The Dispatch Podcast - The Weirding Way | Roundtable

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

What a difference two weeks make. Jonah, Sarah, Chris Stirewalt, and a beach-bound Megan McArdle discuss whether Kamala Harris’ newly energized and surprisingly disciplined campaign is getting on Trump’s nerves. The agenda: —Kamala basking in the coconut glow —Trump’s onstage interview at the NABJ conference —Gov. Roy Cuppa —Trump’s messy messaging on Kamala Harris’ identity —J.D. Vance’s controversial comments —Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan come home —More Sarah lore Show Notes: —Nick Catoggio on Democrats' "weird" messaging The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger and whoa. Yeah, we have Jonah Goldberg, whatever. But we have Chris Stierwalt. We have Megan McArdle. I mean, this is the time to be alive. Not since Jefferson podcasted alone. Starwalt, let's start where we have to start.

Kamala Harris has had a very good two weeks. Donald Trump has had a very bad two weeks, but how much of this should I be thinking of as almost a reversion to the mean, right? Donald Trump had a very good three weeks. Now he's having a bad two weeks. Sure, Kamala Harris is exceeding my expectations for these two weeks, but that too will probably come back down to early. She hasn't yet done any interviews.

She hasn't made a mistake. She will make a mistake, and we haven't seen how the campaign will be able to handle that. What are you expecting, looking for, impressed by, unimpressed by, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I guess it's better for Democrats than a reversion to the meme. After one week, so we're blessed right now because we have lots of polling, because all the high-quality pollsters, everybody's going back in the field because the race is reset. So, atypically, we have a lot of contemporaneous polls from a lot of good pollsters.

And the answer initially was, oh, it's back to where it was, which is basically a tie race with a slight advantage for Donald Trump by half a point or whatever in an average of good polls. And of course, as we know, a Democrat has to win the national popular vote by more than three points in order to win the electoral college because of the slant of the electoral college of those seven states. But now we see in a second week that Harris is ahead of where her boss was in the race with Biden. And there's a, when it comes to polls, there's good polls and there's bad polls, but even bad poles can be useful if they are consistent, if they're bad in a consistent way, which is to say that they continue, they keep their methodology flawed as it may be.

And every, every pollster good and bad, points to the same thing. And I would point you to the Sesquahana University poll, which is not one of my favorite polls. It's not the most delightful poll, but it's an okay poll. and it's got her up now four points, more than four points on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. And that's a poll that had Biden down slightly, down and tied consistently before. So I think it's better than reversion to the mean. But as you say, she hasn't done one single interview.

She hasn't picked a running mate. She hasn't paid any price. She's just been basking in the coconut glove. Megan, let's now dive to the particulars. Trump this week did a on-stage interview with the National Association of Black Journalists and talk about a reversion to the mean. You know, Chris Lassavita and Susie Wiles,

who have been running the Trump campaign, sure had been running a disciplined campaign, but they can't change who their candidate is. And I feel like that was on full display really since the after the first 25 minutes of his convention speech to now we're realizing that you can run whatever campaign you want with the best operatives you want candidates matter i guess we already knew that and um if you could just give your answer while sipping your my tie or pinia calada with your feet in the sand as we hear the dulcet tones of the beach behind you that'd be

Yes, I'm coming to you live from the beach in Massachusetts, bringing you all the latest news of the kelp incursion that is piling up on the sand outside. Yeah, I think that, like, it's fascinating that a month ago when I talked to Democrats about the campaigns, they would complain that, you know, Joe Biden was not doing the job. He was not really capable of campaigning or they worried that he wasn't. And then there's Susie Wiles and Chris Lissivina and they're so professional and Trump's really like actually doing a good job this time around. And now it turns out that when you have a candidate who can campaign at all, Trump can't help himself. I also think probably his legal troubles were suppressing some of his in it Trumpishness, keeping it from breaking free of the bounds and, you know, galloping through the news cycles. And now we're back to where he was.

He has a ceiling. And the funny thing to me is, you know, a lot of Republicans are now in my Twitter feed complaining that it's so unfair. They've had to, they swapped out the candidate. We were prepared to, you know, campaign against C. and Nile Joe, not Kamala Harris. And this is undemocratic. And I'm like, you know, you guys could try the same trick. You could sub in someone, I don't know, electable.

Well, what do you think we're supposed to, you know, one of Trump's. greatest strengths has been defining his opponents, finding these weaknesses that however unpleasant people like us may find them are incredibly effective. So we're seeing the campaign appear to roll out their strategy, which is that Vice President Harris isn't really black, that she's identified as Indian through her career and that only now when it politically suits she is, you know, identifying as black to try to court black voters. I guess what I find odd is that normally Trump finds something that, again, we may find distasteful to say out loud, but that nevertheless feels true.

What's odd about this is that it's, like, doesn't feel true at all. She went to a historically black college. She was in a black sorority. I don't really get this one, and I'm not sure that it would resonate anyway. Yeah, I think there's a couple things around here. first of all, it's gross. Second of all, I don't know who the target market for this is, right? Like, do you think black audiences are unfamiliar with the existence of biracial children

who have to negotiate somewhat complicated questions about heritage and which side they identify with if both, you know, so I don't think, first of all, black voters are just not going to be a source of great strength for Donald Trump. like he's doing better with them than he was last time around, although this may erase that advantage. But that's not his core demographic and that's not what's going to push him over the finish line. And like, who is the other audience?

The other audience is white people who are obsessed with their online grievances about affirmative action, DEI, whatever. Those people are already voting for Donald Trump. There's no extra votes to pick up there. And so what is the purpose of this other than that Trump enjoys doing it. Jonah?

Yeah, so, I mean, I agree with all that. It would not sharp me because this was clearly, I think this was planned. So I agree candidates matter, all that kind of stuff. But they were so ready to go with this. She was Indian until she decided to run in 2024 as a black person thing, which, like, I don't think, Trump is clever enough to come up with this on the fly and then have a campaign

instead of trying to put it out, put it on signal boost. So I think it was planned, right? It planned for this rally. They had those slides ready to go and all that kind of stuff. And I think that they're falling back on their sort of as close as they can get to birtherism kind of playbook, which I think is dumb because birtherism is what got Trump, to the extent Bertherism got Trump elected, it got him elected because it won him the nomination. It was good for him in the primaries. It did not win the general election. It was not

something that won over, you know, the median voter to him in any way. And I agree. I'm not, look, I'm inclined to think this is one of these cases where I think both pro and con, you can overread the very online world, you know, Twitter is not the real world. And so The response to it has been, it was so bizarre last night where literally, like, I mean, I felt like I was screaming to serve men as a cookbook people, you know, like, not a single person who was saying she's such a faker, she was Indian until she decided to be a black woman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, not a single person, if you would ask them 24 hours earlier is Kamala Harris Black, they would have said yes, right?

not a single one of them in 2020 when Clyburn basically said you have to pick a black woman and Biden said I'm going to pick a black woman and then he picked Kamala Harris and it was a black woman and he said in interviews for three and a half years now particularly in great earnestness

when he was trying to keep his job stay on the ticket he kept saying I deserve all this credit for appointing the first black woman as vice president and she's a black woman and no one I mean not even Jesse Waters was out there saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. President, we all know she's Indian.

I mean, everyone just sort of took it as like, that's what she was, right? And like, so yeah, every now and then there are these things where she's like doing outreach where she says, oh, by the way, I'm also, you know, Indian. And you would have reporting that would say the first African American and first Asian vice president. Everyone knew this.

And so I was particularly just freaked out by the ability of the Trump campaign to flip a switch in people, to have them embrace the gaslighting and run with this as if this is something they'd always believed. I just don't know that those people matter in terms of electoral politics,

except maybe it reinforces the idea that the GOP is weird. Well, if I may on that point, I think it rehearses two previous... Trump plays the hits. Freebird! That's right. There's two previous Trump hits.

One is the birtherism we have heard mention of Kamala Harris's high school years in Canada that dreaded the maple menace that she did spend her time not dissimilar to Ted Cruz's dubious origin of Ted Cruz's Canadian mother so it rehearses birtherism and nativism if we were doing the remnant right now Chris

you and I would do 10 minutes on your mother's so Canadian jokes But no, this is the high-minded, you know, mainstream. And let's be honest, we do need to protect the country from the Canadian menace. Yeah, it's there. They're right there. Poutine fiends right there. With their ice guns? Yes.

Like 90% of their population is amassed on our border. Exactly. Exactly. The sleeping giant. So it rehearses the nativism, birtherism. But at the core of this is an effort to relive 2016. The Hillary Clinton is a fake. She uses a fake Southern accent.

She's a phony, phony, phony. She's a fake, fake, fake. And I think what Donald Trump does not understand and what his eager acolytes do not understand is. Do you know the best way to get black voters mad at you? Say something in public that they might say in private, right? You really want to make black Americans. mad at you, you put in your mouth words that behind closed doors, I am sure there are black

Americans who have had the conversation about Kamala Harris. Well, much as they might have had about Obama, well, it's not the same experience as the descendant of enslaved Americans. Bup, but they might have that conversation. But boy, when you put it in Donald Trump's mouth, they're going to line up. They're going to come in hard for Kamala Harris. And so, Sarah, can I ask you a question? as someone who's actually handled politicians. Whoa. None of,

I can say this as neutrally as possible. None of the caliber of Donald Trump. So before I said, I thought this is planned. And I do think this was planned to one extent or another. That said, do you think, do you think the reason why the campaign went with this is because this is because this is the, Like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks

as sort of what Chris is getting at. And so, like, they're like, okay, well, we have these other arguments and tactics we could use, but with all the sock puppets, and flashcards, we can't get Trump to absorb them. So we got to go with something he can actually sell because he's going to go this way anyway. Or do you think this was actually more,

or do you disagree with me at all that this was a strategy from the get-go? I don't disagree that the campaign was, on board with this and that it was planned or that they were aware of it, however you want to say that, but I can come up with another theory than the one that you have, and my evidence for it is the vice presidential pick. So I now believe that Lasavita and Wiles, the two campaign managers of the Trump campaign, have a strategy, but they also have to deal with the reality of Trump and his clown show side coalition of human beings that distract him. And the way to manage this is that you have to give them things along the road.

And they need to be things that are big enough that they feel real, but also things that you're willing to give away. And vice president, I think was one of them. So they don't think the vice president matters politically. You heard Trump even say that. And I could hear Las Avita telling it to Trump and then Trump repeating it, right? that vice presidents politically do not have an impact on the election. It's been studied in tons of political science journals.

The only one that they found might have was, you know, 2008 with McCain and Palin. And even then, probably not. And certainly, even with the study that found that she made a difference, not enough to change the election. Okay? So Lasavid and Wiles note and believe that the VP doesn't matter. So, yeah, they give that one to John Jr. and Tucker and this, like, gang of deplorables, whatever you want to call them.

It's not a basket now. It's a full-on gang. They've grown up from kittens to cats. And that this is one of those things, that nobody's paying attention. It's July, August. When this is going to matter is going to be in September. It's going to be debate season. It's going to be when Harris actually does mess up and do interviews.

And so, yeah, if the Trump team and his little, like, you know, side whatever they are's want to try this strategy now's the time to do it not in September and October and so they're having to give away stuff along the way now the opportunity cost as you guys have said are black voters but they weren't really counting on them to win anyway um I think the the other opportunity cost is forcing Harris into that error sooner, you know, he had an opportunity to just sit there and be on message saying, I'm here, she's not. I'm here to take questions.

She won't take any questions. She hasn't taken any questions from anyone. She won't even take questions from you. And yeah, he made that, but of course it got massively overshadowed and the audience isn't even going to remember that message. So I don't mean to say there's not a cost. To the VP pick, there's a cost. To doing these shenanigans at the NABJ, there's a cost.

but if the cost is sort of buying off this wing of Trump toadies in order to get what you want for the Labor Day to Election Day bit, that might be a cost they were willing to pay. Chris, I want to now go to some of the Harris messaging changes, and it is remarkable when you think about the fact that these are the same human beings that were running the Biden campaign. They did not switch out campaign staff, and yet they've totally turned around the message from the sort of dark, danger to democracy. Look at what Trump did on January 6th to, we're not going back as a slogan, freedom, the, look, drop the danger to democracy stuff. Just say that they're weird, and then point out all the times that they're weird, including the whole, you know, women without children, are sociopaths, and cat ladies and shouldn't be rewarded in the tax code.

Democrats jumping on that is hilarious, and Republicans acting like it's a brand new idea is hilarious since it's literally already in our tax code. So give them a grade, Chris, on the turnaround of messaging campaign strategy, et cetera. First, I think, as J.D. Vance demonstrates, running mates do matter, and they can matter quite a lot. They matter not in a way that's easy to measure. because the idea that I picked Ex-and-So and they delivered this state, there's not very many cases, not a ton of evidence, which is why if you look at the governor of North Carolina,

Roy Cooper, or where you say, well, could this person deliver? Cupper. Cupper? He says it's Cupper. We've all been pronouncing it wrong. It's not Cooper. It's Cupper. He says it's Cuppa.

Yeah. Not since Kamala has his, have so many people mispronounced a name. I declare, I did not know it was Roy Kappa. But the transactional ability to deliver. But what we know is that some running mate picks help and some hurt. The best running mate pick in recent political history

was Joe Biden in 2008. Huge favorability numbers. He had favorability numbers almost as good as Obama's. At the outset, he had a net 19 points favorability. He was universally known and pretty well liked. And what he said about Barack Obama was, he's okay with me. Barack Obama is okay with moderate corporatist whites from the Mid-Atlantic. He's okay with old white dudes, sending a message to that wing of his party,

sending that message to those voters. A vice presidential pick is a billboard. you get to hang it out and say, this is what I'm about. Mike Pence was a successful running mate pick. Sarah Palin was a successful running mate pick until she was not. But history forgets that until the financial panic really started crushing McCain's candidacy and she became more obviously unsurious, she was helping John McCain. She was helping solidify the Republican Party.

She had a net 10 points favorable rating a month after. the election. What Harris now faces is, is she going to pick somebody? What's her billboard going to say? Donald Trump's billboard says, weird. And the hysterics of Republicans complaining about people calling J.D. Vance weird and that, you know, it's a meme. They're trying to make people say it. They're trying to make people say it. Well, what do you think politics is? What do you think we've been doing here? Yeah, what do you think? When you said it was lying Hillary, what was that?

What's the idea here? So Democrats... Every single time Trump mentions Kamala Harris, it's crazy Kamala. It's like, well, is that any meaner or more juvenile? Laughing Kamala. Why didn't you go with cackling Kamala? I don't know. Maybe it's too on the nose.

I don't know. I'm sure they've got a focus group working on it. But the problem for... No, the opportunity for Harris and company is they have a fresh start at the same time that they are able to turn J.D. Vance into the symbol of what's wrong with MAGA? What's the matter with MAGA? Maga hates women. What's the matter with MAGA? Maga does not want women to have choices in life. And it condescends to women and the arrogance of the Trump pick a Vance left right on the table like, oh, you're going to pick somebody who alienates your weakest subset, right? You're going to pick a person. So that would be like if Kamala Harris

picked Pete Buttigieg. Let's say that she picked Pete Buttigieg. A lot of Democrats like Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg is very smart. He has a story of success. He's got all of this stuff. But if she picked Pete Buttigieg, what she would be saying to her weakest demographic, suburban dads, dudes, like, I don't really care about you. I don't need you. I'm not interested in you. I like this guy. And that's what they're doing to Vance. What they're doing to Vance is turning they're using him like a magnifying glass on an ant to focus what's weird and wrong about MAGA in people's minds. 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 can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day,

build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot 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 ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary.

Rates may vary. Megan, how do you feel about childless cat ladies? We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies. Can I just like, as a, like for our feminist moment here on the pod, it seems so strange to me that you would focus on women in this instead of men. Like they had an opening to focus it only on men and leave the women out of it. And it would have been implied. but no, they focused it on women the dumbest way they could. Yeah, look, as a childless dog lady, I take it personally.

I wasn't voting for me anyway, so it didn't hurt him. And I think that's possibly the reasoning here is like if you look at the demographics of the parties, it is striking that like the Republican Party does well with everyone except single women who are like, you know, two to one Democrat to Republican. and you may just say, well, we're giving that constituency up. But as I think we have discovered in the past couple weeks, there are a lot of women out there who are not voluntarily childless, right? They struggled with fertility.

You can, like, yell at them and say, well, you left it too late. I am not going to say what my response to that is. They love being yelled at like that, too. Yeah, would a woman who's gone through a bunch of rounds of IVF to have them fail wants to hear as this is your fault? Like absolutely nutty. And look, I don't understand it. I really don't understand how J.D. Vance ever settled on this line of attack and thought it was cool.

It gets you nothing because, like, frankly, again, like a lot of those childless cat ladies, they are related to people who are in your constituency who feel really bad that their daughter, their sister, et cetera, does not have children and knows that in many cases their sister. their daughter feels really bad that they don't have kids. And like, what are you, what are you doing? How of all of the, and I think about this with the Kamala stuff too, of all of the stuff. Like Kamala is so eminently attackable. This is what you chose. And similarly, like, I think, look, I'm a pro natalist.

I am, I recognize that I am part of the problem. I am in favor of doing things like expanding the child tax credit. because I think that, you know, this is a huge issue for demographics is a huge issue for basically every economy in the world. And I think we don't take it seriously enough. But the way you address that problem is not to say that like childless cat ladies are destroying America. First of all, they're out there like, you know, they're running your community chest. They're in your altar guild. They're doing like they're in the sodality. They're doing a lot of this kind of day-to-day labor of institutions that Republicans like.

They're holding their jobs. Yes, exactly. He's Catholic. Oh, how? Does a Catholic pick on a woman who is like, I mean, it's just absolutely insane. Hey, Jonah, can we just take a second to talk about the policy implications of this?

Because I'm pretty torn on it, actually. On the one hand, I think Megan's exactly right that demographics are important for a country in having human beings to be in your country, is sort of a baseline for having said country. On the other hand, I'm not really for a tax code that sits there and picks and chooses the different lifestyles that we like and incentivizes those

and all the other things. So perhaps is this an opportunity to just have a tax code that just you pay taxes based on how much money you made and not based on whether you own a house or rent a house, whether you have two kids or three kids? You know, pretty soon we're going to be subsidizing dogs over kids, Cats. Well, it's funny you mention that. Okay, let's start there. If, you know, first of all, Vance the way he talks about this does it in the dumbest frigging way. I mean, forget the

offending women part, right? Which is like big and politically important. And, you know, as I've been saying, there are only two kinds of childless women, women who chose not to have kids and women who wanted to have kids and were unable to. Neither want to be like yelled at about it. If you're going to complain about it, so the way you framed it was we have to punish people who don't have kids, which is literally the dumbest way possible as a matter of public policy to talk about this. The way you talk about it is we want to compensate people who are doing the incredibly hard work of providing the next generation of taxpayers, citizens, yada, yada, yada, right? There are extra burdens that are on parents that society should help out with.

And that's the way people like Ramesh Prenu have been arguing about the child that. credit for years. But economically, and so economically, and Megan can check my math on this, there's nothing mathematically different between saying we're going to subsidize, we're going to reward people who have kids, and we're going to punish people who don't have kids in terms of the tax code. But you don't sell it as punishing people, particularly if your problems with childless cat ladies, don't tax the ladies. Tax the cats. Yes. Right? I mean, like, make it, like, if you, you know, it's not your fault. I think we can all get on board with that proposal, even if it doesn't do anything for child.

Cat disincentives. Yes, exactly. And that was the one thing that he said in his, you know, his cleanup interview was where he thought he was being really cute, where he says to Megan Kelly, I don't have anything against cats. Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I've got nothing against cats. I've got nothing against dogs. I've got one dog at home. And I love him, Megan. But look, this is not, people are. focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. And the substance of what I said, Megan, I'm sorry, it's true. So we like doubled down on the wrong policy response. You just like, you know, I was wrong. I should have been clear. I feel nothing but empathy for these women who haven't had kids and whatever reasons they're their own, blah, blah, blah, blah. But man, we got to do something about these cats. And he just chose to ignore the the obvious right answer. The reason that it was good for Barack Obama or the reason it was good

for Donald Trump in theory to go speak to the black journalists was not that it would potentially win him black votes. It was that it would make white people feel better about voting for him. Going and showing up is good. Even if you don't get the votes, even if you don't get the votes, showing that you care and you care about these things and these things matter to you. That's why it's smart politics. For Republicans to campaign in inner cities where they're only going to get 7% of the vote, you do it to say that you care and that you're running for everybody. It is true, as Megan pointed out, Donald Trump is going to get creamed with single women. He's going to lose by 35 points. He's going to get wiped out with single women. And if he is

lucky and wins the presidency, he will do so because he'll win married women by three points, four points. He'll get his nose over the finish line with married women. The point about why you don't attack childless cat ladies is that, as you all have alluded to, it hurts the feelings of dog-owning parents. It hurts the feelings of other people. It makes other people who need an excuse, a rationale to vote for you feel icky about voting for you. And that's what they don't understand. That's the part that they don't get, which is these blocks of voters are not as solid as they tend to think that they are. We do a slap-chop demographic analysis of the electorate and say, all these people are like this, all those people are like that. Republicans have very much

enjoyed talking about the softening up of black and Hispanic voters, particularly men under 50. They really like talking about that. And they say, oh, if we could just take three points, two or three points could make all the difference. Well, no, duh. And if you move women three points who make up 53, 54 percent of the electorate, if you move them three points, you'll get slaughtered. And they just, it's, it's, they want to see what they want to see and they don't want to see the parts. And this is typical of every campaign. The confirmation bias, is a hell of a drop. Okay.

Oh, sorry, real quick. Megan, did you want to finish your thought or is that thought long? Look, I think that this is a sign of negative partisanship, right? Is that the, both sides really tend to confuse things they like hearing about their opponents with things that voters like hearing about their opponents, messages they like hearing from their candidates,

with messages that broad voters like hearing from your candidates. And so the bases are highly, negatively polarized. And so what they like to hear is nasty attacks on the other side. And I think you've seen this with J.D. Vance. Some of the attacks on him are crazy and over the top, even though I agree that the child's cat lady, you know, meme was a disastrous decision by him. Some of the other stuff, like there was a thing that went viral on Twitter was about maybe about how he'd written in his memoir about having sex with a couch. And I read the memoir. And I read the memoir and was like, I don't remember that scene.

I feel like I would definitely remember it. And the fact is, this got so popular that, like, the AP actually fact-checked it, even though it was obviously ridiculous. Like, if he had written that in his memoir, he would not have been selected as vice president. And people like to hear really terrible things about their opponents.

They like to hear not just that their opponents are, like, people they disagree with. They like to hear that their opponents are creeps and fascists and communists and, like, pedophiles. and out and secretly plotting to destroy America. And the problem is that if you give in to that desire, the more you, and I think about this with the weird discourse,

I think it's working right now, but I think when it breaks free of Twitter containment, there's a real risk that progressives will start pointing to very normal stuff and being like, that's super weird. And then the actual success of this meme will be to paint them as freaks who don't understand what normal people are like.

And this is true of Donald Trump calling out Kamala Harris for code switching, which is something that every single person does, right? When I am with my fellow booth alums, I talk a lot about our business school and how I went there. When I am not, I do not. When I'm with Irish Americans, I talk about being Irish American. When I'm with tall people, I talk about being tall. And most people aren't interested in those subjects.

So I don't talk about it that much, right? And if I were running for office, I would totally go to booth and give a speech filled with accounting jokes about how, like, you should vote for me because I'm an MBA, and I would go to basketball meets and be like, you should vote for me because I'm tall, like you. I would do all of those things. That's what politicians do, and normal people understand that. And so I think that on both sides, it would, we're in the general now. Both sides are kind of acting like we're in a primary. The object is not to whip up your base. The object is not to say things about your opponents that your base likes to hear. The object is to look like someone that normal voters would like to see

in the news for the next four years. And right now, Harris is doing a better job of that. But I think it is fragile and it could slip. All right. Let's talk about some breaking news that's come out on Russia. And Chris, I'll just start with you. It is now clear that we are doing a prisoner exchange with Russia that we are getting, you know, several of our people back in exchange for theirs. That's how prisoner swaps work. But look, just domestic politics wise, our prisoner swaps popular in America. As we've seen in the past, Americans seem to have a pretty good sense

that they take our innocent guys, so we give them back their very, very guilty, dangerous guys. Isn't always the best plan? Bo Bergdahl, et cetera. What was the name of the guy that the Russians got in exchange for Brittany Griner?

Don't know his name. No, he was a bad guy. He was a bad dude. 40% of Americans, 30% of Americans maybe know who Brittany Ink Reiner is. Nobody knows who that guy was. Evan Gershkevich has become a massive celebrity in the United States because the news media has a guilty-minded, rightly so, guilty-minded news media that sits on our tufted thrones in various beach communities. we who operate from with freedom and safety

and then we are reminded occasionally that this can be deadly dangerous work and so the national press has made Evan Gerskovich rightly a celebrity and it was a odium that Joe Biden had not been able to get him home. It was an odium in the eyes of many that he had, that Evan Gershkevitt, and we would get news, sentenced again, another hearing,

secret hearing, he's going in. I don't know who's in the deal. I don't know who's in the trade. But I would say it would have to be pretty bad, would have to be pretty, pretty bad in order for it to outweigh the net positive for the administration that they had finally, finally been able to get this person home. Megan, is this a win for the Biden administration or a loss for Trump in that Putin thought it made more sense to do this now than to wait and see what happened in November? Ooh, that is a good question. I think the fact that it is happening now suggests that it is less of a win for the Biden administration than we might think because. Biden waited until after he had stepped down, which suggests that he was, there was some calculation there about what this might do to re-election, not wanting to answer that question. I don't know, obviously, right?

There's a lot of things that go into this timing, but the timing is somewhat suspicious that you do this as a lame duck, and you don't do things as a lame duck that you think would be politically costly. For example, pardons, just to name one thing that might happen in the next few months. and so I think I think it's probably good that it happened now I think it raises questions for me about look I now know a lot of people

who won't go to China because they don't want to be the American who gets snatched in order to enable China to free their guilty people Yep Russia is the same calculation I hear that from people like CEO level you know C-suite level people frequently now that they're just going to forego the trip

I heard it from someone who I went to business school with who had worked in China before we were in business school together. And I saw him at a reunion. And I asked him if he was still working in China. And he said, no, the last time I went there, I was carrying my laptop and my pajamas and my toothbrush everywhere I went because I was so worried that I would get arrested. And by the way, he's not like doing espionage. He's like doing financial deals in China. And I decided it just wasn't worth the stress. And so I have pivoted and come home. And I've heard that some version of that story over and over and over and over again. And every time I go to a conference with the sort of people who might go to China,

there's like, no, I don't go anymore. Same with Russia. And, you know, I won't go anywhere near Eastern Europe. Like, I won't go, like, Belarusia, anywhere where I might reasonably get snatched so that the Russians can do a prisoner exchange. And I think that's a really hard question for the media, right? We don't want to not have Russia reporters. But we are effectively at this point volunteering to be some of the few people

who will go into these places and make ourselves a, available as kidnapping victims to be exchanged for spies. And I don't know what to do about that. But I think these are, you know, questions about do we do these exchanges which incentivize those sorts of snatches? They're hard policy questions and they're hard policy questions now for the media. Yeah, I agree with all that. We're recording is like apparently this is all unfolding.

I mean, we've heard yesterday that this was in the works. And I think that this is one of these things where, you know, I'd say we can all agree that somewhere between 85 and 95% of the claims that the mainstream media is just one big conspiracy are wrong. But this is one area where the big mainstream media does conspire, and rightly so, is that whenever a journalist is taken prisoner like this, the publishers of the Washington Post and if the New York Times, and the CEOs of CNN and Fox. I mean, Rupert's is involved in this conspiracy. They all get on the phone together, and they talk about, here's how we're going to fight to get our guy home.

It's a good and noble and honorable thing. But I think just to give us some light, some visibility on this, that was going on yesterday. We had heard that this was in the works and I was told no one's reporting it deliberately because they don't want to mess it up. And I don't think there's a thing that's wrong with that.

Fun aside on that, Jonah, this is a back and forth that I've had my whole in my previous political communications career, you know, you get the source that SEAL Team 6 is about to take out bin Laden. What do you do as the reporter? What do you do as the press secretary? What are your responsibilities and your priorities?

Is it to be a journalist first, to be an American first, to be a citizen of the free world, et cetera? And the answer is that for most journalists, not all, They're Americans first. They wouldn't report that SEAL Team 6 was going to go kill bin Laden for fear of hurting Americans in SEAL Team 6, for fear of not getting bin Laden.

And this is one of those moments as well. And I experienced that at the Department of Justice as well, that reporters really don't want to put people's lives in danger just to get the scoop, just to be the first one out there. They want to think about the good as well. 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.

With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience 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 dispatched. Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September,

leased a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Okay, so moving from there to thinking about killing people, Israel's had a little run of things that would seem like they're out of a movie. Jonah, is this going to now escalate as Israel, I think, proves what they are capable of, that if you're a bad guy sitting there smoking a cigarette on the toilet, thinking about, you know, writing in your diary at any moment they can take you out. And the details that we're getting from one of these is incredible. They'd had the bomb in the house for two months.

They were just waiting, waiting to make sure he was there. And you have to wonder if you're any of the other bad guys out there, there could be a bomb in your house that they're just waiting to detonate once they feel like it. Once they think it's, you know, the right time in their interest. They know you're there, et cetera. What's the retaliation going to look like? Yeah, well, first of all, one can only hope there are bombs in many people's houses that Israel can pull the trigger on. Yeah, I mean, you, you know, when you're talking about the hypothetical of someone wondering whether they can be killed at any time, one of the ways that gets you killed is when you launch a gang of barbarian rapists and murderers and kill over a thousand Israelis and wound like

5,000 more and take a bunch hostage. That's one of the things that arouses the ire of the Israelis and makes the guy whose job it is to detonate the bomb by remote feel like he's going to have a productive day. But this is nine months later. They didn't do it the week after. I understand. I mean, like, you know, the phrase last straw has resonance for a meaning and for a reason. Look, I think part of the problem is Israel was capable of doing a conventional, essentially a

conventional urban war, which is no mean feat. I mean, which is no simple thing in Gaza, right? I mean, the way Israel did that, contrary to everything you're thinking about genocide, is being studied by every Western military in the world for how to actually conduct urban warfare. And doesn't mean there weren't tragically more civilians killed than we would like. I blame Hamas for that, not Israel. We don't need to get into all that thing again. But the point is, is that they could do that with Hamas. You can't really do it with Hezbollah because Hezbollah is much better armed, it's much bigger, and it is much more networked into essentially Iran's defense posture. It is, it's basically a branch of the Iranian military.

And doing what Israel did with Hamas in Lebanon, which is an independent country, even though it has this giant tumor called Hezbollah, which controls a big chunk of it. It's just a very, very different thing. And so taking out leaders and showing that you can take out leaders, including on Iranian soil, is basically the only way for Israel to establish deterrence. I'm not sure that they have. I think this helps. But saying, okay, well, if you launch rockets at Tel Aviv, we'll launch rockets at Beirut,

that's not going to do it. And it's very risky to launch, if you start to say, okay, well, then we'll start launching rockets at Tehran. then you're talking about a true regional war with Iran, which is something Israel does not want. Fortunately, I don't think it's something Iran wants either. And so how do you find deterrence as you look for this gray area, which says,

okay, you blow up a bunch of kids in Israel. We'll kill your leaders. We'll kill the people who made these decisions. And we'll embarrass Iran by doing it on their turf at one of the events where they're handling security. That's not good for anybody on your side. And whether that will work or not, I have no idea. I hope it does because an actual war with Hezbollah

would turn into a war with Iran very quickly or could very quickly. And even if it was just straight up with Hezbollah, Israel would take massively more casualties than it has in the war with Hamas. Philosophically, it's always been somewhat interesting that assassination is viewed as an unfair tactic, even though killing one person seems obviously morally better than launching a huge war that kills, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who are only marginally involved instead of killing the one person who made the decision. But that has been a longstanding,

you know, it's sort of a collusion between elites there and I think a bad one. I think in this case, right, it sends the message you're not safe anywhere. Iran can't protect you. And so if you do this, if you keep going, we will get you. And I think that that has a much better, chance of establishing deterrence than retaliating against Hezbollah in a broader way that will, first of all, kill a lot more innocent people that will create a media problem for Israel, and Israel already has a media problem with the number of innocent civilians who have been killed in Gaza. Again, I'm leaving aside the argument about whether this was justified, you know, whether they've taken enough care. I'm just saying it is a media problem. It will kill more

innocent people, which is bad in and of itself. And it risks a war that will be vastly more costly for both Israel and for Lebanon than targeted assassinations. So, I mean, what we can hope is that this has made Hezbollah leaders think twice about launching another attack on this scale and think, well, you know, it was one thing to assume that they were going to create a huge number of civilian casualties. This would make my cause look better. And it's another thing to think that literally know where I can go, will I be safe? And eventually I'm going to get blown up by a missile and Israeli missile in like the very near future. That's a very different and hopefully a less appealing calculation. Let's do a little not worth our time. Is Vice President Harris's VP pick

worth our time? Does it matter whether she picks Shapiro or Kelly or waltz? Jonah? First of all, this is the life we have chosen, Sarah. So, of course, it's worth our time. You know, I mean, there's a guy who cleans the bathrooms at Chuck E. Cheese. It's worth his time because it's his job. And we have a similar flight here. This is Jonah trying to get out of the question, by the way.

No, no, no, no. I'll answer the question. Look, I actually think it matters a lot for some of the reasons that Chris had been alluding to earlier insofar as it does provide, particularly for Harris, who desperately needs to redefine herself, an opportunity to redefine herself. It provides an opportunity to sort of stick it to the base of the party, which Trump wants to put her in. And look, I know normally the social science is very mixed, is not super persuasive that they matter that much. But, like, every professional I talk to says that governors in their own states, if they're on the ticket, can be good for a point or two. And so if Shapiro could deliver a point or two, that may be the margin of winning Pennsylvania. I don't know if Shapiro can guarantee winning Pennsylvania, but it seems obvious to me if he can, then he's the obvious pick, pure and simple.

But I will say, and I talked about this with John Pod yesterday on my pod. You a podcast? It's sort of like, remember when Prince changed his name to a symbol? Uh-huh. This is the symbol. And for the children listening in their parents' car, Jonah raised his hand with one of his fingers. Extended, yeah.

I think it is really fascinating, not to get too deep in the weeds on media bias, that so much of the conversation about whether the Democrats can have a Jew on the ticket is, considered like just part of the normal run-of-the-mill punditry. Like, does he need a westerner? Does he need, you know, a governor or a senator? Can he have a stinking Hebrew?

It's like, these are all just like things that people talk about as if they're a normal consideration. If you had a remotely similar situation with the Republican Party where there was a legitimate debate about whether or not appointing a Jew would hurt with the base of the Republican Party, you would have a thousand opeds about how this exposes the dark underbelly

of bigotry in the Republican Party this confirms all of our priors about how they're all Erzats, fascists and yet when it's about the Democratic Party it's like, huh, I don't know, I mean, what does Rashida Taleb say if he picks a Jew? And I just find the sort of the dog

not barking on this point really kind of fascinating and I do think it's worth our time. That said, what else are we going to talk about? Jonah, let me just follow up. If she doesn't pick Shapiro, so let me back up. To me, the three issues that you're looking for in a VP, if you're smart and not Donald Trump and his field of folks,

popularity, she needs to moderate the ticket and swing statiness. And Shapiro wins on all of those. He has the highest favorability in his state. over 60% um he's clearly a moderate he would he would send that message that chris was talking about on like the the vibes of like hey look see i like people who are moderates and there is no path to the white house that doesn't run through pennsylvania so whether he absolutely can win pennsylvania or not it almost doesn't matter to even give you the better shot at winning

pennsylvania is worth a whole lot and so then the question comes so why would you ever not pick Shapiro? And the answer seems obvious because you believe that your voters are too anti-Semitic to tolerate a Jewish guy on the ticket. And we've seen that, right? So Kelly shows up for the Netanyahu speech. No one's protesting him as a pick. Shapiro's actually criticized Netanyahu, but they're protesting him. What's the difference? It's clearly not their positions on Israel. One of them's a Jew. So if she doesn't pick Shapiro, is it anti-Semitism? And does that itself mean she kind of has to pick Shapiro? No, I mean, like, I don't want to go that far. I mean, you can actually make an affirmative case for Waltz, I think. He's, you know, he's the one who launched a thousand memes with the

weirdness thing. He's, um, he's really good at talking Midwestern and talking like a high school principal and a football coach. He won a Republican district, the only one to win that district in a long time. And even though it's tragic, even though he's only like six months older than Kamala Harris, he looks like he's from the World War II generation or something. It's sort of like me and David French. David's only like five months older than me,

but he looks like, you know. My son has never called you, great grandpa. Are you my great grandfather, Nate said. But I do think, I think that's fantastic, and I will be calling him great grandfather from now. and forth, but I do think it's worth raising the question, okay, so why, you know, why didn't you pick Shapiro, right? I mean, like, I think that's a perfectly legitimate question in an interview. It could be one she completely screws up. One of the arguments you hear is that Shapiro is really slick.

He's kind of got a little bit of a Buttigieg kind of like too clever for his own good kind of vibe. And that is not the kind of vibe necessarily that Harris wants. I mean, I think he should, She should pick Shapiro, but I think you can come up with other, you could talk yourself out of it for reasons other than, you know, rank anti-Semitism. Can I just say, guys, Mark Kelly has been to space, okay? Yeah. I think Markelly has a lot going for him.

But again, on those three categories, I mean, he is popular. Arizona is an important state. He is more moderate than she is. But he's just, like, Shapiro beats him on all those categories. No, I actually think she should pick Shapiro. but if I were Kamala Harris and I picked Mark Kelly, I would be like, he has been to space, okay? No one else had been to space.

It was an obvious choice. Space is the future of humanity. Obviously, this is a reason I'm not running for president. No, I think Shapiro is the obvious choice. And I think Waltz, I think it's a problem that Waltz looks so old, actually. Because why did we just have to make Biden step down? Right? I mean, I think that nominating an old white guy worked for Obama in 2008 and is not a good choice for this round.

The other thing about Kelly, which no one really appreciates but me, is that he's such a gift to conspiracy theorists because he's got an identical twin brother. So, like, he could, like, campaign in two states and just, like, dare people to, like, what's going on? Which one's the real one? I think it's awesome. So when I was in eighth grade, we had a talent show, and one of our teachers did this thing, too, I would walk 500 miles. And all he did was walk across the stage and then, like, all in one direction, right? So he'd walk from left to right across the stage. The song continues.

And a few minutes later, he'd walk from left to right across the stage. We're all laughing because for some reason we find this really funny. Obviously, it's, you know, theater of the absurd. And then he starts going faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. and The Grand Reveal, none of us knew he had an identical twin, and they both do it on stage at the same time overlap on walking. Our minds are blown. That's awesome.

Wow. I mean, it was the best reveal I've ever seen of having an identical twin. You have the best school stories, Sarah. I now feel that my childhood was dramatically impoverished. Megan, I haven't even told you about Mime Troop. I was in a highly prestigious junior high Mime Troop. to audition with your miming audition that you did yourself. I mean, this was like, I did it to Adagio for Strings, obviously.

And, yeah, it's called, and Mrs. Rimer was the teacher, and we were Rhymer's Mimers. Mind-blown. And it provided me so much background to be the podcast host I am today to silently gesture. Listeners can't see it, but in fact, she has been miming being inside of a box this entire time. And Jonah and I have become increasingly concerned. Fittingly, given we're talking about mimes, I'm speechless. Oh, all right. With that, our podcast family, thank you for joining us and we'll talk to you next week.

You know,