The Dispatch Podcast - The Russian Plot

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Sarah and the guys discuss reporting about a Russian plot to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops, the battle for control of the Senate, and cancel culture's effect on our conversation about race in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit Thedispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts. And make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Plus, become a member of the dispatch and join us for Dispatch Live,

where we will do all of this on video and take questions from the audience. Next one is July 2nd. at 5.30 Eastern. And we'll hear more from today's sponsor ExpressVPN in just a little bit. Today, I am talking to the guys about the New York Times reporting that Russia covertly offered bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. We'll look at whether Democrats can pick up four seats in the Senate to gain control of both houses of Congress this year. And is cancel culture distracting from real change when it comes to race in our country? Plus, it turns out, not surprisingly to some of you, that David and Steve are culturally

illiterate when it comes to American cinema. Let's dive right in, new reporting on the story that Russia was paying a bounty to Taliban members to kill U.S. and coalition forces. Today, the New York Times reported that American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account. This evidence now supports U.S. intelligence that the conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Steve, I want to go to you first because there has certainly. been reporting that this hasn't been corroborated, that it was contradicted by some intelligence agencies. What do we know at this point? And what do we not know? Well, that's a good way to frame it. We know that there has been some reporting about Russia offering the Taliban and Taliban-affiliated jihadists and criminals bounties to kill U.S. soldiers. You've had Republicans on the relevant committees acknowledge that. You've had Democrats raise questions about it. You've had other Republicans talk about it. You've had basically tacit acknowledgement from members of the administration. The one person who is the real holdout here is President Trump,

who is tweeting, suggesting in effect that the whole thing is a hoax. The whole thing is not a hoax. That's just not true. The president does this all the time. We know that there's something there more than a hoax. The question is what's there? And on that, I think there's a lot that we don't know. You had big reporting. The story broke last Friday in the New York Times, and it was given a ton of attention and, you know, in effect, said Russia's been doing this trying to undermine the U.S. position and trying to kill U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. The president has, the president in the White House have been briefed about this, have known about this, and I haven't done anything. That was the takeaway from the initial time story, and you very quickly had the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, some of the networks, overseas papers, confirm those basic contours of that story.

Over the weekend, in the early parts of this week, you've had bits and pieces added to that. The final piece, Sarah, as you say, is the alleged confirmation of these wire transfers. The story itself, one of the original big clues was, came during a raid of a Taliban-affiliated person in Afghanistan, where they found a reported, you know, half a million dollars in American cash. And obviously that raised a number of questions. It was one piece of a puzzle that they were already investigating. There are reports that some of this had been briefed to national security officials back as early is February, March of 2019.

So that's sort of the story in bits and pieces as we know it today. A couple of contextual things. The fact that Russia is supporting the Taliban is not new. Russia's been supporting the Taliban for years pretty intensely since about 2017. You had the commanding general in Afghanistan, General Nicholson, give an interview to the BBC in I believe it was March of, of 2018, in which you talked about this very openly and even suggested at one point that there might have been payouts, that there might have been financial incentives for the Taliban

to kill American soldiers from the Russians. The Russians have been providing arms, other military equipment. Very clearly, the Russians are working actively against the U.S. position in Afghanistan and doing what they can to help the people who are trying to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. That's been true for a long time. And I think for people who want to defend the administration, defend is maybe not the right word, who want to, you know, put this in the broader context. That's what they will tell you is, look, it may be the case that these bounties were offered or even paid. It may be the case that that escalates what Russia is doing vis-a-vis the U.S. in Afghanistan, but it's not the case that this is wholly new and that we're just

learning about this. I think that's probably right. And I think there's a case to be made that even if you pull the lens back even further, that some of this reporting, you know, exaggerates the significance of these particular intelligence reports. Obviously, they're significant. If we have confirmation, if we have verification of the Russians doing this, it's a big deal. Let's be clear about that. But in the broader, context of what's happening in Afghanistan and what's happened in Afghanistan and Iraq where we've been fighting these wars for the past two decades, I mean, the Iranian involvement in killing U.S. soldiers, both financing it, providing arms for that, is much greater than what we're talking about here. Pakistan's role in supporting the Taliban and bringing harm to U.S. soldiers greater than what we're talking about with respect to Russia here. Last point for me, the thing I think that hasn't been discussed enough because people are still sort of sorting through the details of the actual reporting and what the findings are, whatever the case is, assuming that the broad reports are true, this suggests to me a tremendous failure of administration policy on both Russia and Afghanistan. You had Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, go to Moscow in May of 2019, and return and give interviews saying, look, Russia and the United States have common interests in Afghanistan.

We both want to fight jihadists, potentially at literally the exact time that the Russians are providing this funding for bounties on U.S. troops. But after, a full year after, you had a U.S. general say on the record that Russia is providing harms. So it was very clear back then that that was not the case. It's the kind of claim that you make when you want to, when your boss wants to improve relations with Russia and get an exit deal with the Taliban. And in both of those cases, this team, this Trump team that we were told, remember, we were told repeatedly, the Trump team is going to bring an element of realism that the Obama team lacked. For eight years, President Obama saw the world as he wanted it to be, not as it was. the Trump team was going to come in and fix that. They were going to change that

and bring an element of realism to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy that we hadn't seen. They were living in fantasy land to make those arguments, and it's a dramatic failure of policy, especially when you look at what the Taliban is doing today.

David, I want to come back to the political side. So leave that for our next part of this conversation. But just from a foreign policy angle, You have the commandant of the Marine Corps saying that while he saw no evidence of Russians offering bounties to kill U.S. troops, the families of fallen service members are entitled to answers about this. What should the policy of the administration be now to the extent this intelligence is confirmed? Yeah, that's a really good question. And it has a couple of easy answers, and then the answers get a lot harder. So here are some of the easy answers in my view.

Well, one of the things you don't do is you don't try to invite Russia back into, turn the G7 into the G8. Another thing that you don't do is you don't make a commitment. While all of this is happening, we're also making a commitment to the permanent reduction of forces, American forces, in Germany. Now, that is something that no one's really paid attention to because it is, I mean, we've had little minor things like a pandemic and a global economic recession and urban unrest to worry about, but that is a serious strategic error in my view. And it plays exactly into what Russia wants long term. It long term wants the United States to have really, if it can't have zero presence militarily in Europe, to have a minimal presence militarily in Europe. and that plays directly into Russia's strategic interests.

I had a really fascinating conversation with Iran Corporation, Russia analysts, sort of right at the start of the dispatch and wrote about it in one of my early newsletters. And essentially, Russian military strategy depends on a NATO so weak that if Russia were to make an aggressive move, it could defeat the NATO forces that are in Europe.

It could defeat them in their effort to roll. So if Russia rolled into, say, Estonia, that Russia would have the strength to defend its gains based on the forces that are in place in Europe, thus creating in the United States this choice. Do you want to reinforce against intense Russian resistance from the mainland United States? And so these reductions of military force in Europe are serious. This is a serious matter. So that's the easy answer. the easy answer is, well, you don't bring Russia back into the G7 and you don't reduce your

troop presence in Europe. I think the harder answer that we have to realize is that, you know, when you have, when you're faced with a Cold Warlike struggle with a nuclear armed power, even though Russia is certainly less formidable than the Soviet Union was, you don't have a huge number of great options. You can certainly say, well, we're going to at least temporarily beef up, even if modestly, forces in Europe. Or we're going to send a battalion on a rotation through Estonia. You can certainly consider sanctions. You can denounce publicly. You can engage in targeted bombing raids against the Taliban, as much as you can find them, the Taliban units that you hold responsible. There are a number of additional things that you can do. But

the fact of the matter is we have to realize that there's nothing that we can do that we can certainly there's nothing that we can do without risking dramatic escalation that could certainly indefinitely put a stop to the practice that was one of the quandaries of the cold war was that you know here you have the one thing that is unthinkable is a general conflict between these two powers and so then therefore the strategic dilemma was always how do you put pressure on this foreign power without risking an uncontrollable escalation. And that often leaves policymakers without great options. But I do think you do have at least one really good option here right now to say today, tomorrow, you know that permanent troop production that we had promised? No. And

instead of a permanent troop production, we're going to send some more troops maybe to Poland or to Estonia. Jonah, from a practical standpoint, what about those who argue that this is how this works in a real politic sense. We help the Mujahideen against the Russians in the 79 early 80s fight that was

going on there. And so, yeah, now the Russians are helping the Afghanistan folks kill our guys. This is how countries have proxy wars. Oh, I certainly think there's some truth to that. I mean, there are also some assumptions in there

that are, you know, problematic is probably the wrong word, but Russia is not the Soviet Union anymore, right? And it tells you something that Putin thinks that if Putin's position is, hey, they did it to us with the Mujahideen, we'll do it to them, you know, with the Taliban. That tells you a lot about his worldview, about how his Russia really uses successor states

in the Soviet Union. At the same time, you know, there also has to say, simply be, and it's like, look, there are a lot, there are spy swaps, there are all sorts of things that are done that so long as they don't become public knowledge, you can have a pretty cynical mercenary attitude towards. The second it becomes public knowledge, you have the problem as part of real polity of losing face. And if the Russians are in fact doing this, it is a humiliation and an affront to the United States of America that you might be able to tolerate in secret as you

get them to cut it out or you get some payback from them, you know, below the radar. But when it becomes common knowledge, then it becomes an issue of essentially national honor. And that's part of real politics, too. Most countries do not go to war simply over material interests, despite what all the neo-Marxists say. They often go to war over issues of pride, of honor, and the rest. You know, I mean, China wants to take back Hong Kong not because it's like crucial to its economic model. They want to take back Hong Kong because they think it's an affront to their status as the regional hegemon and all the rest. The same thing with Taiwan. So I think you make a perfectly fun point. I just, it's kind of moot once it becomes well-known.

And it also becomes a major political problem for Donald Trump because, you know, the guy keeps saying it's good to have a good relationship with Russia. Russia should be part of the GA, you know, all the horrible things they said at the Helsinki Summit. And if the consequences of this is still bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, then what are we getting out of this relationship? So I mean, I think it's more of a, I mean, I think it's an important issue on geo-strategic grounds, but it's also just a really important issue politically that, you know, Trump may have known about this or because he doesn't read the PDB, he didn't know about this, and it gets to just sort of, whether it's an indictment, as Steve puts it, of the administration strategy, or if it's just an indictment of administration competence, it's still a big story.

Steve, that's a good point that Jonah raises. I am not clear on exactly what the White House's line on this is. We have two tweets this morning from the president. The Russia Bounty story is just another made-up fake news tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party. The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredit in New York Times has a source,

reveal it just another hoax. That to me makes it sound as if he's saying that the White House line is that none of this is true. But then there's another. tweet that says, no corroborating evidence to back reports, Department of Defense. Do people still not understand that all of this is made up fake news media hoax started to slander me in the Republican Party? I was never briefed because any info that they may have had did not rise to that level. Well, that's different then. That's saying that the hoax is that he wasn't briefed, but that the

intelligence could be correct. Do you have a sense of where the White House is going to go? Either the intelligence doesn't exist, it's a hoax, the story is false, or the intelligence exist, but to perhaps the more subtle point you were making, it's not particularly new and therefore maybe he wasn't briefed on it. Yeah. I mean, so I think the problem is there is no White House line, or if there's a White House line, it's the line that the president articulates. And some of his very top people are out of step with it. You had National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien say this morning that they took this seriously. They ran it to ground. They didn't brief the president. You know, this was examined and investigated. You have Mike Pompeo at a press conference this morning,

also saying we looked at this very carefully. So there's a this there. I mean, the president seems to be suggesting that there really wasn't anything there at all. And you have his own top national security and foreign policy advisors acknowledging that there was a there there. And the president is, unless I'm mistaken, I've missed something, the president is alone in making the claim that there's just nothing to this at all. nobody else in the world believes at it. Look, we shouldn't be surprised. This is what he does. He just makes stuff up all the time. So it's not surprising that when he's cornered like this, he's going to make something up. I mean, I think in his mind, maybe he thinks that's better

than, you know, it was there and I wasn't briefed about it. It was there and I, it was in my briefing book on February 27th, which is what the New York Times story alleges. It was in my presidential daily brief on February 27th, and I didn't see it because I don't read my briefing. I mean, it's hard to figure out exactly what the president is thinking, but it is worth pointing out, as you suggest, that what he's saying today is different than what we've heard from members of both parties on Capitol Hill, reports in, you know, a dozen normally credible media outlets, and even the passing from the lips of some of his top national security advisors. David, staying on the political line here,

the White House has also been briefing separately, Republicans and Democrats from the Hill. And the result of that is that we're getting very different lines from the Republicans who were briefed than from the Democrats who were briefed with perhaps some thought that they were actually briefed on different things. This is not just the partisan outcome

of hearing the same information, but in fact, they were hearing different information. The Democrats saying that they were given no substance information about intelligence at all. And the Republicans saying that, in fact, the intelligence agencies had not come to a consensus on the matter. This fall, sigh, this seems to fall into sort of the great sort problem, but is it a strategic move by the White House to throw more dust in the air? Can I just make a quick clarifying point, David, before you answer that? there have been some Republicans who have suggested that what they heard in these briefings are troubling, right?

You have Ben Sass make a comment to, who was not at the White House briefing, but is on the Intelligence Committee, make a comment to the New York Times suggesting that this is problematic and we really need to learn more. You have Liz Cheney and Mack Thornberry to senior Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee who attended the White House briefing for House members on Monday. emerged from that briefing with a different line than many of their colleagues who said, yeah, this is, you know, much ado about nothing. Cheney and Thornbury put out a statement and said, this is a problem. We really need to learn more. We need to dig down. Sorry, just to clarification.

Well, and the Liz Cheney points interesting because this is not the first time she has broken from the president. This is someone who's moving up in leadership on the House side quite quickly. We'll talk about polling later on, but an interesting note to make on Liz Cheney. Yeah, I mean, everything is unfolding as everything has unfolded before and will continue to unfold throughout the rest of this administration. And it's, you have several strands. One is what is the actual truth of the matter? And I think Steve has laid out a great explainer of what we know and what we don't know. And what we know is from a geopolitical standpoint, quite troubling, putting aside for the moment the Trump administration response

and what Trump knew and when he knew it. And so, you know, the focus of serious and sober-minded policy makers at this point should be the what now. And the secondary focus should be what did Trump know? And so, you know, I think that's where, you know, you see a Senator Sass. It's where you see Cheney is okay, based on everything that we have, this is a serious matter.

let's take it seriously, what is going to be the American response, and let's take a look at what the administration has known and what it's done, which is the serious response. Then you have the extremely political response, which is sort of along the lines of, oh, look, the New York Times report and the Wall Street Journal report about this are not exactly right. Fake news, hoax, here we go again. When the fact of the matter is, in almost every case

where you're going to have a complex story that is, relying on anonymous sourcing and you're going to have some inconsistencies. You're going to have some revisions. The more this gets fleshed out and the more you learn and the more the truth percolates up through the bureaucracy. And that's where sort of the stalwart Trump defenders are going to focus on each and any given inconsistency. And then they'll also focus on the leak itself, which, again, isn't going to the core American strategic problem or emerging from this reporting. So, you know, look, I don't know what the president knew. I don't know, and when he knew it, I don't know that we'll definitively know this for some time, quite honestly. But what I'm

really, really concerned about is what are we going to do? And, you know, the president has had this line that says, I've been the toughest administration on Vladimir Putin. I'm so tough. I've been so tough. Well, let me tell you something. If at the end of the legacy at the end of the presidency was this strategically critical but partial withdrawal from Syria, if the legacy at the end of the presidency is a material reduction of troops in NATO, the record's going to actually look a lot different. It's going to look a lot different than hanging your hat. on sending some lethal arms to Ukraine, ultimately. And so that's where we need, I think, the focus needs to be.

What are you going to do? Are you going to do something that is counter to Russian interest? Are you going to persist in this course of action of materially weakening NATO that is directly in Russian interest? And I think that should be the focus. Jonah, an AP headline today said, Russian bounties further strained Trump's bond with veterans, pointing out that Virginia and North Carolina,

a high number of veterans are still considered swing states, Virginia may be less so. At the same time, you have the president tweeting, I will veto the defense authorization bill if the Warren Amendment, which would lead to the renaming of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert Ely, and many other military bases from which we won two World Wars is in the bill. Are there political implications in the election as the bounty story picks up steam or loses steam, particularly with the veterans community? Oh, I think so. Look, I mean, one of the advantages of this story or disadvantages, depending on your perspective, is that unlike the Ukraine phone call, unlike lethal aid to Ukrainians, unlike a lot of these things, it's really easy to understand. And Trump, you know, so part of the problem that Trump is creating for himself here, my friend, mine and David friend,

Andy McCarthy made this point during the impeachment stuff, is that, you know, during the impeachment, Trump insisted that the phone call was perfect. And it insisted that his defenders called it perfect. That was flawless. That was just perfect. And Andy McCarthy would say, look, whenever I went into courtroom, whenever I went into the courtroom, I did not set a standard for myself that was way higher than the minimal standard I needed to win the case. Right. And so, you know, Andy's point was he was sort of pulling his hair. I was like, look, just say, look, I can understand why the call wasn't, you know, why some people think it, you know, it wasn't perfect and why there were problems with it. And in hindsight, I wish I had said it differently, yada, yada, yada. But give people room to sort of criticize it while at the same time saying it doesn't rise the level of impeachment. Trump is creating that exact same problem for himself or an analogous problem for himself by just saying this is all fake.

the second you sort of set the standard and say there's no truth to this whatsoever, all you have to do for his critics is to provide some truth that it's some evidence that it's true. And people will understand that. And so I think that that's part of the problem for Trump is that this is really understandable, particularly for veterans, particularly for people who serve. And this gets into stuff we were talking about last week is that Trump's coalition that in 2016 is just a lot smaller now. And he can't afford to start losing veterans. You know, if I were Donald Trump and I was watching,

we don't have to get into the weeds on this, but if I was Donald Trump watching Fox, seeing Tucker Carlson essentially, you know, throw me under the bus, that would cause me grave concern because he doesn't have a lot of room for error. And with the Confederate base names and all these kinds of things, he is still suffering from his winner's bias,

and he thinks the solution to his problems is to double down on the behavior that got him there. He can afford to lose 10 points of support in Mississippi. Right? He's going to win the state by 20 points. If he loses 10% of that vote while picking up 5% in the suburbs in Pennsylvania and Michigan, that is a great deal for him.

But he behaves as if he thinks running up massive tallies among constituencies that are already going to vote for him in the electoral college is to his advantage. And the way he's handling this is not ideal. Well, let's transfer then into more of the politics of the politics here. So some good news coming out of the economy. Washington Post headlines. Stocks close out best quarter since 1998 clawing back most of Q1 losses. CNBC, manufacturing bounces back stronger than expected in June. Consumer confidence, higher than expected. So in that sense, with the president and Republicans running on the economy, those should all be great numbers.

But then we have the Pew Research Center with a new survey out. Almost 90% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the state of the country. And diving into the Republican side of that, until June 30th, Republican satisfaction with the state of the country, it stayed above 50%. The latest survey shows 19% of Republicans and those who lean Republicans are satisfied with the direction of the country. 63% of Republicans say they feel angry about the state of the U.S. 56% of Republicans say they are fearful about the state of the country. Only a quarter of Republicans say they feel proud when thinking about the country in its current state. Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report noted something this morning. When President Trump took office in January 2017, there were

241 Republicans in the House. Since then, 115, 48% have either retired, resigned, been defeated, or are retiring in 2020. Or we're eaten by wolves. There was that wolf eating incident. We've talked about Biden versus Trump quite a bit, but I want to spend a little bit of time on the Senate races today. Right now, Republicans hold a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate. That would mean that Democrats would have to get four seats to gain control, three seats plus the vice presidency. However, there's two Democratic seats that are up. Alabama in particular, Doug Jones's seat looks like it will probably go back to Republicans, in which case Democrats need four pickups, four Senate seats to get from Republicans plus the presidency to take control of the Senate,

something that seemed a pretty far off hope in, you know, 2016, for instance, looking at 2020. And yet, the polling in these states is pretty abysmal. In Arizona, nearly a 10-point margin with Martha McSally behind. In North Carolina, 10-point margin with Tom Tillis behind. You have Georgia, two seats up in Georgia that are both held by Republicans right now. You have Iowa with Joni Ernst losing ground. And then you have Kansas and Montana reliably Republican states, but that are polling very, very close all of a sudden. Steve, are Democrats poised to take back the Senate? Yes, absolutely. If the election were held today, I think Democrats would take back the Senate and win pretty decisively. And that's not just my opinion looking at

the polls and these races from a distance. It's the opinion of the people. that I've talked to who are working on these races. To say that there is alarm inside the Republican Senate caucus would be to understate things. And if you talk to Republican consultants working on these races, they can't believe some of the numbers they're seeing. Just extraordinary losses for Republicans in public polling, in internal polling, all following the collapse of Donald Trump's standing over the past six weeks. Yeah, I think there's a huge problem. And the thing to watch for, as we continue to monitor this closely, is whether some of these Republicans get more aggressive in distancing themselves from the president. You've already seen,

not necessarily in the political context, but you've seen some Republicans see me to feel more liberated in challenging the president on some of this stuff and taking a little bit of a different position, whether we're talking about the virus, whether we're talking about the Rush Bounty story, whether we're talking about the protests. There's been some separation, and it's no longer kind of the default that Republican office holders feel like they need to be in lockstep with the president. Certainly those in red states, if they're making a political calculation are likely to continue to follow the president. But for those in swing states and swing districts, it's not at all clear that following the president blindly at this point is

going to be a benefit, just if you look at the polling. I mean, you look at, you know, a race like Joni Ernst's race to be reelected in Iowa. That was a state that Donald Trump won by seven, nine, I should know this. He won, and won pretty hand. handily in 2016. The fact that we're even having a conversation about the Georgia Senate races, the Republicans might be in trouble in Georgia, is pretty amazing. John Ossup, the Democratic challenger to Senator David Purdue is in one poll within three points. There's been a move in Georgia. President Trump's approval ratings have fallen in Georgia. If Georgia's, if we're talking about Georgia as a competitive race, the first week in November,

this is going to be an incredibly ugly November for Republicans. And something pretty significant would have to change with the stipulation and the caveat that, yes, this is a snapshot. Jonah can talk about the snapshot and the Titanic. He had a very good line in his column today. This is a snapshot, but it increasingly looks like this is going to be an ugly, ugly several months for Republicans. David, dive in on those pew numbers about Republicans, because this seems to go to who's going to go vote.

There was one, the New York Times Sienna College poll noted that while voters who backed Mr. Trump in 2016, but now say there's not any chance that they will vote for him this year, represent only 2% of registered voters in these swing states, 2% would be more than enough to have flipped 2016 combine that with these Republican numbers

especially the 50% satisfaction with the state of the country down to 19% satisfaction state of the country among Republicans. Are we just going to see Republicans stay home? It's a great question. I mean, I keep going back to something Jonah said in the last dispatch podcast,

which was, look, it could get closer. I mean, I think if you're going to say, you know, where is the smart money going to bet, where are you going to put bet the smart money, given the close polarization of our country, given the, this, you know, this state of not really 50-50 division, but more like, say, 52, 48, 51, 49 between right-leaning, left-leaning, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of smart money would say this is going to get closer,

as we get closer to November. But it is not difficult to imagine it getting worse for Trump before November. And when you look at numbers like the Pew Poole, you see right there in front of you the seeds of this getting worse. When you have only 19% of Republicans saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, that does not scream four more years. And so, you know, when you're seeing these numbers popping up in these Senate races, there's a chance here that what you're going to have is sort of that Trump magic just starts to melt away completely. There has been, as a result of the surprise victory, and it was a surprise victory that didn't defy national polling because the national polls were pretty accurate about the 2016 popular vote, but to defied some state-level polling, for a long time, Republicans have just not really believed the polls.

They have looked at sort of Trump's consistently low approval rating and yet still had extraordinary confidence about what 2020 is going to be like. Just extraordinary confidence. You talked to smart people who are hardcore MAGA. And even in the days when he was bumping along in 43, 44 percent, and approval, they just had extraordinary confidence in 2020. And there was just almost this magical feeling about what Trump can accomplish and how the media just doesn't get it. It doesn't get the base.

It doesn't get him. It will never get him. We're going to win. And I think a lot of that veneer of confidence is being shed right now. I think a lot of that sort of sense that he has this formula is falling away. And when there are politicians that when they lose that, they hit a team. tipping point. They will start to see accelerating losses. And I do wonder if that is possible, especially as, and we haven't even talked about this, the coronavirus. I mean, if you're talking

about 40,000 plus, 45,000 plus daily diagnoses, and selective reclosings and parts of the country, you know, Texas with bars and other places, you know, closing some businesses that have reopened, it starts to make this sort of V-shaped, not just V-shaped economic recovery, but sort of V-shaped recovery and confidence in the country, that casts that into doubt. And so I still think the smart money would say there's going to be some tightening just because of the background level of division in this country. But it is looking more and more plausible that what you're going to face is continued decline and maybe significant continued decline.

Joan, are we about to see Republican Senate candidates start Heismitting the president in the White House? You know, it's funny. I don't, I think we are seeing it to a certain extent, but it's very understated. I mean, Steve referenced it slightly. We now see Mitch McConnell, all these guys come out and say, even Kevin McCarthy, saying, I know he's not a senator, but he's an important bellwether. you know, I mean, he might as well be literally a canary in a little cage at the bottom of the whole line. And he, they're all saying wear a mask, do it for your country, do it for the Fourth of July, do it for patriotism, all of these things. And we know that Donald Trump doesn't like that, you know, it doesn't have to say that the president is wrong.

It just undercuts his messaging over the last six months. And, you know, the Senate guys, and I've had conversations with them about this, you know, is that they have different constituencies to worry about because they have to overperform Trump to win. And so in states where suburbs really matter, they have to have one message for suburbs and another message for the more rural parts. And this mask thing, it seems to me, is, is, I mean, this about face on the mask is a way to signal to suburbanites that they are not necessarily on the exact same page as the president on the pandemic. But it's also just sort of highlights, I wish I meant to look up the numbers

so I could have them handy. People forget in 2016 the, a lot of senators basically had coattails for the president, not the other way around. A lot of senators overperformed Donald Trump. I remember Rubio did. Portman, I think, did. I mean, I can't, again, I don't have it in front of me, but a half dozen or so of the big Senate seat wins in 2016 for Republicans, you saw Republicans doing seven, eight, nine points better than the president. That's not true right now, which is partly a sign of how the Republican Party has shrunk under Donald Trump and how badly the suburbs have been lost for the Republicans. Trump is now overperforming a lot of these senators. If on election day, Corey Gardner gets the same percentage of the vote as Donald Trump did,

he loses, just flat out loses. He must overperform the president. So must, you know, Susan Collins or all those, you know, type folks who are running. And the only way you can do that is to start signaling to the voters that you need that will never vote for Trump, that you are not necessarily on, you know, on the same page every single day. The interesting political question is, will Trump let them, right? Will Trump give these people the room to run the races that they need to run when they are not, when it means sort of dissing or at least not singing the praises constantly of Donald Trump?

And, you know, and this gets to this point that I've been making of late. people keep saying, I know this is more appropriate for last week, but I started thinking about it when we did the podcast last week. People keep saying, oh, once Biden gets out of the basement, you know, it'll become, and I've seen Ari Fleischer, I've seen John Sununu, I've seen basically every graybeard political consultant who appears on Fox for the last week, say some version of this. And I'm not saying it's wrong and it's thinking, but it's that, oh, Trump's in trouble right now because it's a, referendum on Trump. What Trump needs is to make it a choice. It means to make it a choice between Trump and Biden. This is what Q. Hewitt was saying to me. There's more. This is what everybody says. And they're right as a matter of theory. That if it's a referendum about Trump, Trump will lose and he'll take large chunks of the Republican Party with him. Where I think they have it

wrong, or I'm starting to think they have it wrong, is that Trump is at all interested or capable of making it a choice. He wants it to be a referendum on him. He wants it to be a referendum on him. He wants to make everything about him. He wants to make the question, him the center of the spotlight. And so that question that we got on Friday from Sean Hannity asking, or Thursday, asking Trump what his second term agenda would be, which is the mother of all softballs. It is a softball that if it were physically instantiated in this reality, you could see from space, right? It is the softball that every politician running for re-election wants to be asked, given Hannity's

relationship with the White House, it is no doubt, was told to them that he was going to ask it, if not requested of Hannity to ask it. And Trump completely buttered it with this weird seminar on the word experience and then going after John Bolton. And I think it's because he really wants the election to be about himself. And if he succeeds in making it about himself, it really doesn't matter very much what Joe Biden says or does when he gets out of the basement with his new, you know, skin suit like he's been making like Buffalo bills and silence at the lamp. It puts the lotion on the skin. He puts the lotion on the agenda.

I think I think Jonah is actually giving Trump too much credit, which he always does, of course. I don't think Trump is even giving it that much thought. I think this is just all ad hoc. I don't think he's thinking, I want this to be a referendum on me. I don't want this to. It's just he doesn't give it this kind of thought. But that's sort of my point. He is incapable of thinking that this, like when he's asked, what's your agenda?

He doesn't want his election to be about an agenda. He doesn't want his election to be about how his agenda is better than Joe Biden's agenda. He wants it to be about him. Remember in 2018 when he gave that press conference, which was one of the most, sort of ungracious things in the history of American politics, where he, first of all, he gets shalacked the way Obama got shalacked in the midterms. And rather than admitting it was a loss or anything about him, he runs through the names of all the Republicans who lost and said

they lost because they didn't embrace him. Did not embrace, right? That's who the guy is. And the idea that he's going to run some alternative discipline campaign about Biden's agenda. I'm increasingly skeptical about it. Well, let me then ask for y'all's quick reaction on let's make it a choice. Let's assume that Steve is right, that the polling is accurate and the Democrats are able to pick up. They'll lose Alabama, but they'll pick up four seats plus the presidency, meaning that they have control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. Steve, what is the first legislative priority of that Democratic-controlled government? You know, that's very interesting question.

One of the things that Joe Biden has been able to do by remaining in his basement as Donald Trump would have it is not really lay out much of a positive agenda. He's betting that this is a referendum on Trump, and he's the not Trump, and that puts him in a good position. And so he's doing as little as he can to either potentially frustrate or anger the lefty base of the Democratic Party. But he hasn't at the same time, I would say, gone out of his way to do much to court independents who might be willing to move to, you know, who polling suggests have already moved to Joe Biden or soft Republicans who are willing to vote for Joe Biden. So I don't, I mean, I'm dodging your question. don't know the answer to that question. I don't, I don't have any, any idea what their first thing would do. I know there's concern. Well, I'll just leave it there. I don't know. And can I give an answer of if, here's what they do, here's what they'll do if they're smart,

and here's what they'll do if they're dumb. I think if they're smart, what they'll immediately do is begin to enact additional stimulus legislation if it hasn't been enacted in the latter part of the year. The economy is unlikely to be fully recovered. Highly unlikely to be fully recovered, that would be a popular measure that would almost certainly not be filibustered. Perhaps some police reform legislation that wouldn't have made it, that couldn't have made it through Republican Senate, do two things that are popular that could impact real people in, you know, real people in their real lives. What they'll do, I think, if they're dumb, is immediately get into a fight over abolishing the filibuster to enact the sort of broader social legislation parts of the

Biden agenda. And that very well may happen because if Biden wins and if he wins big and if they take this and Democrats take the Senate, there's going to be a lot of pressure from the left to say now is the time because if we can't enact our agenda with a victory this sweeping, when can we ever, ever, ever enact our agenda? the filibuster, get rid of it, and let's go to town. And I think that would be incredibly, an incredibly divisive way to start a new term after a big victory. But it's not outside the realm of possibility. David just mentioned one of the things that I was going to say when I stopped myself short, which was abolishing the filibuster, abolishing the legislative

filibuster. But I also think there is, there's concern, shall we say, in conservative legal circles that on the heels of a decisive Democratic victory, where they take the Senate and route Donald Trump make gains in the House, that that could revive serious talk about moving the Supreme Court to 15. Joan, I haven't heard immigration and I haven't heard single-payer health care yet.

Yeah, I mean, I think those would be part of the broader agenda, but like a first 100 days thing, I think that Biden, Biden's instincts are still fairly institutionalist when it comes to the Senate. I don't think he would want to go after getting rid of the filibuster. I think Schumer would be persuadable on that, given how much Democrats paid a price for the Harry Reid games, you know, with judicial appointments under Trump. And it's entirely possible that the political climate would be like very conducive for the sort of economic package that Dave David's talking about, you know, Biden's basically running on a platform of return to normalcy. So it would make sense for him in all sorts of ways in his first hundred days not to

amp up polarization by doing these Hail Mary passes for, you know, packing the Supreme Court and all these things, particularly when their chances of actually succeeding would still be pretty low. So I think that's right that the likely scenario is a lot of spending, a lot, which I would probably disagree with, lots of that kind of stuff. Probably the only other thing I think would be definitely in a package would be some major criminal justice police reform thing. Like, you just get out of the gate, check that box. Lots of Republicans want to be able to vote for some of that stuff anyway,

particularly the ones that survived. But if they went full-blown, get rid of the filibuster, Green New Deal, you know, if they did all that stuff, right out of the gate, I think that would be really, really foolish, and I just don't think that's where Biden's instincts would be. All right, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor, ExpressVPN. So we all know how ExpressVPN protects your privacy and security online, right?

But here's something you might not know. You can also use ExpressVPN to unlock movies and shows that are only available in other countries. Now that so many of us are stuck at home, it's only a matter of time until you run out of stuff to watch on Netflix. But now you can use ExpressVPN to binge Doctor Who on UK Netflix. It's so simple to do. You just fire up the ExpressVPN app, change the location to the UK, refresh Netflix, and that's it. ExpressVPN hides your IP address and lets you control where you want the site to think you're located.

You can choose from almost 100 different countries. So just think about all the Netflix libraries you can go through. Love anime? Use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix. and be spirited away. But it's not just Netflix, of course. ExpressVPN works with any streaming service. Hulu, BBC, IPlayer, YouTube, you name it. There are hundreds of VPNs out there, but ExpressVPN is ridiculously fast. There's never any buffering or lag and you can stream in HD without a problem. ExpressVPN is also compatible with all your devices, phones, media

consoles, smart TVs, and more so you can watch what you want on a personal device or on the big screen, wherever you are. If you visit my special link right now at expressvpn.com slash freedom, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. So support the show, watch what you want, and protect yourself with ExpressVPN at ExpressVPN.com slash freedom. Okay, let's spend just a few minutes on sort of where the police reform conversation, the George Floyd protests, have come as of this. this week. So first of all, a wonderful piece on Dispatch.com by Declan Garvey on Tim Scott. Really, this wonderful long form. Tim Scott didn't ask for this about the South

Carolina senator's role as the only black Republican in the Senate. And, you know, his interesting moment where the president tweets that video that has the guy yelling white power. And Tim Scott went on TV and told him to delete it. And the president did. Something we haven't seen very often. So first, just want to highly recommend that piece on our website. But David, you also had a great newsletter of where that conversation has now led. Instead of talking about the police reform bills, the Democrats had a bill, the Republicans had a bill, neither side was willing to come to the table.

It now appears dead and people aren't even really talking about that anymore. And instead, you know, an episode of the Golden Girls from 1988 has been taken down because Blanche and Rose were wearing mud facial masks. Same with community, 30 Rock, several Hollywood celebrities apologizing for past skits and shows saying that they

will not use voice actors who are not of the race of the character that they're playing. You also pointed out this piece in the Atlantic that I thought was a really well-done piece talking about some of the unjust mobs on social media, a utility worker was fired

after being falsely accused of making a white supremacist hand gesture. A progressive data analyst lost his job after tweeting a study from a black political scientist indicating that nonviolent protest is more effective than violent protest. A man's business is in peril

because his daughter tweeted a racist statement when she was 14 years old. So you've talked about David, this being a distraction. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, so here you have this moment in the country, and we've talked about it after the George Floyd killing, where there was this incredible, it was almost like a national

cry of anguish. And Tim Alberta talked about and this really marvelous Politico piece about how dramatically polling numbers had moved on questions of race and policing. And there's this moment where it feels like, okay, wait a minute, we have in our grasp the ability to do something very substantial that can impact the lives of real people in this country in a positive way. And, you know, for the first time, there are those of us who for years were sort of beating the bushes about things like qualified immunity or things like civil asset forfeiture, policing for profit. And all of a sudden, these terms become part of the political debate. And then the next thing you know, we're talking about the Golden Girls.

Or, you know, the New York Times is dedicating a ton of column inches to a controversial Instagram post at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it's all of a sudden what ends up happening is it feels like you're beginning to have this conversation that's starting to be designed, that's starting to be mainly elite progressives, naval gazing about their own institutions and a particularly, intolerant kind of way. And then in the meantime, real life for people is still continuing with no change. And I brought up this incredible Reuters investigation of judicial misconduct in the U.S. And here's how it begins. Because this is what we should be focusing on. It says Judge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars. Why? For failure to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide. Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her

time in jail endures today. Her three children were put into foster care while she was incarcerated. Again, for traffic tickets, one daughter was molested, another was physically abused. You look at this and you say, wait a minute, this is the story. Okay, if the Metropolitan Museum of wants to have an argument about its European curators' Instagram etiquette, I don't know why that is a national story. And it's not just a distraction. It's not just a distraction because while people can say, I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can argue for qualified immunity reform and police my colleagues' Instagram at the same time. We all know human beings And we all know that we default, often default, towards the cheapest, laziest, easiest thing to do,

which often happens to be what, policing Instagram? But then the other thing that happens is when the media starts to focus on like Golden Girls episodes or episodes of 30 Rock, what does that tell a huge number of Americans who are sort of skeptical about the argument that there's a systematic problem in this country with the legacy of racism? You know, it says when you're seeing the media day after day dominated by these minds, microaggression stories, then a lot of Americans are saying to themselves, if that's what you're upset about, if that's your argument about what's wrong with America, then the fight over racism and the legacy of America's racist past is over. It's one. I mean, if we're just talking

about these microaggressions, so I just think it's a completely negative development. It's intolerant. It further crushes the culture of free speech in this country. It's a distraction from real people's lives. And in the emphasis given to all of these microaggressions, it's actually deceptive. It causes people to believe that the problem in this country is something different than what it actually is. So I am, I am, it is, I'm looking at this development with increasing alarm. Jonah, I have a feeling that you have feelings on this topic. I do. I agree entirely with David about if you're actually focused on trying to fix things or make improvements in people's lives and improve the

law to reflect upon the moral center of these protests, then getting your dress over your head about a quarter century old episode of Golden Girls is probably not the best way to go. The one that actually enrages me more is the episode of community that they're banning, which was the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons episode where Chang puts on blue face makeup to be a dark elf and that was considered somehow

racially insensitive Jonah they're coming after Dungeons of Dragons? Well there's a special episode of community based on Dungeons and Dragons but they are they're going after orcs they've now announced that they're going to

no longer make orcs in explicitly evil race because of the you know because they have dark skin they also have feral teeth and weigh like six hundred pounds. And as I've been saying for a long time, if you look at an orc and say, ah, black people, maybe you're the racist. But anyway, um, uh, be that as it may. Um, I think that

this is much more has to do with the fact that, you know, large numbers of elite people are in a, are in a spiritual crisis that anti-racism serves as basically a secular religion because they are not allowed in their cultural circles to have access to actual traditional forms of religious expression, and they're losing their minds. And when you tear down and behead the statue of an immigrant who came to this country who has no ancestral, you know, liability for slavery, who signs up to catch slave catchers, which we are now told are the precursors of all modern policing, which is just not true, and then joins the Union Army, fights valiantly, and ultimately gives his life and mobs tear down this hans christian wegg they tear down the statue in

wisconsin decapitate them and throw them in a lake we are not talking about reasonable people any longer and um this i think kind of just needs to burn itself out we need to run through it i mean i it's a very interesting experience for me having a 17 year old daughter who spends way too much time looking at instagram stories from her friends and beers and the other day she turned to me while I was driving and said, you know, they're saying that Abraham Lincoln shouldn't get much credit for the Civil War and for freeing the slaves. It should, because it takes away the credit that African Americans, you know, reclaimed their freedom on their own, and particularly the work of important people like Langston Hughes. And I almost had to pull over the car and

be like, what did Langston Hughes do during the Civil War? You know, he comes like, a half century later or something, this is a moral panic. It doesn't mean that the core ideas underneath it aren't justified for the reasons that David lays out. There are concrete things that need to be done. But it is so much more performative than it is substantial at this point that I've been going for two days now dealing with people who think I'm a racist because I think it's a bad idea for the NBA to replace last names with social justice slogans. and they're like, oh, that's your white privilege speaking. And it's like, no, not really.

I just think it's a really bad idea. And all I can do at this point is just say, I think all of you are losing your minds that don't tell me that, you know, that it's because I'm not sympathetic to the concrete things that you want to do. I am sympathetic, but this is madness and you are going to turn people against you. it is very much like the early iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation and parts of Central Europe, where they just, you know, like the serial killer from the jerk who just wanted to shoot cans,

they just wanted to set fire to paintings and tear down statues because it was fun and it was an expression of will and sort of transcendent righteousness and all the rest. And it's nuts. And if there's anything that gives a chance for them to get Donald Trump reelected, it's continuing on this path. Steve. Well, I didn't get any of the references at all about Dungeon Dragons or community or...

But did you get the Protestant Reformation? I got a little of the Protestant Reformation. I got some of Golden Girls. I definitely got the jerk. I definitely got the... He hates these cans. Classic. Classic scene.

I think Jonah's right. You know, there are layers here. I mean, I think most of what... what we're seeing right now play out with the kinds of incidents, all too prevalent incidents that both Joan and David are talking about, is just sort of mindless hysteria. And it's not really to a point. It's not really to a purpose. And look, some of the people who are protesting the original problem here and taking seriously the original problem, which started with the killing of George Floyd are frustrated by where this has all gone.

Because it is a distraction. It does keep us from focusing on solutions to actual problems when you have people throwing statues in the lake. I do think there's a big educational component. I guess I wouldn't say that that's a proximate cause for what we're seeing. Because, as I say, I think this is just primarily just hysteria and people aren't really thinking about what they're doing so much. But to the extent that there's any kind of guiding philosophy underneath all of this, it's this kind of ignorance and nihilism that we've seen about our actual history

that we've seen come to dominate the way that our kids are taught about what happened in the United States. And it is the case that a lot of young people don't understand the moral dilemma that Abraham Lincoln faced because they haven't been taught about it. And they don't understand what Thomas Jefferson did, the good and the bad, because they haven't been taught about it. That, I think, is, you know, it's tried to call it a huge problem, but it's part of this whole phenomenon. I don't think it's what's driving it because, as I say, I think this is just sort of mindless hysteria. But it's a part of the problem, and I think once we move past the kind of insanity that we're seeing now

and get back to the point where maybe we can have a discussion about what solutions are, I think that has to be part of that discussion because it'll be important. Can I add to something that Jonah said, which I think when Jonah brought up a sort of a religious impulse element to this, I think that that's a really good way to understand this. If you grew up in, as I did and continue to live in, I grew up in a fundamentalist religious tradition, still belong to a very theologically conservative church. This looks like a religious argument. This is like the Harry Potter Wars, if it was, if the Harry Potter Wars were fought by the people who ran Harvard in the New York Times. where you have these incredibly intense arguments,

emotional arguments, where to those who are arguing, the stakes are very high, but everyone outside of it, who's not in that particular faith, it's just inscrutable. It's just, what are you guys doing? But in the meantime, when you're in that bubble,

for those who are in that bubble, you know, there's this intensity to it that is difficult to explain. I mean, it's like, you know, there was a while where, you know, there was, so the question in some churches were like, where were you during the Harry. What did you do during the Harry Potter Wars? And it's just what this strikes me is this, it is intensely, it's so intensely emotional, so inscrutable to those who are outside of that bubble and so tied to sort of larger transcendent values that I think what Jonah said about this being almost fundamentally religious within these particular subcrued. cultures is exactly right. All right. Last topic for today. I figured out that David,

for, you know, he talks a big game on all these movies that he's seen and loves and Avengers or whatever, you know, warp zappers. But then it turns out he hadn't seen Casablanca. So I asked the guys to all take the AFI, 1997 100 Greatest Films of All Times Quiz to see what they scored because I was not sure who would score the worst, actually, at that point. So, Steve, what did you get? And have you

seen Casablanca? I have seen Casablanca. Okay. But I've only seen 25 others on the list. So I'm just over a quarter of that list. And I like to think it's because, you know, unlike some potentially better performing colleagues, I had a life in, you know, You know, high school and college, I was out doing things. I didn't just sit at home watching movies. But the good news about it is there are so many classic films that I haven't seen that at some point when I get a life back, once the dispatch is through the startup phase, I have a lot of things that I can take advantage of. I can watch a lot of those movies. Okay. So Steve got a 26. Good to know. He has seen Casablanca. David, what did you score?

So I'm just going to go ahead and issue my trigger warning to you, Sarah. I scored a 27. And to make it worse for you, as I read through the list of 100, I could only look at maybe two or three that I actually want to see. Oh, my. Oh, come on. What? Yeah. Yeah. No. Wait, so just to be clear, every time I've said, I didn't even know what like a third of them were. Every time I've said, I'm shocked, shocked to find the gambling is going on in here. You actually have no idea what I'm talking about. No, I know what that is. No, I know what that is. Yeah. But I mean, I know the record.

I should have trigger warned Jonah. Jonah. I'll be honest with you. A lot of those movies, I didn't even know what they were. I mean, I'm focused on the DCEU, the MCEU, and the WFEU, the WFEU, the Willf extended universe. Okay, David's out. Jonah, let's you and I talk about some great films through American history. What did you score?

Okay, so I used a pretty strict filter for myself. Yes. And so there are some movies here that I think I have seen, but it's been so long that I couldn't, in fairness, like if you asked me,

you know, tell me about an American in Paris. I'm pretty sure I've seen it, but it's been so long and maybe I wasn't paying much attention that I put it, down as I know see. And I got, I think, 94.

So should we discuss which six movies you haven't seen? Well, there's like, I remember watching and being incredibly bored at summer camp. They played Wuthering Heights. And so I feel, it's another one I feel like I've seen. I know the plot of it from, you know, remakes and whatnot. But I can't say I've seen the 1939 version to the extent I could take pride in. I'm looking at the list now, but pretty much seen modern times, seen giant.

What's your favorite of the 94 that you've seen? Well, you know, I got to say... Like, did you think the list was pretty accurate in terms of rankings? I think the list is not bad. It wouldn't be my list, per se. I think Citizen Kane is overrated. Yes.

So putting it at one... I mean, one of the problems with Citizen Kane is that it was so pathbreaking in so many of the techniques that it used, that it's sort of like, you know, like my daughter listens to Beatles. I mean, she likes the Beatles, but there's so many things that the Beatles kind of created

that they don't seem revolutionary anymore. And there's so many things that Citizen Kane did that was revolutionary for the time, but is now just sort of standard film craft. That's how I feel about a lot of TV shows that people love, like the Sopranos, like they did so much that was new that we've now all take for granted

that when you go back and watch the Sopranos now, you're like, I don't see what's so special. So I totally agree. Citizen Kane might deserve of its number one spot, but going and watching it now, if you weren't alive in 1941, probably not as special an experience. Yeah. So what's your favorite?

I'd say on the list, I mean, it's pretty conventional. My favorite on the list is the godfather, or maybe Godfather, too. Incorrect, it's Casablanca. Please continue. And then I actually rewatch Casablanca in the last six months, and it really does hold up. It does.

It's amazing. You know, the thing I appreciate about a lot of movies these days is editing. And one of the problems with a lot of old movies is they let scenes linger and shots linger and kids get bored with them. But Casablanca moves, and it's really wonderfully written.

Like, I am annoyed that a face in the crowd is not on this list. I think that's arguably the best movie about politics and populism ever made. Another Ilya Kazan movie. David hates the graduate, by the way, a movie that I find. delightful?

I'm not a huge fan of the graduate. Plastics. Exactly. It's one line, you know? And the rest of it is this this beta male that we're supposed to sympathize with.

The best years of our lives is arguably one of the greatest films. It's certainly one of the greatest war films ever made and very difficult to watch today. Hate what side story. Hate it. I would much rather have guys and dolls in there

instead of what side story. Interesting. So the Philadelphia story is my favorite movie of all time. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Is that one of the ones you'd seen? I've seen it.

It's been a long time. I think it's the best romantic comedy of all time. Yeah. Yeah. From here to returning. I wouldn't be sorry to see you go. MASH, I don't think, holds up as well as we remember it doing. But the television show.

The thing about the television show, I would argue, and this is controversial for people who actually care about this, is that it's one of the very few shows where every season, particularly after the third season, every season was worse than the previous season, and every replacement character was worse than the character they replaced. So can I just object a moment, because this, is this like a critics list of top 100 movies? Yeah, it's cool, something like that, yeah. I mean, it's literally the American Film Institute, David. Okay, but there are other top 100 lists, so... There are. There are psychopaths out there who make, you know, top 100 lists that are all, like, D.C. Universe movies.

No, no, no, like, let's, you know, like the IMDB with the combination of, like, filmgoers and MetaScore, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I'm all over that list. I'd have to go check it out. I suspect I would score pretty well on that list as well. Yeah, I think Jonah's just going to school you on some of this stuff. What's number one on that list? The number one is Shawshank Redemption.

Okay, yeah. So, no. Number two is Godfather. Number three, see, this list, number three is the dark night. What is Dances with Wolves doing on the AFI list and no dark night? I reject. Okay, well, first of all, is from 1997. So there's a good reason why the.

Dark Night's not on it. Oh, well, then why? I mean, you're missing out on the entire modern superhero movie universe. What kind of list is this? So, all right, listeners. You will let you decide. What was your score, sir? You didn't say. I got, I got a 56, which I think I should get some, like, handicap because of my age as well. No, that's true. I mean, I spent a lot of time. I mean, Steve, you know, gives us all the, gives me all this crap about having a life. I had quite a robust life. But, you know, I spent much less time watching the Green Bay Packers lose than Steve did. And, um, and so some things filled in, but, but it's true. Like, reruns back, I, you know, David and I have the benefit of growing up in a world where there were only four

television channels for a little while. And so you saw reruns of old movies more often than you would today because there was nothing else to watch if you were watching if you had a chance to watch TV and so like also some of these came out when you could see them in theaters when I wasn't alive true there's that too but like I'm sure David and I are far more competitive with each other on like Godzilla movies because those were things that were on you could catch on broadcast television yeah back in the day like the 430 movie was a big part of my life you know you come home from school and it starts at 430 and it had all of the

all the Tojo productions as well as the competing Japanese production company that had Gamera which was the flying turtle that had jet flames coming out of its leg holes when it pulled the body inside.

I love that guy. Okay. Well, listeners, as I said, we'll let you make up your own mind on best movies, but it's clearly Casablanca and the Philadelphia story despite really what anyone else says.

Please consider joining us for Dispatch Live, become a member We'll be doing this all on video tomorrow. And thank you so much for making it this far. We hope you're having a great week. We'll see you again next week. Thank you.