going to be proven right. And people recognize that now because the incoherence of the arguments, literally different economic advisors from the White House having completely contrary explanations of things on different cable shows or different news shows at the same hour. And people figured it out. Like, there's no, there's nothing here other than this is, you know, Trump, this is Trump's insistence, the moon is made of cheese, I know what I'm talking about, screw all you people,

and we're going to prove it. And it's freaking people out because they don't trust him to actually have a theory of the economy that comports with reality. So I should just make the point that I think I agree with you in what you said about the subscription economy in the broadest possible way. There are some subscriptions that are well worth your money. And I should point out, as we head into the holiday season, that the dispatch is going to be running it special. One month for $1, and then you are graduated into a full subscription. That's the kind of thing that can add value and save you money. in many other ways.

The Washington Post, I have to say, also a fabulous value, a good companion to your dispatch subscription. Mention my name when you subscribe. Maybe the Washington Post should bundle a subscription package with the dispatch and send it out to their mailing list. Wow. Just putting it out there.

Wow. We're just having these negotiations in public right here. We'll call it. Jonah, you called Jeff. All right. I'll do it. We're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. I want to end with a not worth your time. That actually comes to us from Megan. We are recording this Wednesday morning, November 26th. And we recorded on Wednesday. We usually record this on Thursday morning for release on Friday. We recorded this on Wednesday for a number of reasons, most especially because tomorrow is Thanksgiving. But we wanted to record it early in part so that we could do a Thanksgiving-related not.

worth your time and unlike my practice on most weeks i solicited suggestions from the panel this time and we decided to go with megan's not worth your time which i think was a very good one um and it is simply which traditional thanksgiving foods are not worth your time and because you volunteered and stepped forward in a helpful and constructive way megan i'm going to let you have the first word on this which Thanksgiving food is not worth your time. Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows. Please don't. I mean, look, I

am a libertarian. I don't want to outlaw it. I respect you right to do it. But it's a mistake. First of all, it's marshmallows are disgusting. I'll just lead with that.

Do you eat s'mores? No. No, I really, the funny thing is, I really love toasting marshmallows. And so when I was camp I was very popular because I would sit there and patiently like take orders for exact levels of brownness and I would toast everyone's marshmallows and then I would give them the marshmallows because I don't like marshmallows. But I did occasionally like I think I liked having them in hot cocoa when I was a little kid but I also didn't eat the marshmallows. I just liked having them there. So yeah. What about like Frankenberry or Count Chocular Syria?

with those quote-unquote marshmallows in them that are not really marshmallows. I was not allowed to have sugar cereal as a child. And I think my mother must have told other mothers that because I would go over to other people's houses and kind of hint with my six-year-old subtlety. And I never got any Frankenberry or Count Chocula. I did not have Captain Crunch until I was 18. And then it was disgusting.

I told my mother that. And she was like, yes, I won. so no marshmallows for me. I also just think like sweet potato casserole, I don't mind. I like it. It can be done well. But the marshmallows are not bringing anything to the party except too much sugar in a dish that's already quite sweet.

They are dulling the taste of the underlying delicious sweet potato food. And every time I see it on a Thanksgiving table, My heart quails a bit, and I have to admit, my stomach also turns. There was an article in Parade magazine published this morning. Parade shows up in my Google News feed for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, and it warned of sugar highs, glucose spikes, if you eat sweet potato casserole. So there was actually a cardiologist making the same critique that you're making. Megan

I mean look I am gonna double down on my pie serving so I am my A1C is just going to have to cope but not not on sweet potatoes

not worth the calories forget your time not worth the galleries I'm sending Megan a carton of sardine stuffed with marshmallows that's my plan for her

some you know what I bet there is a 40s cookbook because all the manufacturers used to put out these cookbooks of how to use their products when a lot of these products were novel. And they would hire famous chefs to make dishes with marshmallows. And I have seen that cookbook. And some of them are like sad phoning it in, like a guy who just filled a pie crusts with marshmallows and torched

them. But I'm willing to bet that someone out there in the 50s made sardine stuffed with marshmallows, there is a recipe for it. I will find it. You know, I think Steve was about to go to me. So I'm going to say, I'm going to preempt him here and say, I think that your manufacturer developed cookbook is the explanation for my choice here, which it goes by many names. If you happen to grow up poor white trash in the south or some parts of the Midwest, you will have had this. And it consists of canned cherry pie filling mixed with cool whip and cream cheese and sometimes packaged pecans and a few things like that. I always refer to it as pink slop. My mother was very fond of making this, and it is a weird Thanksgiving thing in certain parts of Texas and the South.

I don't know how anyone chokes this stuff down. It is really grim and terrible. That's my choice. It sounds grim and terrible. Jonah. So I want to be really, I'll be succinct. I concur, subscribe, and emphatically endorse. everything that Megan said.

I think sweet potatoes are overrated. I like sweet potato fries, but marshmallows are gross, and I do not like marshalas. Yes, smore is fine. I'll have one every five years, and I'm like, oh, okay. But, like, marshmallows are gross. Raw marshmallows are gross. Sweet potatoes are way too sweet on their own anyway. My favorite sweet potato dish is stuffed sweet potatoes with black beans and melted cheddar.

That's a great dish. and I went through the delish.com list of classic Thanksgiving dishes because I didn't want to just repeat what Megan said and I scrolled through 60 of them and I can't find another that I would say get rid of. I like them all. I mean, some more than others. But I do not, I mean, only in recent years

have I come to appreciate pumpkin pie. I used to hate it, so I can't even get rid of that. And, but yeah, there's marshmallows have no place in savory cooking whatsoever. There are better things that are sweet that you can use. Just sweet potatoes alone. The only thing I'll add is I think candy ams are a waste of my time and plate space too. Oh, yeah. You know, to get a read for the sophistication of the pallets at work here, though, other than Megan's,

I think I should point out that the last time Joan and I had a meal together, It was it Buffalo Wild Wings in Grand Rapids, Michigan? You're not going to get Steve to condemn that. Buffalo Wild Wings makes a fine wing. Used to be good. Now, they're not too corporate. They're falling off. So let the record show that if I had come up with the topic today,

Jonah never would have done the homework that he did. But since Megan did, and Jonah loves Megan, he went and did all sorts of homework. Let me wrap by giving you my answer. It's an answer that I hate to provide. It's the right answer. But the answer is cranberry sauce. And the reason that I don't like to say that is Wisconsin is the nation's largest producer of cranberries.

I have met cranberry farmers in northern Wisconsin. I have walked the bogs. They're beautiful. It's wonderful. But cranberry sauce is terrible. And every Thanksgiving table would be better off without it. Mr. Hayes, Mr. Hayes, you are breaking my heart. Your level of wrongness has escaped the stratosphere and has entered lower a little bit.

I cannot even begin. The cranberry, first of all, one of the uniquely American foods available on our tables at Thanksgiving. Second of all, with all of the heavy, starchy richness, cranberry sauce is the perfect counterpoint with its tart sweetness. Are people serving you canned cranberry sauce? No, of course not. Have you not had the natural deliciousness?

It's not that sweet. It's tart, but it's bitter. and it just leaves an aftertaste. It's just not good. Oh, man. I am so sad for you, Mr. Hayes. Do you sweeten your cranberry sauce? Yeah.

So I make mine with orange juice instead of water, sugar, and brandy, and some spices, as well as the traditional. That's not cranberry sauce, Megan. That's a cocktail. Yeah. What is it? No, it's not like a lot of brandy. It's like a tablespoon of brandy. and it is delicious and amazing

and I think I'm going to be serving it with the oxtails, Mr. Hayes. I was going to say, we should try it when we come over to your house for the oxtails. Oxtails, is it oxtails and short rib? Oxtails and short rib in one stew. I don't have a name for the stew.

I guess I should make one up, but stew a la Megan. But yes, we will try it. I will withhold my final judgment on cranberry sauce, but I'm not a fan as a general. Although I do agree with you on sweet potatoes and marshmallows, not great. 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.

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and Maggie, we're glad to have you aboard. 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 like marshmallows and sweet potatoes. 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, Max Miller, Victoria Holmes, and Noah Hickey.

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