The Dispatch Podcast - Three More Years

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, Sarah Isgur, and Mike Warren to reflect on President Donald Trump's first year of his second term and look ahead to his final three. The Agenda:—Trump's use of executive orders—Trump's legislative "agenda"—The retribution tour—What will last beyond Trump?—Are we the (global) baddies?—Sarah's Not Worth Your Time ambush Pre-order Sarah Isgur's new book Last Branch Standing here. Skipped lightning round question: Who was the most influential or effective adviser to Donald Trump in the first year of his second term?David French: Stephen MillerMike Warren: Stephen MillerJonah Goldberg: Stephen MillerSarah Isgur: Stephen MillerSteve Hayes: Stephen Miller 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

The Dispatch podcast is presented by Pacific Legal Foundation, suing the government since 1973. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we'll take a look back at the first year of President Trump's second term and then not worth your time. I offer my response to the ambush or the betrayal of my colleagues in last weeks, not worth your time. At Desjardin Insurance, we know that when you own a nail-lawful, salon, everything needs to be perfect from tip to toe. That's why our agents go the extra mile to understand your business and provide tailored solutions for all its unique needs. You put your heart into your company, so we put our heart into making sure it's protected. Get insurance that's really

big on care. Find an agent today at Dejardin.com slash business coverage. I'm joined today by Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Sarah Isker, my colleagues at the dispatch, and, David French of the New York Times. Let's dive right in. Welcome, everybody. We are here one year to the week after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term. So I have assembled this August all-star panel to reflect on the first year of Donald Trump's second term and what lessons we might draw for it and what it might mean for the remaining three years on his term. Joe, I'm going to start with you. Has the first year of Trump's second term unfolded, more or less as you expected? Has it been more orderly? Has it been more chaotic? Has there been anything that really surprised you that you've seen over the last year?

You know, we use the phrase a lot around here or some variant of it. Shocking, but not surprising. Right? I think some of his first year has been surprising but not shocking in the sense that, you know, the argument I had made prior to the primates and all that kind of stuff is that the second term is not going to be like the first term. All my friends who are saying, yeah, well, it's just going to be that the best case scenario is the most likely scenario and it's just going to be repeat of the first term with some crazy tweets and a few things and blah, blah, blah. There's no reason to believe that's true. I agree with that would be the best case scenario. But second term, he's going to be emboldened. He's going to surround himself with loyalists. And he's done all of that. So that's, some of that

has been shocking in the sense of the brazenness of it, of the shamelessness of it. But not necessarily surprising. The place where I guess I was most wrong was I had thought he could do all sorts of things with executive orders. He would do all sorts of things with executive orders. I didn't think he could actually get control of the border the way he could, way he did without Congress to some extent. And that's a really big deal.

I thought that the mass deportation part of his plan was beyond his logistical abilities. So far, I think that I was wrong about that in the sense that you give the president the credit for the things that happen on his watch. But I think this is mostly a Stephen Miller joint. But nonetheless, he's been more effective on the immigration front than I would have thought.

And I think one of his biggest mistakes is that he hasn't bragged about it with some discipline for his first year. I think we should clip those two instances of Jonah saying he was wrong and give them as an audiophile to Jess to have as her ring, her phone ring every time you call. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong.

He's heard me say I was wrong so many times. But a few more times wouldn't hurt, you know. Yeah, I think this is the first time in my six years of working at the dispatch with you. David, has, has Trump's first term been more chaotic than you expected about what you expect and any reaction to what Jonah said? As chaotic as I expected, but in unexpected ways is the way I would think about it. And I agree complete with Jonah on the border. You know, look, he was elected to secure the border.

That's one of things that there are a few things that he was unequivocally, completely elected to do. You know, you have this little thing on. on social media where various MAGA people say, I voted for this, and they'll be talking about the most extreme and weird thing that Trump does. I think it's pretty safe to say that's not why 77 million or so people voted for him was not to tariff the heck out of Canada and Mexico, but to secure the border is a big, big, big part of it.

And he did that, and he's done that so far. And I think that one of the things, if Republicans are going to look at lost political opportunities, is the way in which his interior border enforcement has completely sort of overwhelmed public perception of the progress that he's made on the border. And so I do think that that's been a political own goal. I think another thing that he did,

and I'm sort of trying to think of in the category of things that you elect Donald Trump to do, as opposed to sort of like somebody with an R by their name. And I do genuinely wonder if a other president would have joined the Israeli campaign against Iran. I do wonder about that. I do also wonder if we over, we sort of overestimate the effectiveness of that single bombing run.

But at the same time, I do think it's quite fair to say that him joining with Israel using the B-2s to sort of administer the coupé grah to a key Iranian nuclear facility is something that I don't think, it's hard to see other people doing. Now, that being said, the sheer level of chaos is what I predicted, but it's been unpredictable to me in some ways. I did not see this emerging crisis over Greenland, which seems to have been alleviated late, you know, yesterday to some degree. We don't know all the details.

We have an agreed on framework for a future deal, which we all know in contracts is also called not a deal. But, you know, I did not see that. I did not see the immediate aggression towards Canada and Mexico. I did not see the emergence of this sort of Don Roe doctrine, a perversion of the Monroe doctrine. I did not. So there are a lot of things that I did not see and definitely did see all of the sort of berserker rage against his domestic enemies.

And so I think there were some things I was very much concerned about that have unfolded. And there was this just general vague concern about chaos and disorder that has also unfolded, but in ways I didn't expect. And so, you know, I think part of the story of his first term is of a president who squandered some of his greatest accomplishments politically in the sort of haze and fog of his just constant berserker rage and chaos in virtually every other area of his political life. Yeah. We're likely to see, even if there is the framework of a deal, as you say, not a deal, but the framework of a deal or what Trump might have called concepts of a plan. We're not done seeing the damage, I think, from everything that we've seen leading up to this point.

Oh, no question. Yeah, no question about that. Sarah, David mentioned briefly passing and taking on his, in passing, taking on his political enemies' retribution. You were on Cash Patel's list. Are you surprised that you're not in jail? They haven't come after you, have they? Is there anything you want to disclose to us here? Steve, are you disappointed that she's not? Yes, actually. Thanks for saying that.

That's a very good point. After last week's, you know, not worth your time takeover, Steve was placing some calls. Nothing yet. Cash, she's right here. For whatever, for whatever reason, Cash Rethelf did not return my call. Okay, so I want to focus on two things.

One, I guess I don't think I'm naive about this. You know, each president that has come into office with his party controlling both houses of Congress has had some signature piece of legislation. You know, for Barack Obama, it turned out to be Obamacare, although there was even some discussion of some other topics that might have made it past the finish line in the beginning. Donald Trump did his tax bill, which was a little bit of an odd choice. But, you know, there was still that struggle between the old Republican Party and his Republican Party. Joe Biden obviously came in during COVID. So everything that he had was COVID-related. But there were so many Christmas ornaments on that thing. He's still got quite a few things on his wish list. What is Donald Trump done? Like, where's the legislation? And I don't mean this actually to be a rant on like, you know, no matter the rant that I give. Even if you love what Donald Trump has done, he's done it all through executive orders and it'll be gone on day one of a new administration. That is how. through those other administrations as well, but there's at least been one thing that they've said, this is what I will do through statute, and we just haven't seen it. Like, there's been no work with Congress.

And not even really, like, forward on judicial nomination, like nothing with Congress. It feels like they are just not part of the conversation in the administration. So that's been a surprise. The other surprise is the one you mentioned, Steve, But it's like a two-sided coin for me. I actually am surprised that he has been so forward-facing on his retribution tour. Because remember, this started with the law firms. It went to universities. Like, we now focus on, like, James Comey or Lisa Cook or Jay Powell.

In some ways, those are less interesting. I mean, I get it. They're more interesting in a lot of ways. But, like, this has been a theme of his first year in office. But at the same time, this is the other side of that coin, we have not seen the chaos that I was expecting. It's funny that David used the same word that it's been so chaotic. Externally, it's been chaotic. But internally, within the administration, it is nothing compared to the first administration.

We're not firing people. We're not doing 6 a.m. tweets of someone in his cabinet behind bars. they have a remarkably unified front. Like the one thing I think you can point to is some like one-off stories about how Pam Bondi isn't his favorite person. Again, I just don't think that you're going to have a Donald Trump who's going to ever like his attorney general because sort of by definition, they can't both be attorney general and be a great lawyer and also do the things Donald Trump wants them to do.

And I see that as the same side of the representative. retribution coin. When all of the people in his boat are rowing together, you have the chaos externally, you're able to do the retribution stuff because internally they're actually very cohesive. And you've got to give credit to Susie Wiles for that. And that's something I didn't think anyone predicted was that Donald Trump would have an incredibly effective, trusted chief of staff. I go back and forth about this. On Susie Wiles, she basically has said, I'm going to let him do whatever hell he wants. Yeah, but that's the job.

I mean, this was mine... Isn't it the job? I mean, I thought in the past, the part of the chief of staff was that they were the person who had to tell the president, no, this is a bad idea for their own good. I think I've always disagreed with that. I disagreed with it in the John Kelly model, especially. I think the chief of staff is the ex-o. The president tells you the vision for where he wants to head, and you're the one who

executes it. And she's doing that job. I think we have this like, you know, sort of American president West Wing version of the chief of staff being the id or something of the president. But no, I think the chief of staff is a staff member. They execute. Their job is not to say no, not to hide things, not to keep things off the president's desk, not to have little side meetings. Except for the very obvious, like, does this need to rise to the level of the president? Is this something that can be handled at a staff level?

But that still, to me, is executing. You are not supposed to have a separate vision for the country from the president. It's not to say that I don't like John Kelly's vision more than I like Donald Trump's. Of course I did. But it wasn't actually the job of chief of staff, in my view. Nobody elected you. But my point is, I'm not talking about a vision for the country. I'm talking about what is in the best long-term interests of the president's presidency.

Right. And, like, I remember Len Garment telling these stories about how, Nixon, maybe a little deep in his cups, would call in Henry Kissinger into the Oval Office and go, Henry, Henry, I want you to bomb Hanoi. I want you to bomb, I'm not kidding, Henry. And Kissinger, go, yes, Mr. Poissident.

Of course, Mr. President. Right. I love the dramatic rendering. I want a one-man Jonah show of the Nixon. There is a one-man Jonah show. It's called the Ruminant. You can tune in there. Anyway, he's like, Henry, I'm not kidding.

You don't believe me when I say these things. I want to wake up in the morning and get the New York Times and I want to see that we bombed Hanoi. Of course, Mr. President. It will happen, Mr. President. And it never happened, right? Because, like, there are people around Nixon knew not to let Nixon be full-on Nixon and set fire to the Brookings Institution and all these things that he wanted to do. And how many of the things that Trump has done have undermined his own

popularity because he can't stay on message, right? Yes, but I think that's a good thing. This was that thing I wrote in the Washington Post when I left office that the American people need to see what they voted for. And so much of the first Trump administration was hiding that from the American people by those in the administration. They're not the deep state. I called them the shallow state because they said it publicly.

They said it to his face. This wasn't people secretly undermining him. and so it shielded the American people from what Donald Trump wanted for the country, and it led to his second election. But you bring people in to advise you to give you their best judgment about the things that they are experts in or the reasons that you hired them. If they're just enablers of Donald Trump at every turn, I mean, maybe it's the case that across the board all of his advisors, and we're going to get to more specifics about his

advisors, agree with him, want to enable him, think the best name. to do is to encourage him in all of his, you know, different, different policy choices and different behavioral choices. But then they're not really. I mean, if they have these different views and they don't share them, then they're not really doing their jobs, are they? Their job is to have, you know, views on how to execute the thing he wants. Their job is not to simply say, well, let me clarify that. Of course you can say, I'm not going to do that. Your job is to resign. I mean, so if he wants to invade Greenland, it's not the job of the national security advisors to say, Mr. President, I think that would be an unwise choice for the following eight reasons. I think that's the first and

most fundamental job. Your job is to say, why do you want to invade Greenland? What are you trying to accomplish? Let me give you my advice on how we get there. But your job is not to say, you know, oh, you want to secure rare earth minerals? No, I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, you're welcome to say that. But it's not your job. Your job is to figure out the best way to execute that. that goal of the president not to, not to do the Kissinger, not to say yes, Mr. Puezident, and not do it. But isn't part of the job to give him advice about what you think is best? I mean, you can't just be there to execute, no? Like, if he wants to, what if the president, what if the president said tomorrow, you know, the real thing that we ought to do is imprison everybody whose name starts with J.

Is it your job if you're the attorney general to figure out how to do that most effectively for him? No, of course not. Your job is to say, no, that's crazy, Mr. President. You can't do that. Here's what's likely to happen. This would be disastrous for the company, no? The country, no? The company is actually an ironic thing to say, given the grift, but yeah.

Given the grift, given the mafioso thing. But, I mean, I thought, anyway, I feel like you have to give that advice. I will say I would have been surprised by the level of corruption. That's another surprise. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Mike, you want to chime in on this? Anything surprise you in particular, or is this sort of what you'd experience?

expected coming in. What surprised me in particular was the way in which particular institutions have remained a check on President Trump, and those institutions are basically market forces. The financial markets, the bond markets, the stock market, but also the political market of public opinion. And I know that doesn't, it doesn't seem that way. But the reaction from the public to Donald Trump's presidency and to his, to the extreme lengths that he's gone from everything from immigration enforcement to the tariffs, to his inability to really do much on what we now call affordability, what was being called, you know, the Biden inflation economy, to really sort of tame a lot of elements that make it feel as if costs have not gone down

because they have not gone down in a lot of areas. The public reaction to that has been, he's not doing a good job. And for all of the valid concerns that we have expressed here on the podcast and in the pages of the dispatch and other publications about the other institutions kind of falling down, particularly the political institutions like the party or Congress, sort of the inability to kind of keep the president in check, I think those more market-based forces have. And you can see that in the reaction to the tariffs in which, you know, I think there was a lot of thought, and this is some place where I was wrong. I thought that there would,

sort of the bottom would fall out and Donald Trump would continue marching forward on his desire for some, maybe not full autarky, but some real closing in of our sort of trade position. And instead, he was, I think, cowed by the reaction, particularly from the bond markets, when, you know, after Liberation Day. And I think we're... Right. I'm surprised that you keep calling it Liberation Day. Well, I didn't do it on the video, but it was.

It was expressed with scare quotes around it. But we also should call it what they want it to be called. So anyway, so it does seem that markets as an institution remain sort of undefeated. And if things continue to go the way 2025 went in 2026, the political reaction will have an effect on Donald Trump's actual position within the government, because he's likely now to lose control of the House, possibly even the Senate, and that's going to have some consequences for the rest of his presidency. Before we take a break for ads, consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles.

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You're listening to the Dispatch Podcast. Let's jump in. Sarah, I want to come back to you with the second question, and it's about how permanent that some of these changes that we've seen have been. You made the point in your last answer that really hasn't worked with Congress, the things that he's done, he's done largely by executive order, they can be undone quickly, but going beyond just policy questions to changes in the way the U.S. government operates, changes in the expectations we have for our president, changes in the way the parties

operate. You know, to go back to Mike's point, Mike says we should call it what they want us to call it, changes to the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America. What are the things that Trump has done, or what have we seen in this first year of the Trump presidency, that you think is most likely to outlive his presidency? It can be a norm break or a change in our politics or obviously you don't think it's legislation. What lasts? Let me tick through some fun things that definitely won't last. Anything that Donald Trump has put his name on, I drove to the Lincoln Memorial on Monday for Martin Luther King Day. And... Don't you be the Trump Lincoln Memorial? Yeah, exactly.

Don't give him ideas. Jonah, what are you doing? Oh, like he hasn't thought of it already. The Peace Institute had his name attached to it. The Kennedy Center had his name. It was like you were driving and it was like, but they're just like attached. Like it's very obvious. They're additions.

They don't look the same as what was there. The Department of War. All of those things are named by statute and a president cannot change the name of them. His DEI stuff, which is very popular and which I, think I'm fully on board with will not last. Easy to change. If anything, he has highlighted where the next president should go to swing the pendulum the other way and how best to do that.

Things that will last are really hard to point to because I do think that, for instance, even in the foreign policy realm, that a lot of the world is waiting to see what happens next. they believe that they can last for three more years, and there's a big difference for what the next president does. I think that matters a great deal. Similarly, one of the changes that I don't know is the Department of Justice. The next president will have the opportunity to try to restore the previous role of the Department of Justice.

Will they choose to do that, or will they choose to use these new, norm-free levers of power to implement their agenda, again, in which case I think, you know, it will get harder and harder to bring back the Department of Justice, and fewer people will remember it. It'll be sort of like Congress. Congress isn't some stagnant thing where we could, like, everyone could go back to legislating if they wanted to. We've largely replaced the people who remember how that worked or what Congress was like when we had powerful chairman or, you know, people could bring their own legislation forward before the leadership changes. And when you lose that institutional memory, you're not really talking about bringing it back. You're talking about

regrowing it. So let me paint two worlds. Like in one, Gavin Newsom becomes president, in which case, I think the Department of Justice largely continues on the path it's on. In number two, Rama Manuel becomes president and picks Chris Christie as Attorney General. And then you might see the Department of Justice, because it will be a president who's prioritizing showing what the vision is for a Department of Justice that is not furthering the sort of partisan goals. And again, I want to be clear, I think the Department of Justice is supposed to have policy alignment with the president is not an independent agency, but policy alignment is very different than I think what we're seeing right now.

David, what sticks around, what lasts beyond Donald's? Trump's presidency. Yeah, I think with Donald Trump's president, you have very impermanent policies, but you have potentially permanent effects. And so what I mean by that is, look, Sarah's completely right. When he walked into office with an array of executive orders as opposed to an array of legislative initiatives, what he did was created kind of the legal version of vaporware. I mean, an executive order is, if you're going to look at sort of the hierarchy of American

laws, an executive order is. is right down there close to like signs that say no shirts, no shoes, no service. They're very impermanent. They can be immediately changed. However, the effects of sort of an autocratic and erratic kind of leadership are going to reverberate for a long time. Because I think a lot of American allies have realized the fact that you now have a Trump second term is very different from the fact that you had a Trump first term. You might say every democracy gets a mulligan. Sometimes they vote for some crazy person, right?

And then they write the ship. No, no, no. Like a dog returns to its vomit, America return to Donald Trump. And scriptural reference for those who are not familiar anyway. And so now they're looking at a fact that, look, millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of Americans may actually want to disrupt NATO. They may actually have designs for green. They may like the Don Roe doctrine.

And that is a fundamental shift in your strategic planning with the United States. So it's not that much of a consolation that for now, for today, he pulled back on his Greenland threats. The reality is they're looking at this is take two of the most erratic American president that we've ever seen in our lifetimes. And it is now an exclamation point on American sort of, and you don't even want to call it is isolationism anymore. That's just completely inoperative.

it's looking more like an almost imperialistic sort of view. And it's also take two reaffirmed doubling down on this intense antipathy towards allies. And so if you are a foreign power and you're rational, there are permanent effects of the fact that we went back to this and reaffirmed it and doubled down on it. And this is the thing that sort of gets me about, you know, there are those who talk about Trump. and they're sort of like, another conversation about Trump, he's not going to change, he's not going to change.

At this point, the real issue is, where are the American people? And how much are they looking at and seeing all of this with Trump and sort of saying, yup? And he still has a very high floor. He really does.

He still has a higher floor than, say, George W. Bush did. He has a higher floor than any Republican president of my lifetime. Even with all of this corruption, all of this chaos. And so that's when I say this sort of idea that, well, when Trump is gone, you can go, whew, you know, we'll like NATO again.

We'll tell that to J.D. Vance, right? Well, yeah, and to our NATO allies. Try to convince them of that. Well, our NATO allies are looking at J.D. Vance, you know, already being anointed as the heir apparent. And so, and then when you talk about the use of the DOJ, you know, I think the one phrase I was thinking of as Sarah was talking about how to describe the DOJ was, an agency with integrity. Can you have an agency with integrity? And I think also a lot of Republicans

are kind of living in this fantasy land where that says that Trump is a guy who acts with his extreme on his impulses, which many of them really, really like because he hates the same people they hate, et cetera. And they just are not thinking, as Sarah again said, about, okay, what if Gavin Newsom comes in, is he going to be the return to normalcy candidate? When, of all Democrats, he's maybe, between him and Jasmine Crockett have been the most embracing of sort of that Trump approach, right? And so if you think that all the berserker rage is going to be concentrated in MAGA, because MAGA is uniquely strong and tough and politically ambitious, et cetera, you're just

deluding yourself. You know, the Democrats have a fork in the road choice themselves. and they may choose to go full Trumpian in their next president. And if we're getting into that seesaw back and forth where it's just which autocrat is elected next, we cannot sustain that. We just simply cannot sustain stakes that existential every four years. And so that's why I say it's not so much the policies

that will be permanent. It's the effect of the man and the effect of millions upon millions upon millions of Americans liking the man that will have radiating indefinite effects for at home and abroad. Yeah, I think you just articulated almost exactly my view on this, Mike. What sticks around beyond Donald Trump? Similar to what David just ended with the coarsening of our political discourse, which, yes, I mean, it sort of sounds like something, you know, a cosseted D.C. resident, although I live in Virginia, know, would say, but I, and it sounds,

but you are cosseted. That is true. You notice I did not, you know, disagree with that. And it almost sounds like something that we could have said, you know, eight years ago at this point. But I do think, to David's point, the fact that Democrats seem to be getting wise to this approach to politics suggests that that coarsening is, has seeped into the broader kind of political realm of accepted behavior. Gosh, that's like a lot of

mixed metaphors. But there was a lot of concern in the first term that this would have effects on the Republican Party and how the Republican Party proceeded. You know, it was going to be less conservative movement focused. It was going to be less polite. And that's what Republican voters wanted. And so that's how it was going to affect that one party. I think it's also affected both parties. It's also affected what Americans are willing to accept. And I mean this in a very grounded way, the way in which profanity, you know, is just a part and a casual part of political discourse these days. Look, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not somebody who uses profanity privately. And it's not, I'm not sort of clutching my pearls here about bad words in general.

But I do think what's happened in the political realm has followed what's been happening elsewhere in the sort of broader culture. And Donald Trump is a catalyst for that. He's not the only catalyst. He didn't start it, but he's accelerated it. And I think that that is bad. for the culture, it's bad for political discourse because it begins people in a place of meanness and viewing the other side of the political debate as something not worthy of respect. And maybe that didn't start with Trump. I'm not suggesting it started with Trump, but he's accelerated that idea. And I don't think that's going away anytime soon.

Gavin Newsom is a perfect example of that. I don't even think it's going to happen if somebody like a Josh Shapiro or, well, speaking of vulgarity, Rahm Emanuel is hilarious to think of as somebody who would restore any kind of norms because he's maybe the most vulgar person in Democratic politics, which is saying something. But I don't think that there's a lot of appetite for that anymore and we'll be living in that world from here on now. Jonah, what do you think of Mike's bullshit answer specifically? and generally what lasts beyond Donald Trump. I think people have covered a lot of the points, particularly David, about the reshaping of the world order

that has come from this, right? Because our allies and our enemies, serious nationalist security people think about contingencies. And we have just created a whole bunch of plausible contingencies that they now have to plan for, whether they're 1% likely or 90% likely. I'll say one of the worst things about this period that's going to have a very long legs is that it's going to mean the phrase Overton Window is going to have a very long half-life. But I've got to say, so look, I agree entirely, but I can already hear some of our commenters saying, oh, so you're saying the worst legacy of Donald Trump is the lesson Democrats will take from it and Democrats will now do what Donald Trump did.

And I actually do think that that's one of the worst legacies of Donald Trump. But there are some other ones that I think are worth acknowledging. First, the endless questioning of whether or not Donald Trump and his biggest supporters are fascists is almost irrelevant. The relevant question is, how many Americans want a fascist or fascist like president? Yeah. And the answer is too many. I don't have a percentage. but like, and the, and social media magnifies enormously the demand for these things,

then I think the reality. But if you look at the really sad journey that Megan Kelly is on, where her response to the credible accusation that we committed war crimes by finishing off some people drowning in the water, and her response is... So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer.

I would like Trump and Hexeth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. She's reading a market for that. I don't think, I honestly, I couldn't give her rat's ass what her actual views are, but she says what she thinks her audience is kind of want to respond to and the fact that big chunks of the GOP

have gone anti-anti-Nazi is really problematic. But more broadly, look, I've been saying, since I wrote suicide of the West, if not before that, that America needs a conservative party. I don't necessarily mean the Republicans. I mean party in the way Burke meant parties, a faction, a serious intellectual and political constituency that wants continuity of America's traditions,

America's norms, America's Constitution. One of the things that Trump has done, possibly, is make it that we now basically have two essentially progressive parties. want a right-wing party and want a left-wing party. But the problem with that is that you cannot drive a car that has two gas pedals and no brake pedal. And the sort of statism that Trump has legitimized on the right has not created a sufficient opening on the left for limited government and classical liberalism and all these kinds of things that this country needs to have significant constituencies for it to survive as the country. that we love. And I, you know, I wrote an endless sort of longer than the wedding scene from Deer Hunter G-File yesterday about Ross Dathet's column on the end of conservatism, and I think he's wrong.

But he's not implausible. And Trump has tried to turn with the aid of the usual suspects, the Republican Party, into a European right-of-center nationalist party. And the question is not whether it sticks, because it's going to stick for a while, it's how long it sticks and whether it takes over. And that's going to last along him. He is so deformed what is considered dogmatic conservatism and libertarianism, you know, the traditional Buckley-Eyite-Raganite right, that we could be spending the rest of our lives

just trying to fix the damage, never mind, make progress. For fear of beating this metaphor into a pulp, and because we are now expecting 20 to 25 inches of snow in Washington, D.C., which will end life as we know it here, Jonah. Two gas pedals and no break is called a toboggan, basically. And I guess what's interesting about it to me is that the terrain matters a lot, right? Like, the reason that I'm not still on a toboggan is because the, you know, surface, flattened out, and there was enough snow that the snow acted as a break. And again, like, I'm

really pounding this metaphor down. And to move to another winter metaphor from The Sweep, my old newsletter, you know, it's like that curling stone. There's this 40-pound stone going down the ice, and the politics and all of that is the sweeping. It's not the stone. And there's just going to be certain stone things that are going to have a lot more effect on America. I agree with you on that. I agree with you entirely on that. And it will affect the two political parties that will always try to reach equilibrium. I agree with you. I mean, we can get really in the weeds on this. So I've been arguing for a long time that what the Patrick De Nines and the agent Vermeals don't

understand. These are the post-liberal thinkers. Post-liberal, anti-liberal types. Is it just a liberal country? I don't mean it's like a progressive democratic country. I just mean it's like, this is a country that says, get off my lawn whenever. the state steps on it. Most of the left-wing issues, passions, are kind of libertarian. Defund the police is really stupid. It's also really libertarian. Also, all of this anti-ice stuff, all the drug legalization stuff, getting rid of prisons, super stupid, super libertarian. It's just like the right can't see the libertarianness of the left, and the left can't see the libertarianness

of the right. But like this country is just super liberal. So you're right that like the problem The problem for having two gas pedal parties is that this country doesn't want two gas pedal parties, right? This country is a freedom-loving kind of country, but there are fewer freedom-lovers than I thought there were. And that's one of the things I think Donald Trump has demonstrated. And all of us could hum a lot of bars on Congress sucks. But what is also going to have a really long shadow, I think,

is how many of the people running these institutions believe the wrong things about their powers and their institutions. The presidency's are going to think they have way more power than they have, and Congress is going to think it has way less power. And I want to congratulate Sarah and David, who didn't need their belts or their shoelaces confiscated, when Mike Johnson said yesterday that the president is simply using all of his Article 2 powers to use tariffs.

Gosh. For those who don't know, the president has no Article 2 powers to use tariffs. They're just like literally are none. But he's using them all anyway. But he's using them all anyway. And so I just think there's a lot of defamation out there. And eventually the country is going to have to impose seriousness on the government because it's not going to come from the parties or the politicians.

There's this great moment in Valley Forge when Von Steuben comes and is trying to train up the Americans. He doesn't speak a word of English, but he eventually learns one curse word. And it's the only word of English he knows. So, like, no matter the situation, he just has this one curse word that he will yell at everyone. But he says, you know, when I'm in Europe and I tell my soldiers to do this thing, they do it. Right. Here in America, when I tell the soldiers to do something, they ask why. Yeah.

And there is something so fundamentally American about that. And he said, like, in the short term, it's a handicap, but in the long term, it actually makes them far better fighters. Right. Because once you explain it to them, they're like, okay, sure. Right, right. And then if something goes wrong, they actually know what sort of principle they're trying to execute, et cetera. And it's like this beautiful American sentiment that I actually love way more than anything to Tocqueville ever noticed because Von Steuben was such a cranky little guy. Can I just say that though that a car with two gas pedals does sound like something a libertarian would love? Oh, yeah. For sure.

So one of the – can I raise one other thing? And this is the cultural effect of Trump. And one of the weird cultural effects of Trump is in that word weird, that he's an odd dude who will believe seemingly almost anything. And we have really elevated, one of the consequences is we've really elevated oddness, weirdness. There's all these subcultures that now exist have been kind of conglomerated under the MAGA movement. You know, you've got a lot of, you know, the essential oils using homeschool moms, the, you know, like I'm obviously part of the community of looks maxing gigajads, but I don't wear it on my sleeve. It's not my core identity. And so we've got all of these various weird subcalls. He has no idea. So lost. If you have to have it explained to you, Steve, you're clearly not one.

So lost. It's just we've really started to celebrate weirdness, conspiratorial thinking, and it's rupturing a lot of the fabric of our society. And I do wonder if when Trump is sort of lifted out of that, and you've now got kind of more normal politicians, how long that will continue to radiate in our culture. But it has radiated out of this moment in a way that I absolutely did not expect, you know, in January 2017. I have no idea what looks maxing is. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. Hey y'all, this is Sarah Isger, and you know I've got a book coming out in April.

It's a myth-busting walk through the Supreme Court, showing how it is somehow both the founding father's third wheel and the only branch of government they would be likely to recognize today. And I've got a fun bonus offer for y'all. If you pre-order your copy of Last Branch Standing, you can receive a special signed bookplate from me to stick in your copy when it comes out in April. This is a limited time offer only available until February. 9th. For more information and the form to claim your bookplate, go to prh.com slash last branch bookplate. That's pr h.com slash last branch bookplate. And if you've already pre-ordered, don't worry, that counts.

You just go to prh.com slash last branch bookplate and you'll get that signed bookplate from me. Thanks, guys. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. So I want to move to foreign policy by circling back to something that David had said before and telling a brief little story from my week this past week. I was asked maybe a week ago to join Danish public television, basically like the BBC for Denmark. Like to appear on or like to join like you're a new anchor for Copenhagen at five. To appear on. And I was I was eager to do it. because I think in part the job was, going back to David's point, to sort of explain how the American people are looking at this crazy Greenland, Denmark, NATO thing. And it was a, you know, as you would expect, the anchor was extraordinarily well informed about the details of American politics, knew everything, the questions were great. But the last question was sad to me because he ends the interview, and I'm paraphrasing here, by saying something like, you know, we in Europe have always had our differences with the United States.

We haven't agreed. We may not have wanted to go along with some of the things you did. But we've always thought of the Americans as the good guys. And I don't know if you're the good guys anymore. And he asked me, he said, do you, how do Republicans in Washington feel about that? And do you, you said, you know, you've been a conservative for a long time. Do you think you're the good guys? And I had this moment where I had to say, I don't know if we're the good guys anymore.

We're certainly not behaving like it now, whether you're talking about Russia and Ukraine, whether you're talking about Greenland, whether you're talking about some of these other issues. And so I'm giving you my answer to this question first, and then I'll throw it to you all. When we talk about the most significant foreign policy national security development over the past year, I think in some ways that's it. Other countries, including most of the countries with whom we'd have long and deep and meaningful alliances, as we shaped this rules-based post-World War II international order, no longer assume that we're the bad guys, and have begun, as we saw in the speech from Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister this week,

have begun making decisions based on the fact that the United States may not. no longer be a reliable ally, a reliable trading partner. And those are things that will not be undone. I think they are lasting well beyond Trump. And that is my nominee for the most significant foreign policy development of this year. Yeah. Military decisions, for example, are made with a 20, 25, 30-year time horizon. So like when you're building a new class of frigate, you're thinking about them for the next 20 to 30 years, when you're building aircraft carriers, when you're considering, say, Britain and France the size of New York nuclear arsenal. All of these things are decisions made based on understandings of what the world will look like now and 25 years from now, and sometimes

40 and 50 years from now. And if you're setting in the mind of Europeans that this is, we are not a reliable partner, that we are always one election way from this berserkerness, then it has a, it has a 20, 25 year, 30 year planning time horizon. You can already see the adjustment. You can already see the adjustments and the distortions rippling in the pond, so to speak, as a result of this. And I think Mark Carney's speech on Tuesday was incredibly significant because he did not say we're in a transition. He said we're in a rupture. That's the word that he used, a rupture. And it was very significant that in the middle of that speech, he says, we stand with Denmark on its sovereignty and believe in Article 5. Okay. So that's a not very subtle message to

the United States. And so that is not something that then now he's going to go because Trump is truthed out the framework beginnings of a possible beginnings of maybe a deal that he's going to then say, my bad. Like the TikTok deal. We've had the beginnings of a TikTok deal for a year now. Yeah. He's not going to say, my bad, rupture over. No, the rupture has already occurred. And I think we have to just double pin on this. People don't see it just. is a rupture caused by one man, Donald Trump. They see it as a ruptured caused by 77 million people who put him in office and that you can remove him and you still have the 77 million.

And you're crazy if you're a European defense planner and you think, well, we shouldn't take any larger message from this other than when Donald Trump is in power, our position is precarious. No, that is not the message that any rational planner is taking from this last year. I want to go around to get your answers to this question. Then I have two more questions we're going to have to do as sort of lightning rounds so we can leave time for Sarah to vent further on not worth your time. Mike, most significant foreign policy decision or development.

I think big picture-wise, what you said, Steve, about the question of, are we the good guys anymore is not only, I mean, to me, it's the central foreign policy a consequence of the Trump administration and the Trump phenomenon. And I look at people who are smarter and more well-versed in me and other national security and defense issues can point to other things. I look at the tariffs as a as a bleeding edge leading indicator of kind of the breakdown of that American-led order. I think for all of the other aspects of our, you know, of our hegemony, the economic one is where I think we derive so much of our power and in all kinds of good and positive ways from the fact that when people think of the movies, they think of American movies because of our export of that. element of our culture to just the way in which we as a libertarian country, as a market-based country, we love to buy things and sell things and be a part of a global economy.

The retreat from that, even if it's sort of it's been stalled and perhaps it's not in the end, at the end of the day, going to be as sweeping as many of us feared and as Donald Trump and many of his supporters wanted, I think it was the first and perhaps most significant signal that this was going to happen that Trump was going to be pushing for this seriously. And everything else kind of follows from that willingness to step away from our economic power

in ways that are short-sighted and foolish. Sarah, lightning. It really matters what happens next. Because if we are still living in the post-World War II, you know, global order that we've all been part of, then we all like. We all like it for really good reasons. America wins in that global order. We're number one in that global order. If that were still the global order in 15 years, all of this was not only a mistake, it was a catastrophic one.

But I think what Donald Trump is reflecting, is that he believes that world order already ended. Not that he is changing it, but rather it ended 10 years ago with China. And so you can't continue the world order that you like. You can't continue NATO as you like it. You can't continue America as just, you know, Hollywood exporting our culture. China has its own Hollywood. They're not even watching our movies much anymore.

And so if that world order changed, we're going to have to change. we're going to have to change with it, and we can't just continue being the America, the post-World War II America, that literally none of us know anything different. And I think there's no way for me sitting here to predict which one is correct, but I think time's going to be really obvious

on which one it was. Jonah. I disagree with Sarah, I don't think Trump has any theory of the global order other than the fact that he thinks the world operates the way he's thought it worked since he was in Queens, and he just extrapolates that vision onto the planet. But there are people around him where I think exactly the way you're describing.

I think this good guy thing is a good point. I think the Denmark part of it, I mean, the Greenland part of it, is the most obvious manifestation of it. But, you know, it's funny. At the end of December, a lot of pundits were doing their most important things of the first year, of the year pieces and everyone was saying like i remember matt continenti very plausibly arguing that the most significant thing the best thing trump did the high watermark of the trump presidency was bombing iran and i think that was a defensible claim at the time and two weeks later three weeks later it's

oh he's destroying nato because he's literally thinking about using force to uh seize territory from an ally um so i think the bad guy thing is or the we're no longer the good guy thing is a real thing i think it's just worth pointing out that in large swaths of the globe people have been talking about how kids are dying because of all the changes to u.s aid um around the world and that stuff has gotten a lot of coverage that doesn't get coverage here because americans don't like foreign aid and we don't understand it and all of that but like the America is not the good guy, which was a very common view throughout parts of Asia already. And I mean, the Indians never really thought we were all that great.

I don't mean the American Indians. I mean, the Indian Indians. Yeah. Could apply to both. But the point stands. Yeah. But my point is, it's just like, there's a lot of stuff that we've been doing that just hasn't been front and center for us. As, you know, people in Washington focused on the big stories that matter to Americans and yada, yada, yada.

but America seemed really mean and gratuitously mean for most of the year for tens, hundreds of millions of people. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have reformed aid and all that kind of stuff, but the way we did it was more like performative vandalism. And, you know, all the points that Sarah makes about DOJ, they also applied to HHS and CDC and NIH. How are you going to restore those things with integrity? has the world going to trust our science? There's just a lot of facets to this, are we the good guys, still the good guys thing, than just Greenland.

Is anyone else just like feeling the, are we the baddies skit right now? Like it's all I can see in my head. Wait, are we the baddies? Every day. Oh, every day. Yeah. Anytime you imbue anyone with awesome, or any institution with awesome power,

that institution has always got to ask itself, are we the good guys? And it has to put in implements, it has to put in systems of training and instruction to remind people who they are supposed to be. The answer to the question, are we the good guys, has to be something that is drilled and drilled into powerful people

because there is always the impulse to use the power purely for self-interest. And so if you're going to go to my, what's the most significant kind of early decision for me was when he lands in office immediately starts tariffing or wants to tariff Canada and Mexico, just right out of the bat. And the reason why I think that's so significant, and we've kind of forgotten about it.

It feels like issue number 937 on the list, right? But what that said was that, are we the good guys, question was now fully open, fully open. And if you look at the way we have tried to bully people for our national self-interest, just what Trump perceives to be our national self-interest, isn't just raising that question, once again, are we the good guys? It's also adding in another one, are we even the smart guys?

Because, you know, going back to Jonah's point about the changing world order and Sarah's point about the changing world order, one of the ways that it has changed quite concretely is rising Chinese power. So China is far more powerful. And there's a number that sticks in my mind, and that number is 39. 39. 39 is the percentage of the total defensive liberal democracies

defense burden born by the U.S. If you're going to look at the total defense burden of our allied liberal democracies, we carry 39% of it. That is the largest single chunk. This is according to a Rand Corporation study, but we are still a minority. And so what does that mean?

It means that our national defense is a cooperative collective exercise. And crucially, it always has been. We are very much stronger when you add in the defense industrial bases, even if they are diminished of France, of Britain, of Germany, of South Korea, of Japan, of Australia, of, you name it. And you see the kind of shock of recognition of this and that Trump has said, okay, now I want the defense budget to be $1.5 trillion, a $600 billion increase over current numbers. Deficit busting, you name it. But it reflects, like, if you want to go full Don Roe, where we don't need to be the good guys,

you've got to absolutely massively beef up, which is a shocking thing for a lot of Americans to hear. And so I think that if I'm going to go with the key decision, it was that immediate turn towards Mexico and Canada, which really raised that very question that we've been talking about the whole time. What is the nature and character of the American democracy right now? I think we need to make a stylistic change here on the podcast where we allow people to say bullshit, but we bleep people who say Don Roe because that creates on me so much. And I'm not criticizing you, David, but like, in print, in our textual work, we have to put air,

quotes around Don Roe. And it's like, you know, it's like Gulf of America. It's Department of War. And now Don Roe. They're using Don Row. So we are going to skip a question because we're the worst lightning round panel ever assembled. So we're skipping one. But I will get their answers and we will put them in the show notes. So if you're curious to this group's answers about who has been most influential or effective advisor in the first year, we will give them and you can check the web page for the show notes. The real final question, and this still does need to be somewhat lightning, please. When does Donald Trump meaningfully become a lame duck? Eric Erickson has argued, in a sense, we're already there. So traditional thinking would have it come after the midterm,

particularly if it's an unfavorable midterm for Republicans. Some people might put it at the 28 Republican primary really gets going. Some people say January 20th, 2029. He's never going to be a lame duck until he's actually out of office. I might guess the end of his third term. When do you think Jonah Donald Trump will meaningfully be a lame duck? So I'm looking right really quickly through the list of primary dates by state. I think once the bulk of those, dates passed and Trump can no longer endorse primary opponents of members of the Republican House and Senate caucuses, that's when he becomes a lame duck. Right now he has real control over these people, just as Senator Cassidy, but once he can't kill them in a primary, you're going to

see a bunch of people from purplish districts and states starting to run on their own agendas, not the president's. David. What Jonah said. Sarah. She knows I'm right, but she can't say what Jonah said. No, yeah, for sure. You could say what David said. I think one of the ways in which Trump is most effective is keeping people

in line. And as long as he can keep Vance scared, that if Vance, if people start talking about Vance too much, that Trump will punish Vance, Vance has every incentive to keep his head down.

And the closer we get to lame duck status, the more you'll see Vance keep his head down. And so the question will sort of be when the crest of the wave crashes over Vance's head so that there's not much choice. Sort of like a groundhog day thing. When does Vance see his shadow? Mike. The day that Donald Trump dies.

Wow. Ooh. Deep, profound. Wow. Dark. I mean, dead ducks are quite lame. Thank you for those answers, all except for Jonah and the attempted dad joke. So we have to, before.

we go today, we have to revisit what can only really be described as an ambush from last week, where three of my closest colleagues, I would have probably described them as friends before that event, turned on me, knifed me in the back, then knifed me in the front. Mike was the Brutus. He wondered out loud on the podcast. Am I the Brutus? Yeah, you are the Brutus. You were the guest host, and you were the guest host, and you allowed Sarah to hijack not worth your time.

Jonah, my co-founder, longtime friend. I mean, I was first writing for Jonah back in the National Review Days in the late 90s. That's how long our relationship goes. And he, I don't even think he really agreed with Sarah, but he just agreed with Sarah because he feels like he needs to agree with Sarah. and Sarah, you know, our relationship doesn't go back quite as far. And, you know, I think there are times when I feel very close to you. There are times when I don't.

This would be one of those. But the full attack on the changes to not worth your time, which to answer your question, to begin to answer your question, have been done with forethought. This is a plan. It's a deliberate change. So to orient people who may have missed last week's podcast or turned it off when these attacks started happening, I don't blame you. But we're going to play that clip of Sarah's rant again, not because it needs more airtime, but you just have to understand what it was like.

So, Max, can we play that for the group? I hate it so much. And if I had known that stepping away from hosting duties would mean, look, I would have actually been fine if y'all had just said, like, we're not doing not worth your time anymore. We're doing dumb stuff with Steve Hayes. Call it that. Fine. What I object to is continuing to use my trademarked name, but completely eviscerating it of all meaning and purpose and joy and intelligence, etc. Like, did you think this whole time that my not worth your time was, like, me talking about mustard versus ketchup? No. It was something that, like, you know, the kids were all talking about or that Twitter was all worked up about. And then deciding whether, in fact, that was something that, like, we as a society should be talking about or not. Like, chicken wings.

Guys, like, ugh, nobody cares. What? Nobody cares about chicken wings? Yes, exactly. In addition to that being incredibly wrong. I do want to point out, Sarah, that you did a not worth your time that was entirely about chicken wings. Do you remember that? Have you just forgotten that?

You did. You did another one that was entirely about snack food and Pringles. And Max, we can play this next one. He brings the receipts. Which is this next one, which was from early 2024. Max, can you play this one for me, please? Okay, not worth your time. So I did the brought-off.

Scott and I here for the Packers game. It obviously was good luck, Steve, so you're welcome. And for those who have been writing in about the results of the brought-off, you're going to be surprised. First of all, we had four groups. The control group was just brots on the grill. Then we had beer only, beer with raw onions, and beer with caramelized onions.

And first thing I will tell you is absolutely each... Oh, it goes on and on. Every single element of the flavor. You could just taste it entirely, which is really cool and makes us want to experiment more with different test subjects now. Different brats, different beers, different onions. Who knows? Because it turned out the winner of the brought off was the control group.

It was just the brat on the grill. But then taking the caramelized onions that had been simmering in the beer and putting those on top. So basically beer caramelized onions on a plain grilled broth with the mustard of your choice and we did have three different mustards as well. Oh, wait.

Did we not only have an extended Sarah food monologue, we had mustard references? Hey, Max, can you play this budded clip for us? Did you think this whole time that my not worth your time was like me talking about mustard versus ketchup? No. plain, grilled brot with the mustard of your choice, and we did have three different

mustard. Oh, wow. Okay, so, Sarah, I need to give, I just, I'm confused by this, because it feels a lot less like you really object to doing things that aren't in the news or aren't even news adjustment or the thing, what did you say, the thing that kids are talking about on Twitter? Were there tweet streams about your brought off that I missed somehow? I guess the question I have is this.

A TikTok dance craze. Right. You wouldn't have seen it. You wouldn't have seen it. Is this more about, you're not really objecting to the changes. You're just objecting to the fact that they're my changes. Steve, there has never been a more effective takedown. The amount of time.

You couldn't. get the Afghanistan Taliban peace done, but you can do this? The worst thing was I discovered the Pringles one this morning. I woke up at my three hours of sleep, and I'm scrolling through the old transcripts. And there was the Pringles one. And I'm like, oh, I can't ask Matt to cut that too. I can't ask Max to cut that. I love the image of Steve up at three in the morning,

chain smoking cigarettes, going through old dispatch transcripts. Looking for Control F mustard. Control F. Catchup. That's bleep in Izger. I'm going to get her now. That has to be clipped. Put on YouTube under Steve Hayes. Destroy Sarah Isger.

While I stand by my love of the theory of not worth your time, perhaps it would be wise of me to retract the vitriol to about 97% down from my original tone and presentation. Mistakes were made. Mistakes were made. Well, I think you'll be happy with the outcome. As it happens, this has been a long-running discussion behind the scenes here because, you know, you're a very good host, Sarah.

You've done this job well. It's not easy to replace you. and we have had lots of conversations about what we should do with Not Worth Your Time. I am, as you know, much less inclined to do stuff like the conspiracy theories about the royal family. It's just not my thing. Don't really care. And I do like the idea of moving away from the news. I think part of the – I love Not Worth Your Time the way that you did it, even the Buffalo Wings, especially the Buffalo Wings.

but I didn't like to have to talk about Marjorie Taylor Green because other people were talking about Marjorie Taylor Green. So we've made a conscious decision. I actually sent this in a memo about a month ago to Declan and Marguerite, who's our new sort of audio video, honcho, and suggested that we alternate. So we do basically the Sarah version of Not Worth Your Time on Mondays,

which is likelier to be, we're going to, you know, Monday Dispod is going to, feature a dispatch writer, dispatch contributors, talking in many cases about the pieces that we've published, going a little bit deeper on that, probably a little bit more of a news focus. And the late week dispatch podcast is going to be more discursive. We'll talk about sort of big picture news check-in. So for that second one, I want to go off the news. I want to do the stuff that you don't like, in part because there are a lot more news avoiders.

in the world today, in the country today, and I've got to be honest, sometimes I'm one of them. I just don't want to, I'd much rather talk about your brots or condiments. I'm just going to offer one really annoying nitpicky semantic correction to you. You said what Sarah, Mike, and I did was, there's no other word for it but an ambush. Now, David is the most expert here on military tactics.

I don't think there's any such thing as an ambush in absentia. You were not here. You call it a betrayal. That works. A show trial. If you prefer betrayal, I'll give you that. That's fine.

Unplanned attack. All right, so David, you were the only one who wasn't here for the other one, but you are one of the OG dispatch. Yes. What is your ruling on this? About the fundamental nature of not worth it. your time? Yes. Or any of it. Oh, well, first, Steve Hayes just destroyed Sarah Isner. That is definitely, definitely one take. But I think the, my understanding of not worth your time was it's about things

everyone's talking about that we shouldn't be talking about. Like, that was my take on, but then the problem is, but then the problem is that there's not always something like that every week. There's something like that. Some weeks. And then, then, but I actually have to be completely stumped that as to why we're spending so much time on the not worth your time feature, which actually is kind of a manifestation of one of the most annoying things about podcasts, which is endless podcast banter. That is, so it can be fun like, you know, my decisive victory over y'all in the do you back in your truck conversation in which, you know, That's valuable to people, but it's hard to do that every week. It's hard. And so...

It is. I agree with you on that. That means that sometimes you're going to go with brats. Sometimes you're going to go with mustard and ketchup just because the original, originalist vision of not worth your time is impossible to fulfill in any given week. But endless podcast banter is a great name for a band. It would be a good name for a podcast, actually. It's almost getting to the point of some of our early conversations. about Spanish wine, which almost killed this whole podcast before it could even start. Why do you think we built audience the way that we did?

I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. So one thing that I should point out is I do, when I send topics around, I do invite nominations for not worth your time. Usually, I don't get responses to that. So I will implore you and the others who join this August podcast to give me suggestions. And we are opening this up to the audience. If you have suggestions, either for Monday news or news adjacent old school, we'll call them Sarah Isger, not worth your time, questions, topics, segments, please send them to us. And also, if there are other things that you would like us to talk about in the late week podcast, we're happy to have suggestions. There, you can leave them in the comments. We read all the comments. Or you can send them to roundtable at the dispatch.com. And with that, thanks all for joining.

One year into the term presidency, three years to go. We'll have this same conversation a year from now. And that Jason sells. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few really, really easy ways to support us. You can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to new listeners find us. It really works. And speaking of support, here's a shout-out to a few folks who recently joined as premium members, Breyer Palmer, Bill Hodes, and Sarah Hepburn, and Britt Bishop. Very glad to have you aboard. 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 people who prefer Sarah's not worth your time. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. A big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Victoria Holmes and Noah Hickey, and a special thanks to Max Miller, who cut up the Sarah sound for us. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.