The Dispatch Podcast - Thin Ice on the Eastern Front | Roundtable

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Mike Warren to discuss President Donald Trump’s recent shift on Ukraine and how the MAGA movement might respond to it before revisiting ABC’s brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. The Agenda:—Russia’s rising aggression—The situation on the Ukrainian frontline—MAGA’s response—Trump’s U.N. speech—Free speech under the Trump administration—Trump's Department of Justice—Jimmy Kimmel update—Comey indictment—NWYT: Being a dumb child Show Notes:—Reporting on the Comey indictment 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 access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we'll discuss Russia and Ukraine. Is the United States taking a new approach?

We'll also go deeper on free speech, the Trump administration, and the president's campaign of retribution. And finally, and not worth your time. discussion of childhood and danger. You won't want to miss Jonah Goldberg's big reveal. I'm joined today by my aforementioned dispatch co-founder Jonah Goldberg, as well as dispatch colleague Michael Warren and David French of the New York Times. Let's dive right in. We had some pretty significant changes rhetorically from the Trump administration with respect to the war in Russia this week. Donald Trump in an interview and then in his speech at the UN General Assembly and then in the social media post began to lay out what is a very different approach to

Russia than he had pursued for the first nine months, eight and a half months of his presidency. Mike, can you take us through what we saw this week, what the differences are? and where you think that leaves us today? Well, if you were sort of starting from nowhere and you fired up your Truth Social app on Tuesday afternoon, you would have been shocked, I think, to have seen this statement from Donald Trump.

It was something like around 2.30 in the afternoon. He's up in New York, by the way, at this time, for the UN General Assembly meeting. I'll quote a little bit. of the truth post. After getting, this is from Donald Trump, after getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine slash Russia military and economic situation,

and after seeing the economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win, all caps, win all of Ukraine back to its original form. With time, patience in the financial support of Europe and in particular NATO, the original borders from where this war started is very much an option.

Why not? He goes on to basically say Russia has been fighting an aimless war for three and a half years, calls Russia a paper tiger, or says it looks like a paper tiger. I mean, again, if you had gone into a coma,

you know, on March 1st of this year, and then woke up and saw this truth socially, you'd think, I mean, you'd be baffled to, and wondering what happened in those ensuing months. So I think in the immediate sense, he had a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky in New York just before he posted this.

And Vladimir Zelensky was on a Brett Beyer's show on Fox News that evening and was sort of in his diplomatic way, said the relationship has gotten better, a lot better, since that February, I think 28th meeting in the Oval Office. in which the president and the vice president upbraided Zelensky basically said he was ungrateful and sort of kicked off what would be several months of the Trump administration, really kind of looking to Russia for a solution or an end to the war and really looking at Ukraine as kind of a minor partner, even though Ukraine was the one that was invaded three and a half years ago.

I think what's happened since then to get us to this point, but I think other folks might have some more to add to this, is essentially Trump losing patience with Putin, with Vladimir Putin. There was that Alaska meeting in August that I think Trump had hopes would sort of kick off this grand Nobel Peace Prize winning peace talk. and it kind of fizzled out, nothing really happened. And it was really, I think, used by Vladimir Putin as a bit of a smokescreen. And what we've seen over the last month or so is shocker, more aggression from Russia, more incursions, right? There's Poland, there's Latvia, and Denmark have all seen incursions of Russian drones or military aircraft over the past couple of weeks and even just this week.

And Zelensky seems to think that that has a lot to do with where he's certainly saying that has a lot to do with what has changed in the relationship between himself and Donald Trump and also Donald Trump's view. I've talked to some other people who have some maybe more nuanced views about what is going on here, but it's a stunning reversal. I'm not saying it's going to last. We could wake up tomorrow, and Donald Trump says the exact opposite on Twitter or on his truth social.

But where we are, we can't overstate what a big moment it is for Donald Trump, the American president, to be saying, Ukraine should and can win the war and retain all of their basically 1991 borders from the breakup of the Soviet Union. That would be a huge shift from an administration that was. basically just a couple months ago saying, maybe give up on Crimea and some of these other places in eastern Ukraine that Russia has gained control over over the last 11 years. Yeah, I mean, there was serious talk of land swaps, and the Ukrainians have to be realistic about this. And of course, they're going to have to give up some of their territory.

I want to get it a number of different things related to these developments, including how much stock we should put in them, is this temporary? have we seen any actions related to this rhetoric? But before we get there, Jonah, let me turn to you on this question of what's changed. I think Mike makes a pretty persuasive case that in the aftermath of this summit in Anchorage, where they got together, Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin. This followed months and months of the United States offering warm and friendly rhetoric to Russia, praise for Putin, Marco Rubio, holding out the possibility of broad economic cooperation between the United States and Russia, welcoming Russia back into sort of the civilized nations of the world.

I mean, this really was, I don't know if it was a strategy, but this was a pretty clearly defined approach from the Trump administration toward Russia with respect to this war. And again, signaling in public again and again that Ukraine was going to have to give up. quite a bit. This comes to a screeching hall at least rhetorically this week, and Mike makes the case that some of this may just be due to Trump being embarrassed by Putin. It really is the case that we saw a dramatic escalation in drone attacks on major cities after the summit in Alaska. We did see, as Mike had pointed out, drone incursions into NATO cities. Is it just a matter of Trump being embarrassed or are there other things at play here that led to this rhetorical change a couple things one i generally agree with mike as well the only place where i would

disagree with him um is where he says you cannot overstate the significance of this and i think you can overstate it um because it is at the end of the day just words right until there's like Like, if you're in Kerson in your basement hiding with your kids during a bomb raid and someone comes in, did you hear that Donald Trump now says we can win the war? You're glad to hear it, but it doesn't actually change your material circumstances all that much until he puts actions behind it. I also would say, Steve, I think you left out one of the most significant parts of the escalation from Trump. I mean, escalation from Putin, which was, I think it was the Monday, maybe the Tuesday after the Alaska summit, Russian forces bombed a factory in a part of Ukraine. They had never basically had not touched during the war, because it's all the way in the West.

And the only thing that was significant about this factory that made, I think, coffee makers is it was American owned or partially American owned. And it was not the case that was some stray drone that went off course from Kiev and went another 900 miles or anything like that. It was a deliberate target. There was a certain language to this kind of stuff, you know, particularly from Russia where they cross the border by accident to see what the reaction is. And then if there isn't a big reaction, the next time they cross the border, it's a little more significant and then a little more significant. And then if you do get a reaction, you say, they get to say, oh, you guys are being provocative because you didn't have problems with these things in the past kind of thing. Putin's been playing that game since the summit. He's done it with Poland.

You're right with all these, with the Baltics. And I think at some level, someone has told Trump that he's doing this, and it's probably pissed him off. I suspect that one of the things that has not gotten a lot of attention is that this change of mind came after his two-day state visit in the UK, which was, incredibly stage managed, where basically they were kind of brilliant about it. It was almost like those old stories about the Tsar visiting the Potemkin village. There was no interaction with the public whatsoever while he was in the UK. It was all behind security cordons, and it made it seem like he was very well-received. And I think that, you know, Kirstenarmer, for whatever other problems I have with him, and I have many,

he's pretty good on Ukraine and I think that he may have been he may have worked on him as I think King Charles may have worked on him about this stuff and hearing these kinds of messages from those guys while you're being lavishly fetid um by the royal family probably had some effect the last thing I'd say is look Trump is now and I have to see you guys I've been away so like you guys have been more in touch with the reporting when I left the country um for my vacation he had solved six intractable wars, according to him. And when I got back, I found out it's now seven. And I don't know what this seventh war was that he stopped.

I actually, frankly, don't know what the first six are either. But I think that part of what his strategy might be is someone has told him maybe, and there's pure speculation on my part, look, they're probably never going to give you a Nobel Prize. But they're definitely not going to give you a Nobel Prize if you sound like you're okay with what Russia is doing with Ukraine. So if you want to be a plausible messenger as like this peace guy, you've got to have a bigger problem with what Putin is doing than what you've had so far. And so he's changing the rhetorical stance. There's also some foreign policy people who think that this is his effort to basically dump this all back in the EU's lap. So I just don't know.

I mean, I honestly don't know. I welcome it. You always, as my friend Ramesh Pannu likes to say, whenever you always want to welcome flip-flopping in politics when they flip from the wrong position to your position. So I'm glad that he's changed a rhetorical position. But I would be much happier if he kept spewing nonsense, but actually was upping the arm shipments to Ukraine. David, I mean, I think Jonah makes a good case.

I don't buy the argument that the UK trip probably, you know, may have had a big influence on him. He goes overseas and he's lavishly praised by other leaders for doing the right thing as they push him to adopt their views on Ukraine or whatever the topic of the day is. I wonder, David, if you think it's possible that Trump was presented with some new information here, that maybe the sense that this is just a rhetorical change, that he's realized that Putin is kind of embarrassing him here, that maybe it's not just about Trump and his ego, but there's actually new information that there might be changes on the ground, that he might have been presented with compelling intelligence that suggests he's been

sort of riding the wrong horse, as it were. And I say this because of a couple different comments that we caught from both Trump and Zelensky over the past week. Trump, as Mike pointed out when he read the truth social post, began the post by saying, after getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine military and economic situation. And then he explains his change. Trump is not usually someone who likes to admit that there was something he doesn't know. You know, he has that rhetorical device where he says, many people are just learning.

But of course, that's sort of an announcement that Trump himself has just learned. But in this case, he's saying, hey, I didn't know as much before. I now know more. And then Zelensky, within the same 24 hours, said, I'm very grateful to Trump. I can't share the details right now. Trump possesses very important information about the front. Is it possible that there's some new and compelling intelligence that led to this change? And what's your assessment of where the war stands today?

Steve, from your lips to God's ears is all I could say. I mean, I hope, I hope against hope, that there is some information. Maybe there is some optimism about an offensive that has some hope of success, or there is some intel about the Russian, the state of the Russian economy or the state of the Russian military and the, I mean, I don't know. We don't know what we don't know. But what we do seem to know would be very surprising to me if there was some sort of big shift happening on in on the front it really does feel even though the war there's this a really

excellent piece by neil ferguson that i was reading yesterday about sort of the state of the war and its evolution how it started off as this tank war then it moved into this artillery war and now it is this just unbelievably brutal drone war unlike what anything is you know anything anybody has ever seen. And one of the theories was that the drone war would diminish casualties, but no, the drone war is just escalating casualties and that Russia is losing 7,000 troops a week, killed and injured, which is just an astonishing attrition rate. But they're able to replenish those losses. And I don't know. Again, we don't know what we don't know. We could wake up tomorrow to some dazzling breakthrough. Again, that would shock me. But I'm open to be

shocked because the current reality of the war seems to be falling into a pattern that we've seen before in wars of attrition where the aggressor is sort of thinking one more big push and we'll have this and the defender is if we hold out just a little longer they'll lose their momentum and and i think that you know one of the one of the problems with wars of attrition is sometimes that is in fact true sometimes it is in fact true that one more big push does it or, yeah, we do hold out until we exhaust them. But often it is just a fallacy. It's just one more big push turns into bloody mess,

and then the generals turn around and say, well, we weaken them. The next one will do it. But the reality on the front right now is very similar to what it's been for a while. Russia is taking immense losses for minimal gains, but they are gains. and Ukraine is pushing Russia back in some isolated countertacks here and there. Russia had, you know, about a month ago, there were some hopes for a modest breakthrough that Ukraine dashed immediately after there was sort of an immediate penetration in the lines. At the same time, Ukraine is ramping up its drone capacity to strike into Russia.

At the same time, Russia is massively ramping up its drone production. Russia has moved to almost a full war economy. And one thing that is interesting to me is there are seemingly no indications that Putin feels less confident. And if Zelensky is feeling confident and there's no indications that Putin's less confident, it just feels to me like more stalemate or it's not exactly correct to call it a stalemate. But the one thing that was also a little bit disturbing, not a little, a lot disturbing, a number of people are, as a number of people are saying, the Europeans are ramping up.

They are absolutely ramping up. Germany is spending more, but it takes time, and the Germans in particular are not moving with alacrity. And so there's a real need for alacrity here. And the other thing that is very interesting is let's look at that true social post. When you parse it, there's this fascinating thing where he talks about NATO as if it's like another entity. It says, I wish both countries well, we will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO,

to do what they want with them. Okay. Well, NATO is us, too. I sincerely hope the dispatch podcast continues to do the hard work that it needs to do. Exactly. Exactly. And so that makes me wonder, is what he's saying basically here is, I'm going to sell weapons to Germany, UK, and then they can sell them to Ukraine or give them to Ukraine. I did not see in there that we're going to pour resources into this effort. I didn't see some of that language. So I'm less optimistic. I'm eager to hear if there is anything that is a reason to believe that there's a hope for a

breakthrough that could reverse all of these Russian gains and stop Russian advances. But I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing it. That does not mean that it's not there. Let me come back to you, David. There are two theories that I've heard from some of my pro-Trump friends about this. Both of them, I think, trying to diminish the sense that this is this dramatic pivot and also make it consistent with Trump's basic approach to the war and basic approach to the world.

So one of them goes like this. Trump said originally that his goal was to end the war fast. For months and months, he tried to placate Russia to humor Russia. to promise Russia, you know, economic benefits, what have you, so that Russia would end the war fast, even suggesting Russia could keep Ukrainian territory. And he's now realized that that's not going to happen, that that is not going to end the war fast because Russia doesn't want it to end the war fast. And now what Trump has realized is that the best way to end the war fast is to do what he's doing here, say what he's saying here.

So that's sort of theory number one. And the second, and these are maybe complementary theories, is that this is Trump just doing what he's wanted to do all along, which is shift the burden from the United States to Europe. And, you know, you see it in his rhetoric about NATO. You, we haven't seen a lot of action. And I'm interested in getting the sense from all three of you about what we should look for in terms of concrete action to tell us if this really is a change. But that, in effect, this is just Trump using different rhetoric to achieve the same.

end, and that same end is to get the United States out, to have us back off. As you point out, you know, NATO feels like this hovering third entity, not something that the United States has driven and supported, been sort of the key to for decades. Do you buy, David, either one of those theories from the sort of Trump world to explain what's happening here? Not really. I have a different. understanding of this. And it's rooted in a conversation that I had at the very beginning of this term with very, a person probably, you know, a person who may have been watching this situation closer than virtually anyone, both military and diplomatic, and said, as Trump enters

all of this talk about solving it in 24 hours, he's going to run into a brick wall. He's going to experience two things. One is, this is not the same Vladimir Putin he was dealing with. than his first term. The Vladimir Putin he was dealing with in his first term conceived of himself as sort of this deft, do more with less diplomatic military operator who could with minimal use of force achieve maximal gains and then use all of his sort of diplomatic bullying, et cetera, to just sort of secure those gains. And you can see that. I mean, minimal force, maximal gains for a while in Syria. It was minimal force, maximal gain in Ukraine. He took Crimea with very little effort, right?

And then now Putin is drenched in blood, so to speak. He has almost a million casualties by that time. He is set on being a wartime Russian president who is going to win a war. At the same time, Trump is going to be running into a full-on-scale Ukrainian diplomatic counteroffensive where these guys know how to deal with authoritarian thugs, where they have been spending their entire lives in the shadow of an authoritarian. And so they sort of know how to speak that language in a way

to pull Trump more on side. They know how to maneuver in that world. And I thought that was very interesting. And then as you've seen the last eight months play out, eight to nine months play out, you've seen a lot of this. Putin has been nothing but totally intractable. I mean, totally unyielding. There is not one millimeter that he has backed away.

And at the same time, you have seen the Zelensky counteroffensive. The diplomatic, you know, they had that moment in February where I, you know, I think Zelensky was really caught off guard by the J.D. Vant snark. And there was a tough moment there. But you've seen this Zelensky diplomatic counteroffensive that really is this, we need America, we admire America, we receive, you know, it's all of the, And so on the one hand, he's just getting this brick wall of disrespect and disregard. And the other end, he's getting everything that he wants to hear.

And I think it's making a difference over time. But at the same time, the bottom line is, unless the message is the arsenal of democracy is on Ukraine's side, full stop, then what we're dealing with is just mainly the effect of him not being on Russia's side at last. It's a massive improvement, but it's not what we need. To me, what's been so interesting about what's happened over the past couple days is as much what we've seen in the shift in rhetoric, and what we haven't seen in terms of action or announcements, there were no announcements here that the Congress should move with dispatch to impose additional sanctions. There was no talk about really going from hammer and tongs after Russia.

I mean, when he talks about additional sanctions, he says, yeah, there are things we could do. We really need Russia, we really need Europe to do them first. We need Europe to stop buying, you know, gas, fuel. It's not, the United States is not doing the things that the United States could do to bring a hasty end to this war. Do you, Jonah, as we're thinking about sort of what's to come in the next couple weeks, are the things that you'll be looking for to help determine if this is more than just a rhetorical shift? I mean, are there actual policy differences that we would expect somebody like Trump to announce here in the coming days? Firing Elbridge Colby, that'd be a good sign. Look, I mean, I think we can overcomplicate this.

If large numbers of weapons start getting loaded onto, you know, ships and planes, that's a sign that he's serious. One of the things I worry about, the economists has had some good reporting on this. You know, the domestic political situation in Ukraine is not getting better. And, you know, the Russian strategy from the beginning has, you know, we use terrorism as too much and too many different contexts and all that kind of stuff. But it has been literally to, as a policy, to terrorize the civilian population by killing a bunch of civilian people, right? That's basically what they've been trying to do to weaken the domestic. resolve. Russia has the resources to maintain this insane conscription. You know, every time I have a Russia expert on my podcast, I'm always like, I remember reading all this stuff about how like 18,000

dead people and the Afghan war caused the fall of the Soviet Union. And we're getting 18,000 dead people every two weeks, you know, sometimes, sometimes, you know, close to that in a day, if it's a really bad, you know, day. And, you know, the part of the answer is, is, They're not conscripting from St. Petersburg or from Moscow, where the elite's kids are. And they don't give a rat's ass about the cannon fodder out in the Russian equivalent to flyover country. But the Russians, you know, not to sound like sting, I mean, but the Ukrainians, not to sound like sting, you know, they care about their children. And they have a much harder time conscripting people. The force conscription stuff is very unpopular at this point.

Because like at this point, if you haven't signed up, you don't want to sign up. you don't want to sign up right and um there's a huge ukrainian diaspora they haven't had elections in forever i will defend the ukrainians on that point because they have martial law very difficult to do when 10 percent of your population is abroad and another what 5 percent is fighting or mobilized but um there's some stuff on the corruption front was really bad and the the Ukrainian political system is more fragile right now than it's been in a while and i don't know if trump is looking at that and saying, well, this thing is going to go bad. I want to be able to say we could have won the whole thing if they had only listened to me because he thinks it's going

to implode. I mean, like, your question about is there some secret information that is prompting him to try to get out in front and Ferris Bueller this thing could work the other way? He could think Ukrainians are about to have a big success. He could also think that the Ukrainians are about to have a big failure. And he wants to say, it wasn't my fault. So I just, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, At this point, I can't imagine I'm alone on this, trying to put an enormous amount of weight on sounds that come out of Donald Trump's face as indicative of what will happen in the future is sort of a fool's game. And so the only things you do is you look for tangible stuff, more weapons, maybe helping

the Europeans use Russia's frozen assets to help fund. the budget shortfall in Ukraine. I mean, there are all sorts of those kinds of tangible, real things. But a bunch of words from Donald Trump, meh, you know, we'll see. So I want to get to a bunch of words from Donald Trump in his UN General Assembly speech in just a moment. But before we do that, let me just go around to you first, Mike, and then Joan and David, feel free to weigh in. What's the likely effect of this rhetorical shift with Trump's political base, with the MAGA base? Because one of the things that he had done, both before he was reelected and,

certainly in the months since, is change reality about the war and about who started the war. Remember, one of his main arguments for months has been that Zelensky started the war, that he's to blame. Sort of Zelensky, Biden, Putin. All of them share blame for this war. But the sort of MAGA world, if you listen to voices on Fox and elsewhere, about MAGA podcasts, have made Zelensky out to be the villain here. sort of with Putin, they're, you know, they're either neutral.

You have some, certainly some MAGA voices arguing that Putin is good, that he's more closely aligned to the United States, that he's anti-woke, just like they are. But MAGA has become hostile to Ukraine, opposed to it. You have the vice president of the United States who said he didn't care what happens in Ukraine. Does this matter to them? Can Trump bring them along? if he, if in two weeks we're talking about this here on this podcast and saying, wow, I'm surprised. These things that Jonah has said Trump should do to show that he's serious, he's done them. He seems to actually have changed his position here. What happens with MAGA, Mike?

I would say watch Marker Rubio. Pay attention to what Marker Rubio has to say because if you want to get into the, forgive the phrase, Kremlinology of MAGA and try to figure out how people are positioning them. I don't think J.D. Vance is flexible or is as flexible on this issue. I think he's pretty much staked out of position. I think Mark Rubio is more flexible. So you can kind of get a good sense of what he feels like he can do to sort of take the position that's in between full bore. Let's support Ukraine and Ukraine is the aggressor. Mike, let me jump in, there because we actually did hear something from Marco Rubio that I thought was interesting,

maybe notable, after Trump said this and said, hey, really maybe the thing to do is to go back to the original borders and all this talk of land swaps maybe didn't mean much, suggesting that the military, and that Ukraine was making progress militarily, suggesting that the war could be ended in military fashion. Rubio came out and said, hey, look, this war is not likely to be ended on the battlefield. This is going to be ended in negotiation. It's hard to know if he meant it as a correction to what Donald Trump had said, but it was different to a certain extent than what Donald Trump had said and probably more consistent with where the MAGA base would be on this stuff than what the president himself said. I thought it was the Secretary of State going native.

Like that was such a State Department kind of statement after. Fair. That's true. After what Donald Trump said. But I would say, okay, that I agree. I saw. all that statement as well. Let's see where it is in two weeks. I think the base and to the extent that they have media voices, folks on Fox News or whatever, they will go with Trump in whatever direction he takes this. So, yes, there are loud voices who have staked out this position that Ukraine is the bad guy. Zelensky is the bad guy. I think Republican voters are very flexible. They want to go where Donald Trump is. If Donald Trump turns out a dime for real here, they will turn on a dime with him. I don't think there is, I don't think this is the issue on which not even MAGA will follow

Trump because MAGA is too MAGA. Can I say one thing real quick? I know it's a little off, it's from the earlier topic, but I just want to say if we are talking about potential information that Donald Trump learned from Zelensky, this is just informed speculation. This is, I don't have any information on this, but I think it's important to note that August, September is a time when Ukraine has, has demonstrated some kind of military, either counteroffensive or incursion that, that has had some level of success. There was both Kersan and Kharkiv. They both, you know, did their counteroffensives in late August, early September. and then last year in September was the incursion into Kersk in Russia by the Ukrainian armed forces. So I'm not saying that that's also happening at this time around, but we are getting to that point where it's winter is coming. And so if there is something that Donald Trump has learned from Zelensky on the front, as Zelensky suggested, maybe it has something to do with something we're about to find out.

It would make sense for this time. but we haven't seen anything that suggests that. I'm just throwing that out there. So I wanted to get that out there just in case something happens and I'll look really pressure. Fair enough. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast.

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Search for the Remnant in your podcast app and hit the follow button. Now let's jump back into our conversation. Let's move to Trump's UN General Assembly speech. The president spoke to the United Nations this week. You had, I think, pro-Trump folks respond to Trump speech made a positive way. Our friend Mark Teeson from AEI was a speech writer for George W. Bush said it was the best speech that he has seen an American president give in that area. And he said he'd written some of them. But was thrilled by the speech who had others, Gary Kasparov and others say, this was a crazy speech.

The way I would summarize it, it was a sort of typical kind of thumb in your eye speech from Trump to the United Nations. I think in some ways making clear on a very justifiable and necessary basis, the shortcomings of the UN over the years and ongoing today. But if you're looking for a coherent statement of the Trump doctrine in this speech, you didn't get it. He the teleprompter went out. There was some riffing. You could see that he was sort of switching between prepared remarks and Trump just sort of being Trump. At times it felt like a political, a Trump political rally with people in the audience not really cheering him as they do when he gives, when he gives a speech at a rally. David, did you take anything from the General Assembly speech? Is there anything to be learned? Did he did he break new policy ground? Should we expect something different from Donald Trump? Trump as results of what he said there? We learned nothing. It was not important. It was Trump being Trump for several more, for an hour, whatever, however long it was.

You know, it's funny at some point, you know, while I think that Donald Trump wants to be taken seriously and literally to go back to, you know, revive some 2016 language, you know, his supporters took him seriously, but not literally, and the media took him literally, but not seriously. We've learned that all along Donald Trump wanted to be taken seriously and literally all the time, but he also wants to be taken seriously and literally when he reverses himself and then when he reverses himself again and when he engages in over-the-top rhetoric and when he uses more diplomatic rhetoric. And, you know, to me it was just like a greatest hits recording. I'm going to bray you over migration. I'm going to call climate change a hoax. I'm

going to talk about how great I am. I mean, what is it that we learned here. We learned through actions, really, I think, is a better way to put it. And I think here's what I think is that speech to be insignificant. What is significant is we have had now multiple Polish incursions into NATO airspace. We had Polish jets actually opened fire to shoot down drones, right? Or it was either Polish or Dutch jets opening fire. Here's what's fascinating to me. I think, and I would love to know if any of you guys, disagree with me. In previous times of very sensitive moments with Russia and NATO, America has been sort of at the tip of the spear of the response for two big reasons. One, we were the most

capable, in other words, we had most capacity to offer an immediate response. And number two, we wanted to send a message that the most capable member of the alliance is on the front line, on guard, on the front line. What's fascinating to me about these Polish and Estonian incursions, who intercepted them? Dutch jets, Italian jets, Polish jets, German jets, or German missile systems, I think, in Poland. What's missing from that list? What's missing from that list? And so that's it to me. Spanish, British, but no, the key term missing is American jets. And so, you know, some of this could be artifacts of rotations, you know, pre-scheduled rotations, but at the same time, even that, even that, if the eastern flank of NATO is under threat,

we should not be rotating out where there's not a very significant American presence there. And so I'm one thing that concerns me as we're moving forward, the UN speech, what was the only thing that was notable about it to me was it's, it is exactly normal for Donald Trump. And normal for Donald Trump means he's separating himself from everybody else, that he is he is putting himself outside and above everything else at a time when we don't need to be doing that particularly on the eastern flank of NATO. And so what we're seeing is this sort of, I welcome all of the rhetorical shifts, but we just continue to see this move toward where Donald Trump seems to be putting our allies, our partners, and everybody at arm's length or

beyond by his actions and also by his rhetoric. And that is the one thing that you see, that's relatively consistent over time, and that's what really alarms me. Jonah, I think what you'd hear from Trump people in response to David's point is, geez, if these were American jets, that would be highly provocative. Then you have basically the Americans seeking a confrontation or maybe responding to Russian incursions by making this more about the United States versus Russia rather than letting NATO do what NATO does. And as David points out, this is pretty consistent with Donald Trump.

This is part of, I mean, I don't buy the idea that there's a Trump doctrine. I don't think there's a Trump doctrine. I think this is almost all ad hoc as it comes to Donald Trump's thinking. But certainly he has aides and advisors who are building sort of the structure of an approach to the world that has the United States stepping back, not only not leading from behind, but in many cases, just not leading at all. And I think that's what they would say here. Why should the United States do this?

This isn't our continent. Yeah, okay, we're part of NATO. We got you in the background, but it's entirely appropriate that these would be Dutch jets. Yeah. And I think it is entirely appropriate that they're Dutch jets. If it was the Dutch's turn to be in the jets, right? If there was some order that said don't send American jets, even though they're the ones in the rotation, if there was some sense of saying America is not stepping up for its normal role, like if the normal procedures, if they open up the binder and they break that plastic thing and they read the code and say, what happens if Russia crosses the border? And if they're supposed to scramble American jets and they didn't because they didn't want to provoke Russia, screw that.

That's bad. If it just turns out that like, hey, you know, like they have a rotating cast to character. you know, on duty, that's a different matter to me. Let me just piggyback just for a second on what Jonah said about, is this the normal rotation? I totally get that. And I think there's entirely, it's entirely possible that this is just the Dutch turn or the Italian turn.

However, there's also a larger point that if the eastern flank is under threat, how bulked up are we? Why? Yeah, exactly. You know, what is the force composition? Because it could be, it's terrible if it was our turn and we didn't respond. And I'm not saying that I have zero evidence that that occurred.

But it is also terrible if we're not in the rotation the way we should be because we have barely extended our reach. And that is the concern I have more than, if it would be a grade A scandal if we didn't scramble jets when maybe the call came out and it was our turn. And that would be a great,

international scandal. But to me, perhaps the, the, a situation not as troubling, but very troubling would be, we just aren't there. We, we've delegated it to the Dutch, the Italians, and the Germans. And that, that is, that's very alarming to me. Yeah, I mean, I would say, I find it alarming that we, that he's doing what he's doing rhetorically. And we're, you know, if, if we're not there, just the fact that he's saying the stuff that he's saying. And while this is unfolding. Just two quick things. I'm really sick of all those talk about what would be provocative from America. You know, we've been told for three years that we, that NATO members can't be involved

in Ukraine. That would be provocative. Ukraine can't be aligned with NATO. That would be provocative. Meanwhile, Russia has a basically a massive mutual, not quite a mutual defense pact, but this massive, massive relationship with China. China is providing all sorts of material for the drones. And North Koreans are freaking fighting in Ukraine.

And we're not supposed to think that's provocative. So screw that noise about it being provocative. On the U.N. speech, I'm more with David on this. I don't really know what Mark Tusson's talking about. I agree. There were a lot of things in the speech that I kind of, you know, if I could get my partisan hat to fit again, that I would, you know, that I would like. And there were things, you know, like I have 30 years of columns reigning contempt on the U.N., so I'm fine with all of that. that. But the point of presidential rhetoric is to accomplish a policy goal. And if it's not

accomplishing a policy goal, then what is the point of it? And in the case of the UN, I mean, so point of presidential rhetoric is to accomplish a political goal or a policy goal. There's nothing that Trump said at the UN that is going to make the UN more likely to do the things he wants it to do right it was entirely for domestic consumption it was to get people at fox to say this is the greatest speech ever um it was to indulge himself and that's what it was and so like are there lots of quotes from it that you know pre 2015 Jonah goldberg would say oh that's awesome i can't imagine a president saying that at the u.n that'd be great sure but to what end right it was it was it was a supreme act of self-indulgence unconnected to a policy agenda as far as I could tell

David you had some thoughts on the whether the United States is actually supporting um in eastern Europe I yeah you know just one thing I want to make super clear uh is that this I the idea it's one idea that says okay if it was our jet's turn if we were on on station and didn't intercept, that's a major international scandal. Like, that's a major, major, major, grade A scandal within NATO. I don't have any information that that happened. The thing that I'm concerned about is that we weren't there to be on the schedule, if that makes sense.

In other words, in previous iterations of American commitment to Western Europe, we were very substantially there. We were, it was unmistakable. that if you were crossing that line, you are going to be encountering American forces. And that had a very successful. It was a very successful record of deterrence, by the way, unbroken record of deterrence

when America is forward deployed in strength. What I'm concerned about is that as we talk about NATO deployments, there's just less of us, much less than we have the capability to bring, by the way. There's just so much less of us there that when Putin does clock, cross that border, the composition of forces is going to be Dutch, Italian, etc., without that American buttressing. And when we talk about what we're trying to do with Putin, deterrence is

in all caps, you know, times Roman 36 point font, deter, deter, deter, this next step beyond the Ukraine war. And the best way to do it is through your strongest military partner. That doesn't mean that Italy and Poland shouldn't be absolutely bulking up on their defense, but we're still the one who has the most capability. We're going to be the one with the most capability for all of the foreseeable future. So we should be leading a response. Yeah, I would say capability and will. I mean, when you hear the president and his supporters continue to talk about the United States sort of withdrawing back to a focus on domestic issues, there's a real question about whether the United States would make good on its on its NATO obligations.

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Speaking of coming back to the United States, Mike, I want to turn to you with a series of new topics. You know, as we were putting this together and I was trying to come up with a second topic, maybe a third topic, we had a number that we discussed over the course of the last few days. There was the whole free speech controversy over Jimmy Kimmel, Brendan Carr at the FCC, Donald Trump's own rhetoric. There's news that the Pentagon is requiring reporters to sign play. pledges vowing not to disclose sensitive information. You had a good piece this week, Mike, about Donald Trump using the Department of Justice

and the attorneys there as his own personal lawyers. And then we had news. We're recording this 930-ish on Thursday, September 25th, news overnight that we can potentially expect an indictment of former FBI director James Comey, one of the president's biggest critics and one whom the president has vowed revenge on for many years. So there's no real way to get to each of those, and they didn't each support, I mean, each of them could have supported a long discussion, but I think maybe the best way to look at this part of the conversation is just sort of an update on creeping authoritarianism.

What happened this week as it relates to start, I think, with G. Jimmy Kimmel in the Department of Justice. You had Jimmy Kimmel was taken away from ABC News or suspended indefinitely. Disney reversed its decision. He came back on Tuesday night of this week. The Trump administration and Trump supporters had said repeatedly that this was a decision by Disney and by its affiliates to take them off because he was losing money. He wasn't effective.

He wasn't funny. What have you. But really, this was not any response to the U.S. or words from the president or his FCC chairman. And then Donald Trump weighed in after Jimmy Kimmel came back and made that a harder argument for those Trump supporters to make. Can you just bring us up to date on what actually happened? Okay. Let's, I guess, start with Kimmel, right?

Kimmel comes back on Tuesday night a week after he was taken off the air, suspended. By the way, never fired. Nobody ever said that he was fired from either ABC or Disney. By the way, I know that this was just a speako, a typo in speaking, but Jimmy Kimball does not work for ABC News. I think it's an important thing to... Yeah, ABC. He works for ABC, the network, and he's an entertainer and a comedian, not a newsman.

I just think that's important to underscore that he is... Nobody gets their news or ought to get their news from Jimmy Kimmel or what he says. But he's brought back after a weak suspension. And it's incredible because, as you pointed out, his suspension came last week, as was talked about on the podcast last week, because or around the same time as these statements from Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman. You have these two station owners trying to merge. There were all these signals being put out and pretty direct. I would not say indirect.

I would not say indirect. I would say direct signals that the FCC and these two major owners of ABC stations were, you know, if they wanted to please the FCC and get their okay on this merger, that they would need to indicate that they were not going to stand for Jimmy Kimmel being on their stations anymore. And so all of this was swirling around when Disney. made this decision to suspend them. They unsuspended them. I think they were always going to do that. You know, Jimmy Kimmel's contract runs out at the end of 2026.

So if they want to get rid of Jimmy Kimmel, they don't have, they don't, they've, it's coming soon. They don't have to wait around for long before the contract runs out and they can say, hey, the contract's over, we're ending the show. So they were always going to bring him back. Why not have him provide content as long as his contract is there? But I do think it was easier politically for ABC and Disney to do this once it became clear to everybody that there was some government pressure going on here. And I think it does reflect a willingness by corporations who may feel that kind of pressure to also respond to pressure from their own customers, which it seems to be what. what happened. You had a lot of sort of liberals sort of take up this cause and say, you know,

we're going to cancel our Disney Plus subscriptions or what have you. I do think that ultimately Disney was always going to bring him back, but this sort of made it a better environment. But on the other hand, I do think this is this is going to have likely a chilling effect for other, you know, companies, media and entertainment companies that also have news divisions. I think you're just going to feel that. We're going to have to see it out. But the fact that Brennan Carr felt willing to say this stuff out loud and to sort of do it in this very kind of mob boss style is very concerning. So that's the free speech side of it.

DOJ, all I'll say is, I mean, I would encourage people to read the piece. It is by no ways an exhaustive look at all the ways in which Donald Trump and his folks that he's installed at the Department of Justice increasingly treat the department as a place for rewarding Donald Trump's friends and for going after Donald Trump's enemies. And that anyone who stands in their way is subject to dismissal. I think that's what we saw with Eric Siebert, the former, it's interesting. He was the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and also the nominee for that position, nominated by Donald Trump, basically pushed out, forced to resign last week because we believe the reporting, and I think we should, that he was unwilling to move forward on prosecutions against two of Donald Trump's enemies, the aforementioned James Comey,

and also Letitia James, the AG of New York. Now Donald Trump has a new acting U.S. attorney, a new nominee for that position. And I guess we're going to see. Maybe we'll find out by the time this podcast is completed that they are going to bring an indictment against James Comey. I mean, what more confirmation of what I was trying to describe in this piece than that information right there.

We could talk about Tom Homan as well and what the DOJ has done. But I think I've spoken enough about all of that. No, this is great. That is a terrific summary. David, let me come first to you on the first part of this on the Jimmy Kimmel free speech stuff. The Trump administration has been, to be kind, a mess rhetorically on this all week long. Because you had, as I pointed out earlier, you know, sort of downplaying the sense that this was

something that the FCC was pushing, even though it was pretty plain that the FCC was pushing, it. And then Donald Trump weighs in himself on social media and, you know, just says the thing, as he is want to do, just says, basically, we're going to, went after Jimmy Kimmel, we're going to go after him again. He didn't use the word extortion, but I got ABC to pay me $16 million. I could probably get more if I went after him again. We basically, we want to shut up Jimmy Kimmel. So after you had people kind of downplayed, diminish what Trump himself had said, he then goes on and admits it. But then we have sort of this additional, I think, curious argument from Vice President J.D. Vance

yesterday, sort of returning to this idea that this, all of this was no big deal. They're not really threatening free speech. They're not going after anyone. And I want to read some of what Vance said because it's so striking to me how fundamentally dishonest he's being here. What, that's striking to you? I mean, you're right, it probably shouldn't be striking to me, but there's no real cover here. There's almost no pretense here based on what he says.

He was asked about the Brendan Carr and what he had said and the whole hullabaloo around Jimmy Kimmel. And he said, well, compare the FCC commissioner making a joke on social media. What is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in? to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air. Zero. What government pressure have re-bought to bear to tell people that they're not allowed to speak their mind? Zero. We believe in free speech in the Trump administration. We are fighting every single day to protect it. And then I want to give you exactly what Brendan Carr said, because I think it's quite a contrast on the podcast where Carr made his original marks. He said, quote, frankly, when you see this stuff, I mean, we can do this the easy way or the

hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. Carr also raised a possibility of revoking broadcast licenses. He said it's time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we're going to preempt, we're not going to run Kimmel anymore, and so you straighten this out because we, licensed broadcasters, are running into the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion. You haven't heard that one, Steve?

That's a classic old joke. That's a Bodville humor right there. People were howling with laughter when he said it. I mean, on the one hand, you have this very obvious, purposeful, intentional threat from the FCC chairman. That's the only way to interpret his words. That was a threat. And then you have Donald Trump sort of doubling down and saying, yeah, we meant that threat. Yeah, we might do this again.

And then you have the vice president of the United States saying, ah, this is all a joke. Don't you know we really believe in free speech? Am I just being uncharitable here in my interpretation of events, David? Look, this is a game to them. And here's what the game is. The game is that they have factions of their party that are, that joined with Trump, because they wanted, they were furious with far left cancel culture, rightly so, by the way, and wanted to do something about it and wanted to be part of a free speech movement.

And these are the people who go to, who cheer Vance scolding the Europeans for free speech, you know, for their, again, rightly scolding Europeans for their free speech issues. But, you know, when he was doing it, he was a raging hypocrite because the Trump administration at that point was already unleashing really the biggest attack from any presidential administration in my lifetime easily on free speech. And it didn't start with Jimmy Kimmel. Let's just get that universities, law firms, immigrants. I mean, we can go down the line. And so, but all the while, you know, every now and then, some of the MAGA people come out and say, we're free speech, the left is not for free speech. And so this is, but then you also have part of the MAGA

coalition that it doesn't care about free speech at all. And this is kind of keeping that whole gang together here, and J.D. Vance gives cover there. But look, let's just get real. This is a quote from the Supreme Court. To state a claim that the government violated the First Amendment through the coercion of a third party, a plaintiff most plausibly alleged conduct that viewed in context could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress speech. you don't. And that was last year, correct? Last year, 9-0, 90, last year. And you don't get more explicit than Brendan Carr. You don't get more explicit than Donald Trump. So, yeah, this is violating the First Amendment to do this. And all of these people talking about Roseanne Barr, for example, that happened in the Trump administration. Trump didn't pressure ABC to ditch Roseanne Barr. That was a ABC decision. And we, and we, and we, We can talk about whether or not that was good, but there was no government threat hovering

over ABC. That's what makes this very different. You had an explicit government threat. And then the whole process was such bad faith. So here, Brendan Carr issues the threat. Literally within hours, ABC pulls Kimmel. Brendan Carr starts sending people jifts of celebrations, like taking credit for it. Then you begin to have the MAGA backfill.

No, actually, this is what the disheaval. you know, the local networks wanted, like the Sinclair folks and others with this is what they wanted. Trump had nothing to do with it. Trump had nothing to do with it. How ridiculous to claim. Meanwhile, you know, Brendan Carr was just celebrating. And then here comes Trump and he's, yeah, that's what we meant, right? And it's just the same cycle again and again. And I'm thinking of the free speech brouhaha when Pam Bondi said, we're going to go after hate crimes. And then there was this giant backlash to Pam Bondi. And then she goes, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. Trump's like, yeah, yeah, we'll do that.

And maybe we'll start with you, Jonathan Carl of ABC. You have hate in your heart or whatever he said. And it's the same pattern where when the MAGA underling does something that part of the coalition doesn't like, they'll go to war about it, they'll fight about it. You saw all kinds of Republicans taking on Pam Bondi when she said what she said about hate speech. But then as soon as Lord Red Hat himself speaks, then it's largely crickets except for those few conservative, consistent folks that we all know and

love, like a lot of our friends at National Review and other places who were like, nope, that Trump statement's bad also. But you did not see the same outcry when Trump repeats it as when Pam Bondi said it, because there's a permission structure to fight about Trump's subordinates. There is not a permission structure to fight about Trump. Yeah, Jonah, there wasn't a lot of criticism of Donald Trump when he said it after the fact. I would say, as David points out, you know, our friends at National Review, the Wall Street Journal had a good editorial about this. You had Ted Cruz speak out about this pretty directly critical of Brendan Carr, comparing his words to the kind of rhetoric you see from Mafioso in Goodfellas, actually criticizing him by name. He said, I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business.

we should denounce it. And then he said it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it's used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it. Is this, I mean, there were other other people who spoke out criticizing Pam Bondi, Ted Cruz, criticizing Brendan Carr. Is this something that should encourage us that there's at least something that some of these elected Republicans are willing to speak out about? It's always encouraging when a party that has had been very reluctant to tell the truth

about its own side, shows some green shoots of telling the truth about its own side. I don't love all of the arguments. I've written about this a couple of times now. Greg Likianov did a good piece in the New York Times about it. It had a fire, a free speech organization. Right. It does what people think the ACLU should do. Very consistent principled group, yeah.

And the argument that you get from Ben Shapiro, from Ted Cruz, I don't want to diminish it because they did have some substantive criticisms. But the main criticism you get is this is bad because the other side will do it to us when they get in power. Now, I agree with that. I think that is factually and logically correct. But it is a secondary argument. If it is bad to censor, for the state to use coercion to censor speech that it disagrees with, it's bad in its own right. It's not just bad because the other side will do it to us.

And there is a tendency to sort of turn this into a real problem. politic game rather than actually condemn what is actually going on. And I agree with David entirely. There's a very, there's been for 10 years now this, if only the czar new kind of logic about Donald Trump, right? You can go after members of his court. Oh, he's being poorly advised, you know, and that kind of stuff. But you can never doubt his own judgment.

But I want to sort of call back to some David reference in passing, which has been obsessing me. I was so furious about J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of the administration in February, I think it was March, where everyone was, this is his first major statement on foreign policy, right? And he was going to represent the administration. Everyone was trying to figure out what the direction of the administration was going to be on Ukraine, right? What's going to happen? All the rest. And instead, Vance does this incredibly churlish and trollish finger-wagging thing where he yells at all our allies, offering in many ways

legitimate criticisms about their policies towards free speech and free competition and politics. And it is with this incredibly condescending, more than in sorrow, more in sorrow than in anger kind of thing. He says, I fear that free speech is in retreat in England and across Europe. And he says, you know, look, to be fair. We haven't been perfect on this either. The previous administration was really bad on free speech. But then he said, this is a direct quote, in Washington, there's a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square.

Agree or disagree. And there was more of that sort of sanctimonious chest beating about how great they were on free speech. And this was already at a time, as David suggested, where the administration was saying that negative media coverage of Trump was influencing judges and therefore was illegal, right? This was at the time where they were suing the AP for refusing to call it the Gulf of America. This is administration that the willing suspension of disbelief that is required to believe that this administration is a friend of free speech is just, gobsmacking. And the thing that I think ties this stuff together is that much like the UN speech, as I was saying, was really for domestic consumption. It was boob-bap for, you know, the MAGA crowd. That's how they're conducting foreign policy from the beginning to go to the Munich Security

Conference at the dawn of the administration and crap over your own country and crap over all our allies countries by pretending to be a champion of free speech and throwing the previous administration on their bus at the same time just so you can get Jesse Waters to wave his big foam fingers were number one thing every night while at the same time clamping down in precisely the way you're condemning in Europe just shows how unbelievably bad faith this administration is on the free speed stuff and the inability of members of one coalition on the other

I'm such a both sides are on this you know we're now hearing the Trump people the MAGA people saying well we're not a pre-cancel culture we're for accountability culture literally the exact same friggin language they used five years ago on the left and it is appalling and I've

got nothing nice to say at the macro level about either side on all of this and and the the to make free to make american foreign policy and national security subordinate to this garbage is so grotesque to me strong letter to follow as our friend charles crouthamper would say just one point of clarification on the uh the ap and uh the trump administration the trump administration didn't sue them they banned them from covering the white house and then

the AP sued, and then they were bound up in court. On the, David, I want to come to you quickly on this question of James Comey that Mike introduced earlier. Can you, as you look at the events of this past week as it relates to the Eastern District, I think it is the Eastern District of Virginia and the firing the dismissal of this Eric Siebert, who effectively told his colleagues that. that he didn't see enough evidence to bring cases against these two Trump critics. And now Trump putting in his place, naming in any case, one of his former personal lawyers, to do this.

And the statute of limitations on potentially going after Comey runs out next week, that's, I think, highly relevant here. is there any way to look at this as anything other than what the facts, it seems to me, very clearly suggest that this is Donald Trump using the federal government to get revenge on his allies, which is something he promised during his campaign and has been determined to do in his first eight months in office. Okay, let's leave in one corner this possibility, as remote as it is. It's still a possibility that there's something in an indictment that's completely outside of anything that we know or understand. previously about the previous 10 years. So let's just say it's you can't opine about an indictment that you haven't seen.

Let's just put that there. But I can say that all of the underlying circumstances are screaming corruption, screaming it, because you have a situation in which a respected prosecutor apparently declines to prosecute. Again, you know, you're dealing with a lot of sources, seems to have been pushed out, says he resigns, then Trump just goes ahead and says, no, no, no, no, no, don't think for five seconds this guy resigned like I got rid of him. Then, you know, there's this true social posts where plain English is directing a prosecution of Comey, hires a U.S. attorney who he vows is going to prosecute. And then now it looks like she's going to put together an indictment in a few days.

And now we have also some reporting that indicates that she's even been presented with a memo internally that says there's no grounds to indict. And yet, appears to be pushing forward anyway. That's what the reporting indicates. And so here you have a person who appears to be following a direct presidential command to prosecute a political ally with all of the available evidence so far indicating that there's no basis for the prosecution and that prosecutors have been told that that there's no basis for the prosecution. This is, you know, again, we'll see, but all of the circumstances are indicating that this is like a nine alarm. fire here, that Comey is maybe the first fulfillment of that campaign pledge, not that, I mean,

a vengeance, right? And so this is very, very alarming. It's very alarming. And I've looked at some of the potential allegations. There's a number of people, it's a, there's a lot of informed speculation because he's been critiqued for some time because of his answers to a couple of questions in his testimony in September of 2020. And I've looked at him and to call them thin gruel, would be insulting thin gruel, that it's, I can't imagine a successful prosecution under those theories that I have seen. And then the other thing I'd say is if I'm a defense attorney, my opening statement, I'm putting, I'm quoting Donald Trump. I'm quoting Donald Trump. And just say, can we just cut to the chase here? Let me show you why we're here.

You know, and maybe the grand jury won't indict, who knows. But I would put, if it came to a jury, I would just put that up. This is why we're here. This is the only reason why we're here. And it would make my job so much easier as a defense attorney to have all those Trump statements. Yeah. Well, thank you for offering that cautionary note that there is a lot we don't know. This story broke over the past 24 hours.

We don't like to get in too deep when there's information to get. We like to wait. Wait for the information. I suspect we'll be returning to this topic next week. but that is it for this part of the discussion for Not Worth Your Time this week I want to return quickly this was actually Jonah's suggestion

to the conversation that we had last week on Not Worth Your Time which is about sort of the best season and led me, I don't really remember the sort of hop, skip and jump that took me to discussing skidgeting in Wisconsin but skidgeting in Wisconsin for those who missed last week's episode

is when the snow covers the roads and you put on sort of boots or shoes with not much grip and lock your hands underneath the bumper of a car and get pulled along by the car to your destination. Great fun. Don't recommend it. We did get a lot of mail, a number of emails about this with different, I think, regional words for skidgeting. We had Northern Pennsylvania, Carl said they called it skidsying and said it was the best. He also said where I grew up, the grand prize and bragging rights went to you if you successfully did it behind a police car, which I'm grateful to say never occurred to me once as we did this. Anyway, Jonah came up with a not worth your time this week playing off of this.

And the question as he posed it to the group, as we were thinking about this, was as follows. what is something you did as a kid, young person that was so outrageously dangerous that to this day you think back in horror at how stupid you were? And Jonas, since it was your question, let me start with you. Yeah, so there are many contenders for this, and I can't get into it. I won't get into some of them because they have to do with drinking and with stupidity as a as a team that I do not want out there in the world necessarily, even some things I did in my 20s.

But the thing that I remember telling my dad I had done years later, and he would not let go of how angry he was at me for having done this. And kept lecturing me, it kept saying it makes me worry about what you're doing whenever you leave the house if you could do something that stupid. So, and to this day, I think about it all the time, about how incredibly stupid it was, because it actually feeds into some of my larger fears. Steve will make fun of me for a very long time of this.

I used to be, as a kid, like in grade school, big into roller skating. Like, remember the 1980s roller skates, the heavy ones, right? I like roller skaters. You don't need to say anything more. I know this is shocking that I was actually a good roller skater. And I actually played some street hockey on. Could you do backwards crossovers? I can.

And my friend, anyway, me and my friend, I'll just say Ben, we were rolling skating in Central Park. And I was in sixth grade, I want to say. Because I realized after grade school that girls were no longer impressed with roller skating. And also, I got really tall, really clunky and all that. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. we were in a central park in the early spring, late winter. And, you know, there's this big rowboat pond in Central Park. And me and my friend Ben thought, hey, let's roller skate across the ice.

And we start, first of all, you cannot actually roller skate on ice. I want to be really clear. So, like, it ended up we are like, like, not skidgeting, but we are like going inch by inch kind of sliding our feet. And we realize as we start looking, this ice is really thin. And there are like open pools where there's just holes in the ice. And we can see where we're walking the water coming up through cracks in the ice. And if we had sunk in, I don't know this for a fact, but I am willing to, we don't do a lot of speculation on this podcast. But I am willing to speculate with a high degree of certainty that swimming,

and freezing cold water with five-pound roller skates on your feet is difficult. It's unbelievable. Could have so easily have died. And I think about it all the time. Like maybe I did, and this is like an occurrence in Owl Creek Bridge. And my entire life since then is just me flashing before my eyes because I had gone under for the third time in that freezing water in 1982 New York City Central Park. And I'm incredibly stupid, ashamed of it, no justification. And I think it is such a good example of doing something stupid when you're young

that I was willing to spend the rest of my life having Steve make fun of me for roller skating. So that is incredibly stupid. You're right. And this is the point at which, I mean, you know, this is a fork in the road moment for me because I would love to just make fun of you for the roller skating admission. as you predicted I would but we at the dispatch believe in telling the full truth and I have to reveal that I also was a big roller skater back in the day

I didn't really do a lot of outdoor roller skating but we went to roller rinks and you know would do slow dancing with Amy Miller and Jenny Bats to REO Speedwagon lots of Do you wear like a silk shirt? A lot of journey No, you know what we wore. There was a uniform for roller skating.

It was sort of the things that baseball players used to wear underneath their uniforms that were like three-quarter sleeves that had the, no, the three-quarter sleeves that had sort of a solid color on the chest and then different, you know, the like navy blue sleeves or something. That was what you wore every time you went. Anyway, a little embarrassed by my roller skating, but I couldn't not divulge that. David, do you have something that you did that was especially dangerous as a kid? Yeah, like Jonas said, there's all kinds of stuff from, you know, when you're a kid. The BB gun wars, like what, you know, one pump only allowed, not a great limitation. Wait, sorry, can I just, I know you're going to get to something else.

Can I just pause you there? When you say BB gun wars, were you shooting at one another? Yes. Yeah. So you get those like, you know, Red Rider B. BB guns and you just do one pump. You're going to shoot your eye out. I know.

I know. Yeah. And of course we said, no aiming at eyes that took care of that, Steve. So seriously, stop being such a mother hen. But the thing I'm going to say is when I was in college, I developed, along with one of my great friends, a spontaneous spulunking hobby for like about nine months. Because there's all these caves around Middle Tennessee. and we started exploring the caves for fun. And one day we were exploring a cave.

Well, we didn't know what to do on a Saturday, and a friend said, hey, there's this cool cave nearby. And so he went to it and started going through it. And he assured me who knew how to get to the other side, and we got kind of lost. And, you know, of course we had told nobody where we were. In the cave? In the cave.

We told nobody where we were, told nobody where we were going. This is, I mean, this was pre-cell phone, but even if you had a cell phone, you were underground. It was just, and we couldn't figure out how to get out. And so we're just crawling, crawling, walking, then crawling. And then at one point we finally see a shaft of light where we can get out. But it's so narrow, it's so constricted that I'm on my stomach and I cannot fully breathe.

I cannot fully breathe. My chest will not fully expand. and I'm just trying to slide through this very narrow way to get out. And at one point, I felt worried I was getting stuck. And then I finally get out, and part of me was like, that was monumentally stupid. But then the day new ma of the story is we're getting back to my car. We figured out how to get back to my car. We're covered in mud from head to toe.

And I was like, we're not getting in my car like this. But we didn't have any extra clothes, but I did have a bunch of big, hefty garbage bags in the drunk. And so we literally stripped off all our clothing, put on these big black, hefty garbage bags, and I drive back. And this is the summer, a summer in law school after my 1L year. So it wasn't college. Sorry, it's a summer after my 1L year in law school. And I pull into my aunt and uncle's house where I'm staying. And I walk to the front door with my garbage bag on. And I look up and I lock eyes with my aunt who starts waving furiously for me to not come in the house.

And I look and I see why. And sitting at the table with my aunt and uncle is the managing partner of the biggest law firm in Nashville. And I'm standing there wearing a black hefty bag only for my clothing with the drawstring around my legs, you know?

And a hole cut in the time. And so I snuck around the back. I got in through a back door, took a quick shower, and then came out and said hello properly. But every now and then I do run into that lawyer, and I've told him that story, and I asked him if he ever got a glimpse of me in a hefty bag. And the answer is no, thankfully. That was just for me, and that's something only my aunt saw.

I figured we might get a story from one of us about being trashed. I did not think it would be that kind of a story. Literally. Literally, yes. Mike. I can't follow that. I mean, that's way too, that's way too tough story to follow. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things.

I mean, there are some drinking stories. There are some fireworks stories that I could get into. But I was always kind of a risk-averse kid. I'm still kind of a risk-averse person. So the things that I thought of when I, when this topic was suggested, was more things that I find now as an adult, like, disgusting and gross that as a kid you sort of jump into because you don't know any better. Like, kids just don't have,

my kids are certainly this way. Like, they don't always have the best sense of hygiene. And, like, and maybe they just don't understand germ theory or we just don't care. But lots of. Wait, we just need to isolate that comment right there. Maybe they just don't understand germ theory. Yeah, that's true.

That might be it, Mike. That was a little tongue-in-cheeked, Steve. Oh, really? Yeah, I couldn't talk about the sarcasm. The, uh, but, But my memory as a kid was spending a lot of time in the creeks in our neighborhood. You know, if my parents were playing at the tennis court, we'd, you know, we'd have several hours where we didn't have anything to do.

So let's just walk down into the woods, into this creek. And I do, you know, and you're doing the kind of things that kids do at, creaks. You're skipping rocks or you're trying to build dams out of mud and stick. and see if you can damn something up or make little boats out of leaves and send things down. And maybe you might find a, you know, see a snake or a cool bug. But there was one time in which the idea was, let's see how far up the creek we can go. And, you know, these are shallow creeks, the kind of thing where you're maybe getting the tops of your tennis shoes wet, but not much more. um let me tell you when you as you keep going up the creek it gets a little deeper and like it was like

that kind of thing where the next thing you know you know i was like you know eight years old and the water is coming up to my clavicle as we're walking there because we got to we got to find out where where it goes and the disgusting end of the of the journey is that of course it's this is all just sewer runoff and you're just walking through like you know i'm not saying it's like I don't know exactly where it's coming. Maybe it's just the rain sewers, you know, where this is coming from. But, like, you know, you're expecting some kind of beautiful cascade of waterfall.

And instead, it's just a big, giant, corrugated metal tube sticking out of the ground. And you can see houses and streets, you know, up the hill. And you're like, okay, yeah, we just walked through, God knows what. Absolutely disgusting. Yeah, and that was a fun walk back and to have to ride home in the car with our parents asking, why are you so wet and disgusting? No trash bags available to you. No trash bags, just gross.

Well, yours actually brings to mine a different one that I thought I was going to mention. I mean, when I think back on those days, I think it was a lot of the routine stuff that I did that was just so incredibly dangerous. I can't imagine that my parents let me do it, let us do it, let me and my siblings do it. We had a birch tree in our backyard that towered above the house, and we would climb it and be at the top of the tree jumping from limb to limb, two stories above the, you know, if we had missed any of those, we would have fallen, I don't know, 30, 40 feet to the ground. We also played pickup hockey with no pads, of course, and no helmet, and our rule was that you

weren't allowed to fly the puck above the neck. So, like, I mean, not that kids at 8 and 10 can really control that and keep it below there. So we were flying the puck at one another, you know, pretty hard at great length and very high, often going above the neck. But what your story reminds me of Mike was a trip that we took, my family took a trip for a while to a town. We lived on a houseboat, a canal boat in southern England into Wales. And we came to a town called Betisequid that had a huge river with fast-rushing water and a big rock in the middle of the river.

And what we decided to do, there was another family with us, what we decided to do was take a long sort of sprint to the edge of the river and do a long jump to this rock in the middle of the river, which was going to be a, it was questionable whether we could make it. But I prided myself on being able to long junk. I'd done that in middle school, some track and field. And so I did it and took this, you know, ran as fast as I possibly could, stepped right on the edge, hugely, barely made it to this rock in the middle of this fast-rushing river.

At which point, I stood up, celebrated for a second, got the, the sort of praise of the other kids. And then figured out that I wasn't going to have the ability to take the long run back. And there was going to be no way for me to jump from this rock all the way there. And we were in full panic. I mean, there was conversation about, like, you know, how do we, could we get, you know, some, could we get the police to come and help me? And eventually what I did was an attempt at a broad jump where I didn't.

make it back to the shore and I fell into the fast rushing water and went down a little bit in the thing. You know, these were sharp rocks. It was a bad situation, but obviously I survived and I'm here today. And I'm glad I took those risks. I think it's good. It strikes me that all four of us had something to do, our dangerous action had something to do with water. Even David's, like the cave is formed by water. I think the lesson here is like water is the most dangerous thing. you know, bodies of water and rushing water. Oh, we were panicked. We were panicked that it might rain because this was the kind of cave that it would fill

with water when it rained, yeah. I think that's true, but probably the most dangerous thing that we mentioned today was just Jonah Goldberg on roller skates. Oh, just anywhere, at any place. I do feel like we should come up with some kind of a dispatch member's meetup at a roller rink where we ask Jonah to, you know, do his backwards crossovers that he claims he can still do. Well, that's it for a very long, but I think enjoyable dispatch podcast today, particularly the last part. Thank you for joining us.

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No ads, early access to all episodes, exclusive town halls with our founders, and more. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from roller skaters. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Max Miller, Victoria Holmes, and Noah Hickey. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening.

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