The Dispatch Podcast - The World as It Is

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

This week (so far) we have seen a mass shooting, a crisis at the border, a major walkback from President Trump’s favorite lawyer, Sidney Powell, and more. On today’s Dispatch Podcast, Steve, Sarah, Jonah, and David talk about all of it and then some. Gun violence has been front and center in the news, and rather than yelling about it, the gang has a well-informed, meaningful discussion about how best to solve this problem in the U.S. Plus, after discussing the border and China, all four talk about just how ridiculous the motion by Sidney Powell to dismiss the case against her is and what it means for center-right media. As Jonah puts it, “If you gave her a platform on your network, on your radio show, either in person or by proxy or simply reading their stuff and then you don’t tell your audience that this woman … has treated you all like suckers … then you’re part of the problem.” Show Notes: -Study on effectiveness of state gun regulations -American Psychological Association study on gun laws -Washington Post Fact Check on 1994 assault weapons ban -Reuters article on how and why kids are “smuggled” into the U.S. -Is there a “surge” at the border? Washington Post looks at the data -Jonah’s column on the China bilateral meeting -Last week’s Dispatch Podcast with Danielle Pletka -The Morning Dispatch: ‘The Kraken is Backtrackin’ -Court filing in Sidney Powell’s case -Major Biden is BACK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgher, joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Steve Hayes. We have so much to talk about. We're going to talk about gun laws in the United States. What is happening at the southern border? The last bilateral meeting with the Biden administration and China's representatives. And we'll end with the new reply by Sidney Powell in the defamation suit resulting from the Cracken lawsuits. Let's dive right in. David, another mass shooting this week, this time in Boulder, Colorado, 10 dead, including a police officer who leaves behind seven children. The conversation inevitably has turned to gun control. Yes, it's turned to gun. gun control and it's turned to other things as well. So let's, there's sort of three strands here.

And guns, identity, and riots. Okay, so let me unpack this real quickly. We seem to have, when it comes to mass shooting issue, the mass shooting issue in the U.S., we've got sort of three different strands that are unfolding at once. One is each one of them follow, each mass shooting is followed by a discussion about gun policy. Is there a way that we can enact gun policies that will stop mass shootings? That's something I've been skeptical of except for one policy that I have advocated for in the past, and that's well-crafted red flag laws. In other words, why, where somebody who exhibits dangerous behavior can have the guns temporarily remove from them with due process. Now, this is not a cure-all. Colorado has a red flag law, and it wasn't activated in this circumstance.

But there's often a big argument about gun control laws that aren't directly tied to the actual facts of the shooting. Then we have number two strand, which is we've now also developed this incredibly toxic political discourse around each and every mass shooting, where we race to find out what was the identity and belief system of the mass shooter, which is something that's important to know, that's very important to know, but then we immediately weaponize it against our political opponents. And then the last characteristic, the last thing I want to talk about is that we now seem to have a problem where if you are a very disgruntled or troubled young man, regardless of your ideology and regardless of the reason, there seems to be the

way in which a very troubled and very disgruntled young man is going to manifest that rage is now fixing around the mass shooting. And why did I use the term riot? Because there was a Malcolm Gladwell piece in the New Yorker several years ago who described the mass shooting phenomenon in the United States is something like a slow motion riot that each shooting lowers the sort of the threshold by which the next person will pick up a rifle or pick up a handgun and start shooting.

And so there's a lot to unpack there. So let me just start with Jonah. Which of those strands is most sort of salient to you and why? I guess the one that will put it this way. I mean, you and I have been doing this. this gun, talking about the responses to these kinds of horrific mass violence for a long time. And I think you're, I think by any objective metric, you are more affirmatively pro-gun in the

sense that you have many. You like them. You, like the abominable snowman. You have one where you rub it and pet it and name it, George, and all of that kind of stuff. I am more, I like guns. I mean, I enjoy shooting guns. I've done it and all that kind of stuff. but I am not a hunter. I don't have guns. And I would be much more open as like an urban cosmopolite to reasonable gun regulations and stuff if I found the arguments persuasive.

And it's very much like I would very much be much more on board with being opposed to the death penalty if I found the arguments from the anti-death penalty people persuasive and in good faith. And often they're not one or the other. And so I get very bored, not bored, I get very exhausted with the arguments about the Second Amendment stuff. The thing that I find most salient and most depressing right now is the way, I didn't think it was going to be possible to turn up the gain on identity,

politics, interpretations of mass shooting. And yet it has gone to 11 amazingly fast. And I just, I mean, like they broke the knob off, turning it up. And, um, this, This stuff out there about how all mass shooters are white, which is apparently not true, the stuff out there about how you know that if a mass shooter survived being apprehended, he must have been white because they give white people a special pass for mass shooting or something like that. The reaction to the Georgia shooting, which to my mind was so clearly fueled by a sense of relief that the media could finally talk about Asian by. with a perpetrator that fit the narrative that they wanted. And then it turned out that he didn't actually fit the narrative that they wanted. And it had to go, it had to change into some other stuff, which is now transmogrified and evolved into,

you have actual U.S. senators saying, Democratic senators saying they're going to block all appointees until more Asians are nominated by the Biden administration. It just feels particularly grotesque to shove identity politics, stuff into this kind of thing when people haven't even buried their loved ones yet and it just shows you how so many people are stuck with a certain prism on how they view politics and how it has to fit you know their narratives their their quasi-religious worldview to the point where you can't actually have a sort of an enlightened based argument about the public policy or even the facts of

what happened. Sarah thoughts I'm interested in what solutions will actually be effective I think that unfortunately we have an incident we talk about it for a month then we stop talking about it because there are intractable issues on both sides and no one's willing to come to the table

I'm very interested in the data what do we actually know and look I think the data on whether the federal assault weapons ban was effective is really hard to parse. There are plenty of studies on it. But I don't think it's as hard to parse the state comparisons. And you have comparisons over time. A state doesn't have a law, then a state does have a law. And then you have state to state comparisons as well. You know, in looking at those, I think the data is relatively clear. I'm looking at two studies

right now. The first looked at permitting laws and large capacity ammunition magazine bans. Large capacity magazine bans resulted 60% lower odds of a mass public shooting occurring. This other study looked at child access prevention laws, right to carry laws, and stand your ground laws altogether. If a state has all three of those laws, they're looking at about an 11% reduction in all firearm-related deaths compared to a state that doesn't have those three laws. If we know that some laws are working, and I think in this case, the large capacity magazines

are the most egregious to me. And like Jonah, I enjoy going out to skeet-shoot or go to target practice. None of those things require high-capacity magazines. if we know that they can reduce the number of deaths in a mass public shooting and reduce the number of mass public shootings, I don't see that as a Second Amendment problem. And I am frustrated that I understand the slippery slope arguments, but each time we have elementary school children being mowed down. We have a police officer this week who is left behind seven

children who was the first one to respond and gave his life to try to save others. I don't understand why people aren't willing to at least come to the table in good faith. And I feel like the conversation that we've been having for the last, oh, I don't know, ever, David, has not been in good faith. I've got thoughts, but I want to hear Steve's before. Yeah, I'll go quick and then kick it back to you because I want to have you talk about something, something else related to this. I am in a sort of remarkably similar place to both Sarah and Jonah as it happens. I think part of the problem, as Sarah suggests, is when you look at the data, what does the data tell us? And if you look back at the data on the assault weapons ban, the federal assault weapons ban, it is mixed.

And you can find scholars who point to the same basic data coming to entirely different conclusions based on how they either read that data or characterize that data. And that's a problem. I mean, it's a problem, I think, for people who study this for a living to try to make a determination as to what's actually true. It's a bigger problem for people who are busy living their lives and going to work and raising families to try to figure out what the heck this means. But I do think a data-driven response is correct.

The other problem is, and Sarah, we should pop these studies that you're mentioning into the show notes. Already done. Perfect. So many of the studies that are done are undertaken on behalf of groups on one side or the other. And as often as not, they come to the conclusions that the groups who, are funding them or sponsoring them want to. I'm assuming that's not the case here. And certainly, Sarah, you would not introduce them with an agenda in mind. You'd be introducing them with the data. That too makes it hard to figure out exactly what the data tell us to do. Having said all

that, what strikes me in this debate is how few new ideas there are about how to address these problems. I mean, it is endlessly frustrating that we wake up to these kinds of headlines, that we see these things. And, you know, there's a flurry of activity, a debate, a promise that this won't happen anymore. And then nothing changes. And I think that's frustrating to people on both sides of the debate. One of the interesting new ideas, one of the very few interesting new ideas is something that David's written about a bunch and has a great piece on National Review from a couple years ago about gun violence restraining orders. And I would just like to ask you, David, if you just describe the idea in sort of a big picture way and tell

us whether there's any chance that this gets a more serious. Listen, it was it was kicked around a couple years ago when you wrote about this the first time and had some power folks at least indicating an interest but of course it hasn't gone anywhere so what is it and where does it stand yeah so the basic um the basic description of a gun violence restraining order is that if somebody exhibits dangerous behavior uh are you know everything from homas murderous intention to suicidal ideation any kind of behavior that indicates that they might be a risk to themselves or others, that a defined group of people, whether it is, say, a principal or a teacher or a member of the family, can go into court and can present this evidence and get an order from a court requiring

that individual to turn over their weapons for a defined period of time. The reason why this idea has gained traction, and a number of states have actually enacted them, is it's twofold. One is time and time again. Now, not always, not always. but time and time again, you have seen circumstances where individuals involved in mass shootings have been flying red flags, that they have said things, they have done things that cause people around them to be deeply troubled. But the way our law works, there's been kind of a loophole. If you don't commit a felony, you're going to be able to buy a gun. If your behavior isn't so troubling that you can be institutionalized, for example, for mental health reasons, you're going to be able

to buy a gun, but still somebody can be sitting there waving red flags. And so it's a temporary deprivation of a constitutional right with due process. Now, a lot of the red flag laws that have been passed have been, in my view, a little too light on due process, but with due process. So this is something that connects, for example, with things like domestic violence protection orders, where somebody can be deprived of a right so precious that they can be deprived of being in proximity to their spouse and their children. So this is not unknown in American law. This is not an unheard of intrusion upon constitutional rights. And it has two virtues, I think. One is it is targeted like the best gun control provisions are targeted against problematic behavior. So why do people

so broadly support background checks because background checks are targeted at individual behavior. They don't burden people who have a lawful track record. So this is targeted at actual problematic behavior, number one, and number two, it's targeted at exactly the kind of behavior that has been exhibited prior to previous mass shooting. So it's one of these, it's a gun control provision that's targeted at the problem in a very specific way. The trouble that we have with, for example, so-called large-capacity magazine bans is twofold. One, the general burden of the large-capacity magazine ban,

and to be clear, when we say large capacity, it's a little bit of, it's for a gun owner who has, so I have two, we have some automatic handguns with large capacity magazines, but they're the standard capacity. It's just what comes with the pistol. We have two AR-style rifles with large capacity magazines that's just the standard capacity. So they're not these big drum magazines that I can, for example, easily imagine a ban against

some of these extraordinary magazines. But these standard capacity magazines exist by the tens, if not hundreds of millions in the United States of America. They're just all over the place. They're incredibly easy to make. And I'm skeptical of gun control measures where the burden primarily falls on the people who aren't the problem, as opposed to falling primarily on the people who are the problem. And so that's one of my queries about magazine bans. I mean, so for example, in my household, the AR-style rifle is the front line of our self-defense in our home.

And so it's a very real thing to say, okay, well, wait a minute, a law-abiding person is going to suddenly have much less firepower than the foreseeable criminal threat than the foreseeable person who would try a home invasion or something like that because of the incredible prevalence of these large capacity, really standard capacity magazines. So that's my problem with the magazine ban. But David, let me just jump in there because I think that's a very, that's a theoretical argument. That's a you sitting home being concerned argument. But if we look at states that have that ban versus states that don't, we see the data that shows that it does make an effect. And I think it would have a larger and larger effect over time, which is also what a little

bit of that assault, the federal assault weapons ban showed that, yes, right, a way when it went into effect, it didn't have much of an effect because, as you said, there were already these guns out in the country. But over time, they become more scarce when they're not being sold. And it did have an effect. And so this idea that, well, all the criminals will have them and all the good guys won't, that's just not in the data for the large capacity magazines. Well, that's, so a lot of, a couple of things on that. One, on the federal assault weapons ban, in a lot of ways, when you're talking about what are quote unquote assault weapons, which we need to be really careful about it's it's a it's a very vague term what you're really talking about

is a semi-automatic rifle that has the ability to receive a certain type of magazine so it's not the rifle really that's the issue as you as you've properly lazered in on sarah it's the magazine you know everyone focuses on the ar-style rifle well an ar-style rifle with a very small magazine is no different from a deer rifle. I mean, it's a lower caliber, but as far as it's the ability, the number of rounds it can shoot and how quickly it can shoot them. But, you know, and in the same vein, a Glock with a high capacity magazine is incredibly deadly in a mass shooting, as we saw in Parkland. Right. Right. Yes, it is. And I would say a couple of things that are, you know, I'm going to, I would like to see these studies, because,

Because state-to-state comparisons are interesting, but not all states are the same. You know, you've got a lot of varying, a lot of variation from state to state and background gun crime rates, background suicide rates, for example. You've got a lot of variation. And one of the problems that you have with the mass shooting is the mass shootings, in spite of the fact that they are absolute, that they are absolute nation-shattering events, they're rare enough in any given state. where the next single mass shooting will completely alter the next single mass shooting will completely alter the composition and results of the study, like one mass shooting in a given

state or one mass shooting, two mass shootings in a given state. And so a lot of these things, I think, as I've seen them, have been contingent on a lot of factors that I don't think are explained by the magazine. And I also like to see their definition of mass shooting, because that is, by itself also quite controversial. What is, which definition are they using? Because if they use the wrong definition, what they're tracking are not mass shootings of the style of, um, the Atlanta or Boulder or the, you know, Sandy Hook or Las Vegas or Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and all these awful situations, what they end up tracking, um, is a lot of what you might call more common or gang violence type crimes. And so that, that has a whole,

different challenge regarding gun control tied to it. So I'll be very interested to take a close look. We need to move topics, but I hope on advisory opinions, we can also look at the legal case where Boulder had an assault weapons ban for the city. And that was overturned 10 days ago. Interesting legal analyses there as we have Second Amendment cases moving through the country. So maybe you and I can talk about that from the law standpoint later this week. 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.

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That's ethos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right. Next up, I want to talk about the border. So it's messy. And both sides have different arguments. On the one hand, there is an incredible.

uptick of people crossing the southern border right now. On the other hand, there are seasonal reasons why that's happening, and some are arguing that the increase over the 2019 numbers is, in fact, you know, a 20% or so bump from people who didn't come in 2020 due to the pandemic. But on the other hand, who's making up those numbers is very different than 2019? A huge number are unaccompanied minors, and there was this incredible Reuters piece that quoted some of the smugglers. I'm quoting a Guatemalan smuggler named Danielle right now. It's good to take advantage of the moment because children are able to pass quickly. That's what we're telling everyone.

They are taking children as young as two years old by themselves. In fact, some of the cartels associated, some of the smugglers associated with some of the Mexican cartels are in fact using chartered planes if you're willing to pay for your child to fly to the Mexican to the U.S. Mexican border. It is incredibly dangerous what is going on down there. The Biden administration, though, also has, they have a policy problem and they also have a messaging problem, neither one of which they've really gotten their hands around at this point. I think it is very easy to criticize what they're doing or not doing from a results standpoint because the results are really, really scary right now, especially when we're talking about

children, you know, some of these families are going to the border, realizing that their children will be able to get in and not them because the pandemic restrictions under the public health limitations have been lifted for unaccompanied children, but not for adults. And so what the adults are doing is they are staying behind. They're getting to the southern border with their children and then pushing the kid across the border with a smuggler or coyote. And we're finding more record number of dead bodies in the desert.

And it's really hard to read all of this. But my question to each of you is, what should the Biden administration actually be doing differently that could make a difference now or even a month from now? Not what they should have done. Not what they didn't do two months ago, but now. And Stephen, I'm going to start with you. Yeah, it's a good question.

I think it's a constructive way to approach this. I hope you'll indulge me for a second to just revisit what we said last week before I actually answered the question. You know, Sarah, you mentioned that they have both a policy problem and a messaging problem. And we discussed on this podcast last week that the messaging problem flows from the lack of policy planning. And I think that became, it was clear when we had the discussion last week, it became even more. clear over the weekend when Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of DHS, went on the Sunday shows to explain what the administration was doing and failed to explain what the administration was doing. Very, very clear lack of policy, lack of planning.

And I think that's become evident in the changing explanations that the Biden administration has had for what's taking place. You know, for a while there was this view that they inherited this challenge and this was something that they couldn't really do anything out. then they pointed to the Trump administration's problems. Then our argument was, well, there's not really a crisis. Their argument was, well, this is seasonal. You've had these sort of rotating explanations.

I think all of them with a kernel of truth, but it feels like blame shifting to explain or to get out of having to explain why they don't have policy, and that is where the messaging problem comes from. Look, I think if you look at what the administration, is doing on a number of different fronts, they have, they have undone several aspects of the Trump administration policy. Now, we may agree with what the Trump administration policy was,

or we may disagree with what the Trump administration policy was. But there's no question that the different standards in enforcement is contributing to this flow and contributing to the perception that these migrants have that they will be more welcome. You've had Biden administration officials do something I think that is good but hasn't proven very effective yet, in that they are now saying, articulating in clear, plain, unqualified language, do not come. This is not an open border. The problem, I think, is that that's not the reality. You know, you had these coronavirus restrictions that were put in place under the Trump administration. You have the Biden administration warning everywhere all the time, we can't let up on our fight against the coronavirus,

except as it relates to the border, where they have not been enforcing these restrictions as much as the Trump administration had. There was a story in Axios looking at the week between March 14th and 21st, showing an average of just 13% of nearly 13,000 family members attempting across the U.S.-Mexico border were returned to Mexico during that week. That is not the kind of enforcement measures that you would expect from an administration that says it's taking the coronavirus seriously. So I would say at the very least that's someplace to start. David? Boy, that's a hard, hard question.

That's a hard question because there's a lot of this that is driven by the Biden, Some of this is driven by the Biden administration. Some of this is driven by conditions in home countries, including, you know, pandemic wrecked economies, including natural disasters. Some of this is driven by the season. So there's not any one given, there's not any, you know, any one given solution to this. I think a couple of things to go along with what Steve said. I mean, there has to be a, I think a change in some of the messaging that has to be relentless.

that this is not an open border, that they, the Biden administration is engaging in a great mini summary, you know, a great, a great mini summary proceedings to remove illegal immigrants. So broadcasting that message, you know, I think the remain in Mexico policy was a good policy. I thought that was a solid policy. And I, but the problem is it's really hard for me to imagine Biden reversing to being going back to the Remain of Mexico policy because that would cause much of the activist base of the party

to explode. But we also have to do a real, and I'm going into pipe dream territory now, Sarah, going into pipe dream territory. You've asked what the Biden administration can do. I'm going into the territory of what should the U.S. government do, which would include immigration reform,

which includes a compromise that would be, permitting and making the dreamers giving them a path to citizenship in exchange for increased border enforcement and border control. I think that that is a long-term hope that a lot of people have had that even saying it out loud already defines me as like this is some sort of dorm room bull session, utopian discussion. But I think we're just constantly kicking the can down the road until we actually get the entire U.S. government, Congress and the president, to focus in on this problem.

Jonah, to me it seems like whatever the president says is irrelevant. This is market forces at work. The smugglers and coyotes are either successful or they're not, and that word gets back to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. And that's why the smugglers have a different message now because they are more successful at getting unaccompanied minors across. And so whether the Biden administration goes on TV and says, don't come, the border's not open, irrelevant.

The market will decide whether the border's open. And the market is also deciding how expensive it is and how profitable it is for these cartels to go into the human smuggling business. Well, as David French is your feminist ally, I am glad to welcome you as a free market ally and that markets matter. And I agree with you entirely.

This is a market for children. Yes. And we all saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and that's very disturbing. No, I don't mean to make a lot of this. It is a terrible thing. But one caveat to that before I actually answer your question dispositively. I do think Biden's messaging mattered during the campaign. When he signaled that we're going to put an end to the Trump administration's policies and we're not going to do this to the kids and everyone's going to get a hearing and all of these. these things, whether or not he was going to live up to those promises or not, that was great salesmanship for the cartels. The cartels got to say, hey, look, who's coming in? This is what he said. Give me your money. We'll take you up there. And then it became this catalytic effect where if they were successful, it didn't matter if Biden started saying something different. That said, I'm a little reluctant to agree entirely with David about the need for the comprehensive immigration reform

because comprehensive immigration reform has proven to be in the last 15 years the thing people say to get out of actually doing anything about immigration. And I'm not saying, I'm not attributing that to David, I'm attributing that to about 98 senators. And so I think the way you actually get

something like comprehensive immigration reform is to think about how to use markets better. The current wave of immigrant come from Central America. They don't come from Mexico. But Mexico has a particularly salient role here in that they are the buffer between us and Central America. And the president of Mexico, short Amlo, last name, Oberdor, can never get the four names altogether in sequence, right? So I'm not going to try. He wants a return of the Brissero program. Now, the Brissero program was a very successful program that had some serious abuses in the 1950s.

It was a guest worker program from Mexicans. But one of the things that it did was gave, it worked at a deal with Mexico where they helped police the penetration of our border. And if Mexico were better at policing its southern border, we wouldn't have to do all sorts of things at our southern border. And I have no problem with guest worker programs in theory. You know, again, they can be abused. But this idea that everybody who wants to come to America to work wants to therefore be a citizen is something of a myth propagated by the Democratic Party, which has been bought into this now falling apart demographic, demography is destiny theory about as long as we import more immigrants, they will eventually become Democratic voters. And so we must turn them all into Democratic voters as quickly as possible. And we must treat immigration as another one of these identity politics issues,

even when most people of recent immigration status from South America and from Latin American countries, don't consider immigration to be their top priority in the first place. And so one of the things I would do is work out a deal with Mexico where they help us enforce our own board. Beyond that, I would get beyond this idea that compassion and humane policy requires never saying no to whoever shows up at our border, because that is, in fact, encouraging this process that is dangerous and all the rest. And I heard someone on NPR the other day, I think from the Migration Policy Institute or one of those immigration think tanks, say he had a good line where he said, look, the border is to immigration policy. what the Middle East is to foreign policy. Everyone comes into office with these grand ideas about how they want to do X or Y on this policy front,

and then on foreign policy, the Middle East screws them because it's complicated and it always demands attention. The same thing with the border. We can talk about the dreamers and skills-based this and point systems that. The border keeps kicking us in the ass. And I think that at the end of the day, the compassionate thing to do is,

I don't necessarily think a wall, never mind one that Mexico pays for it, is the great answer, but it's part of the solution is to make it clear that our border is ours and we get to decide who crosses it and why and when. And that's not cruel. That is what countries do. That is one of the things that defines a place as a country. And it's, it's, it doesn't, it seems to me that Biden could help himself enormously politically by doing some kind of sister, sister, kind of thing on this that pisses off his base that shows that he actually takes this fundamental thing that we're a country seriously. And it would also be the right policy approach. So there's another quote at the bottom of that. Reuters piece as they're talking to

smugglers who specialize in children and smugglers who don't. And one of the, even Vasquez, who specializes in children, says, quote, if an adult causes problems, you can ditch them easily, but you can't abandon a child for having a temper tantrum, which is just a chilling statement overall. I wonder, David, on your point about DACA and Dreamers, whether what is happening right now at the border hurts the case for granting a legal status when the messaging around DACA and Dreamers was they were brought here by their parents as children through no fault of their own. That is the bumper sticker. But what happens when, in fact, they're sort of intentionally smuggling children because they're minors without their parents? And, you know, the story,

the Reuter's story that I'm referring to here that'll be in the show notes starts with a 17-year-old who is pushed across the border with family staying on the other side. I think that this may change people's opinions of who the dreamers are. And how faultless the kids are, even though I just want to make clear they're minors. Of course, they're faultless in this. They don't, you know, a two-year-old doesn't choose whether they're put on a cartel bus to the border. But it changes the view of who they are. I really like Jonah's comparison of the border to the Middle East.

Thankfully, the border is much less violent. Thankfully, it's much less violent than the Middle East has been traditionally. the Middle East is a place where idealism goes to die. The border is often a place where idealism goes to die. And I think you raise a really good point. And the really good point is that not just in the sense of adjusting the equities in the sense of, oh, wait, our family's now exploiting this possibility of reform. But also, you raise a different side of this coin is, wait a minute, if we are

broadcasting sort of open arms to dreamers, are we enabling, are we creating perverse incentives that are then causing problems with the border also? And so there is a real imperative if you are somebody who supports DACA, if you are somebody who wants a permanent agreement regarding dreamers, that you have an incentive to get this thing under control as well. And I think that Jonah is exactly right, that there is an opportunity here. And it's an opportunity. that campaign Joe Biden, especially in the Democratic primaries, might have been more apt to seize, and that is kind of acting, it's not so much, so where's Clinton and sister soldier directly turned around and verbally, rhetorically defied sort of a fringe of his own

base, Biden, the Biden version was sort of acting as if those people didn't exist, and just sort of, you know, he was the candidate who kind of campaigned as if, like, woke Twitter never was invented. And governing as if that doesn't exist. That's what I would imagine a Biden sister soldier moment would be. But his administration has not been governing like that in many ways. His administration has been governing as if the interests of the activist base are on occasion paramount. And he's got to shed that. And this is no time for sort of like, no time for idealism. There is a real problem on the border. And it's a problem that is growing to be severe enough that it could threaten consensus in some of the areas where there has been consensus. So I think, Sarah, that's a great

point. Well, and look, if you look at the argument Jonah's making, there is some recent polling to suggest that that's right. I mean, there's some changing views on these questions as it relates to the borders and dreamers and path to citizenship or what have you that, that showed diminished support for some of the policies that the left fringe of the Democratic Party support. The problem, I think, in part is the perception among Biden advisors in particular, who I think are by and large pretty progressive is that they need to play the politics of the base here. I mean, we talked about this last week too.

Part of the reason we haven't seen any serious accomplishments in immigration reform over the past decade plus is that the perceptions on both sides, on the right and on the left, are that the base wants what the base wants and that it would be crazy to defy the base. everybody plays to the base and thinks it's a political, when they'd rather have the political issue than they would actually have these reforms. That may be changing. We're seeing some suggestions

in some of the polling lately that it might be changing, but I don't think those perceptions among Biden advisors are that it's changing. And at some point, we've got to hold Joe Biden accountable for what his advisors are doing. Now, I've had conversations with Republicans who say that, you know, who spent time with Biden, who kind of took him at his word on the unity bipartisanship promises during the campaign. And after the election, we didn't obviously see it in the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package. Mitch McConnell was on Fox News Wednesday morning saying that since Biden has been sworn in, McConnell has not yet spoken with Biden, which is truly extraordinary. Two months in, the guy who campaigned on bipartisan, she hasn't called

the Republican leader of the Senate. And I think you have a scenario where Biden's advisors are driving this left-wing policy agenda. Biden may or may not be sympathetic to it, but they're doing it anyway. So I'm skeptical that Biden is going to have this sister-soldier moment because he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't show a willingness to defy the views and the wishes

of his advisors and his advisors at this point there's no indication that they've been giving him that advice 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, Lisa 2026 X-E-90 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. All right, Jonah, speaking of idealism, let's move to China. This is a perfect setup.

And as we were saying before the show started, the only request I had was that I go after the immigration discussion. because I knew that it would set me up for my point about the China thing. As you guys discussed on last week's, you previewed on last week's Wednesday dispatch, and then you talked to my AI colleague and dispatch contributor Danny Pletka on the Friday dispatch podcast. We had a pretty disastrous summit with the Chinese in Alaska last week, and in much the same way that I think the border crisis,

is an intrusion of reality on to preconceive the best-laid plans, right? The Biden administration came into office with a idea of how the world should work with regard to immigration, and then the world got a vote and gave them a different set of problems. And I think we see the same thing going on with China. And remarkably, my contention is we see a very similar dynamic in the problems that the Biden administration faces with regard to China. insofar as the things Biden should say are things that the base of his party don't want him to say.

And in this case, by proxy Anthony Blinken. So just to set it up, at this summit, the two sides are supposed to have a photo op. They're both supposed to speak for basically two minutes. Anthony Blankin, the Secretary of State, raised some of the issues of concern that they wanted to talk about during the summit, which included Taiwan, which included Hong Kong, which included. who did the Uyghurs, in cyber attacks and whatnot. And then the Chinese just went off for like 17 minutes, basically echoing a lot of BLM rhetoric,

basically borrowing a playbook from the old Soviet Union with, which is people forget that the term what aboutism began as a Soviet propaganda tool. If you look up the actual definition, that's where it comes from. And, you know, whenever the U.S. in the late 1960s would criticize the Soviet Union, the Soviet representatives would say, well, what about the Negroes? and there was a way to sort of point to America's own foibles. And Blinken's response, there are two possibilities.

Either he was completely sandbagged, and then we grade his response one way. But the fact that he was, if he was in fact sandbagged and unprepared for this attack, shows you how ill-prepared they were to deal with the Chinese and where they are politically, or he wasn't. Either way, his response was necessary but not sufficient. For example, if I call Steve a moper thief, rapist, catamite bastard, and he responds, well, you know, Jonah, I've never denied that I have my problems, but I'm open about it. That is not a denial of the accusation. And what China did was basically say, we have no moral standing whatsoever to criticize China.

given our problems. We've given the problems with our democracy, given the problems with our human rights issues. And Blankin's response was, look, one of the great things about our country is we face our problems with open eyes. We don't sweep them under the rug. We debate them, yada, yada, yada. That's all true. That's not good enough. We are better than China as an objective, moral, declarative statement, regardless of what our flaws are. We are not putting over a million people in concentration camps. We are not tearing down mosques. We are not raising Muslim cemeteries. We do not have a de facto policy of racial supremacy in this country, where the Han Chinese basically are the beneficiaries of Jim Crow, where if you don't belong to the right ethnic minority,

you cannot get an internal passport. You cannot get certain jobs. You cannot leave your villages. They're not, we are not forcibly sterilizing ethnic groups or repatriating people in a Stalinist population policy away from places like Tibet. What China does is evil. And what we do may be flawed or imperfect in all these kinds of things. And what was remarkable to me was the inability or unwillingness. And that's the question I really have, was the inability or unwillingness for blinking to come

up with any other defense of the United States of America. other than this procedural debating point, we talk about our problems, we face our problems, but not actually say, hey, you know what else we have in America? The rule of law. We have a basic decency. We are among the least racist countries in the world. And my fear is that Blinken's a smart guy.

He knows these things are true about America, but he feels like he cannot say these things because it would contradict the identity politics left, of his party, which is saying America's built entirely on white supremacy and 16, 19, and all that kind of thing. And it would create political problems. So he had to fall back on this lawyerly thing about how, well, we at least talk openly about these issues. So I'll go to Steve first, since he's most forcefully our foreign policy guy, although no offense to anybody else. Which explanation do you think it is, or am I misreading the whole thing?

Strongly deny everything you said about me. You're not a catamite. Okay, good. Yeah, I mean, there are sort of two ways to look at this, and I'm glad you brought this up because we hadn't sort of seen the end of the summit when Sarah and I talked to Danny Pletka about this on Friday. On the one hand, I was encouraged that Blinken

said some of the things in his opening statement that needed to be said. Remember, the criticism of Biden from, certainly from the Trump campaign, was that he was just going to roll over that he was so soft on China that he, in effect, really wanted to enable China because he had financial interest there, what have you. There was at least some confrontational language and some calling China out on some of the things that China needed to be called out on.

That, to me, was encouraging. Danny's critique was, hey, great, glad we're saying this stuff. Now, where are the policies to follow? And I think we'll be able to judge that indictment here in the coming months. I think you raise a sort of deeper and a more troubling problem. And I don't know, I don't know if you're right that Blinken, you know, sort of had his domestic political life flashed before him and understood that he couldn't make these arguments because they might kind of clang off the ears of of Biden's supporters back home. But that is not crazy speculation to think that that's the case. I mean, talk to people who know

Anthony Blinken well, and they will tell you that he is basically a centrist, smart, pro-American foreign policy thinker of all of the people that Biden could have chosen as Secretary of State. He was one of the better ones if you believe in American exceptionalism, if you come kind of from the center right, you could have done a lot worse than Blinken. And I think you're right, Jonah, that if we were to have a beer and wings session with Blinken, he would probably agree with you on lots of the substantive points that you just laid out. But he didn't make the case. And the question is why he didn't make the case. That is a moment. And you can imagine the power. The power or sort of the dynamics in the relationship

and the message it would have sent to the world, had Blinken been able to take advantage of the opportunity that the Chinese provided in with a forceful response, making that case. And at the very least, it strikes me as a pretty big missed opportunity. At the worst, it strikes me as an administration that cares way too much about its domestic policy audience.

and so much so that it won't make arguments that at least it's, you know, it's spokesman in the case of Anthony Blinken actually believe. Hey, Jonah. Can I use my time to ask a question back to you, y'all? What has two thumbs and would appreciate that? This guy. Go ahead. Imagine a scenario in which the base of the Democratic Party cared deeply about the human rights violations in China and was putting enormous amounts of pressure on the NBA,

Apple, Walmart, you name it, in sort of a similar way to the boycott, defund movement dealing with Israel and Palestine. If that were the case on the left, how would this administration's policy choices look different in relation to China? David. Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think of the China problem in, can I use your term buckets? Yes. Okay, so I sort of have three buckets of the China problem.

Bucket one is the one we've been talking about today, which is sort of the soft power, making the case to the world, using these public moments to strongly condemn. China's ongoing, and just unbelievably inhumane oppression within its borders. And so obviously in that particular chapter of this soft power challenge, we failed. Bucket number two is the economic problem. You know, this is something that we're facing with China that we never faced with the Soviet Union, which is two economies tied together. And not just tied together, you know, as far as we consume so many products and use so many products made in China, but tied together in a cultural sense as well.

I mean, that gets to the LeBron James type stuff or the Walt Disney stuff. And then bucket number three, which we don't pay nearly enough attention to, in my view, is just the raw military power problem. And that what we are moving towards facing as China develops increasingly, increases the pace of its military development and begins to close a generational gap between American weapons and Chinese weapons is a situation where China may feel that it can absolutely gamble on a lightning attack against Taiwan, that it could absolutely gamble on that, that it could absolutely prevail in a short, sharp war against the United States and Taiwan, which could

destabilize the world in a way that we haven't seen since the 1930s. I think that, think of the a better if the activist base, and I think maybe a better comparison because the BDS movement is rife with problems. A better comparison would be

the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s where there's there is an absolute clear, compelling, moral case against this foreign entity and there would be a relentless pressure again on the

half of American activists, I think that that would impact bucket two more than anything else. I think right now we have a situation where we have a lot of very large private corporations that are too entangled with China and that they, and it's especially galling since many of them are the same sort of hyperwoke corporations that are eager to jump on a religious freedom legislation, say in Indiana or Georgia or elsewhere, but are doing immense amounts of business with the People's Republic of China, including in some of the problematic regions. And this is where I think activism could really make a difference, and it could make a difference not just by connecting with the Biden administration, but by connecting in the boardrooms of Disney.

And quite frankly, it is a giant blind spot, in my view, on the left, that this kind of activism is not taking place because what's happening, just for example, with the Uyghurs is completely intolerable, completely intolerable, and it's as if a lot of activists give, say, Disney, Apple, et cetera, a pass because they're seen as being on the side of the angels in domestic politics. And I think that that is, it's tough for me to see an excuse for that. Yeah, I guess, Jonah, my question is, if the political, Steve made the excellent point that their side doesn't,

this isn't a priority, so the administration has a lot of room to bear what they don't want to do, do what they do what they do what if the political wind was at their back in China? Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. I think, you know, I agree with a lot of what David said about how a huge part of the problem with doing anything serious is that the third-party legitimizers of political campaigns. I mean, I don't mean like running for office, but I mean like major issue campaign are the various Hollywood celebrities, sports celebrities, and those kinds of people. And they've been corrupted by money from China, markets from China. There's a very old story going back to the Brits in the 19th century. And the seduction of the money makes it

difficult to get those people to sign on. But again, China has apartheid right now. I mean, it does. And people who say, you know, I've been writing, I read a column every three or four years about North Korea saying, don't never give me this never again crap, because it's going on right now. And we're just turning a blind eye to it. So I think that one of the things that could affect that if they had the wind that they're back on this was we would have a serious international propaganda campaign. And then I mean propaganda. Sorry, when I said a serious international propaganda campaign,

Siri thought I was talking to her. So, you know, propaganda is not in of itself a negative word. It is a form of communication. And we would, you know, we

had a piece on our site that I commissioned a while back about how the Islamic world basically doesn't know about the Uyghurs because it's basically censored in the Islamic world. Telling the Islamic world, telling the Islamic world, look, this is what the Chinese is doing to your co-religionists, could create significant problems for China and pressure on China. Telling the Chinese people themselves what they're doing would have serious pressures.

We used to have a robust idea of how to do this kind of thing during the Cold War with Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia. We've kind of lost our way with that kind of thing. And so, first of all, just changing the rhetoric. from the United States would help enormously because creating, you know, the rule of thumb among the China experts is that the Chinese Communist Party is almost as afraid of the people as the people are of the Chinese Communist Party. And if you can arouse some nationalist sentiment that doesn't bolster the Chinese Communist Party, but actually inconveniences the Chinese Communist Party, that would be to our benefit. And other than that, look, I mean, I think a lot of the supply

change stuff is wildly over-hipped. It's happening anyway. But I do think the Biden administration could do things at the margins that would make it easier for American companies to get out of China, particularly when in this wonderful fantasy world that you've described, there is a public pressure to do exactly that. I love fantasy world, Steve. So does Sidney Powell. How's that for a transition? I love that transition. That's a good transition. I want to take that transition to the prom. So final issue here.

And it relates to a story that was the obsession of the news media and much of the country from November 3rd through at least January 6th, really through January 20th, and then has pretty quickly fallen off the radar. But we continue to live with the effects of this story to this day. And I'm talking, of course, about the idea that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Among the loudest voices pushing that claim from the very beginning was Sidney Powell, a prominent right-leaning lawyer, Trump advisor, on and off again, Trump campaign lawyer, but somebody who had the ear of the president, who had the ear of top officials at the Republican National

Committee, who was taken seriously and worked alongside senior Trump campaign officials, and pushed relentlessly a wide variety of conspiracy theories about how the election was stolen from Donald Trump. She started broad and just made sweeping claims about the election having been stolen. She pointed in particular to Dominion voting systems as the makers of the machines that allowed votes to be flipped. She then added some detail to her conspiracies, pointing fingers at Hugo Chavez era Venezuela, other foreign countries, saying in effect that the, not in effect, saying directly that votes cast for Donald Trump were flipped to Joe Biden, Biden because of the manipulation of these regimes at the direction or at the hand of foreign

powers. It is the case today that if you look at the polling, somewhere typically between half and 70 percent of Republicans believe the election was not legitimate. They believe this for a variety of reasons from media bias to big tech, to changing of laws, to these kinds of conspiracies. And Sidney Powell fed them again and again and again and again. She was cited, according to our good friend Jerry Beer, sometime contributor to the dispatch. She was cited nearly 500 times on the Fox News website between Election Day and the end of January. She was a regular guest on Lou Dobbs and other Fox programs and was very popular in Center Right Media. All of that is build up to a filing that her attorneys made,

saying in effect that nothing Sidney Powell said in that time frame when she was making those arguments was meant to be taken seriously. They made that argument in the context. They made that argument in the context of, I believe it was a $1.3 billion suit against Sidney Powell filed by Dominion. And their argument, the lawyer's argument, is she, in effect, she didn't mean it. She still believes it. She believed it when she said it. But she didn't really mean it. She was just floating these things. And nobody should have taken her seriously. I guess the first question I have I will send to you, Jonah, is about the... I want to do the politics, and I don't mean to hijack your thing.

But can we open just with a lawyerly appraisal of like that position? Because I'm objectively curious why the, you know, the god of legal stuff, holds a briefcase in one hand and billable hours in the other hand doesn't visit a lightning bolt upon these people. I mean, I just, I don't get it. How you can claim simultaneously in a legal filing that you're, that no one should believe what your client said, but your, and no reasonable person does, but your client still believes it. And that therefore, my client is not a reasonable person. Is this, is this, is this, is this real lawyer stuff? Or is, I mean, what? What? I'm sorry, Steve.

No, no, that's fine. That's fine. Let's get that explanation first because I think it's interesting and ultimately meaningless. It doesn't really matter because it's a stupid legal argument meant to defend her. The reason I wanted to do the politics first, it's probably better to do it second is because I think the politics stuff really, really matters. I agree with you. And I just wanted to get that part out of the way because it's the thing that people are all succeeded on. Let's do the legal stuff first.

Sarah, you have expressed skepticism about the legal argument here. Why? Skepticism, indeed. First of all, when you're being faced with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, the first thing you're going to do is go try to hire the biggest legal guns that you can. I'm going to assume that's what Sidney Powell attempted to do. What she, in fact, has are three solo practitioner lawyers who don't seem to have a lot. of experience doing anything close to this type of litigation. And it shows because while they're

going for cases that were mocked, you know, on both sides, Rachel Maddow has a case like this and Tucker Carlson have a case like this, where they were both sued for defamation in both times. The lawyers argued, no, what they were saying was not supposed to be taken as fact. What they were saying was their opinion. They're an opinion show. They talk about the news. Then they give their opinions on the news. That's what they're attempting to do here. But it is hilariously off the legal mark of what that Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddo cases were, both in terms, I mean, just in every sense.

And I, in every sense, it's not even worth diving that far into it, except to say, she was not the host of a legal, sorry, of a news program. she was a lawyer filing a lawsuit and she's claiming that her lawsuit was a matter of opinion, not fact? Well, in that case, you're going to be held in contempt. Like, they've put their client in an impossible position where either she lied to a court

or she is at least liable for defamation. You can't have it both ways. I think this is just bad lawyering, though, David. So I think that her lawyers have a real problem in that they have a terrible set of facts to deal with, a terrible. Let me put it in very simple terms, as simple as possible. So this doctrine that says that essentially what you have to do is for it to be defamation, it has to be an assertion of fact, a false assertion of fact, that a reasonable person would take to be true. true is to avoid a circumstance like, say, for example, let's suppose somebody goes online and says, Jonah is a lizard. Okay, Jonah is a lizard. Well, it's completely false. Jonah is not

a lizard. I am cold water. Could Jonah sue for defamation? Well, nobody believes you're a lizard. So, you know, there's no real harm here. There's no real problem. He does lick his eyeballs, though, sometimes. I've seen him do it. That's true. At the same time, there's also, in part of the legal doctrine, especially if you're dealing with public figures, is that there is an element called actual malice. In other words, did you, were you, did you know what you were saying was false? So what they're trying to do is they're trying to say that she sincerely thought there

was a lizard. and so therefore there's no actual malice and there's also no real harm here because what we what we're dealing with is a person who's just frankly deluded she was just frankly deluded that that was the that was the undercurrent to the pleading was that this is a person who sincerely thought there that there was a lizard when there was no lizard and that's the undercurrent now the problem is um it's not going to work i don't believe because the fact that reasonable people would otherwise would believe this is belied by the fact that major news organizations kept putting her on the air. They don't do that if

she's calling Jonah a lizard. They don't do that. You don't get through the first screen even at OAN. Well, maybe at OAN, but you don't get through the first screen. And so they're trying to thread a needle that quite frankly they can't thread, and this is how they're doing it. when I read it, I thought, you know, this is one of those cases where I'm not sure, and this is why big firms, for example, would pass on this. Defending her, there's, it's very difficult to defend her without it radiating back to you as what, what argument are you making? Wait a minute, really. But, you know, honestly, that's the path forward for her. That's the path forward is to essentially claim that she was deluded.

She believes it, but it was so ridiculous that nobody should have believed it. Okay. Again, I apologize, Steve, for hijacking it, but I just, I wanted clarity on this point badly. Yeah. So the question on politics, one of my biggest concerns about this is that the same places that devoted hours and hours and hours of coverage to Sidney Powell beforehand are, should we say, unlikely to spend a lot of time covering the fact that she is now saying they should not have spent hours and hours and hours covering her speculation or her crazy

claims. To Brett Baer's credit, you know, you and I are both Fox News contributors. We sometimes appear on his show. Brett did a segment in which he reported this news. There hasn't been much on the Fox News website. Certainly we haven't seen much on the other websites that promoted these kinds of theories. What should be done politically about this? And what about journalistically? I mean, you know, Sidney Powell was not, these are crazy fringe arguments. They were sort of obviously untrue, I think, to people who were following closely, what she was doing, in particular when she was asked to produce evidence and couldn't. That was sort of the giveaway for a lot of people.

But for other people or people who are living in media silos where they just weren't exposed to more skeptical thinking about her, they don't even know that this has happened. They don't even know that she herself had said she shouldn't have been taken seriously. What do you do about that? Yeah. So I have some significant rage issues about all of this. And I think it is a profound problem. Let's put it this way. It may or may not be a profound problem. It is symbolic of a really profound problem. And the only correction I would offer to your summary is when you say these are fringe arguments. The fact that Dominion is, is suing and may well win in multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuits is that they weren't fringe arguments. They should have been fringe arguments, but because she took them up, she got all of these megaphones, she promulgated them. She was echoed and approved of, in large respects,

by the president of the United States and all sorts of other legitimizers. It is essentially saying- Four Seasons landscaping. Four Seasons and landscaping is all in on this. And that's a huge problem for them. And can you imagine the relief? We should make clear that that's a joke, less four seasons, landscaping, come after the dispatch.

That is a joke. They're not actually. I mean, I get the analogy about calling me a lizard. But if the President of the United States repeatedly calls me a lizard and all these other, eventually that becomes less of a friend. issue. And the reason why Dominion can sue for one point, whatever, billion dollars, Rudy Giuliani and Fox News and all of these places is because they didn't treat this as a fringe argument. They treated this as a very serious thing. And it seems to me on the journalistic front,

if you devoted a scintilla of credibility, of your own credibility to saying this is a serious person, I mean, I remember back then, he's like, oh my gosh, Sidney Powell is such a serious person. You have to listen to Sidney Powell. Sidney Powell, you know, Mike Flynn, Cindy Powell and Ron, you know, Cindy Powell's a serious, real person. And so if she's making these allegations, there must be truth behind them. That was the, that was the gist of it all back then. And if you gave her a platform on your network, on your radio show, either in person or by proxy, or simply reading their stuff, and then you don't tell your audience that this woman is,

by her own lawyer's account, either uttering. deranged or profoundly deceitful and has treated all of you like suckers and you all have cider in your ears for believing her for a second, then you're part of the problem. Then you are, you are not, you are no longer in any way, forget journalistic. You're no longer remotely a truth teller or an honest institution. And this, and it is a, for me, it is a great die marker and litmus test to see who, you know, if you criticized her from the beginning, you're off the hook because it's wonderful how if you just tell the truth, you don't get into these kinds of problems. But if you took her up seriously, like, I don't know, Mark Levin, or I don't know who, you know,

all the people who did, you know, Lou Dobbs is off the air in part because he did. But if you took her seriously and you're still on the air and you don't address this, then you're a hack. Then you're a hack and you're a part of the problem. And it, for me, it's a great, useful heuristic or litmus test to tell whether you're a serious person or not is how you're treating this issue. Well, a lot of people took her seriously. There was an article in the Federalist less than two weeks ago lamenting the fact that the courts didn't take her more seriously than they did and suggesting this was a major failure of the U.S. court system that it didn't happen. Just to underscore your points about her reach, I mean, you know, Sidney Power,

held a press conference at the RNC, flanked by top Republican and Trump campaign lawyers on November 20th and spouted many of these theories, accompanied by Rudy Giuliani, as sort of the other star of the show. She met with Donald Trump December 18th in the Oval Office to continue to try to resurrect this case, despite the fact that the electoral college votes had been cast four days earlier. Donald Trump cited her conspiracies in a tweet January 3rd, two days before the Georgia special election in the Senate, and three days before the assault on the Capitol. So her arguments were being circulated and amplified by top Republicans in the country. One last twist before we leave this question, and I'll go back to you on this, Sarah. Sydney Powell has

apparently posted a message to telegram saying the fake news is lying to everyone about our filings in the Dominion case. My position has not changed. We will be taking them to the mat, Sydney. And Lynn Wood, who was her partner in lies on a lot of this stuff, has also pointed to an Epic Times article, basically saying the same thing, saying that the fake news is misreporting what this filing, in fact, says verbatim. So I think where we are in the epic times, it's got to be true.

That's the Lynn Wood, Sidney Powell case. But I think where we are then is Sydney Powell is now saying not to believe Sidney Powell's legal argument that Sidney Powell's earlier statements shouldn't be believed. So what should we believe? Well, I will say. Sidney Powell believes there's a lizard. Yeah. I mean, it, oddly. kind of helps their case that their client believes that Jonah's a lizard and that no reasonable person would believe it. But yeah, you know, honestly, David, I'll see if you agree with this. Legally, if you're the attorney on this case, what would be most helpful at this point is if your client is treated for a psychiatric disorder, that would sort of provide evidence for your

claims, your sort of wildly contradictory claims meeting together in the middle, and add in the fact that your client is going to go on TV if she can and try to undermine what you just wrote in that brief. So that's probably their best legal scenario at this point. Yeah, her checking herself into an institution is probably best case legally. I would agree with that. I mean, that sounds extreme. That sounds absurd. But yeah, if you're going to make two arguments simultaneously,

she believed it and no reasonable person should believe it, then how do you square that circle? But I want to go back to something that Jonah said on the politics of it. I know people in my life who believe this stuff. And it's infuriating to me to see the institutions, the media institutions that gave her free reign. And the talk show hosts and the hosts who gave her free reign being completely silent on this, totally silent. And I can guarantee you that the people I know, unless I tell them personally, about this retraction, have no idea about it. They have no clue, no idea. And so what

has ended up happening is that two sets of conventional wisdom have set in on parts of, not all, parts of the right. One is, Sidney Powell was right, that Sydney Powell's claims were correct, that this is actually what happened. I would say that's more of a minority view. And then the other is her claims may or may not have been meritorious, but they were never given a fair hearing. They were never given a fair hearing. Which just be clear, is related to a sort of similar third one, which is where there's smoke, there's fire, right? She was onto something, but we don't know the full extent of it, right?

Right. And what this does is it puts a torpedo below the water line of both of those views. If the argument is no reasonable person could have believed this, then it, it absolutely undermines the slap-dab factual certainty around them, and then it also undermines the notion that a quote-unquote fair hearing here would have yielded some sort of proof. Instead, they're just going straight for, it was obvious garbage. That's essentially what they're saying. This was obvious garbage and no reasonable person should have fallen for it. and it's so important to get that message out.

The problem is we know full well that message won't get out because it also implicates all of the people who spread it because what it says to them is you're not a reasonable person. You're not a reasonable person talk show host. You're not a reasonable person, Fox Prime Time host. You're not a reasonable person because you help spread this because it indicts them and it indicts them squarely and they will not indict themselves.

They will not. And so this lie will continue to fester in the American public. Also, good on Dominion. This was certainly the result they wanted. They're not going to get much, if anything, from Sidney Powell. If they win this lawsuit,

this is what they wanted from Sidney Powell. Is exactly this answer. You wonder how some other potentially libelled or defamed folks might have fared if they had filed suit. And your Jonah is a lizard thing makes me think of Ted Cruz's dad

in the Kennedy assassination. That's pretty close to being a lizard. Yeah. That could have been interesting. Okay, we'll leave the topic there. You know what? In the spirit of updating our listeners whenever there is a change in status

on a story that we have covered in the past, I do want to update our listeners on a really important story that we haven't given a lot of time to and there's been an update. Major Biden, the rescue German shepherd, is back at the White House. After being sent to Delaware,

after an incident, the president insists that he did not bite someone or penetrate skin, but nevertheless, he and his big brother champ were sent back to Delaware. Major has now worked with a trainer, we are told.

He is back at the White House, full time. And congrats, Major, for getting out of the doghouse. Hey, well, also, look, he could have killed somebody. Sending him, banishing him to Delaware is still, like, wildly excessive punishment. There are some good-looking dogs. And regardless of your politics, we can all support good boys left and right.

All right, listeners, thank you so much for joining us this week. We'll look forward to talking to you again soon. This episode, is brought to you by 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,

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