The Dispatch Podcast - Trump’s Authoritarian Instincts | Roundtable

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Steve Hayes returns to the host chair, joined by coastal elitists Jonah Goldberg, Michael Warren, and Megan McArdle to discuss a wild week in Washington. The Agenda:—The crime debate in D.C.—Shifting toward state capitalism—Does the GOP even believe in free markets anymore?—Best- and worst-case scenarios from the Trump-Putin summit—The DC's 4H has to be pretty modest 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

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. www.ca.com. Did you lock the front door?

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

Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com. Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes.

On this week's roundtable, Washington, D.C., crime, and Donald Trump's proposal to federalize policing in the nation's capital. Also, is the U.S. marching towards state capitalism? And finally, a big picture look at Ukraine and Russia, ahead of the Trump-Puton summit. What would be a good outcome for the United States? What would be a good outcome for Ukraine? And what would be a good outcome for the world? I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues, Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren and Megan McArdle from The Washington Post. Let's get to it. If you follow the news at all over the past week, you have gotten probably two different, very different descriptions of Washington, D.C. and the day-to-day reality here in the nation's capital. If you've listened to Donald Trump in his press conferences or in the things that his supporters have said, you see Washington, D.C. as sort of a hellscape with crime on every corner, people being mugged, violent crime, murders through the roof, and the federal government needing to come in and fix the problem. If you have been listening to Democrats and many denizens of Washington, D.C., you've heard on the other hand, that crime is at a near 30-year low, and really things are pretty good in Washington,

D.C. and this federal intervention that Donald Trump proposed and is now executing is unnecessary and maybe dangerous. Johnny, you live in Washington, D.C. You've been here for a long time. Who's right? Sort of everybody and nobody, I think. First of all, I honestly think D.C. was worse when I first moved here in the 90s. But I think the thing that is misleading to a lot of, which skews a debate a little bit, is that it was worse in predictable and known ways. I've had this theory. We've talked about this a bunch during COVID on this podcast. I think COVID messed up a lot of things, you know, but one of the things it messed up was the normal patterns of policing and crime. And so there was a lot more unusual crime or usual crime in unusual places in D.C.

in the last five years. Carjackings in places like Bethesda, which would have been unheard of. Bethesda, which is a wealthy suburb of D.C. wealthy suburb of D.C., yeah. And so it's, I made this analogy the other day on TV, but like, if you look at the share of the homicide rate in New York City that is constituted by pushing people off of subway platforms, it's negligible, right? It's just not, it doesn't happen very much. It's pretty rare statistically, but it's sort of like a shark attack. Once is so terrifying and sends such a signal of things are out of control. There is chaos, we'll find you anywhere, that it becomes much more destabilizing psychologically than maybe it is as a crime thing. And I think there's a lot of that going on in

among D.C. residents who when they talk about things, they just feel like the status quo is unacceptable. At the same time, I don't think it's an emergency, right? And that's my problem with this, is that I think this is a smart play politically for Trump. I think it puts Democrats in a stupid place where they're responding as expected. I saw the Democrats' Twitter account the other day, just all capping D.C. statehood now as a response, which is just so profoundly inept and unresponsive. Trump's got Muriel Bowser, the mayor of D.C. between a rock and a hard place where she has to comply because she doesn't have legal authority not to. And Democrats who complain about this stuff are sort of MSNBC liberals who want to turn this into an assault on democracy

argument. They may have a point about this being a camel's nose under the tent as an assault on democracy. They may not be. I don't know. We have to sort of wait and see. But they have so exhausted that line of argumentation that most people just don't want to hear it. And what they want to hear is Trump's doing something about crime. So I think politically this is good for Trump, but I would argue constitutionally, legally, democratic, normatively. This should be seen at least in part as another attempt by Trump to invoke emergency powers in a non-emergency, as he's doing on trade and a bunch of other fronts,

in order to sort of move the Overton window, God, I hate that phrase, and seem like, at least performatively, a strong man. And I think it's working for him. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, and that doesn't mean I have to think it is something that is in the long-term healthy for the republic. Yeah, Mike, to pick up on that last bit,

point, is this something that you think is part of a strategy that Donald Trump is? Are we watching an unfolding strategy? Is something that they had planned? Or is it the case that, as some of the reporting is suggested, you know, a Doge staffer was beat up in Washington a little over a week ago. Trump has tweeted about it. Elon Musk has tweeted about it and said, we need to federalize Washington, D.C. There was apparently a Fox News segment highlighting crime in Washington, D.C., that Trump supposedly watched and gin him up on this. Is this sort of reactive ad hoc Trump that we're watching? Or is this something that we should be worried about on a sort of a broader scale because it's

part of an actual plan to do this in city after city after city? Yes is the answer to that question. I mean, he is reactive. That is not an answer. I know, I know. But I'm going to explain my answer. Donald Trump is reactive. I haven't done a deep forensic analysis of what was airing on Fox News over the previous

two weeks, but I have seen the apparent clips that Donald Trump apparently saw that were highlighting crime issues in Washington, D.C. I just know from having reported on this in the past in the first Trump administration that what happens on TV, what is sort of put in front of him media-wise, often generates policy and action from him. There is a kind of feedback loop where people want to get things in front of him. They get it on Fox News because they know that Donald Trump watches this and reacts to it. And you mentioned the Doge staffer who was attacked. That's a part and parcel of this.

And yet it also fits into. I wouldn't say a grand plan. I think the sort of liberal pearl clutching about, you know, this is the first step of the kind of federal fascist takeover of our cities. There's no evidence that there is a plan to do that. There's no evidence that he could really do that effectively. Why is that? Why is this something he could do in Washington, but maybe not elsewhere? And to be clear. He did in his press conference when he was asked about this. I believe it was in response to a question, raised the possibility of doing it in Chicago and Los Angeles. And I'm not getting the cities exactly right. But he talked about doing it elsewhere. Well, first of all, I mean,

Washington has, Washington, D.C. has a unique relationship with the federal government, which is the federal government, has jurisdiction, for lack of a better term, over the district. It's a federal district. It's not its own state. Constitutionally, Congress and the federal government can make these decisions. Now, the last, like, 50 years, D.C. has had a pretty good run of increasing autonomy and self-government relative to sort of what it had been before. And I think that's been a mixed bag, which is why I think Donald Trump has kind of a leg to stand on here, not just constitutionally and legally, but also politically, as Jonah was suggesting. I mean, you know, it's it's um it's not as if like dc is uh going to be is in the textbooks for how to run

an urban government um at all so but i just i view all of this as entirely performative on the part of don't trump performative and aesthetic driven right it began as a reaction to what Donald Trump was seeing on TV, and the result has been a kind of a battle on the internet over, like, whether or not it's good or bad that we have now, what, D.E.A. agents, FBI agents, National Guard, patrolling the streets, patrolling Georgetown. And the mall? And the mall, which are not typically high crime areas in Washington. Not the places, for instance, when I'm in D.C.L.

in Virginia, but when I'm in D.C. that I avoid because of crime scares. And we should just, we should be clear that crime is a huge problem in Washington, D.C. And just because the stats say it's down from where it was, I mean, I was looking at some statistics here. When I moved to Washington, D.C. in 2010, the murder rate was, was a little lower than where it is now. But it has jumped up over the last 15 years from kind of a low back in 2012. And I don't care if it's down from where it was in 1991, which it certainly was. It's certainly down from the peak in 1991. For me, it feels as if I hear about and feel less safe in places that I am used to going for work and decreasingly for

pleasure. Look, I think this is, it's all aesthetics. It's all about image. But it is a real problem. I just don't think what Donald Trump is proposing is anything like a workable or long-term sustainable solution. Megan, there is, I mean, this is a real problem, right? I mean, it is true that crime has declined violent crime is down since 2003, since the top of the spike in 2023. But it's a problem. And, you know, Democrats are using this figure 30-year low. And you can look at statistics and make that argument. And I'd say an intellectually defensible way. But the 30-year low is bad. And D.C.'s violent crime is worse than most other, many other big cities, comparable big cities, including ones that get more bad press about violent crime than Washington, D.C. I was on Meet the Press now with Cornell

Belcher, who's a Democratic strategist and Polster. Smart guy. I like him. I enjoy talking to him. And I was making sort of this point, like, hey, look, we might be worried about this being the proverbial camel nose under the tent for Donald Trump. But he's not responding to nothing. Like, there's an actual problem here. There very well might be an appropriate federal rule. And Democrats, to Jonas' point earlier about the politics of this, by in effect saying, ah, it's safe. Ignore these carjackings. I mean, it is like the Leslie Nielsen moment. the original naked gun where, you know, he's waving his arms as fireworks are going off in the background. There's nothing to see here. That's a pretty inept response. So two questions to you.

One, how serious is the actual crime problem in Washington, D.C. today, number one. Number two, what do you make of the Democrats' response to what Trump has been doing? I would say it's quite serious. Now, I have to confess some bias, which is that post-pandemic, I had in the space of about a year and a half. I had four or five multiple victim shootings within four blocks of my house. And so during one of them, the first and the worst of them, my dog likes to go to the window and look out

whenever anything happens on the street. So I hear the gunshots. And I execute for the first time in about 30 years a long, low, flying tackle and throw my body over the dog to keep her from moving. and then lay there until the gunshot stopped. And then I didn't want to get up because if they start again, you know,

so my husband walks up from the basement where his office is and just looks at me and says, do we need to move? And I said, no, honey, we have a 1.75% mortgage. We're never moving. But that's actually, I mean, that is actually part of this. That is the quintessential Megan McArdle anecdote of financial advisor, Megan, trumping, saved dog from violent crime, Megan. Now, look, it has gotten better, but it was horrific.

And still, and so one thing that we should clarify is that violent crime is down. Homicide has fallen, but homicide is still elevated compared to, say, 2012. Right. Right. Like, it's still elevated compared to pre-pandemic. And the violent crime statistics are a little hard to know what to make of because the MPD, the D.C. Police Department has just put a commander on leave for possibly manipulating data. And the police union says that this is a widespread problem.

If you look at the crimes that are the hardest to massage, which are on the violent crime side, homicide and carjackings, and on the nonviolent crime motor vehicle theft, bodies are hard to hide, and people report car thefts to the police because they need to do that to claim the insurance. If you look at those numbers, they're not down as much as the overall violent crime numbers. That could just be coincidence. It could be that we've had a shift towards carjacking homicide and motor vehicle theft away from other things. And there are reasons actually to think that that's a possibility. For example, as there are fewer people out on the street because they're working from home,

they're working, you know, they're not coming in because they're in the suburbs. Possibly we're getting fewer muggings, also fewer people carrying cash, less valuable stuff to steal. It's now easier to brick your iPhones. So there's always, with crime data, a lot of moving parts. That said, this is a huge problem. And the democratic response of saying, of just gaslighting people, and what's interesting to me is how many fairly liberal to progressive Washingtonians aren't having it. Right.

Right. The conservatives you expect to say, that's a lie. But I have seen a surprisingly muted response. from a lot of conservative Washingtonians. And this is the sort of thing... Liberal Washingtonians. Yeah, sorry, liberal Washingtonians. I have not seen a concern.

I have seen a completely, expectedly, unmeasured response from conservative Washingtonians, all four of them. And I think that Democrats have just walked into a trap on this, even though I don't support calling out the National Guard.

Now, I will say, you know, if they're going to patrol Georgetown, take a look at some of those boutiques because those prices are robbery. But I don't like the fact that the Trump administration seems to be trying to normalize the use of the National Guard for things that are not civic emergencies. That is really, really creepy. I'm not saying that the dark night of fascism is about to fall over the land, but I don't like it. It's un-American.

But my feelings are not shared by the general American public. the general American public is just a lot more authoritarian than elites are. So can I push you on that? How do we know? Like, I don't want to be, we don't want to be hyperbolic. We don't want to be alarmist. You know, it may not be the case that, you know, fascism is here in November because of these actions. On the other hand, this is not the first time that we've seen this from Donald Trump.

I mean, most recently in Los Angeles, but, you know. He also campaigned on doing this in D.C. He mentioned this, like, 14 months ago. But he campaigned on a lot of these things, which is taking a heavier, I would say, authoritarian hand in solving what he describes as the problems of our society. If you look back at what he did in the post-election period after 2020 and the use of troops there, the arguments that he made, you know, if you listen to Mark Esper, who was then in his Secretary of Defense, Trump was literally asking why the U.S. couldn't go in the streets and start shooting protesters in the legs. So, on the one hand, you don't want to be alarmist. On the other hand, isn't it alarming? Absolutely. Do I think that Trump has authoritarian instincts? Yes. Do I think he has no

respect for civic norms or restraints? Also, yes. There's some distance between guy with authoritarian instincts and fascist dictatorship. And I don't think that Trump has either the focus, the well-organized paramilitary gangs that actual fascist dictatorships had, or the weak institutions to get us there. But that's not to say that this is not disturbing, not bad, in the same way that firing the head of the BLS, this is banana republic stuff. That doesn't mean we are now Argentina, but it does mean you are eroding things that are good and valuable about the United States for very little benefit. That said, I think there are actually, if Trump actually cared about fixing crime, which I have my suspicions, there are real problems with the way the divided governance between the city of D.C. and the federal government that have made it incredibly hard to fight crime in D.C. And Trump could actually do some things about those things. He could make sure we get more judges appointed to our courts so that we can clear backlogs. He could change. The kinds of judges that we appoint, it is somewhat complicated. There's this crazy counsel that you appoint members to, and then they recommend the judges list.

But he could make changes that would actually reduce crime in the streets of D.C. He could provide more funding for the police department. He could make sure that the Justice Department, when they are doing pretrial monitoring and all the rest of it, actually do it really well and keep people off the streets. He could, there are a lot of levers he has to pull. if he wants to fix crime, and instead he's putting the National Guard on the street. And that is a fundamental problem, both with the Trump administration approach to almost everything. There are things where I think they're doing a fine job. Their AI plan was very good.

The stuff he doesn't care about, they do pretty well at. But this is theater. And as a Washingtonian, I actually want him to fix the problem and do the things that he can do to fix it. And instead, he is sending the National Guard in so that he can get some good, you know, images on television. He's going to get Democrats to say idiotic things about how the real crime problem is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Are you kidding me? What idiot of a consultant came up with that line? Fire that person, blacklist them, and get a real message because that ain't it, folks.

but Trump also has to get, he is the president of the United States. I realize that I don't know why I'm trying to exhort him to be better. But, you know, your staffers, you're the Republican Party congressman, they live and travel and work in the district. They eat there. Actually fix the problem. Make the city safer. Make me like you more. I'm open.

Rant off. So I do think it's worth pointing out, sort of like my point about like carjackings in unusual places, freak people out. freak parents out, which is one of the reasons why I think you get the muted response from liberal DC residents. It's also important to point out that while social workers and public policy professionals make very sharp distinctions between, say, homelessness and crime, most normies don't, right? And so, like, if you're at a playground with your little kid and there's a homeless guy using it like a bathroom, or there's a drug addict shooting up, or there's someone just passed

out on a bench so that makes your kids feel unsafe. Technically, it's not a crime issue, according to the experts, and there's a lot of good reasons why we shouldn't think of it as, strictly speaking, a crime issue. But for a normie parent and normy citizen, it's much more marbled and complicated and intermixed and and so you have i think one of the things particularly since covid that is that is that is that i do think is worse is the sort of broken window i don't get into broken windows this just the simple surrender to homelessness in a way you know they pulled out a lot of the nice things in union station because there was no way to have

seating areas because it was just going to be it was just colonized by homeless people and And not sort of Hollywood, you know, homeless guy with the heart of gold homeless people. But, you know, mentally altered, drug addict, scary homeless people. And I have, there's a lot of anecdata in the conversation on this stuff. But I'd be shocked if there's a single person on this podcast who either doesn't have their own story or doesn't have a friend with many stories about just creepy gross stuff at, you know, in public places. And I think, you know, Trump is hitting on something very real when he says, that's not what it should look like when you visit the nation's capital. It's totally, that's exactly right. He's pulling on something also.

I mean, I said it jokingly the other day that all he really wants to do is get the shopping carts and tents out of the way so he doesn't see them from his limo window when he goes to golf or goes to Andrews Air Force space. But I think there's some truth to that because, you know, a lot of people should. here, we know that those roots from the White House, you go by like a lot of green spaces on the mall, by the Kennedy Center, and there are homeless encampments there. And those are the things that he's going to see. And he's not going to see Georgetown very often. He's not going to see Upper, you know, Northwest very often. The parts that he sees in Washington, literally himself, have a lot of sketchy homeless people in them. And it'd be good if that sort of anecdata kind of approach didn't affect him so much, but I think it does. And he's right. People shouldn't be

embarrassed about the nation's capital. Well, and look, I mean, Anticata, I think your point about anecdote is right. It's definitely the case that we all have stories, that we know people who have stories. I find myself when I have friends who come to visit the nation's capital, giving them warnings about certain areas they should go or not go that I didn't give 10 years ago. In pretty stark terms, my daughter was down near the capital. There's one building 400 North Capitol, it's where NBC is headquartered, Fox News, News Nation, lots of the TV network, C-SPAN, have their headquarters there, and she watched a homeless guy take a dump in front of that, in front of 400 North Capitol, like in the middle of the day. And it is, you can see the Capitol. And that was Peter Navarro,

Donald Trump's trade advisor. It was not. It's false, fake news. You know, you. You can see the capital from there. So, yeah, this is a pretty widespread problem, and I think this is in part what Donald Trump. Can I say real quickly? To be honest here, and this is, I think, revealing of a problem that Democrats have in talking about this, on the issue of the National Guard being deployed. Kathy Hochel, the Democratic governor of New York, deployed last year the National Guard of the state of New York into the New York City subways in large part. to make people feel more safe on the subway. And there are some very important distinctions about why her authority on that is very clear, right?

She is the governor of New York. She can deploy the National Guard for those sorts of things. It worked apparently. I mean, I've talked to folks I know, friends of mine who live in New York who say that it was jarring at first, but it's now become a regular thing to expect to see National Guard guardsmen on the subway and things feel a lot safer than they did a year ago. I just think that that sort of example really benefits Donald Trump and benefits Republicans in this debate where they can say, look, why is it okay if Kathy Hochel can do it? It's not okay if Donald Trump does it. I think it doesn't get rid of the problem,

which I think that that was targeted in New York. This seems to be performative. This seems to be, as Megan said, theater. But I think on the political argument scale of things, we should just, we need to be honest here that Democrats, one particular high profile Democrat has employed something very similar here. And people didn't say boo about it. I mean, one of the most difficult things, at least in my time covering the Trump area, is trying to figure out to that point and to, to, to make. Megan's point earlier, sort of what of these things that we're witnessing are Donald Trump just being Donald Trump and silly or things that Democrats have done where there's actual

precedent for these things and people are overreacting because we're watching Donald Trump do it instead of somebody else? And which of these things are, you know, more alarming and more concerning? A lot of this happens in ways that, I mean, it's not marked. We can't say this is now the moment where we, where, I forget you're phrasing, Megan, but the dark night of fascism descending o'er the land. Beautiful. Yeah, we're not necessarily going to know that. I mean, I suppose, to use that metaphor, it would actually be dark. But in, you know, for other reasons, we're not going to know that. Nick, our Nick Catojo writes an entire newsletter that's based on this idea with boiling frogs, not knowing that the water is getting hotter.

You appreciate a good fact check, though, Steve. So just very quickly, love boiling frogs. Nick Catoja is a wonderful talent. They've actually done this experiment. They have. And frogs do actually get out of the water when it gets too hot for them. This is something that Nick acknowledged at the outset. Yeah.

So when he announced this, he said, this may not actually be literally true, but... But you didn't say the apocryphal story or the Just So story. It's a good point. I appreciate the fact check. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder

of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions.

You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary.

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, you're writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site.

It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience, without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. We're back with the dispatch podcast. But before we return to the roundtable, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere here at the dispatch. This week on the remnant, Jonah Goldberg, talks with Barry Strauss about two centuries of ancient battles between the Jews and the Romans.

Search for the Remnant in your podcast app and make sure you hit the follow button. Now let's jump back to our conversation. So second topic, I want to talk about state capitalism. Greg Epp, who's respected writer on economics, formerly of the economist now at the Wall Street Journal, wrote this in the Wall Street Journal this week. I'm just going to read the first couple of paragraphs. A generation ago, conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble Americas. Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China. Recent examples include President Trump's demand that Intel's chief executive resign,

the 15% of certain chip sales to China that NVIDIA and advanced microdevices will share with Washington, the quote, golden share, unquote, Washington will get in U.S. steel as a condition of Nippin Steel's takeover, and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans. to personally direct. This isn't socialism, it writes, in which the state owns the means of production. It's more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises. Megan, back to you to start this discussion.

Is capitalism in America starting to look like China? I mean, a teeny tiny little bit. We've got a ways to go. And I don't think Trump's going to get us there because he doesn't have the attention span, or the state apparatus, frankly, or the legal, the lack of legal curbs on his adventures. Look, I think industrial policy has become chic on both right and left. I think the people who are in favor of it don't really have a clear image of what industrial policy can do and can't. And I don't think that that's true of all people who are in favor. So, for example, I think

economist Noah Smith, who writes a great newsletter. His take on industrial policy is pretty clear. You can disagree with it around the edges. I have come around wounding my libertarian heart to the idea that there are strategic things like semiconductors, some health chemical precursors, you know, rare earths, things that are necessary for defense that you don't want a strategic rival to control, although I think in many cases the solution is friend shoring. where we build up our relationships with allies who have key capabilities rather than what the Trump administration has done. But most of the people have this just inchoate idea that they would like the economy to look some different way.

Often they wanted to look like the economy of the 1950s or the late 60s or some other time that they think was better. And it don't work that way. So, for example, one thing that a economist is named Sudo Erasmus, synonymously named, Sudo Erasmus has been pointing out on Twitter is industrial policy absolutely worked in China and in the Asian Tigers. And the reason it worked is that they suppressed wages. So, right, to keep, they have forced their economies into high, saving, low consumption,

equilibrium. That's obviously not with J.D. Vance thinks he wants from, from industrial policy. or what Peter Navarro wants from industrial policy or what a lot of these other guys want from industrial policy, they want the opposite of that. They want the extremely high wages that America had in 1970 when we were the manufacturing capital of the world.

And I don't think we can get there from here. And so Trump, what Trump is doing is, I think, even less coherent than that. He's just, he likes wins. He likes to make deals. And so he comes out and he says, I got Nvidia, I'm letting Nvidia ship high-end semiconductors to our strategic rival, but they're giving us 15% of the rope we're selling to hang ourselves, right?

And that, I think, is not what China does, actually. China is, China has a whole bunch of problems, but they're pretty strategic about where they invest. That doesn't mean they don't have a ton of malinvestment. That doesn't mean that I think that that should be a model for our economy. But say what you like about she. He is actually cracked down on corruption where Trump is just, you know, giving it license. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to actually ask you, is it scarier if this is strategic from Trump or is it scarier if it's sort of fueled by corruption by, you know, the need for PR wins? If you were strategic, you would in no way say, sure, export semiconductors to the country that is our leading competitor in the AI race,

but give us 15%. What is that? It's not a strategic decision. That's a decision for low-information voters who don't really understand what's going on. Now, at the higher level, you can argue that they have to do this because China has these monopolies on rare earths that we need for defense stuff and for other industrial uses like batteries. But I don't. really, but then the 15% doesn't make sense. Why are you taking, what is the 15%? It's going to raise, I don't know, like $5 billion in tax revenue. This is not nothing, but it is functionally nothing in the context of the federal budget deficit. So this is literally just a photo op. There is no explanation for this that makes any damn sense.

Jota, do you buy the argument that we're drifting towards state capitalism? So I'm very tempted to nerd out on terminology here. Do it. But I'll refrain a little bit. Yes. I mean, in the way that Greg had been to talking about state capitalism, yes. And I think that that's been the case for a while. I think the Obamonomics was, you know, very much in keeping with that.

You know, to the extent of Democratic Party is a cargo cult, the New Deal, it has always been pretty in. with state capitalism. A lot of Biden's economics was essentially state capitalism. If we're going to mean state capitalism, sort of public-private partnerships where industrial planners and politicians pick winners and losers based upon their bet of what is best for the economy rather than letting markets decide. Okay. A better term for all of this is corporatism, which does not mean rule by corporations. There's a guy political scientist, Howard Riata, who wrote a book, Corporatism, The Other Greatism, or something along those lines, about how corporatism never gets props from political scientists.

They want to talk about democracy. They want to talk about authoritarianism and all these kinds of things. But corporatism is basically the idea that the stakeholders, right, it comes out of essentially feudal Europe. The Pope in the late 19th century came up with, you know, I think it was in Riram Navarum, try to define corporatism. But basically it's the idea of like the guilds and the nobleman. and the aristocrats and the king and, you know, the military and all the big stakeholders in society,

they sit around a table and they all get a slice and they're all in on it and they get to decide the direction of the economy. I think this is much closer to the way Trump looks at economics, but it's not because he has an idea of a political theory. I think it's because he learned a lot from me despisito, a mafia boss, or I, I should say, a mobbed-up machine boss from New York's, from Queens in the 1970s. And he thinks, if you're trying to figure out a unified field theory of Trump, it's that he sees economics the way like a mobbed-up political boss does. He should get a slice of every transaction.

He needs a piece, right? His foreign policy is the foreign policy almost in effect as if he's the head of one of the crime families. and that's why he shows so much respect to the other heads of other crime families, the Putin's and the Gis, but he treats his own underbosses like crap, because they don't pay up enough and they don't show them enough respect, whether it's NATO, whether it's Republican senators and all the like.

He has a personalist view of politics and economics. He thinks, he was explicit about this. He says the American economy is like a department store, and he's the manager of the department store, gets to decide what people pay to be able to sell their stuff in his department store department store i think that this is basically how he views all of politics it's transactional it's like he was asked recently whether he would give did he a pardon and he said well you know it's very this is a very difficult question and i which i don't think it's a difficult question at all but like and the but the reason

why he explained it was a difficult question is you're for it he used to be really nice to me and then he stopped being nice to me. So it's really hard to decide whether I should give him a pardon or not. Like, no reference to, like, law or guilt or atonement or any of that kind of stuff. It was just sort of like, what respect has he shown me? And I think that this manifests itself in all sorts of different kind of economic ways that the Remaras and Rasputins and would-be Resputins that circle around him want to turn into state capitalism, want to turn to simply crony capitalism, want to turn into just outright

corruption and Bitcoin nonsense and all of these, I shouldn't say crypto nonsense. And we can get really clever with the terminology about all of it. But at the end of the day, I think he wants to run the country as if he's a mobbed up party boss. And you can put whatever labels you want on it. So we can call it what we want. We call it state capitalism. We could call it corporatism. And it may not be happening to Megan's point to the extent that Greg Ip suggests that it is, Mike. But it's happening. We're seeing some of this.

Trump is fueling it. And one of the reasons it's happening, I would argue, is because he pays no political price for doing it. Democrats can't come up with arguments to effectively sort box him in on the question. and Republicans who once might have been counted on to at least make sort of rhetorical gestures in the direction of free markets no longer really feel any compulsion to do that. I mean, there are few on occasion, but whether we're talking about tariffs, whether we're talking about these kinds of state interventions, markets, whether we're talking about these, you know, new sort of payouts, the golden shares, Republicans have been totally

absent on this. Mike, is it your sense that these Republicans, elected Republicans, particularly the ones in Washington, no longer believe in free markets, or is it that they're just too cowed by Trump to say that they believe in free markets? This is not an excuse for these Republicans, but I think if Donald Trump were to completely disappear from the scene tomorrow, The idea of corporatist or state capitalist system being, you know, a long-term policy or ideology of the Republican Party would just disappear as well. This is entirely, as Megan and Jonah have said more eloquently than I can. This is just entirely Trump and Trumpian. I don't buy that Republicans buy into this.

The problem is that it sounds cliche to say it now, but the cult of personality around Donald Trump, the singularness of Donald Trump, I can't see, for instance, J.D. Vance or Mark Rubio in 2008 and beyond, sort of sustaining some kind of political coalition that wants to do more of this kind of thing. They are not the deal makers that Donald Trump has portrayed himself as. They are, you know, they have different incentives.

You know, I mean, Megan mentioned the part about J.D. Vance. You know, he's all about more higher wages for workers. Donald Trump doesn't really care about that. Donald Trump's approach is all, again, to repeat a theme from this podcast, it's all aesthetic. It's all the image of an economy that's all sort of working together and one sort of toward one kind of great national goal of American greatness. And the details we'll figure out later. It doesn't actually really matter.

I think that it falls apart once Donald Trump is gone from the scene because it all sort of flows from his performative aesthetic approach to politics. But let me push back on that. Please. Let me push back on that. So Trump is the one who's executing this. And in that sense, this is Trumpian. And he's the one who's responsible for it and for the things that I mentioned earlier in terms of actual policy.

But I would argue that the two people that you mentioned specifically, J.D. Vance on the one hand, and Markerubio on the other, have done tremendous work, I mean tremendous in quantity, not in quality, building out sort of an intellectual case for these things that rationalize what Donald Trump is doing. I mean, Megan mentioned industrial policy. Nobody's more tied to industrial policy in the Republican Party than Marco Rubio. This was his new sort of common good conservatism. He started building the intellectual case for this back in Trump's first term, 2018, 2019, when he was sort of the new Marco.

You know, the guy who had run for president in 2016 calling for corporate tax breaks and a return to free markets was suddenly the sort of declarer of the common good and the main avatar of industrial policy. J.D. Vance has done the same thing, arguing in public unapologetically for these kinds of statist interventions in the economy and making the argument that Greg Ipp in this Wall Street. journal article makes explicitly saying, look, this is necessary because we've seen so much failure from the market. Really, the problem here was unfettered free market capitalism. It was the fact that the Cato Institute was a charge of Washington for years. I mean, this is the Tucker Carlson case. It's the J.D. Vance case.

It's now the Marco Rubio case. My conclusion is that is almost the opposite of yours. This lives way beyond Donald Trump because while he's the guy who's done it, they've built their careers at this point on making an argument that it's good and justified. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. But as a very lesser minor member of the sort of intellectual conservative movement, I just don't have a lot of confidence that an intellectual movement can have much real-world impact if the political coalition isn't there.

And it's been a story of the, going back to 2016 and to the, you know, American Affairs, Julius crime effort to sort of intellectualize Trumpism. It has been just a story of failure after failure to institute or impose any kind of ideological consistency on this movement, because I think it all comes back to Trump. So I do think there is long-term damage to the sort of more classically liberal conservative movement on economics that will last a long time. I just doubt there's a lot of political salience for this, absent a strong man with a large, broad, popular appeal like Donald Trump.

Megan, is he right? I'm going to have to disagree. I agree that actually the intellectuals. project is not cohering as I think people on that side might have hoped. They don't really have a strong coherent agenda that tells you, in this situation, we will do that. That said, for a bunch of reasons, I think that this is going to be an ongoing tendency in the Republican Party. And the first is the Great Awakening. When corporate boardrooms got heavily into, I started in 2015, I think, is the really big first example where Apple, Indiana

passes a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that basically allows a pretty expansive religious liberty car route on LGBT issues. And Apple basically bullies Indiana into pulling that back, not just Apple, a bunch of Silicon Valley companies, basically bully Indiana in. into revising it. And then going forward, you see this over and over, right? Disney coming out famously against the don't say gay bill, which was not actually called that, but in Florida. And conservatives and also social media moderation policies.

There was a period of years where every time I went to a dinner with a certain kind of Republican staffer or congressman, all I heard about was Twitter moderation policies. It was like they had been elected to Twitter board, the Twitter board instead of the United States Congress. And people are really mad about it and not just people in Washington. Voters are really mad about it. I cannot tell you how often I hear about this stuff when I go out and speak to the populace, as it were. And that is going to be enduring.

People do not trust corporations. Republicans do not trust corporations in a way that they did 10 years ago. They're not on their side, in part because those corporations decided somewhat inexplicably because the Democrats were never going to be good allies to them. They could have had a good ally in the Republican Party. And instead, they chose to pick the team that was definitely going to get into big antitrust activity and raising minimum wages and all the rest of it. But that's it, you know, water under the bridge.

But also because in general, people don't like corporations. That's bashing corporations is actually quite popular. And so the corporations, instead of thinking, I really need to keep sweet with both parties because it is always going to be popular to go after me, thought, what if we used our economic power to kick some Republican legislators around and to channel Dr. Phil for a moment, how's that working for you guys. And actually the answer is they know it's not. And they are desperately trying to roll that back. And I think that they can undo the damage with Republican legislators. The people they can't undo the damage with are Republican voters.

I'm sort of in the between Mike is wrong and Megan is right about why Mike is wrong. And I just put it as a right that there is going to be a reckoning, whether it's because he leaves office because of constitutional limitations or he leaves office because of actuarial realities. When Trump departs the scene, there are an enormous number of factions, institutional forces, politicians who are keeping their powder dry and their heads low who are going to be ready to have a fight to get back to sort of more basic Republican orthodoxy and conservative orthodoxy on economics. I think we'll see it from Coke World. We'll see it from a lot of think tanks and see it from a lot of Normie Republicans.

At the same time, you know, not to go all Scott Lindscombe on all this, but like tariffs once imposed are really hard to get rid of because of the concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, sort of Mansor Olson thing, right? And that's one of the reasons, I mean, also because Biden's a protectionist, but one of the reasons Biden kept all of Trump's trade stuff is because it was, because Trump's trade policies were essentially democratic corporateist trade policies. And K Street is making a fortune off of this new environment. They like the environment where politicians can be pressed to violate free market principles. And that is going to, and so, I mean, we have to remember, you know,

as we talked about with J.D. Vance and wages and all that kind of stuff, a lot of the protectionist stuff, a lot of the serious, quote unquote, serious arguments for the tariffs and whatnot that aren't about national security are just basically backdoor industrial policy. We're going to bring these factories here. These are the kind of factories we want to have here. And we know where to put them. And then we are going to have this great, you know,

these various kind of slush funds, sovereign wealth fund, maybe, Japan direct investment thing that he gets to direct me. There's going to be all this money sloshing around that Trump is going to personally guide sort of like the same way he picks the Kennedy Center honors people. And lobbyists love that crap. And so the political reality in Washington, regardless whether you want to put an R or D after it,

is that we are going to look a lot more state capitalist for a while, even if nature heals. We're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. We're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. I want to move to our third and final topic before we get to not worth your time, but we won't spend a lot of time on it. There is, I think, what could be a pretty significant meeting taking place in Anchorage, Alaska, tomorrow, Friday. We are recording this on Thursday, August 14th. It's a meeting between Donald Trump and, as Jonah said, Vladimir Putin head of the Russian crime family. to hash out what's going to happen or what should happen, what might happen in Ukraine.

Waldemar Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader is not present, has apparently been consulted, at least to some extent, but won't be there to make his case. There's a lot we don't know. We don't want our conversation here to be overtaken by events, but I thought it would be useful just briefly to go around and get your thoughts on what would be a good outcome for the United States for Ukraine and for the free world. And is that possible? Is a good outcome from this meeting possible? And I'll start with you, Megan. I mean, a good outcome is that Russia withdraws from Ukraine and adopts a peaceful policy of economic freedom, respecting territorial sovereignty

of their neighbors and, you know, domestic political freedom for the many, many people that they have repressed. Do I think that that is going to come out of this meeting? No. No, I do not. I don't know what a good outcome in this war that's plausible looks like anymore. You know, the death is terrible. Ukraine has not managed to fight to a point where they can realistically ask Russia to leave. The United States is not willing to, I mean, for some good reasons, they have a lot of nuclear warheads. So we are either constrained or unwilling to press Putin farther. And I don't know, I don't know what good is going to look like. I think it's minimizing territorial losses for Ukraine and hoping that this has been so costly for Putin that he decides not to do it again to a different

neighbor. Mike, we've seen from Donald Trump, we've heard from Donald Trump in the last several weeks, something that feels a little bit like a more confrontational approach to Vladimir Putin. He's expressed frustration on a couple different occasions with Putin for continuing to be the aggressor. He's suggested several times that more severe consequences will follow. They they have not really followed, but he suggested that they might. And yet the Donald Trump, we've seen in these kinds of situations in the past, whether you're talking about on the world stage or in negotiations with Democrats at the White House, Republicans at the White House, he likes to please the people who are in front of him. We saw this, I would say,

most significantly on the world stage in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin back in Donald Trump's first term. What do you expect from this? And is there a good outcome? What should people who want the best for Ukraine and want the United States not to be sort of a midwife to further Russian expansion? What should we hope for out of this? I think we should hope for a Reykjavik replay where Donald Trump walks out from this meeting with Putin. I don't expect it. And at all. I think the fact that this meeting is taking place is going to be the, I fear will be the, you know, we will look back as this was the beginning of the end for a good outcome, a good possibility for Ukraine. As you were talking before you had mentioned Helsinki,

all I could think about was Helsinki and the way in which Donald Trump was so enamored, but also so secretive about what happened in that meeting. Just to provide context for people, this meeting that took place in Helsinki, I believe it was in 2018. There was a press conference after that meeting in which Donald Trump sort of expressly sided with Vladimir Putin over the U.S. intelligence community on a number of issues

and seemed to take Putin's word that he hadn't been meddling in the 2016 election and kind of repeatedly came down on Putin's side in disputes with Americans, with the intelligence community, and others. Exactly. And look, the fact that the Ukrainians are not in this meeting just to me tells me everything I need to know. This is not a, this is not an attempt to negotiate between two sides of a war to try to find a negotiated peace that wouldn't be necessarily what the Ukrainians or what pro-Ukraine

Americans would like, but would at least have Ukrainian input. But I fear that this is, this is going to be an opportunity for Vladimir Putin to turn on his charm, turn on his strong man charm, and Donald Trump will walk away, not siding with the sort of skepticism and frustration that he's expressed over the last month or so with Vladimir Putin's the way that he's conducted the war, but by sort of falling under the spell. of Vladimir Putin's eyes and seeing that his way is the only way to peace. And that's ultimately what Donald Trump wants. He just wants an end to it all. I just don't think it's going to end well for the Ukrainians. And I fear that something metaphorically blows up this meeting because I don't think there's a good outcome if it goes all the way through. Joda, do you share that pessimism? And if you do, what's the worst thing? Like, what's the, what's the worst case scenario here?

Well, I mean, so to answer the first question first, the best case scenario was lost the second Trump agreed to have the meeting in the first place, right? There was a, this is already a win for Putin, and there's a bad idea. And people forget that Russia is like literally better than us at very few things, but one of them is summits. America's been embarrassed at summits many, many times, going back to at least to Yalta. And, you know, Reagan is beloved on the right for a certain Reaganite tradition loves Reagan for walking away from Reykovic without doing a bad deal.

But he wanted that, he wanted that summit in the first place because he really wanted a great deal. And then he just, to his credit, he walked away. But I think the summit in the first place was a mistake. Anyway, be all that as it may. Best case scenario would be basically along the lines of a Reykovic, as Mike says, is that he says, look, I came here to size up Putin. Turns out Putin is the bloody-minded warmonger that people have been telling me he is.

I'm very disappointed. But now here come the sanctions. And, oh, boy, is Ukraine going to get just a lot of things that go boom? That would be the best possible outcome. The worst possible outcome is some incredibly stupid deal that Putin, you know Putin is prepping for this in ways that Trump has not prepped for anything in his life. and you know that they have a dossier on Trump, a psych profile on Trump,

they're going to go, and I would suspect, or I fear they're going to go in, and he's going to propose some great deal about like mineral rights in Russia, that they'll split the profits, and there'll be all of this stuff, and the Russians will do this,

and X and Y, and oh, we'll build malls together, and it'll be fantastic, you and me, these two great crime families, yada, yada, yada, yada. And, Trump will be dazzled by it, and he'll say yes to it, and then get really pissed that Ukraine doesn't go along, and then screws Ukraine. That's the, some version of that is the worst

case scenario. I will say, to Trump's credit, he has said, which means what we don't know, but like the fact that he said it is better than not saying it, that he's not going to do propose some territorial swaps. That is good, because this talk about territorial swaps, you know, trading land, is really, really evil and pernicious and dangerous, in part because these are not pieces on a board of risk, right? They're actual human beings who live in these areas. And so when you're talking about swapping land, particularly land that Russia has not conquered yet, right? One of the proposals that Russia has is to give up areas of Ukraine that are still under Ukrainian control.

So, in other words, to give a diplomatic victory of conquest that Russia can't get through military means, which would be really perverse. But it would also mean sending tens of millions possibly, but certainly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, to be trapped in Russia, where their kids will be taken away and reeducated and brainwashed as Russians. there'll be domestic resistance by a Ukrainian nationalist there

would be incredibly demoralizing to Russia to Ukraine and will give Russia the breathing space in the time it wants and will use to plan a further conquest of Ukraine that's the worst possible scenario and it is not that unlikely a scenario I mean Ukraine will never agree to it they can't agree to it

but you could see Trump proposing something like that that would split Europe, that would split NATO, and be a hot mess. I think you've just described the likeliest scenario, unfortunately. And I think there are, I think it's possible that there is a worse case scenario than that. I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see elements of it. I mean, I think the thing that if you look at the rhetoric from the administration going into these meetings, whether it was J.D. Vance last weekend talking about the need of to end the war. The goal is to end the war. We've got to end the war. We're not doing this

anymore. Or U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, talking about parts of territory that Russia has earned on the battlefield, his words, earned on the battlefield. That's sort of incredible statements. It's like getting points for doing your credit card miles, you know. For aggression. It really is incredible. I've earned these iPhones I stole from the Apple store. They're already in my trunk. Yeah. I mean, that is the, that is the, the, the, equivalent. And we've heard pretty consistently, since the very beginning of the Trump administration, I think the first person to really talk about it at length was Marco Rubio in a tarmac impromptu news conference he gave after the first set of these meetings with his Russian counterparts talking about

renewed cooperation and talking about a positive, normalized relationship for the United States and Russia so that we can do deals. And Rubio said, you know, only Donald Trump could do this and talked about commercial possibilities if the United States could find a way to reach some point of cooperation with Russia. So I think that that's sort of guiding the talks going into this. Donald Trump, as you say, Jonah loves a deal. And I think that Vladimir Putin won't come in under, come in empty handed to listen to Donald Trump here. He's going to come in with a plan. And we will see next week what has happened in these meetings. And we will will certainly be revisiting this issue at some length. And we will see which scenario actually

unfolds. Briefly, not worth your time this week. I was, I spent a good part of the last week in Wisconsin, in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, my native land, God's country, as we call it, and spent one of those days at the Wisconsin State Fair. You might have seen on the news that the Wisconsin State Fair was among the places that were hit with the really awful flooding in Wauitos, Wisconsin. The images that you've seen of Wisconsin in all likelihood, if you've been watching television, cable news, the weather channel, what have you, nightly news. That's my hometown. Sort of crazy to see it.

We were there for the flooding, and I was caught out on Saturday night in those torrential rains, and I've never seen rain like that in my 54 years on this earth. But State Fair was a great experience. I went to State Fair as I do every time I go home. in early August and took in the wide variety of bizarre, attempting state fair foods. I didn't actually eat many of them this year, in part because I've gotten so sick, so many other times, eating so much of the state fair food. But I looked at all of the varieties and the deep fried candy bars, and I did have some gluten-free

corn dogs that my daughter got. But my question to you is, one, do you frequent state fairs if you have the opportunity? And if not, why are you an American? And then two, do you partake in these kind of bizarre foods that appear once a year, I think often at Midwest state fairs, but it's also true around the country? And if so, what's the best of the state fair foods you've ever tried? And Mike, just because you're the most likely person, I think, to go to state fairs and to try the foods, I'll start with you. I've never been to a state fair. So your assumption goes right out the window. Not even in Iowa? No, I've never had the opportunity to. You know, I like to wait until

the election is closer before I go get the pulse of the people. I've been to county fairs. The Fairground was up the road from my house in Georgia. So I've been to plenty of those kinds of fairs. The state fair in Georgia is, I've actually been to the fairgrounds. And I don't think it was officially the state fair when I was there, but there were like lots of fair stuff was going on. And I don't know. I find all of the overly fried, like weird stuff, the fried Oreo. of the fried, like,

twinkie type stuff. It's just, it's, it's too much. It's, like, it makes me sick just thinking about it. And I guess that is just another data point in how I'm an out-touch, non-American. Coastal elite. Coastal elite. You know, I, I, uh, I don't know what else to say other than, Steve, this is really a Midwest thing.

And it's really not even a. thing in the South. And I'm happy for you that you enjoy it so much. We're going to have to send you to the Iowa State Fair. I mean, so much in politics happens at the Iowa State Fair. I consider you a well-traveled expert on American politics. This is why I read everything you write about politics. But the fact that you haven't been to an Iowa State Fair diminishes your credibility in a pretty significant way, at least on that. Megan, is it just me? Because I'm from the Midwest. Have you been to a state fair? I love state fairs. Yes. I should say that not only do I love, unfortunately, I do not live in areas that have great state fairs. But I do have

in my mother's generation, not in mine, multiple cousins who have taken prizes at the state fair for needlework and jams, pies, cakes. Our family has a proud state fair tradition. If there were a D.C. state fair, which for all I know there is, I would totally submit my pies for judging if they had a pie contest. There is a D.C. State Fair, by the way. There is. Do they have a pie contest? I don't know. Jams, jellies, herifords.

It exists. Love the herifords. The D.C. 4H. has got to be pretty modest. Future farmers of D.C. Mostly cannabis growers? Yes. I honestly would not be surprised. So, however, I do like some state fair foods. My favorite things are Dolewip and the bananas covered with chocolate on sticks.

I'm going to be honest. I'm not. I love a funnel cake, although this is contentious in my household because for some unaccountable reason, the godless country from which my husband hails refers to them as elephant ears. And so this is an ongoing argument every time we see a funnel cake stand that, whether we are looking at funnel cake or elephanteers. Deep-fried candy bars, that is, if you don't like your tongue and you would like to burn it out with a stream of molten chocolate and never have any taste buds again, then you should get

a deep-fried candy bar, otherwise pass. Deep-fried Oreos are fine, but they're not noticeably better than Oreos. and so I tend to be on the frozen treats rather than the fried treats with the exception of funnel cake which I really do love and we have we do not have a state fair near where I am in Boston

but we do have the Revere Beach Sandcastle Festival or Sand Sculpture Festival which happens every July and they have some good dull whip they got the fried stand things they've got kebabs and so forth

but if you are on the north shore of Boston in July, I recommend. The sand sculptures are pretty amazing. Jonah. All right, so I am just going to have to throw down receipts all over the place. I've probably been to more state fairs than you have, Steve. Probably haven't been to a state fair as many times as you, if you've gone every year to Wisconsin, you know, since you were a kid and, you know, given our age. But as you know, I've driven across country with my wife many, many times. We aim for state fairs either on the way out or on the way back quite often. So I've been to the Iowa State Fair, the Oregon State Fair, the Washington State State Fair. Always wanted

to go to the Texas State Fair and we've planned on going like three or four times and things have fallen through. In Parkasas, my daughter loves amusement parks. So there's that. Also love county fairs. Sometimes county fairs are better than state fairs because state fairs are like a big business now. They're basically like a giant amusement park things and they're at such scale that it's major vendors. Meanwhile, the county fairs, you still have the locals, the local Megan McArdle's making their pies, complaining about industrial capitalism and our industrial policy. But I will say in terms of food I like, I've done the fried pork job stuff. I've tried the deep, I'm kind of with Mike on like, out in the hot sun having deep fried food is just

not really my thing. But one of the things, I mean, there are a few things like I love more than a good sausage and peppers sandwich, which you can get, you know, actually in New York or in Massachusetts, and most fares have that kind of stuff too, like a good brat, you know, or a good Italian sausage. Now, I do not want to get into a big, but my favorite, I was going to say my favorite thing is an elephant ear. And then I hear Megan disparage both elephant ears and, um,

funnel cake. No, I love them. I just don't think they should be called elephant ears. They should be called funnel cake. Well, but here's the thing. They are, in fact,

different things. Made with different does. And elephant ear, I looked it up while you were talking because I'm like, huh, I didn't think they were the same thing. According to Google AI,

elephant ear dough is made from a yeast-based dough that is stretched and fried, while funnel cake is made from a batter made that is poured into hot oil, even though a funnel or through a funnel or a piping bag. Different techniques, different dough. Well, I have never had this strange beast that you call an elephanteer, so.

So elevineers are wonderful. They're basically fried dough with sugar cinnamon on them. They sound great. They're fantastic. They're one of those things that's like, I know Megan knows exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know a few Philistines do. but the delta between the smell of a New York City pretzel, which is one of the greatest smells on earth

and the actual crappy quality of New York City pretzels is just massive. Meanwhile, the smell of an elephant ear is one of the most glorious smells on earth, and the taste actually holds its own to the smell. And so you smell elephant ear, it triggered something in you like Proust, Madeline's, and I must go have one.

And having an elephant ear, with a cup of coffee is among the most civilized things you can possibly do. Now I have a life goal. Finally, after 52 years. I know I'll disappoint you when I report that I did not partake in a lot of these crazy foods this year because of exactly what Jonah said, it was like 100 degrees. And so the things that I would have otherwise done, and because I've gotten sick in earlier years, I just chose not to do the big item at the Wisconsin State Fair, at least the one that had our family buzzing, was pickle pizza, which I'd not heard of, dill pickles on pizza with a flaming hot Cheetos crust sprinkled on top. Keep talking.

I like what I'm hearing. I didn't try it, but I'm tempted. I would try it. I had never heard of this either, and I never want to hear of it again. I would try it. I'm tempted. I think it sounds pretty good. But the sort of the highlight for me in my life, just at least in terms of food, was back in 2010 when I was working for the Weekly Standard, I somehow convinced Scott Walker, who was running for governor to go with me to the Wisconsin State Fair, to have a couple of beers with me at the Wisconsin State Fair, and then to eat the thing that was new at the time.

and I think has since become sort of a regular featured item in Wisconsin anyway, and that was the crispy cream cheeseburger. So you just cut a crispy cream donut in half and used it as the bun for a cheeseburger. And I convinced Scott to have one and then took a picture of him while he was eating it, which we used in the Weekly Standard. I believe I got word later that his campaign staff didn't like that because he was taking, you know, a huge honk and bite of this crispy cream cheeseburger and we put it in the, we put it in the magazine. But it was not good. It was, it was exactly what you'd expect from a crispy cream cheeseburger. And a good old Wisconsin burger is much, much better. Well, I'm sort of encouraged that I got this so wrong on who has

been to state fairs and who likes state fairs. Mike, we have some work to do on, you, I'm afraid, we will be sending you to the Iowa State Fair because I think it's important both for reporting and for eating. That's it for this week's dispatch podcast. We will talk to you later. See you later, Alligator. One final note today. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And we hope you'll consider becoming a member of The Dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at thedispatch.com slash join. And if you use my promo code,

Roundtable, you'll get one month free and help me win the ongoing, deeply scientific internal debate over which dispatch podcast is the true flagship podcast. 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 that beat up on Jonah. That's it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible,

Max Miller, Victoria Holmes, and Noah Hickey. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next week. Calling all Booklovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more

with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketourou Isakou and Kieran Desai. The Toronto International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd. Details and tickets at festivalofauthors.ca.