The Dispatch Podcast - The Taylor Swift Grift | Roundtable

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Jonah and Mike join Sarah for an episode-long digression about Taylor Swift. The Agenda: —Tech CEOs at Congress —Regulating children's access to social media —Performance vs. results at the border —Trump says the quiet part out loud —Immigration in psychological terms —The Taylor Swift conspiracy theories —The issue with Benny Johnson —Why Trump should demonize Taylor Swift —Not Worth Your Time Extended Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgird. Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren joining me today where we're going to talk about Taylor Swift for the next six hours. Buckle your seatbelts. Jonah, the tech CEOs, came to the Hill. And while, we're sort of used to the horseshoe theory of politics when it comes to social media companies. This actually looked like it might have been real agreement, not even horseshoe politics agreement. Are we about to see legislation come out of the U.S. Congress? You know, it feels like it. I don't normally just go with a sort of vibes thing. But if you just watch the interviews with various senators and stuff, it feels like they've come to a place

where they think they can actually do real legislation. I guess it feels like we're going to get legislation. What exactly looks like, I don't know. But there seems to be this movement that you have to protect kids. Amy Klobuchar and others have wanted to do a whole bunch of stuff for a very long time. I don't know what the actual legislation will ultimately look like. If somebody else has better visibility on that, feel free to chime in. But it does feel like something's coming. And it should be pointed out that particularly Mark Zuckerberg has been asking for years for Congress to regulate him, right? And this has always bothered me because this is not to go all Gabriel Colco,

but this is one of these classic things where the big incumbents want regulation because it is a way to lock them in as themselves in as big incumbents and lock out smaller competitors. And we can talk about that. But there's one thing that just really bother me that I just want to get out there. So like, I believe it was Josh Hawley. He does this stunt where he has these parents of kids who were cyberbullied horribly, some, you know, died, you know, terrible, terrible stuff, nothing but sympathy for

the parents in every regard. And Holly demands, you know, Zuckerberg, will you apologize to these people to their faces or something like that? And Zuckerberg gets up and does it. I don't think he should have done it the way he did it, but I also understand that's a tough spot to be in. I just want to make a point when we move on from it. But like, it is not the job of the, I don't like these social media companies. I don't like Facebook very much. I don't like any of them. very much. I don't like their role in social life. I think they have a lot to answer for. I don't hate them either, you know, but I just, I'm not, I'm not here to represent them. That said, their obligations is to provide shareholder value to their shareholders.

It is not to protect your children. Now, I think it should do more to protect your children, but that's not their job. You know whose job it is? The senators who are in the room, they're the ones who have the power to do what they think these companies should do, And instead, this idea that like the apology is owed by the company and not by the people who's sworn obligations is to actually do right by these parents and by kids generally. There was just a really creepy asymmetry to it that I did not like and it gets to our whole Congress isn't doing its job thing. That, my friend, is a real hot take.

So a few things. One, I just want to emphasize what you said about Zuckerberg and others, want to. regulation. Yes, they want it in part, like all regulation, all large entities want regulation to prevent new entrants into the system. But in this specific case, I also think the reason would be that Zuckerberg is fine with spending a lot more on sort of the user side, but he doesn't want to spend so much more than all of his competitors are spending. And so this is actually about him acknowledging that he could be doing more, but he doesn't want to be at a competitive disadvantage with some of these other platforms.

And so this is actually about him wanting the other large platforms to be regulated and they all have to spend the same amount of money on protecting your children, which kind of, I guess to me, Jonah, undermines your point a little, i.e., they know that it would be better for them to spend more on this, but they don't want to do it unless everyone has to do it. And if everyone isn't going to do it, they're fine with a few kids committing suicide every month. I mean, that's pretty gross. I agree it's gross.

And again, I wasn't trying to come to their defense. I'm just, it's not so much that I want to say it's not their job to do the moral and correct thing. My point is, it is the job of the senators to do the moral and correct thing. I like that phrasing better. Okay. Because it is, look, yes, they have a responsibility to their shareholders, but they do have a responsibility as an American company to do the moral and correct thing and not

knowingly kill American children. I don't care if it's better for their bottom line. if a few American children die. I don't think they were knowingly killing American children, right? I think that's a little strong there, too. My only point is that statistically they did. They knew that without more people in their user experience section, that statistically X percent of people were going to commit suicide.

Yeah. And the senators who said for years, if we don't do something, kids are going to die and then didn't do anything, have the same statistics in the indictment against them. That's the only point I'm getting at. I also have a issue, you know, there's a reason we haven't talked about what these specific bills will do

because it's not clear what they'll do that will actually help. So some of the proposals stop Casam Act will give victims new avenues to report child sexual abuse material to internet companies. The Report Act would expand the types of potential crimes. Online platforms are required to report

to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. One would make it a crime to distribute an intimate image of someone without that person's consent. It would push law enforcement to coordinate investigations into crimes against children. Another would create a legal duty for certain online platforms to protect children. You know, some of these will do more than others. Some of them, you're sort of shocked. They're not already law. Mike, jump in on this.

Here's my problem with talking about any of this stuff, which is, in theory, and at the surface level, all of what you just described, the various legislative efforts sound like a good idea to me. I have no confidence that the people who are drafting this legislation understand the technology, understand the social milieu in which they're trying to regulate. I mean, I think it's gotten better than, you know, talking about a series of, the internet is a series of tubes. But I don't think it's gotten much better. And so my problem here is a lack of confidence in the legislators themselves to know that what they're pushing and what they're arguing for will actually solve any of these problems. I just, I feel like I don't know enough.

Is more more resources required for reporting abuse or or things like that? Is that really going to be going to help? I don't know the answer to that. I trust that I actually do believe that I agree with you, Sarah, like Mark Zuckerberg does not want Facebook to be a place where kids are killing themselves. That doesn't seem like that's what he got into this for. I don't know. Just I'm going out there on a limb.

But I don't know. my my my my sort of small government muscles kind of twitch when when I hear these big companies asking to be regulated um as jonas said it and and i mean i don't know in the in the dc area like i hear commercials on podcasts and radio and tv all the time for years about these social media companies and particularly facebook you know asking for this stuff um i just have no confidence that anybody any of this stuff is solving problems, which ultimately rely on, on sort of parents and families to have knowledge and have information about what their kids are doing, what they can do to limit or prevent their kids from being on platforms where this kind of stuff happens. I mean, at the end of the day, basically, your kids should not be on these platforms at all if you really want to protect them. They shouldn't even have a smartphone.

I mean, somebody once mentioned that, you know, you should give your kid a smartphone when you are okay with them being, okay with them looking at porn, not okay with them having the ability to maybe see what, but they will see, you know, bad stuff the moment they get a smartphone. And it's really hard to navigate that as a parent. and, you know, maybe what we need is more support or more guidelines or more sort of dialogue with, like, individual parents and families about best practices. And I don't know if Congress is the right, like, place to do that. Well, this gets to something that David and I have talked about on the legal ability to prevent children from getting on the platforms at all, for instance, and how different states have approached that.

You know, New York recently declared an environmental toxin. Montana and Utah have tried things as well. You know, my very quick take on that is that if you have the evidence to show that it is addictive in the same way that tobacco is, you're getting closer to being able to regulate it like tobacco. However, the more you treat it and talk about it like a violent video game, the more you're going to fail. and you look back on the violent video game controversy of the 90s and it kind of sounds silly here in hindsight right violent video games did not cause

drive-by shootings for instance there's now no evidence that it caused any uptick in violence whatsoever so it was a bit of a moral panic that turned out to be false I don't think this is a moral panic that's false but you do legally at least need to be able to show

more like tobacco, less like violent video games because, of course, the Supreme Court held that the violent video games were protected by the First Amendment. Jonah, I want to push you on something. Like a subway platform? The top of an oil rig? This is social media cyberbullying here.

Yeah. Who's bullying who, Mike? That's a good question. Good question. I want to put it to you. Sarah, no offense. More people, the dispatcher, afraid of you, than they are free of you.

me. I just want to put that out there. Yeah, see, I think I'm being bullied by Jonah calling me a bully. You like this jiu-jitsu? I know, by him saying that I want to push him onto a subway platform. That is him bullying me by making it sound like I'm bullying him. I am putting you at the wrong end of the oppressor oppressed. That's right. That's exactly what you're doing. I know it. It's funny because it's true, though. All those bills that I talked about actually have already passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Meaning, so that's the committee that had this hearing yesterday. That's what the committee, Josh Hawley's on.

They've already voted on all those bills. They already said yes to all those bills. They just died in the Senate slash or didn't pass the House. So does that change then, your perception of Holly? He already voted for all these things. He did his job. No, that's a fair point. That's a fair point.

At the same time, I think we all know. And again, I don't have granular insight on the way these things have wound their way through the legislative process. But we all know that as a matter of basic DC process, there are many, many, many, many, I'll stipulate a lot more many's opportunities to be nominally in favor of something while at the same time avoiding responsibility for actually seeing it accomplished. Sure.

Voting for it in committee, knowing that it's not going to pass the Senate, that is a way to get, could be a way to have your cake and eat it too, is right? You tell the lobbyist, hey, look, I'm going to vote for this thing, and then I'm not going to, but then we're not going to really do it, but we know the fix is in and it's not going to go anywhere on the floor. I'm not accusing anybody of that, but one of the senators yesterday, Marsha Blackburn, or somebody like that was saying they can't get this done because you guys send all these lobbyists up here. I get that argument, and that's a perfectly fine argument for one of the three of us to make. But it is a little weird for the elective representative to say, I can't do what I think is

moral and right to save children's lives because you guys send lobbyists up here that stop me. You know, it's a weird, stop me before I kill again kind of thing. Can I say one other thing? I mean, whatever the value in voting on this for Josh Hawley, I mean, the actual scene, with Holly, you know, asking Zuckerberg to sort of holding a gun to Zuckerberg's sake, apologize to these parents. I mean, it was, you do have to ask yourself, who is that serving at this point to sort of do a performative apology like that for the camera? I mean, we know what these hearings. You're aware of the U.S. Senate, right?

Exactly. But my, yes, I know, but my, this is my point, is. you know, that's, that's what Holly is choosing to perform. It's the, it's the apology that, I mean, look, maybe it meant something to these parents, maybe it didn't, but that's, that tells you where, where his priorities are. All right. Moving on to the next topic that Congress is woefully failing at, the southern border. As of taping this podcast, there is still a compromised.

bill pending in the Senate, although many now think it is on life support at best. Mike, this has been interesting because normally both sides don't want to compromise and sort of rile up their flanks about why something is the worst bill ever. This time, however, I found it very interesting. The left seems largely on board. To the extent there's sort of the far left open borders folks who are upset about it. We're not hearing a lot from them. Joe Biden said that he would sign what would be the most comprehensive amount of, you know, increase in border security, like in my lifetime probably. But it's the right saying, no, we could get more.

This isn't enough. This will not actually secure the border. That's what they're saying. So my questions to you are A, how much is that the problem that the politics on this have turned so much that the rights, like, we don't have to compromise at all. We can get a lot more versus Donald Trump saying, stupidly, that he wants to run on it and doesn't want the problem fixed before the election. I mean, aren't those the same problem? I mean, the political problem of performance over results.

I mean, that's how I see it as all part of the same thing. It's not about the substance. Because if it were about the substance, Republicans would realize that they were getting as much as they could possibly get out of a Democratic Senate. Democratic president on this. No, but their point is like, no, no, no. Joe Biden thinks this is so toxic to his reelection, we can get more from him right now. So like Ted Cruz's point is that the quote unquote shut down would only happen after reaching 5,000 crossings a day. And Ted Cruz is like, why are we letting 5,000 people come illegally a day by definition

instead of saying it's zero? The border is shut down. There's no more asylum from crossing the border if you cross illegally. So that's the sort of point that Ted Cruz is saying needs to be in the bill for it to actually be about having a secure border. But at least in Donald Trump's theory of the world, even if you shut down the border with, you know, sort of a King of the North style, what's the Game of Thrones wall? The name of the wall? I mean, the big ice wall. Yeah, the big ice wall.

That's like, you know, thousands and thousands of feet tall. Whatever. Like even if we built that on the southern border, Donald Trump would say, no, don't. build that until after I win election because I want to be able to run on Joe Biden failing at the border. And if that gets built while Joe Biden's president, it takes the issue away for me. I see those is totally different. Republicans saying, this isn't everything we want. Let's get everything we want versus no, even if we got everything we want, let's keep the issue alive. I guess my my response to that is both viewpoints are animated by the same idea, which is that it's not actually about solving

a problem. And I would say on the congressional side of this equation, there is, it seems to me, a lack of seriousness about like achieving something good from their perspective instead of something perfect and using it as, you know, is a sort of incremental change to, to say, look, we got as far as we could, we can do better with a Republican president. I mean, maybe I just don't understand how the politics of immigration work. But Donald Trump ends up saying out loud what I think is animating people in Congress, which is this is about politics. And if you do a half measure from a Republican standpoint in order to get something done, then you take away the thing that we really want, which is an issue to hit Joe Biden over the head with. So again, I see them

as two sides of the same corner, whatever the cliché metaphor is, like, we're not talking about the substance of stopping what's happening at the border, because if we were, like, this would have been, this would be going through, and then Republicans could turn around and say, we did as much as we could, but we need to do more. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder. of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance

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and thousands of families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's eth-h-o-s dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. Jonah, I think I disagree with Mike a little, at least on the sort of margins of this, which is you're not going to, like you're not going to get another border bill coming around this universe anytime soon. So yeah, you want to get everything you can when you've got the political will to actually move something and the left has the motivation right now to move something.

Once this thing is done, the left's political motivation will have evaporated. And so I do think it's hard in that situation to know the difference between good enough, like we're going to have to compromise on something versus know we could get a little bit more. And again, ask my three and a half year old because that's what he does every single night. He tries to measure the difference between the most he can get of Paw Patrol versus could he get another half episode. First of all, I mean, as we all agree, Trump is just a bad actor in this and making it more difficult for everybody. But he's saying McQuiet part out loud. It's not like he's the first president to ever want to leave an issue for a campaign.

It's just what's so unique about Trump is he'll just say he's doing it. I mean, Barack Obama had both houses of Congress in the White House. Didn't do it. Donald Trump had both houses of Congress in the White House. Didn't do it. Now Donald Trump's just saying the part out loud. Yeah, but in politics and particularly in democracies, there's something to be said for not saying the quiet part out loud because it changes things, right? And it's sort of like the Seinfeld, where once you say you're returning the coat for spite, that's it, right?

So it's sort of like I was among the first, many other conservatives have made this argument that Joe Biden's executive orders are kind of dictatorial, too, that and anti-constitutional. And I've been beating up on those kinds of executive orders for a very long time. there's just something qualitatively different when you actually say, I will be a dictator, right? It just, it changes the vibes. And so when you have, at least the affixion that you're going,

you're playing by the rules is an important thing for people to hide behind. And so when Trump basically flat out says, I want this as an issue more than I care about fixing the problem. I mean, he didn't say blatantly that, but you, it's, he's not subtle. It poisons the well for people who actually want to get a better bill from the right, right? Because no one can say, and particularly today's GOP, which, let's say, is not exactly highly resistant to following orders from Donald Trump.

There's no reason to believe Ted Cruz is arguing in good faith when he says, oh, I just want a better bill. And at a time going into a presidential election, when Donald Trump has made it clear he wants to. no bill. And so that just poisons the well a little bit. I also, I have a real problem. I thought the A.O. that you guys did on immigration stuff was very useful, very interesting. There were some, what do we call it, Lacunae, that I thought were notable. Insofar as, like, you mentioned at one point, Visa overstays being an issue, but like visa overstays are actually a huge issue, which is not discussed by anybody. No one knows the full number, but like it's a big number. You know why people aren't up in arms at the same level of visa overstays,

right? Because it's Canadians. Right. It's people who were able to fly here. Yeah. Right. And they're, yeah, no, I agree. It's opairs who overstays. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's, uh, H-1B coders in Silicon Valley. Um, nonetheless, there's also like, I listen to my friends at National Review and a couple different podcasts talking about this stuff. And the one assertion that sort of flies in the face of the stuff that you guys are saying on A.O., and I'm sure it can be reconciled, because I think it's all in good faith.

There are a lot of Republicans who believe Biden has all the authority and power he needs right now to shut down the border. And part of the argument that you were making is that, no, once you claim asylum, you were no longer an illegal immigrant. And I think the response from that crowd is, yeah, but the law still says you can detain these people.

And we're not doing that, right? Because we don't have the places to detain them. Right. All of our detention facilities are full. And so the problem I have with opposition to the bill, and again, another reason why to assume a little bit of bad faith is not just what Trump is saying, it's that a lot of people, including J.D. Vance, is going on whipping against it without having seen it. A lot of people have come out against it, not knowing what's in it. And that doesn't bespeak of a really good faith desire to improve upon it if you're just saying it's a dead letter before even looking at it. It would, though, it would benefit James Langford to show a little leg here.

I agree. And our colleague John McCormick has pointed out that the fact that he hasn't means that all the straw men that J.D. Vance and company have been going after, there's, there's nobody to, there's no way to deny those things effectively. And at some point you start asking yourself, if he's not coming out and pushing back on some of this stuff, maybe some of those straw men are more true.

Yeah, maybe they're a little, little steelier. Yeah, although he has pushed back a little bit on this 5,000 in the day thing. Yes, but I mean, I take your point, to paraphrase the Washington Post, straw men thrive in darkness. And so for me, first of all, part of my problem with this is I've always been a little squishier on immigration stuff, not on the border stuff. I'm totally with Donald Trump when he says nations need borders or they're not nations. I have no problem with that kind of talk, at least when it's not connected to other things, he says. But my tribe for 30 years has been saying, no, no, no, no, no comprehensive immigration reform, do enforcement first.

do enforcement first, then we'll worry about what to do with these people. And now this is essentially an enforcement first bill. If you read what the enemies of the left-wing opponents of this thing say about it, they think it's an outrage, right? They're not happy with this. They don't think it's some sort of Trojan horse for letting in more illegal. And so I think part of the problem is that for the right, they think there's no reason to credit Biden when he says,

if you give me that if you pass this bill i'll i will close the border tomorrow because they think he can close the border today and so it's bad faith and so i think strategically where the right screws up on this is if if they're correct and i don't think that necessarily correct if they're correct that the that Biden just doesn't want to close the border and therefore won't if he gets this piece of legislation then this piece of legislation would be an albatross politically for Biden because Congresses say we did our part. We gave you the powers that you said you needed to shut the border and you're still not shutting the border that would kill him politically. And if the right is wrong, then Biden will do stuff to shut down the border, which gives you the policy that

you want. So I just, I don't, I don't buy the argument about making the perfect enemy of the good on this one. So a few things. One, I think, so first of all, and we said this on AO, there are things that Biden could be doing. They're just small. They're Band-Aids. on what I've called a sucking chest wound at the border. But yes, there are things he could be doing more. The reason that Biden's not doing them... Wasn't sucking chest wound at the water, one of the Smith's best songs?

It would be so good. I just dropping just beautiful titles here all over the place. He could be doing more. The reason he's not is because he also, for the first time ever, like the incentives have shifted such that a president finally wants to hide behind Congress. There's a few things he could do. They might get enjoined by courts, frankly.

And then it wouldn't really lower the numbers. Because really what we're actually needing to do here is convince the cartels that their business model is drying up. And that's why most of the things that are in Biden's repertoire that he could do actually won't make much difference at the border at all. Because the cartels will not believe that their model has dried up until two things, right? huge amounts of money on enforcement,

meaning detention facilities, more CBP officers, 10 times a number of immigration judges, and changing the asylum law. Just overnight, you've got to change it. Those are the things that will convince the cartels that their model doesn't work anymore. Anything else? Yeah, your daily numbers may go down a little,

but it's not going to fundamentally change what's happening at the southern border. So the reason that Biden wants the congressional help is A, maybe he actually wants to secure the border. Okay, like that's the non-cynical version. But even if you want to believe the most cynical version, it's that, yeah, Joe Biden actually thinks that this is a problem politically.

And he wants to say that Congress has now passed a law. Congress has tied his hands. He must secure the border. And then he doesn't get crap from his left flank either. And the numbers actually go down and the incentives for the cartels change. I mean, this is like a win, win, win. for Joe Biden if he can get Congress

to do it, which is why I think he's willing to agree to nearly anything that will pass out of Congress. You'll notice he's like, yep, I'll sign it. He doesn't know what's in that bill. He doesn't care. Because it's such a win if Congress will pass something to give him that political cover,

which that's where it gets a little fascinating for me if you're Ted Cruz or some of these other guys where it's like, look, Biden's going to have to sign this no matter what. The Democrats in the Senate are kind of going to have to pass this pretty much no matter what. So yeah, why would we make this reasonable when we have the chance to make it actually the, you know, the Game of Thrones 10,000 foot wall at the north?

This is where like the inter congressional politics, my friend on the other side of the aisle or my friend, like this is where this comes into play. And the fact that the fact that the Border hawks in this debate are seen as being sort of the most unreliable partners, legislative partners. You can't, you can't rely. I mean, look, they all remember Ted Cruz's Obamacare shutdown. I mean, like, you're, these things matter. Like, these interpersonal relationships or lack thereof matter.

And it turns out, like, it's really hard to trust. Ted Cruz on on these things if you're actually sort of crafting this is why it's it's James Langford who's you know running this this operation he's got a lot of respect from people on both sides of the aisle there so it'll be interesting I mean Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are the only Republican senators on the border at this point and Ted Cruz clearly as you've noted like his incentives are not necessarily going to be aligned to push this bill across the finish line. Although, don't forget, he's up for a pretty serious challenge this election year and being able to say that the border got secured on his watch could actually be good,

meaning there actually may be things as long as he can get to say, like, I got this in the bill that will get him over that hump. But all I should be on John Cornyn. If John Cornyn says this is a good bill that will actually do something for Texas, I think he's going to be the sort of most honest broker once we actually see what's in the bill. And if John Cornyn says, like, this ain't it, it's going to, you know, there's poison pills in it, there's a lot of loopholes that allow tons of people to cross the border still, as in the cartels are not going to lose their business model, you know, I'm very open to hearing John Cornyn say that.

Well, let's not forget that John Cornyn is among those in the talks. Yep. You know, being talked about as a potential successor to Mitch McConnell. that will also color his motivations. All right, Jonah, last word to you before we move on to Taylor Swift. Yeah, I don't have much more to add. I do think just because I'm going to run out

of opportunities to, I might run out of opportunities to throw this metaphor into the conversational miasma. I've been thinking about the border thing about the way it eats at people in more and more psychological terms. And, you know, I'm a fan of Jonathan Haidt. There's all sorts of stuff. The language that Trump uses about vermin and disease and all these kinds of stuff, it's, I don't think it's intellectually smart, but it is very lizard brain smart to talk in those terms.

And like, you remember when everyone freaked out about Ebola coming in under Obama, and it was so disproportionate to the actual facts and the science of it, but there's just something about diseased people coming in that freaks people out. at all sorts of ways. Anyway, I haven't, I've been, it's an analogy slash metaphor, but the BP oil spill caused a lot of liberals to lose their minds because they could not handle the visual every day, you know, there was the, just a steady cam of that oil constantly pumping in. And Frank Rich wrote these unhinged things and, oh, you have to stop this now, you have to stop it. And it was like, you could tell it was some, it was like a telltale heart thing in the back.

of their lizard brains, that they just couldn't handle it. And even though you could try to explain to them that as terrible as that spill was, and certainly loss of life was horrible, the volume of oil versus the volume in the Gulf of Mexico made it unlikely to be the environmental catastrophe that people wanted to make it out to be. But there was just something about the constant visual of it that aided people. And I think the border stuff works the same way. And I'm not saying this to dismiss it. I think it's a perfect legitimate thing. And that's why I keep thinking it's so weird to credit the, let's keep it as an issue thing. I don't know that for normal, a lot of normals out there who actually really are freaked out about

just the constant streaming across the border, I don't know that they are like, they care more about getting Trump reelected than they care about fixing the border. And I can see in town halls and that kind of stuff, a lot of normies who are probably mostly pro-Trump, but or a Republican, nonetheless saying, we've been saying for years, we've got to turn off this spigot. We got to,

we got to curtail this. And now you're saying, I need to wait another 10 months or more for someone else to get in so we could turn it up. We can turn the valve even tighter than what this would do. I'm just not sure that the politics are going to work perfectly as a,

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to every crisp morning commute. This September leased a 2026XE90 plug-in hybrid from 599 byweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. All right, so now we're moving on to the topic that we had to talk about. But I do, here's what I'm actually curious about, and I'll set it up a little.

Taylor Swift is a very, very big deal in the United States and internationally. She's wildly popular. She's incredibly famous. And the first, I'm going to forget how exactly she's the first something, something female billionaire, but like, she's the first female musical billionaire to earn it only from her music, something to that effect. Then she starts dating Travis Kelsey, a very, very famous football player before he started dating her who'd already won two Super Bowls. Okay. So now we have this conspiracy theory, Taylor Swift endorsed Joe Biden back in 2020, that the Super Bowl is rigged

and that after Travis Kelsey wins his third Super Bowl, something to the effect of, he's going to propose to Taylor Swift, and then they're going to endorse Joe Biden, and this is how the left is going to steal the election or something. Yada, yada, yada, lobster bis. Okay? There's then been all these attacks from right-wing pundity types on Taylor Swift,

everything from, you know, she's a lefty who's, like, poisoning young girls' brains, Two, she's not hot and who would want to date a 34-year-old who's not a virgin, which is a pretty gross thing to say. Jonas raising his hand. I'm happily married, but like I find Taylor, if I were signal, heaven forbid, I find her eminently datable. And I would have found her eminently datable in my 20s as an older woman. I just want to put it out there. I think that it is a defensible claim that she passes certain tests for datability. aside from her billions of dollars and all that.

And being 34 and not being a virgin are not disqualifying for a whole range of men at various ages. I'm just going to, I just want a level set here, right? Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, go on. Okay. So I checked in with some of my more super MAGA friends, all right?

The ones who believe all sorts of things that I don't believe in sort of what I would call mainstream conspiracy theories. Including stuff about the 2020 election, for instance. Not a single one of them thinks any conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift. They're like, yeah, yeah, she may endorse Biden, but she endorsed him in 2020, so, like, I don't get it. Like, what's the conspiracy theory here?

They don't think the Super Bowl is rigged by Joe Biden, and they don't really understand why Travis Kelsey winning a third Super Bowl, like what, how does winning the Super Bowl, Super Bowl change any of this or affect any of this? Like it doesn't, it's not like it, then they'll become famous. They're incredibly famous right now, both of them. Okay, so this gets me to my question for you guys.

The people who are pushing this stuff, the right wing MAGA folks, either they're doing it for attention because, you know, if Donald Trump is the way to get a lot of attention, you know it gets even more attention talking about the other two most famous people in the world right now, Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift. So as long as you're saying stuff, you then become relevant if you're talking about people who are relevant. And they don't actually believe any of it.

It's all just the grift, right? It's churning the chum to get themselves as part of, you know, in the coattails type thing. Okay, that's one. Number two is that the right wing is so broken that they see someone who is popular on the left as a threat to Donald Trump and that they believe

that they can bring down Taylor Swift's popularity among the right and that they see her endorsement of Joe Biden as a real threat to people who would otherwise vote for Donald Trump and that this actually is a political move that may or may not work but that, you know, they think

they're doing it because it could bear fruit. I think there's evidence for both of these and I'm curious where you guys fall. Jonah, coming to you first. Is it a grift or is it to help Donald Trump? So I actually did a survey. There are other theories. I surveyed most of the theories.

I mean, I think you're right that they break down basically into two camps. And one is the help Trump. It's for politics stuff. And one is, well, the three, right? It's grift and no one believes it. It's political strategy and nobody believes it. and it's serious, and they actually believe it, right? Those are the three main ones.

I think the Venn diagrams, I'm cribbing from the G-feller wrote about this, but I think the Venn diagrams overlap in all sorts of ways, and at the very center of it is Benny Johnson. Benny Johnson is a social media influencer. He got to start at BuzzFeed. He lost his job because it turned out that over 10% of his writings had been grotesquely plagiarized.

And then he bounced around the right wing of sphere doing various things, including a brief stint at National Review, where I met him. Nice guy did not strike me as the sort of fellow that was going to become the president of Mensa. The reason I single him out is, is there's a whole group of people, and this is the Eric Erickson argument. There's a whole group of people who, for the, so Erickson, it makes the most forthright grifter argument, which is that these people just want to prove they can get things trending. They want to prove they can get stuff injected into the media. bloodstream, and they don't really care what the content is. They just care about being able to take credit for it. I think for some people, that's absolutely true.

I think Hannity and those guys are, they think they're helping Trump by doing this, either electorally or psychologically, because Trump apparently is moping like a big dog whose food bowl has been moved about the fact that people think Taylor Swift is more popular than him. We can put a pin in that for a second because I think that strategy is incandescently stupid. I mean, it is so stupid. You can see it at night from space. It's so brightly idiotic.

The thing I'd point out is that for some people, these are all false choices. Because they traffic in this stuff so much. They convince themselves it's true. And the feedback they get from their audiences is, oh, you've got to keep investigating. This is just the begin. This is the tip of the iceberg. And that's the feedback that they get. The people who think they're crazy,

don't pay any attention to them and don't give them any feedback. And so this echo chamber thing, you look long enough into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. And so I think that one of the things, and this is sort of Ross Douth's argument in the New York Times,

the almost Freudian death wish among a lot of people on the right to be just freaking weird and stupid is so powerful that they've over-interpreted the, they've over-learned the lessons of 2016, and the logic of that is you have to attack things that are popular. You have to attack things that have respect. They have to attack institutions that have legitimacy and credibility

because otherwise it doesn't look like you're heroically taking on things. And basically because of all the corrosive bullshit, that the left and right have done to delegitimize all sorts of institutions in this country, we're left. Like, the only thing standing amidst the rubble is Taylor Swift and the NFL. And that's what they're going for

because that will still get a rise out of people like, don't dare attack Taylor Swift. Don't you dare attack the NFL? You can attack Pfizer all day long. No one's going to pay attention to you. And so I just don't, I don't think it has to be all one or all the other. For some individual people, it's all clearly a grift. But, and for other people,

it's clear that they're crazy. But for most of them, it's like Alex Jones. You just don't know where the chocolate ends and the peanut butter begins because it's both. All right, Mike. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, I'm sort of prescribing the rule of goats to all, to this question. And I'll boulderize it for our podcast audience. But, you know, if if you are, the rule of goats is, you know, if you are having carnal relations with a goat for, for controversy and for laughs and for like, you know, to own the libs or whatever, like at the end of the day, you're still somebody who has carnal relations with goats. So in a way, it doesn't really matter to me whether they believe it or not. But I do think I fall more on the grifter side of things.

And it may not even be a conscious grift. This is where I am, I think. Like Jonah says, a lot of this is the feedback from your most ardent audience. And I think it's important to actually dissect what, like the different, to mix my metaphors here, dissect the different streams of conspiracy theory and kind of like urban legend stuff that's going on here. So a big part of this comes out of an idea that the NFL itself is written. I mean, you will say, if you have, this is a sort of, it is like professional wrestling in that it's, the violence is real, but the outcome is predetermined. Exactly. That's literally on our fantasy football league.

That's our motto. Exactly. So, so, like, this is, and this is sort of predates and is sort of separate from the, from any political element or Taylor Swift element. Like, this is this idea, whenever something happens that seems to follow a script, you will see among social media NFL watchers, you know, up the writer's really. did a number with this one. And, you know, this is all, you can see this in the, one of the memes that came, has come up in the last few years is the Super Bowl logo, which is, of course, you know, created before, you know, the season begins, you know, the two color schemes in the Super Bowl logo predict accurately who, which two teams will play in the Super Bowl. Of course, it didn't

happen this year because everybody thought it would be the Ravens because there was purple, but the Ravens aren't in the Super Bowl. And also, if you were going to have this grand conspiracy theory, you probably wouldn't have little Easter eggs around. Yeah, but it's so much more fun. You know, it's like the Beatles putting in the Paul is Dead stuff. Yeah, but the Beatles wouldn't be committing securities fraud. There you go.

Okay. So like there's that. Now you're being naive. Exactly. Exactly. So there's that. There is a sort of, again, it's not a conspiracy theory. There is a among a set of NFL fans.

this season. And I would suggest that maybe there's sort of a boomer set, largely male. There's a kind of annoyance that Taylor Swift is taking over the broadcasts of the Kansas City Chiefs games because the camera shows her on screen

for probably a grand total of like four or five minutes of a three-hour NFL broadcast. But that this is sort of, there's like, sports fans have to grumble about something and this is the thing that they're grumbling I have relatives of mine

who you know will say we'll grumble oh we the chiefs can't win because I'm sick of seeing Taylor Swift and I don't think there's even a political element here it's a kind of you know old man you know yells at cloud kind of aspect to it the ruin in the game by making it all about Taylor Swift even though they're not really making it about Taylor Swift

They're just pointing it out because, again, she's the most famous person in the world right now. And also correct, because this is part of the problem with, to borrow one of David's favorite lines from Ted Lazo, there's a problem when you're dealing with people who have the memories of goldfish is like they don't know that Taylor Swift was popular before this, right? They don't know that Travis Kelsey was well-known

and accomplished before this, right? They don't seem to remember that Taylor Swift is not the first celebrity to be in the stands or in a skybox or court side for the cameras to turn to during a game. I mean, does I remember like Jack Nicholson at the Lakers in the 1980s? I was going to say, but this is so different than Jack Nicholson because...

Because she's his ear on the eyes. Yeah, well, because Jack Nicholson was a dude rooting for the team the same way as all the dudes watching the game. Part of the issue here is that now, I forget the number, 46% of people watching the NFL are... not dudes. And so you're like relative. Lady fans.

They're lady fans. Can you believe it? And they're yelling at the sky is because fundamentally the game is changing a little when women start watching and becoming a marketing audience. Well, this is another stream, which is kind of, there's like a battle of the sexes element of this, you know, which is like, oh, all these, all these lady fans didn't know that Travis Kelsey was an accomplished. And then, you know, and then all, you know, all the, all the women say, didn't you know that Taylor Swift was popular before this? So, like, what I'm saying is this is the audience. These are the streams that are going through the audience. And what I see happening is a kind of, in the way that Trump has this ability, sort of preternatural ability to like tap into that, that electric buzz that's going on in his audience. I think that's what the grifters are doing. They like, they have a sense that this stuff is.

out there in the ether and they kind of mash it together with the with the antifizer anti-vax kind of oh they're because because Travis Kelsey is supportive of and was doing PSAs to encourage people to get a vaccine it's like it's like they see it like all in this bowl and they kind of mix it up and and pour out this terrible tasting cake from it and like serve it to their audience because they know that it it'll get them it. it'll get everybody outrage. So that's really what's going on. There's not so much of a,

I don't really buy that there's a political element at the heart of it, or sort of a political motivation at the heart of it, except in the most dedicated, you know, Trumpsters online. Yeah, well, so I wanted to put a pin in that before, so I'll take the pin out now.

Brian Kilmead went on to Terra saying the dumbest thing Taylor could do is alienate half the country by, you know, endorsing one candidate over the other. And I'm normally very much a entertainer should stay out of politics person. And I get the point. And it's not a dumb point. But she did in 2020. And since then she's grossed like over a billion dollars in concert tickets. So like the stakes are not what they think they are. And then Sean Hannity straight up like warned or you better not do this. You better think twice before doing this and that kind of thing. And I think there is a political angle to that stuff.

I just think it is based on really bad analysis. It's so far downstream of like where real people are on these or the people who would matter. I think you guys are a little bit wrong about this because in 2020, so a celebrity endorsing a Democratic candidate, shrug. The right doesn't really care and they don't really notice because otherwise they wouldn't be able to go see movies or enjoy music or do anything else. Right. So that alone does not alienate a. celebrity's right-wing fan base.

That is different than Donald Trump going after that celebrity. That actually can drive, I think, negatives in a totally and fundamentally different way. Now, what we've seen so far is right-wing trolley morons going after Taylor Swift for, again, being 35 and not a virgin or something. I don't think that's going to work very well, even among the, like, most ardent Maga right. But we haven't seen Trump go after yet. If he does, that'll change this a little. Okay, I have thoughts on that too.

All right, so, like, I'm glad we reserved an extra two hours for this. So, um, strap in, folks. So, first of all, the stupidity, I just want to get it out there, the stupidity of what Hannity and, and I'll take Brian Kilmead, I think he's being more sincere about it, but Hannity is basically, I mean, like Trump's hand actually goes up through Hannity's sphincter and moves his lips sometimes. So it's, he's much more of a puppet on this stuff. There's this thing called the Streisand effect where by trying to silence something,

you actually amplify it tenfold, right? By trying to get to avoid bad publicity, you actually make the publicity much worse. If you actually think, which I think we all do, that Taylor Swift's endorsement is inevitable, locking in to say, oh, well, it's clearly a DOD sciop slash Pfizer deep state operation, all orchestrated by Biden who rigged the NFL and you get all these people to lock into it, it guarantees there's going to be a lot more attention on it than they're otherwise would.

So I just think it's dumb on that level. On your point, Sarah, I think you're right. It could cause problems for Taylor Swift. That said, do we honestly think Trump gains more voters than he loses by attacking Taylor Swift? I mean, he attacked the Pope at one point and then kind of, like, walked away from that because it turns out that, like, attacking the Pope

is, like, not great politics. And so, like, he goes after Taylor Swift. He polarizes Taylor Swift. If you, you know, when you polarize Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift polarizes you. And it just doesn't seem to me obvious that while Taylor Swift could take damages from that, right? She could lose, I don't know, 10% of her ticket sales, maybe,

which she wouldn't lose, right? It's just like her ticket sales would drop in price enough and then be sucked up by other people. It's not like there'd be empty seats. Meanwhile, what voters does Donald Trump game by going after Taylor Swift? Going after a attractive 34-year-old girl in basically a hallmark card movie

romantic relationship with a football player. I don't get it, right? I mean, and I think that's the biggest problem. with all of the stupidity of this is it's just not the politics of addition. I mean, tell me what you, you know, you're the big defender of demonizing Taylor Swift here. What are the, what is the politics of addition here? What's the upside for Trump in this? I'm not saying that what's the downside for Taylor Swift, right? Because it's the goat's problem to a certain extent when you get mixed up with Trump, you get goat on you. But like, what's the, what's the, what's the downs down. What's the upside for Trump? So I, there's no downside for Trump, I guess, the point. I don't think he loses voters by attacking Taylor Swift. I think you're right. I don't think he gains any voters by attacking Taylor Swift, but there's a reason that I don't think he's attacked her yet, which is he's already in the news plenty. Just wait until he's not in the news, right? For the same reason we've talked about the grifters attaching themselves to this story, because it gives them

relevance. If Donald Trump, for some reason, drops off the radar because Joe Biden, I don't know, does something that puts him in the news, I'll bet you. I'll bet you. you a shiny nickel that all of a sudden Trump sees Taylor Swift as a really interesting avenue for attack. Can I can I just say one more thing? What we're talking about here, like Taylor Swift has not done anything. This is all about she's falling in love, Mike. Well, okay, which is great. I'm so happy for her. But like she's not done anything. I mean, yes, she endorsed Biden in 2020 and it seems That's what she's going to do, and she'll, they'll have some kind of, but like, she's literally gone to her boy. As one guy said, she's going to endorse Biden.

That's going to cause World War III, and millions of people will die because of Taylor Swift. So she's already pre-killed millions of people, Mike. Oh, there's one other theory here. Yes. The other problem is there's one group of people who think that false idols have dangerous power, and that's idolaters, right? And so the sort of Trump worshipers who think celebrity is a superpower are freaked out by Taylor Swift's celebrity. And they think it has more power than it does. Because they think that's the source of Trump's power.

Yeah. No. Because there's a very strong sort of members of the ball cult being really upset about the cult of Athena. And like how dare they leverage their celebrity only the form. star of a reality TV show can do that kind of thing, you know. And by the way, don't forget the left, actually, has generally been very mad at Taylor Swift because she has not inserted herself into political fights where they feel like she should have. There are people who think she could have ended, she could have gotten a ceasefire.

I mean, you see it on Twitter all the time. She could have gotten a ceasefire. She could have prevented Roe v. Wade from being overturned. Again, there's like a whole left wing. They're not really conspiracy theories. They're just mad at her about it. Yeah. And as best I can tell, um, the.

I mean, this is part of her popularity, right? Taylor Swift is a, you know, quirky, kind, weird child celebrity who didn't lose it. And so everyone's rooting for her and they're rooting for her to find happiness and she seems to have actually found it. And, you know, for everyone out there listening who's like, okay, but why haven't you mentioned the obvious fact that it's a whole bunch of 12 year old girls who can't vote? No, Taylor Swift's average fan base is a 34 year old woman or even older because that woman has daughters and she's now discovered Taylor Swift through her daughters and it's a way to bond with her daughters.

I've heard a lot of dads talk about that as well. Dads of daughters. I mean, as someone who has sons, I guess I'll never really experience that intergenerational joy of Taylor Swift, but nevertheless. Can I just, can I use this as an opportunity to tell my Taylor Swift story,

which is, which I think both of your point. Can you call it your Taylor Swift truth? I mean, I just would prefer that. It is. It is. She'll, she'll put it into a song after hearing. Uh-oh. So, no, no, it's not, it's not like that.

No, no. So the year is 2007. I'm in college. And Taylor Swift shows up at my fraternity house on a, on a football game day tailgate morning. And the reason is, so I went to the school in Nashville at Vanderbilt. And at the time, I don't think she was living in Nashville. She was still a country star on the rise. And the reason she was there was because her, I think her manager's daughter hung out at our house.

And so she was like there. And anyway, the point is that she was nowhere near the superstar that she is now or even close. But it was very clear she was on the cusp of it because she didn't want anything to do with you. Yeah, no, exactly. That did not prove that. And I've proved a lot of other things about myself. No. So she shows up and immediately, nearly every single girl at the house, hanging out the house,

swarms her to get pictures. Again, she's not, I think she had one hit song at that point. And all of us guys are standing on the deck looking at her and looking at the scene, like kind of dumbstruck, like what is this? What's going on? And like that is, we should have. note. We should have seen what was coming. And so that's my Taylor Swift store. So peer drops on my guitar came out in 2006. So she was almost at her peak initial popularity in 2007, which is sort of

interesting. I guess so this was, yeah, well, maybe Tim McGraw had come out at that point, but she had not done any of the poppy country stuff. The crossover. The crossover, yeah. Had not started yet, but we should have seen what was coming. Well, now I'm curious, let's see, Tim McGraw. came out in also 2006. It's the same album. So, yeah. So, like, that album came out in 2006, which is what I mean.

Like, she's at the peak of her initial ingenue stardom. Yeah, she was, she was like 19 or 18 years old at that point. I was going to say, I don't, no, I don't think she was 19, Mike. Oh, please. Yeah, right. No chance of that. Speaking of goats. All right.

I think it's time to wrap this podcast up. Uh-huh. You're the one who wanted to tell your Taylor Swift story. badly. All right, y'all. Thank you for joining. We're sorry. The other three hours of the Taylor Swift conversation will be available to members on the skiff. Just kidding. Just no, just I know what Don would want me to do this. that then and then I would be stuck with Jonah talking about Taylor Smith for three hours.

Who can't name more than like two songs by her in the beginning with? You know, there's, Jonah, this is your time. I know, I know. This is like what, like, see what you made me do? That's the only one you know because.

Well, I know it because they put it as a headline on my G-file yesterday. I didn't know it before. No. Hey, look, I was just on the skiff for the book club talking about a book I hadn't read. So, like, who's to say I can't be on about, talking about Taylor's

We're never listened to. I watched that bad blood video a few times. I will say that, you know. I'm excited for her era's concert movie to come out on rental where it's not 20 bucks. 20 bucks is like a little more than I'm willing to pay to watch it. But $5.99, I'm willing to pay that. By the way, this all reminds me of one of my favorite journalism jokes, which is somebody

asks you about a book. If you've read it, you said, read it, I haven't even reviewed it. I always wanted to do a book review where all the quotes come from the, the flapjacket and like page I-I-I-I-V. As it says in the bio. You can learn everything you need to know about this book on page I-I-I-I. We didn't do have it not worth your time, so I figured we had time for, for credit roll banter. Oh, no, the not worth your time was definitely

Mike's story about Taylor's life. And it was not worth your time. I'm sorry. Fair. But now I do want to see a picture of Mike. I just have, I do have a photo of her walking out. No, I want to see a photo of you at that age. I'm just now really curious.

We don't need to show that. Mike the frat star looked like. Weren't you the one saying that your kids call you bruh? Yeah, but that's a, that is, uh, that is entirely what all. nine-year-old boys say. Is that right? Authority figures, bruh. Oh, bruh.

Are they going to call me, bra? Like my boys? We'll see. Oh, no. So when I, um, I created a group text for like my closest dude friends. And, um, and I just, the group text is called boys. And when my daughter saw this in like 10th grade, she was, she rolled her eyes. And she was like, dad, you know, every single 14,

year old boy in America calls the group text with their friends, the boys. And I was like, no, I didn't, I didn't know that. And I'm not used to having eye rolling, being on the receiving end of eye rolling scorn from my daughter for being so juvenile about this kind of thing. So, anyway, I always think about that. Well, my son was up from three to six last night. I would like to give you a every 10 minute rendition of the complaints. One, was my tummy's rumbling. I need apple slices. So I brought up apple slices. But he said that was too many apple slices. He only wanted one apple slice. And then I gave him one apple slice. And then he told me he needed more apple slices. Another one was my cheek is cold. Is he sick?

Nope. Nope. You'll be, Sarah, you'll be wishing for this when he starts calling him. you, bro. Yeah, for sure. It was such a long night. I can't even tell you. I was not at my best parenting because I am sick. And so every 10 minutes, I had to walk in with some new interesting complaint. And if you're wondering why I kept walking in, it's because one of them was I wet my bed. And the whole thing was soaking wet. So like, and then I skinned my finger trying to change. I mean, I've had a night, y'all. That's rough.

At least a little one sleeps. That kind of probably explains why, I mean, Adam can probably take it out of the podcast before this years, but it explains why you were speaking in tongues for like a full 20 minutes and we just let you go. It was weird, but yeah, we just got to sat back. Super weird. And like, where'd you get those snakes?

Why are it? What's going on? It was the whole thing was strange, but, you know, it was entertaining. John's hair is in a whole different time zone today from. It is. Yeah. Because I had my, my duff hat on earlier.

Nice. Duff man. All right, we're really going. This is it. You all got your skiff. But skiffs are usually better than this. Much better. But not much better.

No, not much better. Marginally better. Hey, I did be right. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. It can end. Everyone's so tired. I'm so tired.

I'm so tired.