The Dispatch Podcast - The Tucker Tapes

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Jonah and Steve join Sarah after a very rewarding Dispatch Meet and Greet in Denver for a reality check on all things political madness, including: -Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy’s rage-bait for right-ring folks -A DC crime bill that had elected Democrats out of step with more left ideology -Biden’s ESG Retirement Fund fiasco -The true threat of China -And, the scrubbing of popular books Plus: Subscribe to our YouTube page for clips, video interviews, and more! Show Notes: Noah Rothman: Tucker Carlson's Jan 6th Revisionist History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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joined by Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. And it's already getting punchy around here, guys. I'm going to tell you. It's a whole thing. And we can't make Steve laugh because he has a cough and it sounds terrible. So we're going to try to avoid that if we can slash not. We've got plenty to discuss today.

We're going to start with those January 6th tapes. If we learned anything new, was it worthwhile? Was it a good idea? Did Republicans just self-own themselves? And then we'll talk about Congress versus Joe Biden when it comes to DC's crime bill or the ESG Labor Department rule Biden bucking his own party. And finally, we'll end with some China and Russia. Let's dive right in. Steve, I'm going to start with you. Kevin McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy, gave a lot of January 6th-related security camera footage to Tucker Carlson at Fox News.

Tucker then puts together multiple segments where the thesis is actually a little bit complicated, depending on who you ask. One version of Tucker's thesis is that January 6th wasn't that bad. These were meek protesters taking a tour of the Capitol. They were tourists, really. Another version is simply

that the January 6th committee's narrative was partisan, it was wrong, that there were police officers giving tours to the guy who became colloquially known as the shaman guy. who was, he pled guilty, he did not go to trial. Or, for instance, that the police officer who later died of a stroke, that that was not related to the events of January 6th and that this

footage now shows that he was fine after being sprayed and attacked at various points on January 6th and that his death later was unrelated. I just want to ask you first about, the politics of Kevin McCarthy doing this, because first off, now every Republican is having to take a position on January 6th, and it's March 2023. Yeah. So I think you've framed that up exactly right. I'll start with the politics since that's where you ended. I think the politics of this are horrible for Republicans. I think it's tremendously short-sighted for Kevin McCarthy. If you just look at the results of the 2022 elections, it seems to me that what many voters were saying, particularly those getable voters that the parties have been fighting about, that have in large ways

determined the outcomes of the 2018, 2020, and 22 elections and who has control in Washington, they were saying, in effect, we might not like the status quo, but we don't prefer crazy. And what you're offering us, Republicans, in many cases, is crazy. And Republicans in some ways boxed themselves in on the crazy question in the weeks after the January 6th riots, insurrection, when Kevin McCarthy chose to go to Mara Lago, reembrace Donald Trump, and try to normalize what had happened. That happens, you know, weeks after January 6th, Kevin McCarthy as part of this effort to become Speaker of the House. makes this pledge that he will make these tapes available. This is something that Tucker Carlson had suggested on his program. McCarthy might do to win holdover votes,

to win over opponents on the right fringe to McCarthy's speakership. McCarthy agreed to do it. And he provided these tapes to Tucker Carlson. I think the politics of it are sort of self-evidently stupid and foolish. And McCarthy set this in motion a long time ago. he's making good on a promise, and it will hurt Republicans. I think it will hurt Republicans. I think that there are two other sort of primary questions. The first is, should the American public be given access to some 40,000 hours reportedly of these raw tapes, many of them

security tape, security camera tapes, of what happened in the Capitol that day? And I think there are probably good faith arguments on both sides of that. I think Jonah and I disagree on that. I would argue, even though I'm sort of a transparency hawk, transparency fiend, I would argue, no. I don't think it's wise to provide these and make them public because with a sophisticated opponent or somebody who wanted to attack the Capitol, they could determine where we have coverage and where we don't and help plot future attacks on the Capitol. The second question is whether it was wise to make these tapes available to Tucker Carlson. And on that, I think the question is, in my view, even for the answer is even more obviously, no, this is a disaster. Tucker Carlson

has made very clearly he's not interested in the truth. He has hawked conspiracy theories since he got his show in 2017. On a consistent basis, he produced a sort of fake documentary called Patriot Purge that he produced for Fox Nation about the January 6th attack, which included a number of crazy conspiracy theories, many of them self-contradictory, as you pointed out, Sarah, and really tried to rewrite the narrative of January 6th. There was an analysis, I think I read it in the Washington Post that Tucker had made reference to January 6th and this kind of revisionist history more than 100 times in 2021. And he's telling a story. that just isn't true. So giving these raw tapes to Tucker Carlson, we know that he has done this

in the past, specifically about January 6th is bad enough. We also know that he's done this about other things. Remember, there was an interview that Tucker conducted with Kanye West, in which Kanye West said a number of very objectionable things, including some anti-Semitic things. That was edited out. Tucker presented the interview with Kanye West as if it were a normal conversation between normal individuals, and later Vice got its hands on the raw, unedited tapes, and it was very clear that what Tucker presented to his audience was almost the opposite in many respects of what the interview actually told. So I think given those two things, this was grossly irresponsible of Kevin McCarthy and the outcome that we're seeing now, which is Tucker Carlson's spinning

a narrative that isn't true about January 6th, was predictable and inevitable. But look, Jonah, to push back on what Steve said, it's been really full. fun to see all the people online, et cetera, coming up with their own metaphors like, you know, that ride in Dallas was all, you know, look at this other footage. It was just a family picnic out there. Um, you know, look at JFK's motorcade coming around the corner. He's happy. He's waving. What are you talking about? These were just meek people out enjoying a ride. Um, you know, OJ Simpson was mostly peaceful that day. Like, I get it. That's, it's very funny. some of them have been very, very funny.

But I want to go through this little conversation that Mark Theson, former Bush speechwriter, Republican rah-rah guy, had with Ben Shapiro on Twitter because I think it illuminates a real distinction in the conversation. So Ben Shapiro says, last night Tucker Carlson released new January 6th footage and that footage utterly explodes

two key narratives from the media. and Democrats about January 6th. He's talking there about the police giving the tours and about the police officers' death being related to or caused by the protesters, rioters, insurrections, whatever you want to call. Mark these and says, come on, Ben, you're better than this. When the left pointed to scenes of calm and said BLM riots were mostly peaceful protests, you correctly said that was ridiculous. Now you're making the same argument as BLM on January 6th. And Ben responded to his credit and said, in what way exactly? January 6 was a riot.

Many people were violent. They were arrested and sentenced. But it's not newsworthy that the cops were apparently walking around the inside of the Capitol with QAnon Shaman? I'm curious what you make of that, that perhaps it can be both that January 6 was a violent riot and that the January 6th committee perhaps should have been more fulsome in its explanation and what it released from that day and that they've lost some trust along the way. Yeah. Look, I highly recommend anybody who hasn't read it. Noel Rothman

did a great service and actually wrote like a 2000 plus word point by point response. It was great. We'll put it in the show notes. He took a lot of time and it was really, I really found it helpful. It took real effort, right? And so, you know, one of the, one of the most frustrating things about Tucker's shtick, and I do at this point think it's purely schick. I think that Tucker is very good at convincing himself he's passionate and sincere about things. But it's pretty much the George Costanza version of truth telling. He convinces himself he's telling the truth in the moment and then turns it off later. And I think he's fundamentally operating in bad faith. But Tucker has this tick, this rhetorical trick, which is very effective, he's very good at it, where he makes a really bold assertion. You know, we now know that squirrels are, in fact, agents of Finland trying to undermine our government. And no honest person can disagree. That's how he always says it. No honest person, as if there is no room for reasonable debate about something that almost demands reasonable debate that, in fact, Tucker has the wrong interpretation.

of it. And so absolutely it's true. I think the January 6th commission was not the ideal format. Whose fault is that? Well, large part it's Republicans' fault because originally it was going to be a big blue ribbon commission kind of thing like the 9-11 commission. Republicans nixed that. And then you can say, well, you know, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't let Jim Jordan and all these people on perfectly find a debate that we've had that conversation a million times here. Would the fact finding have been better if it had been a more adornment? adversarial thing. Sure, I think that's absolutely true. I think that the January 6th committee got too caught up in just selling a narrative, but that doesn't mean the narrative was fundamentally

wrong. And the narrative was, was that a bunch of goons at the, at the encouragement, if not the behest or incitement, and we're not going to turn Sarah into lawyer Sarah, but we're encouraged by the President of the United States in their own hearts and minds to do great violence at the at the capital to intimidate congress i've argued from the beginning that if no one had stored in the capital what trump did that day was inexcusable because what he was trying to do was politically intimidate an equal branch of government by sending a mob out there to heckle people and he's open about that he's like this is what we're going to do we're going to go down there and if you want to take the most pro-trump interpretation of it possible and put all the weight in the world on

his we're going to go down there peacefully stuff it was still outrageous right like if you sent If the president sent a mob of protesters to the Supreme Court while it was deliberating to shouted them through the conference room window, it would be outrageous. This was even worse. Because the intent behind it was just essentially stage a coup. So I am fine with a lot of these points that people are making that it would have been better if there was a more normal committee hearing, you know, more normal approach.

But a lot of these things we actually knew, and that's part of Tucker's shtick, is to take facts that were actually in the record, but because his audience, particularly his biggest fans, are woefully uninformed about stuff that Tucker doesn't want them to know. He can then say,

you know, it's still an open question about how, you know, the guy from the Royal Order of the Buffalo got into the Capitol, when it's not. Like, there's a deep record about this, about how it happened, what happened.

This idea, that the cops were just taking people on tours is factually wrong. This is part of the whole de-escalation, violence de-escalation thing. So it's all bad faith. And so getting back to the political question, I love that if it's sincere,

that these guys think that this was going to make, like, so you had Scalise was asked the other day about this and he says, it seems like a lot of the press, a lot of people in the press just want to talk about January 6. And the implication was like, McCarthy released this stuff, so we wouldn't talk about January 6th anymore, right? That we would put this stuff to bet.

He says he released this in the name of transparency. Well, if it's in the name of the transparency, you release it to everybody. You make it public domain. Disagree to Steve about the security stuff, but that's not a really interesting argument, I think. But if you're going to release in the name of transparency, you wouldn't release it to the one person you can count on

to distort the tapes and quote them selectively to support a bogus conspiracy thing. theory, thesis, um, in the first place. So it's, I think they have self-owned. I think that they have, they are, um, that Kevin McCarthy is proving his gift to a foghorn, leghorn like walk through, um, a field of a field of rakes. I know foghorn, leghorn isn't the one who stepped on them. It was actually the dog that fogghorn leghorn tormented. I apologize for that error. Please send, don't send me emails. But, uh, I think it's a remarkably pathetic spectacle. I want to push further on this Antifa Black Lives Matter comparison, because some of the argument that you hear back from the right about that is this double standard that's been applied, that in fact, you know, there weren't a lot of arrests of Antifa or Black Lives Matter protesters.

and, for instance, in January of 2017, around Donald Trump's inauguration, Antifa protesters set fire to broke and targeted tons of downtown D.C. that was then boarded up for weeks, if not months after that. And most of those people weren't convicted. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any that were. I could go back and look, so I don't want to say for certain. You can compare it to. people who are firebombing crisis pregnancy centers versus those who are getting arrested for being, you know, pro-life and pushing a guy down outside an abortion clinic. I think the Department of Justice has said they're very eager to prosecute people for firebombing crisis pregnancy centers

and have made arrests on that front. But is the right correct to feel like there's been a double standard of justice when a thousand people have been indicted related to January 6th and nowhere near that number when it comes to Black Lives Matters, protesters, and assume some of the same percentages, right? There were people who were there for fine reasons. You may disagree with them politically, but they were there to protest and exercise their First Amendment rights. And then there were some really bad people there who were violent breaking the law in both of these groups. And so why are they being treated so differently is what you're going to hear from the right? Right. So, I mean, there have been lots of Antifa prosecutions. I think it's, I don't know that

I'd go so far as to say it's a straw man argument, but I think that the claim, to the extent that this is the claim that's being made, that really nobody was prosecuted in Black Lives Matter protest. It's just not true. I think the double standard exists, but it exists more in the coverage of this, where I think you had media coverage, you had reporters in effect almost tacitly cheering on BLM protests or rationalizing or explaining away the violence in a way that you have the opposite with reporters who've covered January 6th. I don't think that's a very good argument from people on the right who are making the claim. I think it's fine to point out the double standard, but I don't think the answer then is to somehow minimize or diminish what happened on

January 6th. There's a fantastic newsletter from Nick Cotogio who writes about the various contradictory claims that people on the right have been making about January 6th. I think it's probably the single best thing I've read on Fox, Tucker, January 6th, and this sort of political entertainment problem. And he walks through all of the different explanations, many of them that have been amplified or either originated with or have been amplified by Tucker Carlson. And it's this collection of totally self-contradictory claims. And Nick's argument is what they have in common is eventually they get to the point

where nobody who supports Trump or is aligned with Trump is at fault for any of it, no matter what. So whether it was peaceful and they were sightseers, which is what Tucker said, said they revered the capital, which is what he claimed, as we have video of them destroying it, or whether they were, whether it was a horrible day and they were actually Antifa Democrats in disguise. I mean, there are four or five pretty common claims that have been made that don't line up. And you've seen people who are advancing this revisionist history, this revisionist narrative, sort of just toggle between them, choosing whichever one is most

convenient at the time, and it's intellectually dishonest. I think it's frustrating to listen to it, and I do think that eventually could be pretty dangerous. I mean, you know, Joan and I left Fox in no small part because of the distortions contained in Patriot Purge, and it's really important that people remember this wasn't just sort of, you know, a one-off shrug-your- shoulders. Nah, the thing wasn't as bad as people have said, they were advancing a narrative. I mean, Tucker had Darren Beatty on, a known notable racist, to make claims like this is the U.S. government launching War on Terror 2.0. I mean, that, that was a claim in the documentary, I think it's being on American citizens. That was the on American citizens. I mean, Darren Beatty is quoted. This is what he says in the, in the

documentary, the Tucker Carlson documentary. The domestic war on terror is here. It's coming after half of the country. Then Carlson says, the helicopters have left Afghanistan and they've landed here at home. There's video of an individual in a orange jumpsuit being waterboarded. And an attorney for one of the January 6th defendants says, quote, the left is hunting the right, sticking them in Guantanamo Bay for American citizens, leaving them there to rot. that's simply not happening. It's invented. And I think it's deeply responsible,

it's deeply responsible for them to have said it then in the context of that documentary, and it's deeply responsible for them to be doing the same thing now. Yeah, but we now know, just to tie it to the Fox Party for a second, we now know why Tucker did it. We now know what the real thinking was

between about Fox Nation, which was to do fan service for the audience that they thought they were losing to Newsmax and ohan and that that is precisely why i mean that's the the the financial business interest behind that crazy is just is it's fan service for the audience um that they were afraid to lose and that they couldn't keep by doing that stuff on tv because there was somebody who says look you're not going to put that on the network so let's give them you know let's let's let's go in this alley

behind the building called fox nation and sell the smack there yeah i mean i I think we knew that. I think we knew that at the time. I mean, I think that's what Fox Nation, yeah, now we've seen it in these in these filings from Fox. You're right. And I just want to go back real quick that, you know, I think it is not out of line to say that the protesters in January in D.C. in 2017 were trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as well. They wanted to disrupt and prevent Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. And I got the numbers, by the way. So it was that the six people who originally went on trial were all found not guilty by a jury. And then the Department of Justice dropped charges against 129 other people. Fifty-nine were still facing

charges. Some months later, they dropped those charges as well. So in fact, nobody was convicted related to that. And we don't think about it. And we don't talk about it. And we don't say that that was, you know, an attempted insurrection. We don't even really call it a riot. I guess I am a little confused about that. You're talking specifically here about the 2016 protest side to Trump's inauguration. Yeah, it was 2017, January 20th of 2017. But yeah, why wasn't that seen as trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in the same way? And it, you know, it was violent. I have an answer for you. I mean, like, um, uh, and I want to stimulate, I hate, I hate peaceful protests. I hate crowds of all.

kinds and I've written about this at great length so I'm not like endorsing anything there's one thing for a bunch of of Yahoo's and activists and and and would be Jackman radicals going off as

self-starters to be jerks and be idiots and that's what Antifa is and I all in favor of anybody can be proven to broken the law rotting in jail for some period of time if they're members of Antifa or any of these kinds of groups. There's a huge difference in degree, kind, quality when you have the still sitting president of the

United States with accomplices in Congress and a vast media complex providing cover, rhetorical, and otherwise, for a cockamamie scheme to steal an election. That, you know, people forget at this point that Steve Bannon, Mother Jones got a hold of these tapes of Steve Bannon and I think October saying that what Trump is going to do is he's going to lose, but he's going to go out and say, I'm winning and claim victory anyway because he's going to be ahead in the polls on election night. And that's his plan. And then he's going to say, try and stop me. Bannon was right. Bannon had insight information. That's exactly what Trump tried to do. And so I would be much more upset and talk a lot more about the stuff that happened in 2017 if Barack Obama had

encouraged anybody to do that. If Joe Biden had encouraging or Hillary Clinton had encouraged anybody to do that. I think that's a pretty fair point. All big protests have Yahoo contingents, right? This was different. And just to finish up on the politics, you've had someone like Tom Tillis. He is not a squish.

He is a conservative Republican senator saying that this is, I'm not quoting him here, I'm paraphrasing, Bunkers Town. To, A, give the footage to Tucker Carlson and B, Tucker Carlson's narrative, he was like, this goes against everything we know and that we experienced. And WTF, again, paraphrasing Tom Tillis. Steve, is this going to once again divide the Republican caucus or are most Republicans just going to get in line?

By the way, one of my favorite quotes, what Senator, Republican Senator said that Republican House members needed to watch less cable news? Like it was John Cornyn. Yeah, it was Senator Cornyn. John Cornyn, also, not a squish. Yeah, I hope it divides Republicans, because if it doesn't divide Republicans, I think that they'll all end up on the Tucker Carlson side. I mean, look, you've had, part of what's happening here is Kevin McCarthy's personal attempt to ingratiate himself with Tucker Carlson, who has been blistering about Kevin McCarthy's incompetence and stupidity and corruption in the past. I mean, Kevin McCarthy was a regular target of Tucker Carlson's. And I think you've seen whether it's individuals like McCarthy, who happens be a pretty powerful guy, or institutions like the Heritage Foundation that have been on the receiving end of Tucker Carlson criticism do these kind of crazy somersaults to ingratiate themselves with Tucker, who has the biggest conservative cable audience in the country. So if there's not a

divide, I fear that that means most Republicans will just go to where Kevin McCarthy is and go to where Tucker Carlson is. That would be, I think it would be stupid for Republicans. I think it would be politically damaging, as we've discussed. But it would also, it should also be embarrassing if these people are capable of embarrassment any longer. Look at the stuff that they said during and after January 6th. I mean, look at what Kevin McCarthy said.

He blamed Trump directly. He talked about the violence. And now he's saying, I mean, as Nick points out in the newsletter I mentioned, he says, you know, we wanted to put these tapes out so that people can make up their own conclusions. And while I think that McCarthy probably just misspoke and he meant to say make up their own minds or draw their own conclusions, the fact that he said make up their own conclusions couldn't possibly be more perfect because that's what they're doing. Jonah and Steve, I suppose, but I do have a moment of, I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed of this text exchange I had with Declan Garland. RV, our morning dispatch editor. So he forwarded me the question that he sent to McCarthy's

comms director, press secretary, asking for McCarthy's, you know, response to all of this, a statement on the record. And so Declan sends it to me and says, how would Sarah Isgar comms director respond? And I said, A, I wouldn't. This is something the principal would need to answer for himself. Com staff can't do this. B, the answer that he should give that I'd write from is something like, the January 6th committee wasn't seeking the truth. Now everyone can see the footage for themselves and make up their own minds. And McCarthy's quote, as you said, is each person can come up with their own conclusion. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. Declan said I should be at least a little embarrassed in response. Jonah, last word to you. Look, I mean,

part of your job as a comms person back in the day was to give the best possible answer in a bad situation. I, given the equities and the interests involved in the incredibly stupid position that McCarthy has gotten himself into, I don't know that there's a better answer, you know, I mean, I know there's an objective terms on the merits, on the facts, on morality. There are all sorts of better answers, like, including, dear God, I am, sorry for what I have wrought, but, you know, like, that's not going to happen. So given the circumstances, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it just shows you the limits of the position. You know, there is no Kobayashimaru that is going to get you rhetorically out of a mess that you've spent years getting yourself into. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss,

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All right, let's move on to Joe Biden versus Congress. So first up, Jonah, D.C. passes a crime bill by their city council to lessen penalties for all sorts of various crimes, including carjacking, for instance, at a time when D.C.'s murder rate has just jumped and then jumped some more. I mean, D.C.'s murder rate was incredibly high when I was at the Department of Justice. It has only gone up more. And so when we talk about, when you see, you know, D.C.'s murder rate has gone up 30 percent. It's really important to look at the year from which it went up. And inevitably, that year was an increase as well. That's what's so terrifying about some

of this. Joe Biden backed the effort in Congress to block that crime bill, to basically repeal it because that's Congress's prerogative since D.C. is in a state. This was seen as a rebuke of all sorts of Democratic priorities. Criminal justice reform, D.C. statehood. A lot of Democrats had already come out in favor of this D.C. crime bill. And so it put them in a weird spot of having to vote against the president or kind of find a way to be for it before they were against it. Joe Biden, politically brilliant,

actually a moderate? Or is this just, you know, him trying to navigate a situation where the vast majority of Americans just are not where even the center of the Democratic Party is? Yeah, I think it's smart. I think it's bigger news than it ought to be on the merits,

except for the fact that it's surprising and it sort of took people by by and it took people by surprise it sounds like on purpose right because like if if if this was going to be a policy approach he wouldn't have screwed congressional democrats he would have given them a heads up they would have voted differently this wouldn't have gotten to where it got but like part of the reason why it was smart was that he did it in a way that was um kind of shifting and and and and dishonorable among Democrats right because he like he sent a bunch of House Democrats he left a bunch of House Democrats hanging um high and dry and so that kind of makes it more interesting than it otherwise would be I do think that the um the argument that you hear from

a lot of people on the left particularly here in D.C. Like I don't think in the rest of the country the issue of home rule for D.C. matters to anybody. But like the Washington Post cares about it. And a lot of D.C. journalists care about it. I think it's a terrible issue. And D.C. should never be like if I had the choice between, you know, all our license plates say taxation without representation, the idea that you would take, you would demand representation rather than say no taxation is mystifying to me.

Like I would much rather have no taxes and just have to answer orders of the federal government here in the district, but still be it. My point is shouldn't Republicans, though, want more local control? And isn't the main reason they don't want local control because they don't control it?

I absolutely think that if D.C. were a majority Republican town, Republican position would be different. That said, the conservative position is that that's not what the Constitution says. That this is a federal city. It was carved out for a specific purpose. It is not It doesn't fit into the federalist scheme.

It doesn't fit into the enumerated-powered stuff. It is just a different thing. But what I think is funny, and I'm sorry, I got distracted there, what I think is funny is how people are saying, oh, this is such a violation of Biden's principles because he's for its home rule. And he's just doing this for like the politics of it. Yeah, the Biden actually gives a rat's ass about home rule.

All right. I mean, like, the political expediency is what really matters to him. And like, pissing off people who are in favor of home rule is a pretty cheap way to set yourself up for a re-election campaign. And so I think it was very smart politics. I also just think it's incredibly stupid that the D.C. City Council wanted to weaken rules against carjacking when carjacking is through the roof. And I never mind murder and all that. But that's a phenomenon that's taking place in a lot of cities. A lot of cities have been taken over by really ideological people who seem to think that,

weakening the penalties for criminals will play well with middle-class people. And I think there's going to be a reckoning coming across the country on a lot of the fronts because of that. Steve, is this going to sweep Republicans' legs out from under them that Democrats can now point to this and say, clearly we're not soft on crime. So, huh? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think Democrats are on defensive on crime issues broadly, and this, I think, gives one Democrat, Joe Biden, an argument that he can make in a debate with a Republican on the stage, if you are wrong and Donald Trump ends up being the Republican nominee, Biden can make that argument.

I think generally Democrats recognize that they're in trouble because they've made these arguments or allowed these arguments or tolerated these arguments about defunding the police. And in some cases have pushed measures like some of the provisions included in this D.C. Council crime proposal that would sort of slow down the gears of justice in a deliberate way so that people who commit these crimes can't be effectively prosecuted. And what we've seen around the country is we've seen this, you know, this is a long-term trend. You've seen prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals.

it creates bad incentives for police in terms of taking risks to arrest these criminals. They don't want to take risks to arrest criminals, who they are reasonably sure won't be prosecuted. You have prosecutors who won't prosecute these criminals for crimes, and now you have local governments trying to gum up the works, in effect, without providing additional funding for these prosecutions. I think that makes it hard for Democrats to say, look, as a party, we are where Joe Biden is, and we too think that criminals should be prosecuted. I think we're likely to see, and we've talked about this on this podcast before, Tom Cotton was well ahead of the curve on this. We are seeing sort of a response from the electorate to various kinds of rising crime. And the statistics go in different directions on different issues, but there's a trend.

here. It's rising. People are more concerned about it. And I think Republicans tried to make an issue out of it in 2022, but it was sort of counterbalanced by other crazy that Republicans had to contend with. I think it's certain to be an issue in 2024. We should also just for edification of our audience, the D.C. Council withdrew this bill, right? So it's no longer in consideration. But the Senate was just, Senate Democrats were just so jazz to show that they were anti-crime, they're going to pass a resolution against the D.C. thing anyway, which just gives you a sense of where the politics are, particularly in state for statewide officials rather than congressional districts. Joan, on the flip side, you have Biden's veto threat. Let me back up a little. So the Labor

Department put forward a rule that said that pension managers, could consider ESG factors. Those are environmental social governance factors, things like climate change or sustainability or equity initiatives that are not purely about the financial outcome of the pension. So it's a sort of exception to one's fiduciary duty to maximize pension benefits for the people who are retiring and your retirees. Now, on the one hand, it's only supposed to give them the option to do that. It's not mandating that they consider ESG factors. But on the other hand, the retirees aren't really going to get much of a choice. Like, your retirement plan could have more money. But instead, we decided to take into account some other things that we felt good about.

So Republicans in Congress, along with Joe Manchin and John Tester, who are Democrats in the Senate, passed a bill that repealed or superseded is technically what happens when it's legislation. this sort of administrative state labor department regulation and joe biden is going to veto it which is sort of stunning on some on many many levels there's the political level which i want to hear from you about there's also just the sort of separation of powers you have the administrative state through not a legislative process no compromise whatsoever you know putting forward a rule congress then saying no no that's not what we meant We didn't mean to give the Department of Labor that power,

and we're going to make that clear by passing a law that says so. Then the president's going to veto it, meaning that the only way to overcome administrative state regulations now is going to be with a supermajority in the Senate and House to, you know, override a veto. That's not going to be great. So can I ask you a legal question before I answer your political question? Yeah. So let's say someone,

get standing, and I don't have an argument about standing. I just had an argument, David French. Frequent advisory opinion is frequent guest, David French, about standing stuff. Let's say someone gets standing. I assume it's gettable. Very getable for this, yes. And says,

hey, you know, my life savings are in this retirement fund, and now this retirement fund at the behest of the Illinois State Legislature is investing in a firm that says that they can convert unicorn poop into renewable energy. And the returns on it aren't as good as they would be if they maintain the old system of fiduciary, yada, yada, yada. Of just investing in Exxon, yes. Right, right.

Best return possible, right. Yes. So all that said, does the fact that the Senate actually passed a resolution saying, this is not what we meant by that law, you cannot do this. And even though it was vetoed, does that become part of the evidentiary case for a case for a lawsuit against the rule, right? Because like, often courts argue about what the intent of Congress was.

Congress is actually saying the big megaphone, this was not our intent. So does that become a factor in a lawsuit? Yes, but that will only factor in at all if there's any ambiguity. I haven't gone back and looked at the initial legislative authority by which the Department of Labor claim to be able to pass this regulation. So I'd want to dive into that. If you're saying that that legislative act of Congress was ambiguous to begin with, then yes, you can look and say, well, clearly Congress didn't intend for you to be able to depart from the fiduciary responsibilities and maximizing the profit of retirement plans. And here's some evidence of that. And it would be

stronger than, for instance, legislative history, which conservatives have always hated, though they love the Federalist papers, because this actually was passed through the legislative process. So that would be helpful, but you have to have that ambiguity to begin with. Okay, so on the politics side, I think it's probably dumb for Biden to veto this. It makes his fortune hostage to the dumbest Democratic majority legislature or regulator in one of the 50 states who is going to reward some who is going to pressure the pension board or whatever the fiduciaries of these pension funds into investing in some sort of puppy rescue. thing because it's just good and screwing retirees and it will and that can be thrown back in Biden's face right and that can be thrown back in the Democrats face and I think the reason

why vetoing it and why they're doing this stuff in the first place is that they um there's just so much um third party money involved in this when you look at who the biggest institutional investors are in the world. It is, you know, the list is just full of things like CalPERS and all of these things that are these big state teaches funds and government worker funds and all that kind of stuff. And if you can induce them at the margins to invest in green energy this and diversity, that, and DEI, whatever, that has a real multiplier effect for the Democratic Party. And I'm of the view that the Democratic Party, which has always been the party, which has always been

the party of government. I mean, this is not like an ad hominem thing. This is point at point in hand would make. But it is now not so much the party of what government can do for people as it is the party for people who work for government. Government work in it of itself, including sort of de facto government workers and the extended sort of helping professions. That is the primary constituency of the Democratic Party. And their public policy is aimed at rewarding essentially the administrative state and its friends. And And there's just the stakes of this are so high and they're so convinced that everything they do on this front is right

that it's very hard for them to think that there could be a downside to it. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

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without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right, Steve, I want to make sure we have plenty of time to talk about China and Russia. T.S. Up. This week featured a hearing that us national security.

obsessives, look forward to every year because it's a hearing on worldwide threats with the leaders of the top intelligence agencies in the U.S. government testifying an open session before members of Congress, there's also a closed door session where they talk about classified issues, but this was the open door session. And I would say it was pretty bracing. You had testimony from Admiral Haynes, the head of the department, who's the director of national intelligence, about the threat from China, which she called the most consequential threat, and described in, I thought, pretty significant detail what President Xi Jinping was trying to do to consolidate power. Painted a picture of the Chinese Communist Party that sees its relationship,

vis-a-vis global power and intelligence as sort of a zero-sum game with the United States. To the extent that she offered any reassuring testimony, it was that the Chinese government also, at least for the moment, seeks stability in its relationship with the United States and in this current power balance, but made it very clear that the Chinese are ambitious in terms of territory and reach. it was an unsettling series of testimony provided by these various leaders and I think something that should keep us up at night. I have a side note question on that about TikTok in particular, and we're seeing increasing

efforts, it seems, to take TikTok seriously and its potential threat to U.S. national security. Do you think that anything will actually move forward? The Biden administration seemed to suggest that they were maybe open to it, though the actual language I know has been a bit controversial that perhaps it won't actually do anything for TikTok? Yeah, a couple different pieces of legislation that are being debated right now, one that is a bipartisan piece of legislation pushed by Senator John Thune and I forget the Democratic co-sponsor that would seek to, as I understand it, sort of limit the reach of TikTok.

critics of that legislation from a sort of hawkish anti-Chinese Communist Party perspective argue that it doesn't go so far because it is not an outright ban of TikTok. And you have security folks like our longtime colleague Klon Kitchin and others who think that the U.S. government has to get a lot more serious about TikTok soon and that any measure short of that kind of a ban will be inadequate. Jonah? On TikTok? Or China or Russia, whatever your feelings are, how the dogs are doing.

I don't know. So I think it would be very, very, very, very bad if China gets in as a arms supplier and munition supplier to Russia and the Ukraine war. Because right now, the real only path towards something that looks like a Ukrainian victory is this the burn rate that Russia is having with its, it's war material. And China could easily fill in that gap for years to come and would be hugely depressing if it happened. I don't know that it's going to happen.

I think that it has been dawning on China, has been dawning on China for a little while now, that China is that Russia is eventually on its way to becoming a vassal state of China. It won't under Putin, because Putin's so butch, but it's, it, you just look at what a basket case Russia is turning itself into, demographically, economically, culturally, it's, it hasn't gotten enough coverage, but the flight of talented people, right? Because, like, it turns out that a lot of the most talented people, young people, are also sort of Russian liberals who want to live in a more free and open and serious country. And they've all gotten out of Dodge.

And they're not coming back until the country changes dramatically. And so, anyway, I think that I think Russia has very, they could end up winning in Ukraine, which would break my heart. I don't think they will. But long term, I think Russia is. on a really terrible course and it's going to end up becoming um an extension of chinese power and the question is do we want to postpone that or delay that um in the hopes that you know china itself will run into its own problems which it does have um before they're successful doing that and i just don't know but um i'm um i'm just going to just plant my flag on this again i still think

that in the short term, we have a lot to worry about China, but in the long term, I still think China has got much bigger problems than people want to acknowledge, and that China's, the people who say the bet of the 1990s that we made with China is now obviously dumb and failed. My response is consistently so far, because I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think China's got huge institutional and structural problems that are going to manifest themselves over time. So that's, you anticipated my next question to Steve perfectly, which is it's very easy to say that our number one threat is China. I think that's not particularly debatable right now. And I think Jonah's point about Russia becoming a vassal state and how to think of those threats

as actually more of a combined threat than as individual threats, very smart. But at the end of the day, our number one threat could be an existential threat. Our number one threat could actually be a relatively minor threat. And I wonder whether we oversell, overestimate China in some respects by not talking enough about some of the fragility of the foundations of their economy, for instance. I mean, I wonder if you polled most Americans if they think that China's economy is bigger than ours right now. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very good point. And it's worth that cautionary note. I would just say pushing back on that, that China can be a threat whether it's on a path to greater strength or not.

You could make an argument that Chinese weakness, given its stated ambitions, I think clear ambitions, might present. As we've seen with Russia, right? Like a weak Russia turned out not to be great. Right. If Xi Jinping sees his long-term attempts to consolidate power, grow the strength of the Chinese Communist Party imperiled,

there's a case that he could be a less rational actor than he seems to have been up to this point. And I think if you look at what we've seen in China with respect to the kinds of protests that we've seen in China, which are different than the kinds of protests we had seen in China in years past, which were largely localized and didn't sort of metastasize the response to the lockdowns, the clampdowns on, COVID, in some respects, were almost national protests. They weren't truly national in that they were everywhere all the time, but they grew in a way that I think unsettled the regime and led to the reversal of some of those policies. If that's an indication of the weakness of the regime or the brittleness of the regime or the fragility of its hold on power, that could be both reason for optimism and reason

for concern. And what about China's investments in Latin? Latin America and Africa in particular. Should we see those as important in this larger picture? Yes, yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, look, I think in the best case scenario, it turns out picking up on the point that Joan was making, in the best case scenario, it turns out that we look back on those in 30 years and suggest that China was overextended and tried to do too much too soon. But I think it's made these investments with real purpose. And the United States is, far, far behind in any of a number of areas, whether it's development, whether it's governmental

support. China has the ability to go to those places where it's made loans, where it's co-developed with private sector actors and extract concessions or make demands, exert its power and influence. We're seeing that happen right now in certain parts of Africa. I think we can expect to see it happen later. And as I say, best case scenario, it turns out they can't do all of the things that it appears that they had been set on doing when they made these investments in the first place. Like, you know, Steve and I agree on so many things. And it turns out that global debt diplomacy is where we really part company. Because we knew we would get there one day. Don't forget, don't forget Cypriot monetary policy.

I'm trying to because the last time we brought that up, it came to blows. But, look, I think the Belt and Road initiative has largely been a disaster. It's been a disaster for China and it's been a disaster for its recipients. It turns out, shockingly, so far. So far. Fair enough. Yeah. But, I mean, one concession to the fact that it looks pretty disastrous is that China is largely

reimagining it and they've come up with some new slogan where it's not called Belt and Road. it's called, you know, smart suspenders or something. I don't know. And, but it's, it turned out that it was essentially what you would have expected from a, you know, a state that believes in central planning. And they rewarded a whole bunch of corrupt contractors. All the money went back to China. They picked a lot of dumb projects that these countries couldn't afford. All the countries that took these initiatives are really pissed at China. And I understand that the debt has strings attached that is valuable, but it turns out that mercantilism in a global information age, 21st century global economy is a really dumb economic approach to begin with. And so I think

that the approach that China has taken to a lot of these questions over the last 15 years is going to reap all sorts of problems for it. And that's the danger, I think, is that getting to sort of Sarah's point about weakness, making places more dangerous, I think one of the reasons why you have the nationalism of Xi these days is precisely because they're starting to see growth slow down, they're starting to see the public sector debt

and all of these problems that they have manifesting themselves in all sorts of ways. and they're setting themselves up to say all of our economic woes are because of the evil Westerners who are screwing with us. And that's going to make them more dangerous in the short term.

And it requires us to think seriously about all of them, about all of this stuff. But I just think there's an enormous amount of, I was just talking to David about this on my podcast. Like, I find there's a really weird disconnect where you get to the extent there are really good there are good faith opponents of supporting Ukraine and there are some their argument is oh this is provocative against russia we shouldn't be provocative they're a nuclear power there are a world power why are we interested in doing this

why would we want to provoke them yada yada yada and what we really should do is provoke the hell out of china and like i get the argument about russia but like it's the same people who are also saying you know we should ban tic-tok we should kick the chinese out of these institutions we should you know really hold their feet to the fire we should declare them an enemy i was like well why does that logic work not work for russia but it works for china or vice versa and it's just a weird i think inconsistency in a lot of people's thinking wait who who's this guy you might remember me used to be on some of our dispatch stuff but like now he's part of the mainstream media over at the New York Times?

I don't really remember him very well. I don't see his stuff. Does anybody read it? Where do you even find it? I don't like to bring quirky guests on advisory opinions where he is a frequent guest. All right. We've got a little not worth your time question mark. So I wrote off the whole rolled dolls books being edited because everyone seemed to agree that that was a bad idea. Left right and center, right?

Everyone was like, yep, we shouldn't do that. That's not how you treat history, even if you don't like it. So I thought that chapter was closed. And then here comes R.L. Stein and his books now being edited along the same lines, actually. Is this worth our time to get upset about? Or are these just going to be tiny little one-offs? And we shouldn't think too much about them because everyone agrees that we shouldn't go back and edit all books from the past to make them fit with our current lingua franca it's worth our time and it's

appalling and obviously not everybody agrees unfortunately i think you're right there there was sort of an initial outcry from kind of across the ideological spectrum about what they were doing with role doll but you also have on the flip side of that an increasing willingness both on the part of some on the right and on the part of some on the left to rewrite history and as the case may be rewrite books. I think it's a dangerous trend. I think we should expose kids to all kinds of ideas. And I hope that this now causes sort of a louder outcry so that people really get the message, particularly book publishers. I shockingly have a more nuanced position on this one actually. And I'd say the shocking thing, because normally this is the kind of thing that does

pissed me off and I am I am a little bit I mean I so if you're going to if you're going to come up with a new edition of a book just say that's what you're doing like we're coming out with a new edition of the book here's all the here's the kind of stuff that we've you know taken out of it I'm against doing the new edition but I get it like this has happened a lot in the past but you got to be clear with with the audience what you're doing and you still have to make available the old version right that's the thing I think is sort of key. And what bothers me about the doll stuff, to the extent I followed it, because some of it happened while I was on vacation, is that they're just basically saying, no, this is what

the book was. And it's kind of like stealth editing. And that's evil. Which they have now reversed course on. Right. Which they have now reversed course on. But like, if you go and look at what like the original version of, say, Cinderella was like, where the stepsisters had their toes cut off to fit into the shoe? Hey, into the woods kept it. Yeah, well, yeah, fair. But that's my point is, like, some of these things do change over time. And what offends

me about this stuff is the sort of Stalinist approach to it, where you're not completely transparent about what you're doing. We were always at war with East Asia. Right. That's the part that I think is appalling and it is worth our time. It needs to be stamped out. And I think it, I think part of the problem is that's, part

of our culture is driven by the nature of our technology. And we, these new generation of decision makers grew up in a world where you could just go back into documents on their computers and change what the thing says, whereas we grew up in a world where the stuff was on paper, and it seemed like evil to go back and change what things said. And I think that real transparency about what people are doing and having to be in accordance with the wishes of the literary estate are hugely important. Okay, so we've solved it like all acts of parliament,

All rolled doll books and R.L. Stein books will now be published on Vellum so that they may not be edited moving forward. Yeah, good. And they'll stand the test of time. Thank you listeners for joining us again this week. We appreciate it. And if you've got comments, thoughts, feelings, you can become a member of the dispatch. Hop into the comments section. We do read them. Steve throws things. I tend to jump into the comments. But you know, you'll find Steve there lurking from time to time. A little Jonah. Otherwise, we will talk to you again next week. Thank you.