The Dispatch Podcast - Trump Rising

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Disclaimer: In this episode, which was recorded Thursday morning, we speculated about the delay in U.S. military response to provocations from Iran. By the time the episode released, news broke that the U.S. forces had struck Iranian targets in Syria. The House finally has a speaker ... and he’s one of the architects of Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election. Sarah is joined by Steve and Mike Warren to explain who Rep. Mike Johnson is and what his speakership means for Trump’s hold on our politics. Also: -Plea deals for Trump associates -Joe Biden has a challenger? -Pro-Hamas Democrats -Jewish students harassed at Cooper Union -“Reproductive freedom means Palestinian freedom” -Qatar’s influence on college campuses -Why institutions matter -Iran’s real escalation Show notes: -Collision newsletter -Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show -Video of Jewish students harassed at Cooper Union -The Free Press: Qatar’s War for Young American Minds -Twitter thread on Jake Sullivan's Foreign Affairs essay  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Halloween is on Disney Plus. Hello. So you can feel a little fear. What's this? Well. Or a little more fear. I see dead people. Or a lot of fear.

Mom? Or you can get completely terrified. Who's that? Choose wisely. With Halloween on Disney Plus. us. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgir, and I've got Mike Warren and Steve Hayes here today.

You know, we're going to talk about Trump and Biden, but maybe at a bit of an angle, if you will. And then we'll finish up with Israel as well and some questions that I've got for Steve on, you know, all of that. Let's dive right in. Steve, starting with Trump, let's talk about his relationship to the GOP at this point. So we now have a Speaker of the House after three weeks, but Donald Trump played a pretty significant role in that. He did. I mean, I think if you look at what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week as House Republicans were going in for their third and then their fourth attempt to, nominate a speaker within their carcass and then take that speaker to the floor. What you saw was how truly powerful Donald Trump remains in the Republican Party.

Tom Emmer, who ran the National Republican Congressional Committee, helped get many of his colleagues elected, traveled to country, raising money for them, worked hard to earn goodwill, pretty conservative. guy, probably more moderate than some of the others who have been candidates for the office, but was somebody who had voted to certify the election and had not shown the kind of public fealty to Donald Trump that the MAGA crowd wanted him to. So immediately, Emmer, a member of leadership, when he announced there was a reaction in sort of MAGA world that Tom Emmer could not being Speaker of the House. And they pushed

and pushed and pushed. Emmer made a call to Donald Trump down, I guess he's not at Mar-a-Lago, made a call to Trump and said, I'm with you, Mr. Trump,

please support my nomination. Trump talked about this publicly, sort of mused about the possibility of being supportive of Emmer. And then And really quickly when Emmer was chosen by his colleagues nominated by Republicans, Trump gave a statement and as Trump himself has said, killed it, killed Emmer's nomination.

Emma withdrew quickly thereafter. The irony is that all of this was happening as Donald Trump was in court, listening to testimony from Michael Cohen in the fraud case that is taking place right now. And it came as Jenna Ellis, one of Trump's top lawyers, read a note of apology for her role in the post-election lies that Donald Trump and his team told. There are reports, there's a report from ABC News that Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff and somebody who, behind the scenes at least, appeared to have played a pretty significant role in the events that led to January 6th

in pushing the election lies, has an immunity deal and will be testifying against Trump. His lawyer put out a statement that CBS News, among others, covered saying that that ABC reporting was largely inaccurate, but without giving any real pushback to why it was. inaccurate. We'll learn more about that, I think, in the coming days. And finally, to cover that 48-hour stretch, Mike Johnson, who is a representative from Louisiana and led the effort to build congressional support for lawsuits challenging election results in several states, really made the case, was elevated quickly. and chosen eventually by his Republican colleagues

and voted on the House floor to be the next speaker of the House. Very supportive of Donald Trump. This is somebody who undertook these efforts in Congress to get support for Donald Trump and his election lies. And before that, in his media appearances, amplified some of the craziest election lies

that we heard from Trump world that voting machines from Dominion had come from Venezuela. And really the nutty stuff, Johnson endorsed that. He is now the new Speaker of the House. Donald Trump is at a high or near high in the nuclear politics election polling for 2024, both in terms of his primary competition and the general election. And as we're seeing, his legal peril seems to be, at least to an outside amateur,

observer such as myself, increasing. This is the Republicans' dilemma in a nutshell. Donald Trump is in trouble. He's bad for the party. He's bad for the country. And his grip on the Republican Party seems to be at maybe an all-time high. Well, I guess that does it for our podcast. Mike, thanks for being here. Sure thing. I thought I could contribute. Can you sort of give us the other side of this? Yes, Donald Trump is leading in the polls. Yes, he clearly had more influence than any other Republican, it seems, over who the next Speaker of the House was in the Republican caucus.

Yeah, what is the other side to this? I know. I'm trying to sort of figure out if there is another side. I kind of tend to agree with Steve's analysis. I will say that, and Steve, you and I talked about this last week, there was the moment, if we can sort of pull out from this three-and-a-half-week drama in the House race, House Speaker's race, there was this moment where Jim Jordan was blocked from winning the speakership, and he was blocked by a group of institutionalists, people who, for varying reasons, viewed not

just Jordan, but sort of what Jordan represented as a bridge too far. These were House Republicans from moderates. I wouldn't really even call them moderates. They're moderate conservatives, their center right. They're not moderates in any kind of real ideological way. People from districts that lean or even went toward Biden, lean, you know, swing districts or even voted for Biden, particularly in New York.

And people like Kay Granger, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, an institutionalist if there ever were one in the House, They blocked Jim Jordan, and there was the sense after they did that, that maybe House Republicans were, had some kind of spine, that there were bridges too far for them to go. And that was even, if you had that interpretation, you could see even more evidence in that when the vote, after the floor vote failed for the third time for Jim Jordan to be elected speaker, it went back to the Republican conference. And the vote for Jordan collapsed after that point, I should say that. And Republicans clearly wanted to move on. Then you had everything that Steve went through just now that happened this week with Emmer's election as the speaker designee after Jordan, his call to Trump, Trump's central, you know, I'm thinking of Joaquin Phoenix in The Gladiator when he's sort of pointing his thumb should he go up or down and Trump pointed eventually dead. on Tom Emmer.

I have a piece coming up. It probably will be up by the time this podcast is published about what was going on beyond Donald Trump himself. And I actually wonder if Donald Trump is somewhat of a lacking indicator in what's going on here. I've been paying attention a lot to War Room, the podcast and broadcast by Steve Bannon, the former Trump aide and a sort of unofficial spokesman for the populist conservative wing of the party, they believe, and they being Bannon and his crew, they believe that this whole process has been a big victory for them. Matt Gates is a kind of, their kind of mole inside the Republican conference,

and they've been pushing against Kevin McCarthy. They pushed against Steve Scalise. They pushed against Tom Emmer. They even took Jim Jordan's failure as a kind of win for them as well. Jim Jordan 2.0, Steve Bannon, liked to say he's gone soft since he started working with McCarthy. They're now looking at Mike Johnson as a victory for them because he is, as Steve pointed out, essentially subservient to Donald Trump pushed forward that 2020 Texas. The Texas lawsuit, Mike Johnson sort of spearheaded behind the scenes, the amicus brief, a friend of the court, friend of the plaintiffs, to push back against the election results, I think in four states that Biden won at the end of 2020, sort of last-ditch effort by House Republicans to block the 2020 election.

They view this all as a victory for them. And they defeated the bad guys, which is the Republican establishment. And yes, they're sort of, they were going to claim victory no matter what, the populist conservatives, the Bannon Wing. But I think they're kind of right. I don't actually see where institutionalists, Trump skeptics in the party can find victory. I don't know. Sarah, maybe it's up to you to do this. Well, Steve, here's what I think is interesting.

that Jim Jordan was seen as the, to keep the gladiator metaphor up, I guess, like the champion of the Trump wing. And he went down not just in flames, but like sort of bigger flames. It wasn't with a whimper. It was a bang that he went down, you know, kept trying,

had people threatening members who weren't, you know, voting for him. I mean, it was a huge rift within the Republican caucus and each time they took a vote, he got further from the gavel, not closer. And so it's sort of like how I say that you can't just put the Supreme Court on an ideological axis because Kavanaugh-Gorsuch are about the same,

you know, ideologically conservative people. So why do they vote differently so often? You've got to come up with some other reason. Well, same thing with Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson. They're the same amount of, I think, Trump friendly. They're the same amount of conservative, let's say. So why was it that the caucus was so unwilling to go with Jordan and seems actually very unified behind Mike Johnson to the point that people think Mike Johnson might actually get stuff done? I mean, shock of shocks.

Steve, what's the access that we're missing here? I mean, Mike has a good theory that it's Steve Bannon. I hate that theory, but can't dispute it. Please, tell me there's something else. Yeah, I think Mike is right, but I think there are two other factors. One, I think Jim Jordan was, as you say, I mean, very aggressive in doing what he did to try to win the speakership. You know, he disclaimed any knowledge of these pressure campaigns, but he had Sean Hannity calling or emailing people who were rumored to not be supportive of Jordan in a sort of, you know, that's a nice office you hold. their kind of mafioso way, totally inappropriate, just as a side point for Sean Hannity to be doing that. He claimed he was doing journalism. If he was doing journalism, that would be the first journalism he's ever done. And in the past, when he's spoken at Republican rallies, he said he's

not a journalist. He's really just a commentator. So it's sort of typical behavior from Sean Hannity, who's an utter disgrace. Hannity was doing this on behalf of Jim Jordan. So were many other outside conservative groups. There were threats to lawmakers, there were threats to lawmakers' wives, really aggressive over-the-top, sort of badgering campaign. And this is not the first time that's happened from Jordan. This is sort of how Jordan behaves. He is aggressive.

He's in your face. That's why a lot of the MAGRA crowd likes him as much as they do. But it's also why so many of his colleagues don't like him. I think he also was hurt by the fact that he was seen as sort of a proxy for Kevin McCarthy in some ways, a House Freedom Caucus proxy for Kevin McCarthy. As we've talked about on this podcast before, despite the votes for Kevin McCarthy when the original motion to vacate came up, might lead you to conclude that he had wide support among the Republican conference. He didn't.

there were a lot of people who voted for Kevin McCarthy who were very, very frustrated with the way that Kevin McCarthy conducted himself in office. So I would say that's number one. And then the second reason is Johnson is Jordan philosophically and ideologically, perhaps, but not in a way that he's been known for that. So you had sort of moderates in the party or the people who had opposed him, saying good things about him, saying, I can work with this guy. You know, he's not both a combination of sort of where he was, attitudeally, he's not Jim Jordan, but also he's not been sort of a,

he's not a, he's not been a performance, uh, mega personality. He's not out on TV. He's quieter. He's more reserved. He's, he's regarded, I think, generally as, uh, as pretty smart. Um, and I think that, people take some comfort in the fact that he can make an argument and win an argument. He fought, there was a big fight that he had with Liz Cheney about the lawsuit.

It's covered well in John Carl's book betrayal, where he's got details of this, where Cheney confronts him and says, you know that this lawsuit is bogus. This isn't going anywhere. And according to her, he acknowledges that, which is something, by the way, I've heard from other of his colleagues said he knew that this wasn't going to be a successful lawsuit. But according to John Carl's book, what he said was, we've got to show the president we are fighting and was basically doing Trump's bidding there. Before we leave this, Mike, I do want to talk about the plea deals quickly. You know, we have a collision newsletter together and we're covering

that this week. And I really feel like you look around. and you see people who say these plea deals by three Trump lawyers prove that Trump is about to spend the rest of his life in jail forever and ever and tortured by little gremlins or something. And then you have people on the other side who say, aha, these plea deals

show that Donald Trump's in no danger in Georgia because actually the case is much weaker. Look how minimal the time is that these guys are pleading to. And I'll just walk through those very quickly. So, one, Jenna Ellis had been indicted on two felonies in the case. She pleaded to one felony, no jail time, five years probation, $5,000 restitution. Kenneth Chesbrough had been indicted on seven felonies, pled guilty to one felony,

five years probation, $5,000 in restitution, no jail time. Sydney Powell faced seven felony charges and pled down to seven. six misdemeanors. No jail time, six years probation, $6,000 in restitution. I actually think that both sides have a great point here because, and again, we cover this in the newsletter this week, but there's two reasons why a plea deal like this looks this way. One reason is that they, you know, the small fish can turn on the big fish, and so you have

to offer the small fish something really good to turn on the big fish, like no jail time. And so you can see drastic drop-offs from charge. charges in order to get the small fish to testify, and all three have agreed to testify. On the other hand, you also might see a plea deal like this when the prosecution overcharges isn't confident they'll get something but wants to save face and wants to sort of get some momentum. So they drop a bunch of charges just to get those guilty pleas. And if you're the defendant, it's like, well, look, if you're offering no jail time and for $5,000 I can move on with my life, you know, I'm not going to roll the dice with.

the jury, you never know. Juries can be unpredictable. And so, yeah, you take the deal and you move on. And I don't know that anyone across this spectrum of commentators actually knows which one it is at this point. And I'll just add that my hunch, or rather, for the first one to be true, though, the small fish do have to have something to testify to on the big fish. And this just isn't really a case for me where we're missing facts. It's really more of a case where it's a question of like, does the law cover these facts? You know, this idea that Donald Trump has hid the ball on what he actually thought after the 2020 election or what he wanted to do hasn't really been the question. So we'll see. Maybe they do have bombshell testimony that they can offer. I'm a little

dubious of that. Well, you are, you were certainly convincing, Sarah, on this point. And I, as a layman and not a lawyer, I sort of defer to you on what seems likely, although you're correct, that we just don't know. What I'm more interested in with these plea deals, and let's separate out as well, Mark Meadows, because I think there's something more significant with Meadows than with these other three. I'm more interested in what it might mean in the court of public opinion or in the court of sort of the public record, to have these people who were working on behalf of Donald Trump

admit publicly. Now, you say, oh, they're making a balance, you know, they're making a decision based on, you know, I can take this plea deal, I can plead guilty, I have no jail time, I pay a small fine, it's outweighs, outweighed by what I would be paying my lawyers, fine, I'm okay to do that, but you're still pleading guilty.

And to have them on record pleading guilty and admitting, essentially, to saying that what they were advocating for publicly, what they were advocating for as lawyers for Donald Trump's campaign, which was that there was a fraudulent election, that there was reason to believe that in Georgia, that the electors for Trump could be seated, that all of this was real, that they're essentially saying, we lie. we were wrong. We, we, that was incorrect. And, and that Donald Trump was incorrect as well, I think is an important thing to get in the public record. Maybe it doesn't mean anything for Donald Trump in this Fulton County case. Maybe it, maybe it, maybe it does reveal that it's a weaker case than it seemed. But there's, there's what happens in the court of law and there's what happens sort of in, in public. And I think this hurts Donald Trump's, you know, reputation such as it is and the case that the 2020 election was stolen, which still a lot of people believe.

I think this goes against the heart of his whole argument. If you still listen to him on the trail, he's still talking about the 2020 election. This is damaging for him in that realm. I think that's what's more important. And can I just point out that, I mean, the confluence. of these events this week is sort of built on this mountain of irony. I mean, you have at the same time, Jenna Ellis, who made, I mean, she was part of these news conferences. She was a leading advocate for Trump. She was sort of one of the ones pushing this more than just about anybody

saying, hey, it was all a lie. It wasn't true. And I wish I hadn't participated in any of it. And then reportedly you have Mark Meadows saying, Obviously, we didn't win. And at the very same time on Capitol Hill, you have Republicans turning to somebody who was sort of one of the architects of these election lies and saying it's really important that we have somebody who pushed these things. And you have Trump killing the candidacy, the House Speaker candidacy of somebody who voted to certify. He wasn't an outspoken critic of Donald Trump's election lies. Tom Emmer was just somebody who voted to certify, and that was enough to be disqualifying for the Maga crowd on Capitol Hill. The fact that these two things happened at the same

time, I think just shines a light on exactly what we're likely to see over the next 12 months. And can I put a quick coda on that, Steve? The read that I've gotten for why Johnson is acceptable and Jordan was not to the sort of holdouts on Jordan, is that there is a rea that there is a sense that Johnson is very smart and that, in fact, the push that he was doing behind the scenes, that he didn't actually necessarily believe that that was actually going to work. So there's something even more sort of galling about it because you have these people who were working on behalf of Trump essentially saying, I wish I was never part of it. And you have a new speaker of the House who privately, part of the reason,

and he is Speaker of the House is because people believe that he didn't actually believe what he was pushing behind the States. It's all just goes to the issue that I think you've been hammering on for years now, which is what people say in private, what people say in public, what people are demonstrating or are performing what they actually think are two different things when it comes to Trump. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones

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Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ETHOS.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right. Let's move to Joe Biden. And Steve, Joe Biden looks like he might actually have a challenger in the Democratic Party. I've never heard of this guy. Tell me about Dean Phillips. Dean Phillips is a representative from Minnesota, moderate representative with a long independent streak, independently wealthy, who has been raising concerns about Joe Biden and his age and electability now for some months. He's been a thorn in the side of the Democratic establishment. The Biden team would like him to just go away or at least shut up, and he's not willing to.

And he pushes a lot, certainly behind the scenes, but as I say, sometimes in public. Well, there was a bus spotted driving down the highway in Ohio this week, and a reporter posted it on Twitter, and it was Dean Phillips for President bus, saying make America affordable again, which was his slogan. Phillips is long mused about running for president and gave an interview a couple months back to our friend Jonathan Martin at Politico. Martin interviewed him, and Phillips talked about this. wasn't clear if he was going to run, but certainly hasn't been shy about it. Look, I think there are all sorts of reasons that this can and won't happen that Dean Phillips will not unseat Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.

Most of them logistical, just in terms of timing and filing deadlines and trying to build a candidacy at this late date. But what we do know is that he's speaking for, according to several polls, a majority of the Democratic Party when he says he has concerns about Joe Biden's ability to do the job and to carry out a second term. There were polls that we've discussed on this podcast

showing that some 70% a Democrat rank and file and believes that Biden is too old. There have been polls showing that a majority of Democrats don't want Joe Biden, the current incumbent president, to run. He is losing many of the recent

head-to-head polls with Donald Trump And I think, were it not for Donald Trump being the potential Republican nominee, Biden would be one of the weakest positioned incumbents in recent history. The vulnerabilities are very, very, it's a very, very long list. So Phillips is trying to raise those points, I think, in the hopes of, I don't know what. Unseating him, doubtful, forcing some kind of a post primary shift where Biden steps down after he wins the primaries. I don't know. But he certainly seems to turn to light on the fact that Biden is as old as he is. Mike, I don't mean to be the turn in the punch bowl here for all the people who are, you know, pumping their fists in the air at the idea that Joe Biden might not be the. the Democratic nominee, regardless by the way of which side of the political aisle you may be on. But once again, I have to bring up the thing nobody seems to care about, ballot access.

So this dude's already missed the ballot for Nevada's primary. And as someone who had to deal with ballot access now in a few different presidential primaries, it's hard and it's pricey. Some of these states are like pure pay to play. It just takes a lot of money. Okay, he's self-funding. Maybe he can cut the check. In other states, though, it's like get a signature from someone with every letter of the alphabet in their name in each county precinct and also the middle name of their third-born child. Like, it's really hard and it just takes a lot of human grease to get all the signatures gathered in all the right ways and put it together and sort of have that organizational side. this guy doesn't have the time or the team to do that kind of on the ground work

to get in the ballot, let's say, in the primaries in the other 49 states. That's just not going to happen. So I guess it goes back to Steve's point. What is the point of this? You know, with that attitude, it's a good thing that you're not working for Dean Phillips, Sarah,

because with that attitude, he won't be the Democratic nominee. But I like this positive, optimistic attitude from Dean Phillips. No, look, I think it's, I think it is performative. I think it's interesting, by the way, that Phillips is probably, he's more sort of toward the center than Joe Biden is, but he sort of comes from the Joe Biden wing of the party. Phillips was among those who were the most vocal a few years ago when Elon Omar, his fellow

Minnesota Democrat, had said some things that were interpreted as anti-Semitic. Dean Phillips is Jewish. he spoke out against that. He sort of comes from that center left of the party, and he's really not making an ideological point about Joe Biden at all. He's making a practical point about his age. And so it does lead me to wonder, so what is the point of he's not trying to move the party?

My point of bringing this up is he's not trying to move the party in ideological direction. He's not trying to pull Joe Biden to the center because Joe Biden's pretty much where the center of the party is at the moment. He's just trying to make a practical point, I suppose, that they could use somebody younger as their nominee. They could use somebody more vibrant. I don't know who this is going to convince. It's probably will backfire, as my guess, and consolidate more support for Joe Biden

within the Democratic Party. But you're correct. Practically speaking, I don't see how this gets off the ground. He's in a worse position than some of those Republican challengers to Trump in 2020 were. Joe Walsh and who, gosh, who else was it, Bill Weld, they were at least on the ballots in these states. So, Steve, speaking of the center of the party, let's talk about another bad sign for Biden. Okay, he's drawn a primary challenger. but also look, the Israel, Hamas, Gaza situation

has shined a bright, hot light on a division within the Democratic Party, writ large, but also division generationally within the Democratic Party that is hurting, or at least people think could, hurt Joe Biden, and the administration seems torn on whether to acknowledge that divide, react to that divide, move to the center, something Joe Biden has always been very keen to do. Wherever the party is, he wants to be in the center of it.

Now, when the party moves, he moves to the center of it. Well, if the Democratic Party center doesn't have a center on this issue, there's those who are incredibly pro-Israel and there's those who are incredibly anti-Israel, what is a Joe Biden supposed to do? Yeah, so can I just, let me just amend that last description. There are members, increasing number of members, surprising number of members to me of the Democratic Party, who seem to be not just anti-Israel, but pro-Hamas, like openly pro-Hamas. You have protesters, certainly, who are making pro-Hamas arguments that go well beyond being anti-Israel or anti-this campaign that they're anticipating.

from Israel. They're pro-Hamas. So when we talked about this in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, I was surprised that Biden had come out as strongly pro-Israel as he had for some of these reasons. And when we talked about it, my reasoning was that the attacks were so horrific and so indisputable that, you know, there was this kind of shared whole. horror, even from people who would have identified as pro-Palestinian in the past. I didn't know how long that would last, but I was hopeful that it would last a while. It hasn't lasted. The split is obvious and it's growing.

And Biden seems to be, if you read the reporting about the internal deliberations taking place at the White House, the State Department and elsewhere, Biden seems to be increasingly attuned to this or concerned about it. Maybe for substantive reasons, certainly there's tricky diplomacy that the White House is trying to conduct in the region and being as pro-Israel as Biden certainly sounded at the outset would complicate that diplomacy. I think we can grant him that. But, But he also seems to be paying careful attention to sort of the politics of this in a way that I think we can assume that he'll continue to drift in that direction. So, Mike, it might actually be a little incorrect to say that, for instance, these college student protests that we're seeing around the country, and I'm thinking here, George Washington University students projected honor the martyrs on the school's library, which happened to. be named after a Jewish alumni.

You have at Cooper Union, I think now one of the most egregious of sort of stories to come out of this. Jewish students were meeting in the library. The anti-Israel protesters were threatening violence. At least that's what security thought so much so that they locked the Jewish students into a room to protect them from the pro-Hamas, however you want to describe them, protesters and had to get police escorts for these Jewish students to get out of the library.

And you've seen versions of this, right? At Chicago, Jewish students were meeting for what amounts to like a prayer vigil. Other students screamed over them, yelling all the things we've already heard, right? From the river to the sea and other things that at least can be interpreted as advocating violence against Jews.

I think, though, that to say that those students are part of the base of the Democratic Party kind of misses it. If you asked those students, I think they would not say that at all. They wouldn't like Joe Biden.

They wouldn't describe themselves as Democrats. But the problem for the Democratic Party is it's not like they're going to vote for Donald Trump or something. And so they, they, they pull the party to the left. They're not solid voters for the left, though.

And they're not like supporters in a general sense. It's not like the Republican base in that way. This is very asymmetrical compared to, I think, what the rights problem with their base is. So how do we think about this base problem for the Democrats? I agree with you. I think the way to think about this is not so much about voters and the base

and more about the way that what you're seeing on college campuses now, the way that that environment creates a class of people who funneled directly into democratic campaigns and democratic government service. They are overrepresented, I would say, as opposed to the general democratic voting population. in the type of people who form the engine of sort of the democratic machine in Washington and in politics. To play with your idea of asymmetry here, this is different than the way that things

work in the Republican Party, where a lot of the sort of folks, at least through the early years of Trump, a lot of the people who were, who filled those roles in the Republican Party, were very much out of step with the more populous base of the Republican Party. I would say that the, what do you want to call it, consultant advisor class in the Democratic Party is much more radical than the base of the Democratic Party on issues like this. And I think that's where you're seeing.

Which is fascinating because, again, asymmetry-wise, on the Republican side, the consultant class is considered far more moderate than the base of the Republican Party. And it's not true on the other side. Absolutely. And I think that is, I think that's what Biden is trying to deal with. I think he's trying to deal with in many ways similar sentiment. I mean, you don't want to draw too many parallels where there are.

But I think if you can compare it to the way that big media companies or other big companies are sort of dealing with an educated workforce that is sort of, for lack of a better term, woke, more woke, and they're having to sort of deal with that. I think that's what Biden is dealing with within his party. Because if you look at the polling, the polling of the country, again, this is like a 70% issue for Americans. It used to be higher. I wish it were higher. But that includes a lot of Democratic voters. The difference here is who makes up the sort of nuts and bolts of the Democratic Party. Biden would be wise to to manage that with those numbers and that breakdown in mind.

This is a sort of a staff problem and not a voting problem for him. Interesting. Sarah, let me push back on your assumptions. I don't agree with you. I think there's a lot we don't know. These are young people. They haven't been political for very long. We don't know if they have Democratic Party ID cards.

But I think there are lots of indications that this is much more a function of sort of the political environment on college campuses and beyond, and like a lot of the cause-oriented activism that we see elsewhere on the left. There are signs, if you look at the signs, at some of these rallies that say Palestinian rights and reproductive freedom, despite the fact that abortions... It says reproductive freedom means Palestinian rights. It doesn't make sense. It's pretty clear that a lot of these students, haven't spent a lot of time thinking about these issues. They don't come to this because they have some deep, passionate understanding

of the lives of the average citizens in Gaza, for instance. I think many of them, this is something that their friends are into. They see some Hollywood people into it. They think it's cool. They get a lot of this on social media. There's a lot of reinforcement on social media, TikTok in particular, that pushes them in this direction. So I've seen signs, you know, gay rights.

sequels Palestinian rights and the reproductive freedom sign. So I do think it's much more of a sort of the latest in a string of causes that is consistent with campus activism. That leads often, as Mike points out, to, you know, later Democratic activism. Well, let's take that thread and pull it a little more. A guy named Jeff Morris on Twitter, a writer in the tech space, he was talking about the influence that TikTok has had over this, noting that most young people at this point

get their news from TikTok. It is the number one search engine for more than half of Generation Z. So like us oldies are on Twitter or we're arguing over the New York Times headlines, Steve. But his point is like, you're missing it. This college campus stuff, the growing number on the left

that now see Hamas as justified, that's not coming from the New York Times. It's coming from TikTok. Now, TikTok is using some of the New York Times coverage. But when he looked into it, I just, this both shocked me and didn't surprise me at all, if one has had that feeling before, as I'm sure many of you had in our current political environment.

So he writes, as I looked at the tactics and data, I saw that much of TikTok is being controlled by anti-Israel bot farms, paid commentators, much of which is being paid for by Hamas-supporting organizations. Now, we've talked about the concern around TikTok before, though maybe not enough. This is a foreign-controlled entity that is feeding our young people information, deciding what they get, deciding what those algorithms are,

and here, for instance, taking money from Hamas-supporting organizations in order to have those bot farms to feed them this. Now, again, I don't know absolve the TikTok users of responsibility here, these young people who feel like they can lecture. You know, there's this video of Hillary Clinton at Columbia University where this student, you know, says he won't stop interrupting the event. Columbia, by the way, has clearly no plan of what to do. They say, you need to sit down and he goes, or what?

Good question, young man, because they didn't have an or what. it went on and on and on. Okay, so this guy thinks he's really up on the history of this whole situation, but isn't actually smart enough to realize he's being fed this by paid groups. And on an app that is a foreign country's sort of propaganda arm in the United States. I mean, it just, it makes me a little sick to my stomach because of the power that we've given China over an entire generation of Americans, the next generation of Americans, that we need to continue this experiment,

uh, ain't good, you know? So I want to think about that then in this larger context of foreign money that is part of this debate. And, um, as others have pointed out, our friends over at the free press, these schools themselves are taking hundreds of millions of dollars,

billions of dollars in some cases, from the very countries that very much support Hamas. The one article I'm thinking of outlined just Qatar's support in these universities. I'll pick on my own alma mater so that people don't think I'm being

mean to theirs. But, you know, Northwestern is taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar. Now, the argument is, yeah, it's to start a journalism school in that country. That money's pretty fungible, though. I bet it didn't take all that money to start the journalism school, and I bet

they're using it to, again, be more competitive in the United States when it comes to rankings because that's how you get the most elite students. And the more you can move up in the rankings and get those elite students, the more you get more money and more nicer things. And it just, it feeds on itself. And if that money is coming from Qatar and other Middle Eastern Hamas or Hamas supporting countries, Steve, why should I not be freaking out about this? Well, it's been, I mean, this has been a longstanding concern, certainly of people who have worked in the counterterrorism space. What are these countries doing to help buy access to our students and our brains? And would the universities in the event of something like what we're seeing have the fortitude to step up and push back?

And I would say the early returns are not good. and I would also cite your alma mater for that, the enabling and amplifying of some of the worst voices and the unwillingness to step in with some of the egregious activities that we've seen taking place at Northwestern, our friend Guy Benson has... My classmate, can I just give an analogy here?

I mean, for so many people, and I may disagree with them a little bit on the margins about campaign finance and the control of big money and politics. If you have, first of all, of course, we ban foreign money in politics for a reason. We don't want foreign nationals funding our campaigns, even, by the way, small amounts of money. You can't give 20 bucks to a candidate if you're a foreign national, and certainly not if you're a foreign country. But let's just imagine, I don't know, let's pick on Elon Musk.

Elon Musk gives $50 million to a super PAC to support his candidate of choice. And then Elon Musk goes on Twitter and says something nuts. And a reporter's like, hey, candidate, what do you think of what Elon Musk said? And that candidate kind of demers, right? Like, it's just like, oh, you know, it wasn't great, but I don't know. And like other people say things and free speech, everyone on the let's get big money out of politics side would say, see, this is a distorting factor. Elon Musk's $50 million clearly has an influence over this candidate.

And yet when these universities aren't putting out very strong state, protecting their Jewish students on rampant anti-Semitism on their campuses, nobody's saying, hey, maybe it's the $700 million that only Qatar gave them? That's not including UAE, Saudi Arabia. I mean, Hamas HQ is in Qatar, $700 million to just one school, Steve, and nobody, like, what the frick? Well, I think some people are saying that. And to be fair, in this context, you know, people have raised these issues in the past.

You know, Marco Rubio has been on sort of a campaign over the past several years pointing out the problematic, the excessive amount of Chinese government money, Chinese Communist Party money going to these universities, sponsoring students, sponsoring Confucius institutes, which Rubio has argued, I think, with some good evidence backing him, can be used as sort of infiltration rings. I mean, ways to bring spies into the United States. Oh, feel free to check DOJ's indictment list. You can find several related to exactly this on college campuses. Right. So we've seen some of this, both in the Chinese context, but also as it relates to some of this money from these autocracies in the Middle East.

And you've also had Washington Post as some. done some very good reporting on this money going to think tanks in Washington, D.C., and sponsoring scholarship, academic studies, supposedly disinterested academic studies about the Middle East and how it operates. So I think people have paid attention, but I think you're right, Sarah, to point out that, you know, this brings it into focus a little bit more. We ban this influence in our campaigns, and we do. don't ban it in our think tanks and we don't ban it at our universities. It is insane to me that

we don't do that. Well, so let me ask you this question. Where do you draw the line? Is it just foreign money entirely if there is a, you know, if there's a government-to-government partnership with the United Kingdom that wants to fund a set of programs at University of Maryland? Should that be allowed? First of all, we're coming up on the 250th anniversary. of the Boston Tea Party. So F, you know, them right now. Like, just let's all put our Patriot hats on for a moment, and the British can suck it.

So no. These are long grudges you're older. And just to be clear, like, my ancestors, and I'm going to use that term really loosely, all came here, let's just say, really recently. So, like, I'm not even holding the grudge. I'm, like, picking up the grudge and carrying it up the hill. Like a good American.

Damn right. That's what we do here in America. So, no, Steve, like, no problem. Like, I absolutely feel no need to draw the line, quote, unquote, between allies and not allies. Like, nope, ban it all. And in terms of drawing the line and where that foreign money can come

in versus where it can't come in, I don't think it would be that hard a line to draw. Look, I don't want to ban foreign students from attending our university. So if you're paying tuition, so be it. Although I have questions about things that the schools have done to attract foreign students and why they're doing it because the foreign students pay full tuition. And they're not subsidized

by our student loan system here, which is, that's a whole, it's a whole other conversation. But the point is, like, I have no problem depriving my alma mater of hundreds of millions of dollars. No problem. Nor the think tanks. They should absolutely. not be taking money from foreign governments whatsoever. I find it insane that they're weighing in on our public policy debates without literally in bold saying hey, we're writing this about this subject

and we take money from the country that this is about. Instead, they're like, when they get caught, basically, they're like, no, no, no, totally unrelated. We have a wall. I mean, ironically, it's usually called a Chinese wall. Between those two sections, like, no, sorry, not anymore. You got to disclose this stuff at a minimum, and frankly, I think we should ban it. Mike, last word to you on this question.

Well, I want to answer a different question, which was the original question that we started this conversation with, this part of the conversation with, which is kids and young people getting their information from TikTok. I mean, at the risk of sort of occupying the Jonah Goldberg Institutions Matter seat in this podcast, I do think that there has to be a dearth of positive influence from our institutions like the news media like universities and teachers and families and parents for TikTok to be so pernicious an influence and the internet to be so pernicious and influence. I don't mean to say, I mean obviously we know that

People can watch, you know, videos online and be radicalized or even just, you know, the influence from the media, it's not entirely, as you say, like, we have to give some agency to the young people who are watching this stuff and believing it, not trying to find out alternative viewpoints and make judgments themselves. But I do think... I mean, it's amazing, right? They think that they're, like, standing up for the minority position, even though among their cohort, they're in the majority position. and they're beating up on their Jewish, you know, fellow students who are actually in the minority at these schools who make up 2% of the population in the country. I mean, their lack of awareness,

I will excuse young people for a lot of things, but for some reason this week I'm just not feeling very charitable about the whole thing. We should hold them to account as well. But I agree we should also criticize the fishbowl that they're in. Yes. And this is where I think, this is why institutions matter.

This is why a lack of, and it's not just from the right, by the way, there is a general lack of faith in the American media, and that has been exploited by people, that has been, you know, people make up things that the media didn't get wrong and say they got wrong. But in general, there is a lack of faith, And you have to put, you have to put some responsibility on the institutions, for instance, in the media.

Universities should be teaching their students the right way to interpret these news events. And instead, for all the reasons that you laid out, whether it's money, whether it is ideological capture by certain people in middle and upper management, the institutions are not doing what they should be doing. and I just think that this is a good, like we're upset, yes, at the influence of TikTok and the influence of foreign governments, but the reason they're able to be so influential is we've created a pretty fertile ground for them to, for them to have some influence. I mean, look, sometimes the majority is right, but these people seem to think that they're brave for being in the majority. You're never brave for being in the majority. The majority might be right. maybe you're on the right side of history.

But don't pat yourself on the back about how brave you are, you know, marching on these college campuses when everyone else you're friends with believes the same way as you do. And in fact, you are ignoring the fear in your fellow students' eyes and the tears is, you know, they're feeling so alone and ostracized. Yeah, it's all pretty outrageous. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished,

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not worth your time for you. Mike, that's not to say you can't weigh in, but it's a Steve special. This week, there was a drone strike paid for by Iran that injured dozens of U.S. military members. Actually, it was last week.

Which matters in the understanding of the story, actually. Why is it not worth my time to be at war with Iran at the point that they have injured U.S. service members. Isn't that sort of how wars generally go? If you attack our military, you've now declared war on our country. This drone strike is paid for organized by Iran. I don't, what?

What? Huh? Not worth my time somehow? Why is it not worth my government's time? Very much worth your time. And it's a problem that we didn't learn about these strikes and the injuries that they caused for more than a week. I mean, this is something that the Biden administration should have disclosed up front.

but I think is sort of a piece with the way that the Biden administration has handled Iran for the entirety of the administration with certainly the difficult position the Biden administration is in now after October 7th and these attacks from Hamas. So for some longer term context, Iranians have been attacked, Iranians in their proxy groups have been attacking U.S. interests, allies, and facilities and personnel for years in the region. Open attacks by the Iraqi-Iranian proxies on U.S. troops, U.S. bases there. After the United States took out Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' could source, there was a string of attacks that the Iranians and their proxies conducted

on on a number of U.S. facilities and personnel. These attacks have continued but subsided in the early parts of the Biden administration. They had picked up, depending on who you believe, a little bit before the October 7th Hamas attacks and certainly accelerated after those attacks. The Biden administration, the Biden administration's approach to Iran, as we've discussed here before, has been sort of mutual de-escalation, which I think is an offensive frame for the entire thing. They wanted the U.S. to de-escalate because of the Trump administration's pursuit of maximum pressure, and they wanted the Iranians to de-escalate in their pursuit of nuclear weapons and also funding and supporting these terrorist groups.

Those two things are not the same, I would say. But that's the way that the Obama administration chose to frame it. There was a long article published in Foreign Affairs magazine by Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, published in the print version of Foreign Affairs Magazine, and then later amended without much note, laying out the Biden administration's achievements, accomplishments in the Middle East. And we'll drop a Twitter thread in the show notes to walk people through this. But basically, Sullivan was saying, because of our skilled diplomacy, we have made the region far more peaceful than it's ever been, pointed out the diplomacy between the Israelis.

Palestinians suggested that Iran has actually taken advantage of this opportunity to de-escalate and that the region was more or less at peace. This was published, obviously, shortly before the October 7 attacks and everything that's happened since. Foreign Affairs allowed Jake Sullivan to effectively rewrite most of those embarrassing things for the online version of the story, which raises its own set of questions. But now finally, getting to your questions here. It's absolutely worth our time and a major problem that the United States has been allowing the Iranians to attack U.S. interests, facilities, and personnel with relative impunity. You don't have to

take my word for it, you can listen to two of the leading, recently retired generals in the region, former heads of CENTCOM, led forces in the region, generals, McKenzie, and Botel. Botele was speaking just this past couple days and said one of the reasons that the Iranians are conducting the attacks that they're conducting, what people called a real escalation, is because it's become routine for them to do it without any response, without any significant response from the U.S. and that the reason they're emboldened is because we have not smacked them back. That's what Votel said at a panel.

McKenzie, according to the Washington Post, likewise, quote, attributed the rise in attacks on U.S. forces in part to the decision not to routinely address earlier incidents. You have to respond to these things. I think the challenge for the Biden administration is that responding to these attacks, acknowledging these attacks, and acknowledging Iran as the aggressor and the enemy that Iran is, blows up the construct that they've used to deal with Iran for the preceding three years. They have treated, again, like the Obama administration before them, Iran as a potential friend, as at least, not an adversary, doing deals with them, trying to bring them into the diplomatic circle of reasonable nations. It hasn't worked. That's not Iran. It was impossible. It was a fool's errands to

separate the nature of the regime from its nuclear programs. At the outside of the Obama administration, it's a mistake for the Biden administration to continue to try to do that. And I I think unfortunately we're reaping the negative consequences of those decisions right now. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there, but I am reminded of the great sign-off from Lovar Burton in Reading Rainbow when you said, Steve, you don't have to take my word for it. So for anyone who is about five years older or five years younger than me, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

And just remember that Lovar Burton is probably a good part of the reason that you can read. Thanks, LeVar. Bye. Thank you.