The Dispatch Podcast - They Never Believed Any Of It | Roundtable

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Sarah Isgur, David French, Steve Hayes, and Jonah Goldberg discuss President Donald Trump’s foreign policy and his staggered attempts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The Agenda: ���Trump says 'STOP!' to Russia —Of course President Zelensky is being difficult in negotiations —Vice President Mike Pence as an influencer and Vice President J.D. Vance as an enabler —MAGA makes money off Russian bots —'NASA is fake and gay' —What is even going on anymore? 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 regular livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar. It's David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes. First off, a little dispatch news. The dispatch has acquired SCOTUS blog. An incredible purchase, guys. And I think it will really create our larger AO extended universe. We're now entering into dispatch law territory. I will be looking for a new title, Lord Protectors Fine, Grand Puba, I don't know. I'm open to opportunities. Scotus blog, for those of you who are not advisory opinions listeners,

is the central hub for all things Supreme Court. They have their live blog on days that the Supreme Court announces decisions. they have pages for every merits case that the Supreme Court will be deciding. It's run by incredible Supreme Court reporter Amy Howe. And it's everything from the question presented to the analysis of how the oral argument went. It is the Kleenex of legal coverage. It is both the brand and the product. Congratulations to all of us.

I don't know. I don't know who I'm congratulating in this. Congratulations to you. Yeah. Congratulations you guys. I mean, let's put it this way. Congratulations to me and Steve for, like, nominally getting some weird credit for it. And congratulations to you guys for the incredibly hard work and important work you guys are going to be doing.

Because it doesn't put a lot of new stuff on my plate, but it does put a lot of new stuff on yours. And I'm happy for it. Well, the timing on, I have to say, just, you know, not only is a reflection of the good work that you all have done on A.O., which I think probably some people listening to this podcast maybe listen to on a case. three of us do I have listened to advisory opinions Nobody believes you You do, yeah, don't even pretend, Steve

I've heard some of your interviews with judges Name a judge John We could be beating Rogan in the ratings and you would still not listen Steve Here's the thing

It pains me to say this I think advisory opinions and Scotus blog and all of the work that you all are doing and we're doing is about to become even more important as Congress sort of gives up its congressional or its constitutional prerogatives and the executive branch is sort of aggressively hoovering up as much power as it can. The judiciary is where the action is likely to be and we're seeing that. I mean, we've seen that here in the first three months and

I think we'll see that even more. So I might have to start listening to advice. Opinery Opinions more consistently. Well, before David and I break out into an episode of advisory opinions, we're going to do something that I rarely want to do on this podcast, which is start with foreign policy. But Steve, it must be your birthday, or maybe I've had too much Spanish wine. So here we are, and I want to talk about this headline, Rubio and Whitkoff bail on crucial Ukraine talks amid Crimea split. it. So this is Secretary of State Marco Rubio and United States Special Envoy to the Middle

East, oddly, Whitkoff. And I'll read you a couple quotes. The Trump administration wants to focus on the President's peace deal plan presented to Ukraine as a take it or leave it option. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Ukraine had yet to receive any official proposals from the U.S. and would never recognize Crimea or any other territories as Russian because such a move would go against the Ukrainian constitution. Quote, there is nothing to talk about. This violates our constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine.

United States Vice President J.D. Vance responded that the U.S. had issued a very explicit proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict and threaten to walk away if progress is not forthcoming. Well, Steve... Was it always going to end this way? I mean, I don't, I guess I don't understand what we've been doing these last few months and why the United States thought they could wave a magic wand and end a conflict that Russia started for territorial advancement

when the other side doesn't want said territorial concessions. I should just point out that President Trump responded to the quotes that you read from Voldemir Zelensky, in a rather intemperate post on truth social on Wednesday, sort of once again blaming Zelensky for being the obstacle to peace here, blaming the victim of the aggression for being the obstacle to peace here. Look, I think the frustration for Donald Trump is that he wants this war to end. He promised he would do it on day one. and he's failed, but he's failed because he's on Russia's side,

and Russia wants more from the Trump administration. What we've seen since the beginning of the Trump administration is preemptive capitulation, preemptive concession after preemptive concession. And if you're Vladimir Putin, you look at what the United States is doing on his behalf, and you say, why would we stop this non-negotiation negotiation when we are getting everything we want? And at this point, I think Putin would be crazy to enter any serious peace talks. And Putin apparently thinks it would be crazy to enter any serious peace talks. If you look at what he did just over this past weekend, he announced a 30-hour ceasefire over Easter and promptly violated it.

I mean, didn't really wait at all, didn't really pretend that there was a ceasefire. This is not anything new. Vladimir Putin's been doing this for years. He announces a ceasefire and then violates it right away. gets, I think, sort of a press hit over the announcement of the ceasefire. It's harder and harder to report on the details of the violations of the ceasefires. But go back to March 11th. Go back to what the Ukrainians agreed to in early March,

which was an unconditional ceasefire that the Trump administration had proposed to create space for additional negotiation. Lettinger Putin didn't agree to that. and continued not only to maintain his attacks, he has escalated his attacks. Russia has escalated its attacks, particularly on civilian populations. He's making a mockery of Donald Trump and the United States.

And I find that, you know, if it weren't so serious, it would be amusing that the Trump administration and Marco Rubio and others are in such high dudgeon about claims that they are effectively doing. doing the Russians bidding. There was a Politico story yesterday about the possibility that the United States was going to lift sanctions on Russia. And Marco Rubio took to Twitter and said, this is fake news, this is outrageous.

Political should retract this, et cetera, et cetera, as if it were outrageous to believe that the United States might be open to lifting sanctions on Russia related to Nord Stream and other things. It's worth remembering that at the beginning of March, when the United States, States first held negotiations with Russia and Saudi Arabia, not the Ukrainians, excluded Ukraine from these negotiations. Marco Rubio went out and gave a press conference in which he discussed the quote-unquote incredible opportunities for U.S. Russia economic cooperation and historic things to come if the war would end because the United States would then have an open relationship.

They talked about normalizing diplomatic relations. It's not at all ridiculous to think that the United States is offering Russia lifting of the sanctions. They've effectively said that in public. It should be said that we're recording this Thursday morning. Donald Trump did put out a tweet or a truth social this morning after the deadliest attack on Kyiv's since last summer by the Russians, killing nine people and injuring more than 60. Donald Trump put out a true social saying, I am not happy with the Russian strikes on. Kyiv, not necessary and very bad timing. Vladimir stopped. 5,000 soldiers a week are dying.

Let's get the peace deal done. I think that's the harshest thing Donald Trump may have ever said to Vladimir Putin. And it's not very harsh, given the context and the history that I just related. David, it seems to me from a domestic policy standpoint that the win for Donald Trump is that he just wants it to be over and he doesn't really care how that happens. What is the path then for a Trump victory in all of this? Because I guess I was told once we sort of stopped helping Ukraine, they would have to fold.

And that would be that because of the overwhelming force and depth of the Russian military. I mean, is Europe stepping in to fill the gap here? Why hasn't Ukraine folded like we were told? Well, several reasons. One, the most principal reason being Ukraine does not want to fold. Ukraine wants to continue fighting. Number two, Ukraine has far more capacity to fight right now than it had two years ago, for example. It has far more capacity to continue the fight. It has built an indigenous drone industry that's pretty remarkable the way that they've created it, that is just pouring drones into the front line to the point where large, majority now of Russian casualties aren't due to the American manufactured weapons that are being sent over or the European manufactured weapons, but a large majority of the casualties are related to drones and mainly the Ukrainian drones. Also, Ukraine hasn't folded in part because

in important ways, Russia is weakened. Now, Russia has dramatically increased the size of its military. It has hundreds of thousands of troops at the border much more than existed at, you know, at the start of the war, both of the militaries are much larger than they were at the start of the war, but Russia just has less capacity to engineer a breakthrough through the lines. I mean, tens of thousands of armored, well, thousands of armored vehicles have been destroyed, for example. So there's just the reality on the ground that Ukraine has more indigenous capacity. Europe has continued to step up. It still has some remaining weapons and American weapons and munitions. And Russia's quick strike, combined armed,

offensive capabilities have really been weakened a great deal. And so what we're reduced to and what the front is reduced to is just grinding war of attrition. It's not exactly like World War I because you don't see the same kind of deep, dense trench lines stretching for the same hundreds of miles. But you do have, you've kind of created through drones a de facto version of this. And so two things have happened here at once. One, Ukraine. is more self-sufficient. Ukraine has binded itself with our European allies or its European allies very tightly. They understand the stakes very, very, very clearly and they continue to step up. And the number two, Russia is different. Russia is utterly committed to this fight.

And I was talking to some observers of the war beforehand. And they said one of the things that I asked was about Trump's capacity to bring this war to a close. And they said, Trump doesn't realize how much Vladimir Putin is a different Vladimir Putin than the person that he interacted with in his first term. And the person that he interacted with in his first term had not lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, had not been deeply enmeshed in a brutal war for several years, and that Putin has hardened. Putin has less interest in making deals. He has committed himself to winning this war. And so it's just a, it's a situation that is not as amenable to America just walking in, big footing the whole situation and working its will.

And especially, especially when Ukraine now accurately perceives it is essentially on the other side. And so this is not a, U.S. is not seen as a good faith broker here. It's not seen as a neutral arbiter or even a Ukrainian ally. It's now being perceived as a Russian ally imposing Russian demands on a nation that has spilled an enormous amount of blood to prevent those demands from taking from being enacted and try to impose them on a continent that still possesses considerable industrial and military power that also doesn't want to yield to Russia. And so he doesn't have the capacity to make everybody surrender. The parties are not committed to surrender. And so he walked into this way, way out of his depth compared to the rhetoric that he brought into it.

Jonah, when this war started in America, it was perceived and described as almost a metaphor or a historical analog for Hitler, but also just this like warning for Europe. You know, Ukraine's first, but then it's Poland and yada, yada, yada. Russia owns England or something like that. And so that was, you know, the American interest was stop him in Ukraine because it's in our interest to not have to deal with this when it's a NATO country or to not deal with this when it's all of Europe, et cetera. Not surprisingly, that message emanating from the administration has stopped.

I wonder if that's still how it's viewed in Europe, though, because it does feel like there's been an overall shift in the vibes, if you will. this is feeling more like a unique situation between Russia and Ukraine, not one that maybe the Europeans see necessarily as that grander moment in history. Yes, I promise I will answer that question. I just want to make one quick point about Trump's negotiating stuff that Steve and Dave, David, reference. Trump said that Zelensky is much more difficult to deal with than Putin. and, of course, Zelensky is much more difficult to deal with, right? Let's say, I'm going to have this deal.

Sarah, you get a million dollars and a house on the cliff in the Caribbean with access to the beach. Steve, you get root canal and a colonoscopy with no anesthesia. Now, weirdly, Steve is much more difficult to deal with in the negotiations. Like, Trump is giving Putin pretty much everything he wants. He's rewarding what he's doing. And Zelenskyy's like, hold your role. You're trying to dismember my country and just basically postpone future aggression against me by Russia. So he's the difficult guy, right?

Because he's a guy getting screwed in these negotiations. I think your point about how it seemed, how the conversation has changed is a good one. I think it's accurate to the extent that. that it's sort of like, I'll put it in sort of A.O. terms. Recall how you guys used to talk all the time about how much easier it was for Republicans to take a hardcore pro-life position so long as Roe v. Wade was preventing them to have any accountability to do anything about abortion. When Western Europe, when Western Europe was pretty confident that America was going to take the lead on all of this, it got their backs

to sort of be much more principled and forthright in a lot of ways, particularly, the further west you got when all of a sudden it looks like much more of their blood and treasure in the game or at stake, it introduces a dose of realism. That said, you talk to the people in the Baltics, right? You talk to the people in Poland who have living memory of Russian aggression against them. They still talk the way we talked, a lot of us talked about it immediately after the invasion and for good reason. I think this stuff, because of crazy domestic politics, politics in Germany. It's very difficult to figure out where Germany is on any of this stuff at any given moment. I generally think that when you listen to the EU types, when you listen to

the Brits, they still see this as a pretty, not existential, but a high stakes contest of high principle and also of real stakes for that. And one way to think about it is, look, I mean, in the Iran context everyone's like what's the big deal Iran's going to get a nuclear bomb it's not like it's going to nuke all its neighbors or even Israel probably because they would get nuked back right so why do people freak out about it

they freak out about it in part at least the smart people do because Iran's goal is to be the regional hegemon to call the shots about how the whole region works and eventually to push Israel into the sea and all that kind of stuff but a nuke would let it do that

Russia on the border with NATO on Poland, you know, on Poland's border and all that kind of stuff, after having crushed Ukraine, would be able to flex further and further west into Europe, and the Europeans understand that. And so it's not so much that Putin is going to have a triumph in Paris. It's that Putin, both with his energy resources and his military, would be able to dictate the foreign policy course for the rest of Europe in ways that Europeans don't think is awesome

and that people like J.D. Vance don't give a rat's ass about. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

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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 dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Speaking of that, I want to stay with you for a second and expand out into what is Trump's foreign policy.

And what have we learned about Trump's foreign policy that we didn't know from the campaign or from his first term? It's sort of brought to mind because of the news swirling around Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There was another signal chat where he's talking to his wife, brother and lawyer about attacks on Yemen. There was, of course, his aide who wrote an op-ed saying that Hegseth would not be long for the administration. There were articles to that effect as well. I'm not interested in, you know, will they, won't they, rom-com status of anonymous sources, around Pete Hegseth, but I am interested in what Pete Hegseth stands for in the administration and what it says about Trump's foreign policy when Pete Hegseth gets confirmed, when Pete Hegseth

stays despite distractions. So back to my original question. What have you learned about Trump's foreign policy? Yeah, so I think I never really liked the phrase isolationist. I've written a lot about this, that isolationism was a wildly misunderstood thing. inherently right wing. There have been lots of left-wing isolationists in American history. And besides, but we never really came up with a really good term for what Trump is. It's not isolationism. And then there's this argument that I'm pretty persuaded by that he's what a very

obscure group of people call a sovereignist. And sovereignism, as in sovereignty, is basically the idea that nobody is the boss of us, that we, We shouldn't have, it's not that we should have, you know, the classic expression of what isolationism is, is Fortress America, no entangling alliances, bring everybody home, hide behind the oceans, that kind of stuff. The sovereignist position is we just to get to do whatever the damn hell we want. And that was part of the argument. The original sovereignists were a hardcore group of irreconcilables, they called them the irreconcilables in the arguments over the treaty of. Versailles. They weren't isolationists per se. I mean, some were, but the key thing there was that they didn't want alliances with our friends. They didn't want to be beholden to any kind of pact

that said we had to fight if we didn't want to, or that we couldn't fight if we didn't want to. They basically just wanted to be completely unencumbered. And Donald Trump came in, even before he was sworn in, when he was just president-elect, started talking about taking about the Panama Canal, wouldn't rule out force for Greenland. started saying all sorts of things about the border with Canada, which he's revisited in the last week. And then a short time later,

the whole Maragaza idea of basically turning over the Gaza Strip into a resort community. That's not isolationism. That's just Trump getting to do what he wants, where he wants, which is why the sovereign test, which is a terrible label,

no one's going to start using it regularly. But it's why the sovereignst thing I think applies best to his foreign policy. And the way that gets translated into the bureaucracy or into the foreign policy establishment is, first of all, you can't do anything that Donald Trump doesn't want to do. So, and therefore we have to do everything that Donald Trump does want to do. And you have to praise his strength and his vigor and strong-like bull leadership and all that kind of stuff. That plays into Pete Hegsef, because Pete Heggseth is basically there to be a recruitment video

and to do push-ups and to talk about being warriors and manly. What were warriors for and when, I think, is a secondary consideration for that crowd. And the problem is that he's hired a bunch, and then we can hand it off to Steve or David, but he hired a bunch of people around him who actually do have ideology and don't like American leadership in the world, even sovereignist leadership, and they don't like the idea of taking Israel's side in a contest with Iran. And this is one of the things that's gotten them into a lot of hot water is because the most dangerous thing you can do in the Trump administration is have a strong commitment to any

principle, right or wrong. Like, it is worse for you to be committed to a wrong principle than to have no principles at all, because that's going to get you crosswise with Trump, who basically just doesn't want to be constrained by any intellectual constructs whatsoever, which is why this sovereignist thing, I think, is the most apt way to describe as foreign policy. David, what have you learned about Trump's foreign policy today? that you didn't know in December? Yeah, I think that's really easy to answer for me. It really is what you would say.

I like that sovereign-ist label, but it's manifesting itself in a particular kind of foreign policy that's very old. It's in the term that's often used as spheres of influence. So one of the ways you can make sense of Trump's approach to Russia and Ukraine and his approach to the United States and Canada is to realize that he sees Ukraine as in Russia's sphere of influence,

and he sees Canada as within our sphere of influence, and similarly Greenland, et cetera. And so the big boys, the big guys, get to do what they want to do in their sphere of influence. And so this is one of the reasons why he's consistently poking at Zelensky for having some role here in this war breaking out. Because remember, he thinks the obligation of you, of Ukraine, much like the obligation of candidate,

it just sort of yield to our demands. The obligation to Ukraine is to yield to the demands of Russia, the superpower in its core sphere of influence. This is one of the reasons why, you know, you see this kind of mockery, this idea in parts of the MAGA right, that why would we ever, you know, lose a single life to defend the Baltic states? Or you're even starting to see in some parts of the right,

while a lot of the Trump right really is, trying to pivot to the Pacific and stand against the Chinese threat, very concerned about Taiwan's fate. Another part of the Magar right really doesn't give a rip about Taiwan one way or the other that's in China's sphere of influence. And so this is one way that you can make sense of this really hard heel turn that America has made is that it has gone from a internationalist foreign policy that seeks a cooperative alliance with partners, not subordinates, even though we were in many ways first among equals, given our raw economic and military strengths, into something that is a lot more like Putin's Russia, which is a powerful

nation seeking to control its near abroad while leaving other powerful nations to control there near abroad. And so this is seen as maybe creating a more stable international environment, but it is not, it is not a more stable international environment. And we have actual history as to how that spheres of influence approach works, because nobody actually ends up agreeing on where one sphere ends and the other sphere begins. And every large power gets insecure on the edges of its sphere of influence when they brush up against others. And so this creates this inherent constant tension as the different spheres overlap

and bump into each other. And that's what he is creating. I mean, this is how you make sense of their, that make sort of holistic sense of this approach. It's another reason why he's so reluctant to be so forward-deployed saying, in Korea. He raises Japan and why are we obligated to do anything with Japan? All of this stuff is outside of our sphere of influence. And, in his view, inside the sphere of influence of his true peers in his mind, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. And so this is, when you understand that concept,

so much of Trump's foreign policy starts to make sense. He really does sort of view himself as having maybe two peers in the world, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Everyone else is either subordinate to him in our sphere, or subordinate to them and their spheres. And when you get that, what is happening starts to make a lot more sense.

Yeah, so I agree with all of that. I read a bunch of that. I just want to add one point, I think one way to think about it that really is illuminating because I think it reflects both the way he looks at domestic politics and the way he looks at foreign policy. We all call it because we read eggheadery stuff, spheres of influence and all that kind of stuff. it's really just Don Corleone style, right?

Where in your mob family, in your Fiat, there are three families and your family, if your earners don't kick up enough and show you respect, you can kick the crap out of them. Go get your shine box, right? But the head of another family, he deserves respect. And the whole trick is to bend everybody else to your knee and demand respect for them.

And I think that explains a lot of his approach to like the law firms. I think that explains a lot of his approach. to his, it's why he's always been meaner to the Republican Party to Republicans than he is to, like, the opponents in part because, like, he wants the subservience from them. Yeah, I think that's right. That's where I was going to go with this. I mean, I buy, I think the sovereignty's framing is smart. And I think David's right. Generally speaking about the spheres of influence, I would ascribe those views more to his top aides than to Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump sits at the desk and thinks. about spheres of influence? Of course. Or sovereignism. Yeah, I agree with it. Or sovereignism. No, he's read multiple papers on it, Jonah. Right. This is much less geostrategic and geopolitical and much more psychological. And I think Jonah's last point is the most important one. He wants people who pay obeisance to Trump. And he wants people who allow him to look powerful. I mean,

he said this. He's not particularly shy about talking about it in these terms. I mean, when Kim Jong-un is saying nice things to him, Donald Trump talks about writing love letters to Kim Jong-un. And when other leaders praise him in the way that we've all grown accustomed to, he looks at them in a different kind of way. And it's why you see whether it's the head of NATO sitting in the Oval Office or Putin or even to a lesser extent, but even the Iranians to a certain extent,

not challenging Trump rhetorically and often praising him when you know that they don't mean the praise because Trump wants this and Trump needs this. I don't think Trump has a particular worldview. I think so much of it is just psychological and it's ad hoc. But I do think it really is the case

that many of the people who work for him not only have strong worldviews but have strong sort of deep, ideological views that they are, you know, that many of them have spent their careers working on behalf of. And they are using those to try to direct his decision making. I would say J.D. Vance is certainly one of those. But that's one of the things that's led to this, you know, quiet, I would say simmering, but really intense fight sort of behind the scenes between whatever we want to call them, the actual sovereignists, the non-interventionists,

I do think there are some real sort of old-school isolationists there and the people who I would just describe as having more conventional sort of Reaganite foreign policy views. By almost everything that we can see that emerges in public, the, we'll just call them non-interventionists for simplicity's sake, are winning those battles behind the seams, both in terms of personnel, in terms of policy decisions, and I think in terms of their access and influence on Donald Trump.

So, Steve, just to follow up on sort of where we started this, I felt like during the first Trump administration, for almost any question facing Donald Trump, there were two schools within his administration, if not more, and that that was the battle we always saw playing out. That's what caused the leaks. That's what caused the constant personnel turnover was those tectonic plates bumping up against each other

as the Republican Party realigned away from Ronald Reagan and towards Donald Trump. And I guess what's interesting to me, you said there's still two schools in there. I guess I don't necessarily feel that way. It feels like that tectonic plate bumping has, like, worked itself out. And clearly one school one, to the extent that there are individuals, let's say, in the Department of Defense apparatus who are from that older school of foreign policy, fair enough.

But do you think there are actually senior members of this administration that still hold opposition views? Or is that the main difference between Trump one and Trump two? We're done with the fighting, one side one. You don't mean it as a trick question. It's almost a trick question. What do I think Marco Rubio

actually believes. I think Marco Rubio is a Reaganite. I think he's a Reaganite. But every day he goes out in public and makes these arguments that I genuinely don't think he believes. In some cases, that directly contradict things that he was doing as a senator months ago, right? I mean, you look at what he was doing on Russia legislation that he introduced, things that he inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act that would have held Russia accountable for the invasion of Ukraine that would have prevented us from lifting sanctions. That's what Marco Rubio believes. That's the way he has, he operated as a senator.

Those are the things that he said in his public speeches. And he's going out every day and saying things I just think he genuinely doesn't believe. I think the same thing is true with Mike Walts. I mean, I've covered Marco Rubio for a long time. I think I have a pretty good sense of what he believes. Mike Waltz is the same way. I knew Mike Waltz a little bit. He was a sort of omnipresent at Fox News back in the day.

I think it's one of the reasons he was chosen for this job. He made himself available to Fox News. He was on Fox News on a near daily basis, sometimes more than some Fox News anchors, it seemed, and presented himself to Donald Trump that way. But he was privately a never-Trumper until shortly before the 2020 election when he endorsed Trump publicly, but harbored real reservations about Trump and what Trump believed, in particular in the national security and foreign policy space. And I think Waltz has attempted to bring in some people sometimes successfully,

sometimes not, to the National Security Council staff who have views and have advocated policies that are much more in line with the old school Reaganite foreign policy. Some of those people have been purged. You remember just three weeks ago, there was, you know, three staffers were fired. in the aftermath of Laura Lumer, making a surprise visit to the White House. Steve, we all know that was three years ago. Not three weeks ago.

That's not possible. But Trump is getting, you know, he's getting that pressure from the, you know, again, non-interventionist for simplicity's sake, from people like Laura Lumer, from the hardcore mega crowd, from Tucker Carlson, who has tremendous influence on J.D. Vance,

internally from J.D. Vance and others in the administration. That's why I think, your right to say, and just as a factual matter, we don't have somebody like Mike Pompeo. We don't have somebody like Mike Pence. We don't have somebody like Jim Mattis who were making those arguments internally. And I think, you know, ended up doing a tremendous amount of good keeping President Trump from following's instincts on some of these things, including meeting with the Taliban on September 11th, as he proposed in his first term.

And we don't have those people making those arguments now. And to the extent, you know, we don't know what Marco Rubio is. everything Marco Rubio is arguing behind the scenes. There have been reports that he's, you know, resisted immediately lifting sanctions on Russia. But nothing he says in public suggests that he holds the views he held 12 months ago. And in that sense, I think you are right. In that sense, I think the fight is virtually over.

It's just a matter of how long somebody like Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio can survive. And one last postscript on this. You know, one of the questions we talk about a lot on this podcast, and elsewhere is why Republicans' senators who disagree with these policies aren't more outspoken. And I think one of the reasons they're not, or weren't more critical of Mike Walts in the context of Signalgate. And one of the reasons is because they're worried if they criticize Walts or criticize what the National Security Council is doing or pick public fights with Marco Rubio. They diminish the power of each of each of those individuals inside the administration.

and could lead to a hastier exit than these Republican members of Congress would like. Yeah, just a quick add on that. I, when I gave my original answer, the point I made was that having strong convictions about anything gets you in more trouble than not. Another way of putting that is that the reason why it seems like these debates have been settled

is that everyone's been institutionalized. to put it in Shawshank terms. Like, they're just cowards now. And it doesn't really matter what they believe. I mean, believe's got nothing to do with it. It's like, what are you willing to fight for? And the answer is not much. Like, Scott Besant, who I'm not a huge fan of,

but he is the smartest, most serious person on that financial team, has to wait until after we lose trillions of dollars of value to say, see, I was kind of right. Right? He doesn't have the ability to persuade Trump not to do things until reality backs up his position. And he doesn't have the willingness to fight for these things at a high enough level to prevent bad things from happening. The story from the first term, I mean, there were so many people, Paul Ryan, who's chief among them, they would talk about you guys don't understand the number of things that we prevented from happening. Those people don't

exist in this administration for the most part. I'm sure we'll get stories about some things being prevented from happening that will make your, you know, hair stand on end. But the reality is, is that these people were picked. I mean, all those loyalty tests, who were the real patriots on January, you know, six, all that kind of stuff that's been reported for a long time? There's a reason for that. You guys been covering it on the, on the, you know, the prosecutor's, you know, side,

you know, going back to the Eric Adams thing. this administration is picking people that it doesn't, the first priority isn't what they believe. It's how supine they're willing to be and deferential to Donald Trump's authority and how much they're willing to sublimate any of their own convictions to whatever Donald Trump says. And so by that standard,

you get a lot of people with some crazy-ass ideas, but the crazy-ass ideas are still secondary to the just abject loyalty to Trump and that's the real difference between 1.0 and 2.0. Wait, can I jump in on that real fast? I think, you know, one of the things about Trump there, he's ignorant of many things, but he's a very politically shrewd person.

I mean, you can't look at winning two presidential elections. You can't look at his comebacks from, you know, political, you know, from political ruin time and time again and not say the guy doesn't have some shrewd political instincts. And here's one of them that he has. I think you hacked early on. that very few people will actually, actually, truly bear any risk for their political convictions at all.

And so they will posture online, they will say this and that, and talk about, like, you know, how the barrack soldier while he's heading to the front is like, I can't wait to get to the enemy. And then when he's at the front, it's like, how can I dig a deeper hole to hide from the enemy? this is he realized that very few people will engage will bear any risk this include and we've seen this with Republican members of Congress and Republican senators for years we're starting to see it and media personalities just and media personalities and we're starting to see it with more institutions so one of the things about the Paul White's letter and the immediate Paul Weiss capitulation there were two big lessons there one was you had this giant very wealthy institution predominantly

on the left, Trump came at them frontally. And I can imagine that if one day before Trump came at them frontally, almost to a person, they would say, we're strong, we're brave, we're strong, we're brave. Then he comes at them. They prove not to be a stronger brave. And then you have the other part of this is the community around Paul Weiss doesn't rally to help Paul Weiss. According to the Paul Weiss chair, some of them start trying to poach Paul Weiss's liars. Some of them start trying to poach Paul Weiss's clients. And so what you see, is Trump understands a couple of things. People are not as brave as they imagine that they'll be. And then when stuff hits the fan, a lot of people will start looking for their angle for themselves

rather than defending higher principle. When you combine those two things, then you realize how Trump has exerting such remarkable power over the American body politic right now is he realized people are not as brave as they think they are. Can I add one important point? I think it's an important point to what David is saying. It's that, but I would also say, Trump also recognizes, I think, because he sees this, he knows this about himself, that it's not just that people won't stand up for the beliefs that they have articulated or that they seem to hold. It's that a lot of people in politics don't believe anything. Like, they don't actually really care about stuff, right? I mean, it's a means to an end. They articulate conservative

views to win in red states, but they don't really care. they want to be in politics to be famous or to be on television or to cast votes or because they think it's prestigious. I mean, this is, again, one of the things that I think has been sort of a rude awakening for me over the past decade is all of these people whom I'd gotten to know over the 25 years in the conservative movement who, you know, would thunder make loud and aggressive arguments about free trade and tariffs. and then just capitulate at a moment's notice. Some of them I think it's true. They just won't defend it when there's pressure. They worry about not being close to power. They worry about saying the wrong thing.

But I think for some of them, they never really believed it that much. And I think Trump, as somebody who I don't think has, deeply held views, recognizes that in a lot of the people he works with. With MX Platinum, access to exclusive MX pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side.

Being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Yannex. Did you lock the front door? Check.

Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? I'm looking into it

Stress less about security Choose security solutions from TELUS For peace of mind at home and online Visit tellus.com slash total security To learn more Conditions apply Speaking along these lines a bit I wanted to also compare the first Trump administration

To the second Trump administration Looking through the lens of the vice president And Mike Pence and J.D. Vance Can you imagine for a moment that January 6th didn't happen So take that just totally out of consideration for a moment. What would you think about Mike Pence being replaced by J.D. Vans, what the biggest differences were, et cetera, et cetera.

You take January 6th out of it and I would say, okay, replacing Mike Pence with J.D. Vance is a signal of an ideological shift or a signal of that Trump, I mean, because if we've talked about Trump doesn't have much of an ideology, although I, I, I think we sometimes exaggerate how little ideology he had. There are some things he's been pretty consistent on over the years, tariffs, immigration, et cetera. So you would look at it and you'd say, wait, is this meaning that this really is the next turn of the ideological evolution of the Republican Party? The last vestiges of Reagan republicanism are being tossed aside in favor of JD Vince. But the more accurate, Reid would probably be, he just doesn't like Mike Pence. Mike Pence frustrated him too much, and now he wants somebody who will frustrate him less

and is more aligned, more prone to just do whatever he wants. And I think that when we talk about influence, about the president, who has more influence over the president, I think, you know, we're going on a very partial record, but it seems to me that Pence had more influence. And Vance is, may say things, but ultimately, Vance is the enabler. You know, Pence was somebody who was selected as a kind of concession

to Trump's perceptions of the old Republican Party. Look, look evangelicals. I have an evangelical vice president. Look, conservatives. I have a traditional conservative vice president. He doesn't need any of that anymore. None of that. And one of the things we know is that there was,

influence that that Reagan side had on Trump, often kind of by throwing their body in front of him, but there was influence there. What influence does J.D. Vance have? One of the insights from the signal chat was basically, hey, he raises his hand, not sure about this. They do it anyway. All right, I'm going to go support this. I mean, you know, so here you had the first big military action of the Trump presidency from, you know, thanks to the ridiculous opposite. of the Trump administration. We now have some insight into the dynamics. And it looked like Stephen Miller just waltzed into that chat

and big-footed the heck out of J.D. Vance. And so I think J.D. Vance is in the inner circle. But being in the inner circle is not the same thing as influence. Jonah, is J.D. Vance the heir to the new Republican Party? No. I think there are two ways to talk about this. And I know a lot of people who just simply assert that Vance is, you know, next in line going to be the, not only is he going to be the candidate in 2028,

but he'll obviously win. And I think those are bootstrapping assumptions one after the other that are very difficult to logically defend. Of the field, I think Vance has the best chances of being the nominee, because we don't know who the field is. And so you can't ascribe probabilities to anybody else, really. But I think if you gave me a bet where I got to bet on Vance or bet on the field, bet on everybody else,

I'd bet on everybody else. Like I think he's got like a 25%, 30% chance of being the nominee, which is better than anybody else you can name right now because we're so far out. But it's not like a lock by any stretch of the imagination. And I find the wishcasting on a lot, on the Vance crowds part, really kind of remarkable where they just sort of think that Trump's cult of personality gets passed along as his inheritance. And it just doesn't work like that. It used to be, it reminds me a lot of the people who thought that because Bill Clinton was a really, really good politician, that it became community property and therefore Hillary was a really, really good politician.

right? And it's like, if my wife knows how to play the piano, that doesn't mean I know how to play the piano. Just because Bill was good doesn't mean Hillary was good. And there was a lot of projection that way, there are a lot of people in Vance World who want to believe that because he is the most appealing guy to a small slice of the MAGA coalition, that therefore he will get the entirety of the MAGA coalition. Do we really think that, like, first of all, Ron DeSantis is going to be like, oh, well, J.D. Vance was Trump's vice president. So I have to defer to him out of respect. I will, I shall therefore not seek nor accept the nomination of my party for president. Like, you know, Tom Cotton, you know, that guy, you know, with a thousand-yard stare is going to

like say, yeah, no, I'm scared of dealing with J.D. Vance. It's just not going to happen. And so there's going to be a contest. I do think he has captured a certain, he has won the hearts and minds of the sort of the neo-isolationist, sovereigns, non-interventionist, whatever that crowd is, He's won them over. He's their guy to a certain extent. And he's probably got an advantage to some extent with the people who just want to reward Maga, you know, loyalty to Trump. But other than that, I don't think he, I never thought he was that particularly good a politician of the, what was it, the six senators that ran that were the super Trumpy back by Trump and Peter Thiel on those guys in the 2022 cycle. Five of them lost.

And J.D. Vance barely won by like six. points when Normie Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, won by like 28 points, which means a whole bunch of people who wanted to vote for a Republican didn't want to vote for Vance because they didn't like them. I don't think Vance has gotten more likable or expanded his appeal since he's been Trump's vice president. So I'm very skeptical of all this Vance talk. Steve, did J.D. Vance kill the Pope. No, I'm kidding. He did not. Can you prove that? He did not. I think that the big difference between Pence and Vance, a number of them, but I think the biggest one is that Mike Pence was a check on Trump's authoritarian instincts,

and to the extent that he has him, Trump's ideological views. Did you, though, before January 6th, did you think Mike Pence was a check on Trump? I did. I did. Okay. Well, I think you could see from some of the, I mean, just having reported on some of the internal policy fights. I mean, I think that Trump's instincts would have had him impose many, many more tariffs across a much wider number of countries than he did had J.D. Vance not been in his ear. I think his instincts on pulling out of Afghanistan early was something that Pence weighed in strongly

against. There's this moment Pence describes in his book where he meets Vladimir Putin and effectively says, you know, shakes his hand and effectively says, hey, don't mess with our elections anymore. J.D. Vance would never say or do anything like that. So I think Pence was a pretty effective. I don't think, I think it's become clearer in retrospect and, and starker in contrast to J.D. Vance. But I think Pence was influential. And I think it was, you could see it. You could trace it if you were talking to folks in the administration. There isn't anybody doing that. And not only is J.D. Vance not serving as that chat, but he affirms Trump's authoritarian instincts

and pulls him further in his own ideological direction. I think that's the main difference between the two. And, you know, when Trump picked J.D. Vance, there was, I think, the general sense, the conventional wisdom as it gelled was he picked J.D. Vance because J.D. Vance was sort of in line with MAGA thinking. So he was, you know, he was MAGA like Trump. I guess my own view was at the time and continues to be, Vance is something more like MAGA Plus. He's pulling Trump further along those lines.

If you think about some of the things that Vance has said publicly about, you know, this post-liberal moment and the things that he wants to do, he's just unapologetic about it. He gave these interviews or he said in a podcast, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. He has talked openly about being in this, quote,

late Republican period. And he said, if we're going to push back against it, we have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with. He said that before he was in the administration. This is back in 2021. So, J.D. Vance has shown sort of a comfort with sort of broader authoritarian impulses.

And I think now when Donald Trump has those impulses, he's not only not hearing that he shouldn't do these things, he's having somebody who's egging him on. Okay. Not worth your time. There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there. But one of the oldest oldies is back, and that's that we didn't land on the moon. And it seems to be picking up some traction with the MAGA right, at least, or I don't know that that's fair. I think MAGA right can often be tagged for Trump voters.

Here, I think we mean the pundit MAGA influencer right, the like very online MAGA, if that makes sense, not just like random Trump voters. I think suddenly don't believe we landed on the moon. But Candace Owen, for instance, said that NASA is fake and gay. I don't know how fake things can also be gay, but sure, okay? So there's some questions about this. One, is it ever worth our time to talk about this stuff? But maybe two, why are conspiracy theories so popular right now?

Is it actually some sort of maga thing, or is it just that overall conspiracy theories become more popular in an era of social media? And this is just, you know, it's inevitable on the right and the left. The left has all sorts of conspiracy theories. believe in. Why the moon landing? Why has that been an obsession for so long? And there was one theory that I read that I was kind of like, oh, well, that wouldn't be great, that part of it is actually the Russian influence of trying to diminish American accomplishments. And so the reason that you make the conspiracy theory about the moon landing is because it's one of the premier

American accomplishments against the Soviet Union. And within that Cold War context, so if they can diminish that, make the American right question whether that even happened, it's harder to believe in American exceptionalism, I guess. So, David, do you believe we landed on the moon? Do I believe we? Yeah. Of course. You know, I'm glad you raised the latter point, which is, I saw somebody the other day saying, Twitter, except only American accounts. In other words, if you had a social media platform and we could, we could ensure that only American users used it or only people residing in America used it, I think you would actually be surprised at how different Twitter was. Yep, yep, yep, yep, thousand times, yes, yes. So a lot of what sort of the MAGA-Rite calls engagement or views as engagement is often bot farming.

It is often... Based in Russia. Yes, yes, yes. Also in India and some other places, but yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's scattered around the country, Macedonia, some of it. I mean, you can go through a list. So, yeah, I mean, it is actually the case

that there are a lot of Americans who are so distrustful of institutions and authority now that they are eager. It's not that they are open to the idea that they have been lied to. They're eager for confirmation. that they've been lied to, that they've become so anti-institutional

or so opposed to anything that smacks of the old sort of Cold War, post-war regime, that they're just ready for it. They're ready-willing and able. That population does exist. But what's fascinating to me is I can encounter lots of aspects of MAGA in the real world.

Lots of aspects of MAGA that I see on Twitter I encounter in the real world. But this super extreme, the moon landing, et cetera, that I don't see as much. I just don't encounter that as much. And I do often wonder how much of this is really being gened up and amplified and amplified by the particular dynamics, particularly on X. So I think about that a lot. But at the same time, we can't ignore the fact that we do have a population of Americans

who are so alienated from American political and cultural life that they're open to believing almost anything negative about the other, about them, about they. And so that is destabilizing. And, you know, I don't exaggerate that, I don't think we should exaggerate about how much more it is now than it used to be. I've encountered conspiracy theorists all growing up.

But when I was encountering conspiracy theorists growing up, often what I was encountering was an otherwise healthy, normal functioning person who had these sort of conspiracies as like a side quirk. Oh, Jim, he's an awesome dude, but don't get him going on Kennedy assassination, like that kind of thing. But now you're seeing much more where the conspiracy becomes the identity. It's not the hobby, it's the identity. It's not the quirk.

It's the essence. And that is, I think, one of the changes that we've seen. Hard to say how prevalent it is because of that. that very issue you identify, Sarah, but it is real. Steve, it seems to me that if I were trying to have a grand MAGA strategy, I would want the main conspiracy theory to be 9-11 trutherness, because that discredits the part of the right that you're trying to cut off from now the Republican Party brand.

The moon landing doesn't do a lot for me. We can sort of handle Russia now. Most of the people voting today weren't alive then. they don't remember the Soviet Union. And lo and behold, we did have a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin publicly say that he questions the acceptable narrative on 9-11 and that maybe it was the demolition of Building 7 in New York versus that it fell due to structural damage.

So, yeah, more conspiracy theories. What do you think? it's not so much top down as it is bottom up. So I don't think this is like MAGA strategist saying, hey, here's how we can discredit the, you know, neocon right, let's question 9-11 rather than moon landing. It's just, I think it's much more organic than that. But I think that, you know, what David describes about Jim

and his quirky conspiracies, it was the case, you know, back before the internet that people who had these quirky views were, I think, a bit more reluctant to share them. And if they did, they did so almost sheepishly or apologetically. Half jokingly. Yeah, in a conversation with you would maybe float it to see how you reacted. And then when you looked at them like they were crazy because the shit they were saying was crazy, then they would stop saying that crazy stuff.

Now, with the ability to go online and find support for sort of anything and everything, people are much more inclined to be public about these views. And when you have somebody like Tucker Carlson who, you know, at this point, seemingly embraces any conspiracy theory at all just to embrace the, it's almost like it's more about embracing the conspiracy theory than it is about the stuff that he actually believes. But, you know, we can actually trace this statement from Senator Ron Johnson, you know, was a pretty conventional businessman from Wisconsin, knew him reasonably well, used to see him a lot. Capitol Hill, elected sort of in the Tea Party era as a small government anti-Obamacare guy. I would say had some quirky views, was not a typical politician in some ways. I think one of the reasons he was elected was because he didn't present as a normal politician and he wanted to come and be kind of a disruptor, but maybe not a crazy person.

But the stuff he's saying is crazy now. And I think the reason that he was asked about that, the reason he said what he said was because Tucker Carlson had on a former representative named Kurt Weldon, who has long been a conspiracy theorist about 9-11, long been discredited, you know, talk to anybody who served in Congress with him. And, you know, the conversations you'll have is, wow, what happened to Kurt Weldon? And Tucker has him on. Weldon, I mean, When when you watch the interview, Weldon is sort of, you know, spittle-flect assertions about 9-11 and Building 7 and suggesting this massive conspiracy that the U.S. government may have been involved or behind or certainly covered up what actually happened on 9-11. And I think part of the reason that these things take off the way that they do is because of the speed of the Internet. and the sort of velocity of information these days. But it's also because, as David suggests, you know, a lot of the big things that people were told over the years have turned out not to be true, right?

I mean, when you can point to something like the, you know, Dan Rather attempt to discredit George W. Bush on 60 minutes based on forged documents. And people say like, well, gosh, if people I trusted were doing that, why should I believe them on this other stuff? And you could, you know, people will point to weapons of mass destruction Iraq, things that they were told before the financial collapse and all of these things

where, you know, you can point to certainly point to COVID and some of the things that people were told during COVID. And people say, like, I don't believe any of these authoritative figures anymore. I'm going to believe what I want to believe. I think part of this is also the fall of the generalist when everyone, when we lived in a world where being a generalist, was what everyone was and was enough to get you a job and career and provide for your family,

it's much harder to have a conspiracy theory. When now everyone is a specialist, so someone on the other end of the circle of specialization doesn't know anything about that specialization. It's really hard to understand how MMR vaccines work, for instance. Or it's really hard to understand why you can't see stars in the black sky on the moon, although that one's really not that hard to understand.

But you know what I mean? Like, it's people notice problems in media, I've noticed, when it's in their specialty. They're like, oh my gosh, that's just not true. Like, I actually know a lot about this. But then when that same media source covers something they don't know about, they just assume whatever bad thing

they're being told about that institution. Like the institution I'm in, good. everyone else's institution definitely bad and corrupt and evil because I'm not a specialist in that Jonah I feel like if anyone on this podcast believes in conspiracy theories it's definitely you

absolutely not he's making a shocked face I am not a conspiracy theory guy in part because part of my whole argument for years is like when I try to tell people you know like when you get asked the question what's one thing about Washington that normal people don't realize

and the answer, my answer, which is the same as you've all, Levin's answer, we've been talking about this for years, is nobody in Washington runs anything, right? This idea that somehow really smart people can plan 25 moves ahead and account for all the variables that are going to come into play. And once they roll out their press release. I mean, they're adding a reporter to their signal chat. Right. So like the whole idea, everyone always thinks that there's some group behind some red rope that really is calling the shots.

Which gets me to my sort of answer to all all this. So first of all, you said one of the oldest conspiracy theories. The moon landing stuff is one of the younger conspiracy theories. I mean, protocols are the elders of Zion. Now that's an old, you know, conspiracy theory. And that's so hot right now, too. And I think in some ways for the same reason. I agree with everything

David and with what all you guys said the only thing I would add on that part is that conspiracy theories are only fun and psychically rewarding if you're poking at something that has

societal esteem and status a conspiracy theory about how like Lake Erie got polluted no one cares about right but like toppling you know people's admiration for the moon landing that has some social that has some like cultural status to it it's turning over a big turtle same thing with going after jews you get a reaction out of it and you can tell why so many of the conspiracy theories are bad faith because they're always about things that people have strong feelings about and never about

things that people don't have strong feelings about because the whole point is to poke at people's strong feelings. And so I will just close on that note by saying, Sarah, you said in your setup how you don't possibly, can't understand how something can be both fake and gay. Well, let me tell you a story. My mom and a bunch of her gay friends were in Las Vegas once and they were having a grand time, as you can imagine, probably a pretty boozy lunch. And then after lunch, they went to the Liberace Museum where a sort of Jim Jim Bullock, kind of very gay docent of the Liberace Museum, brought them to see the Holy of Holies at the Liberace Museum, the world's largest rhinestone.

And when they unveiled it, my mom and all of her friends burst out laughing and got ejected from the Liberace Museum. And I put it to you that Liberace's largest rhinestone, which is a fake gem, is both fake and gay. And so there you go. Something can be fake and gay. Wow. I didn't see how you could possibly get there.

I went into the story very skeptical. Okay, well, with that, congratulations again on the SCOTUS blog acquisition. This was the Dispatch podcast. I think next week we do a similar thing about the left, about the goings-on of the tectonic plates in the Democratic Party. Thanks for joining. Bye. I'm going to be.