The Dispatch Podcast - War and Lies in Gaza

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Sarah, Steve, Chris, and David French discuss the war an Israel as a ground invasion of Gaza seems imminent and Western media spreads disinformation about a deadly blast in a Gaza hospital. The roundtable then turns to the House speaker race, this time giving the topic appropriately-lengthed shrift. Also: -Illusion of Israel’s invincibility -Information warfare -The power of confirmation bias -Trump's praise of Hezbollah -Can Republicans be united? -Matt Gaetz and the Seven Dwarves -Worth Your Time (?): Zero-turn lawnmowers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgir, and I've got Chris Dyerwald, Steve Hayes, and David French here to break it all down for us. Let's dive right in. David, can you update us here a week and a half later? on Israel and the U.S. response to the terrorist attack. Yeah, you know, as of right now, there is virtually no daylight, real meaningful daylight between Israel and the U.S. Israel has been massing troops, called up hundreds of thousand, roughly 300,000 reserves, appears to be preparing for ground invasion of Gaza, has bombarded Gaza to an extent that we've not seen in any previous conflict,

And not even the alleged strike, which now appears with by strong, with clear and convincing evidence to have been not an Israeli strike, but a misfired Palestinian Islamic jihad rocket that hit near a hospital, not on a hospital apparently, that that strike has not created any daylight between Israel and the United States. Biden flew to Israel, made a strong statement in support of Israel. It really is remarkable. It's one of the more emphatic American statements in favor of Israel that I've seen really in modern times, certainly in the last 25 years. And I think it is really empowered Israel as it prepares to potentially invade Gaza. Steve, what about these neighboring countries? I mean, Jordan cancels its meeting with Biden. Iran is threatening preemptive strike. How on the precipice are we here?

It's not great. I think the likelihood of a regional conflagration is high, made higher by the grievous mistakes that American and Western news media made over the past few days. Well, you explain the hospital strike in a little more detail for someone who's not, you know, watching all of this? Sure. The hospital strike or the hospital explosion was something that took place around 7 p.m. on Tuesday local time in Gaza. And there was some kind of explosion. And within moments on social media,

followed quickly thereafter by reports in large mainstream outlets in the West, claims that an Israeli airstrike had targeted a hospital in Gaza and resulted in hundreds and hundreds, more than 500, was the initial estimate deaths. This was immediately broadcast to the world, shared with the world, numerous uncritical headlines in the biggest media institutions in the Western world, effectively taking Hamas, this was a Hamas-run health ministry, providing this information, essentially taking their word for both the cause of the destruction, the extent

of the destruction and who caused the destruction. It turns out that virtually everything that we learned in those first reports has been shown to be wrong. And there are, we can go into greater detail about why that is and how that happened, but there are, there's been a pretty serious response. Joe Biden was headed to the region. He had numerous meetings canceled. with leaders in the region of neighboring states.

There were mass protests. There was burning and looting at Israeli and U.S. embassies in the region. The so-called Arab Street was awakened, and those protests continue to this day. Other conversations between the Israelis and, you know, long-time hostile neighbors have been broken off. You had statements of condemnation of the Israelis by neighboring governments that have not been retracted, that are still in effect, despite the fact that virtually no sophisticated intelligence operation or assessment has concluded that this was anything but a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic jihad. David, one more thing. What does it mean for the U.S. to have two carrier groups off the coast? Yeah, that is a very significant thing that actually not enough people have focused on.

One carrier group is a show of force that is extremely significant. Two carrier groups says that we're not just wanting to project a show of force, but it says we are actively preparing for a carrier group. conflict. And I think what the two carrier group says to Hezbollah says to Iran, it says we do not want emphatically do not want this war to widen and have resources available to blunt any military attack that looks to start a true international armed conflict, sort of a conventional war between Iran and Israel. It's really an extraordinary statement. And it's one of the reasons why I say what we are witnessing here is one of the most extraordinary shows of American solidarity with Israel that

I've seen in my adult lifetime. I mean, this is two carrier battle groups deployed when Israel is, it had a moment of weakness that was extremely deadly, but it is still the strongest military power in the region. It doesn't need American carrier battle groups to defeat Hamas. It doesn't need American carrier battle groups to defeat Hezbollah. It can do both of those things. But I think that is a signal to Iran to tread extremely carefully. As I said, that movement from one carrier group to two moves you from just a conventional show of force to preparations for conflict. And I don't think it's because we're actually preparing to initiate strikes on Iran. I think it's sending a message to Iran to don't escalate this conflict.

Chris, when we think about this, the domestic side of this and the Biden administration, this is an interesting moment. We've talked a lot about the sort of civil war within the Republican Party, but this is showing a lot of fractures within the Democratic Party as well. Obviously, there's members of Congress who are not in line with the Biden administration's stance here. but larger points on where young people are in the country and sort of their lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden and now this where they don't necessarily stand with Joe Biden.

And yet, the Biden administration doesn't look like they're checking the politics on this. This seems to be coming from a place of principal and American interest in no daylight between Secretary of State Blinken, for instance, and Joe Biden on this. Where do you see this? Well, I guess probably the divisions in the Democratic Party are about the same, maybe a little stronger than they are in the Republican Party. Obviously, the nationalist trend in the GOP, there are voices over there, Vivek Ramoswami.

and others who were ouchy about this, the overwhelming majority in both parties are strongly supportive of Israel at this point. Now, what Joe Biden knows, of course, is that there's a clock. And it would seem to me what is happening. And I think, you know, an Oval Office address is a very powerful thing.

and it can do enormous, enormous political good. But it's also the hardest stage in world politics. And to be clear, we are taping this before the address. Yes. It's the hardest stage in world politics. It's a lonesome space there behind the resolute desk, and you're all by yourself. And we've seen presidents succeed wildly with it. We think of Ronald Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster, and we think of other big moments,

George W. Bush, at the outset of hostilities and what we once called the G-WAT. But we also think of real disasters. We think of Donald Trump. We think of Barack Obama after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. it can be very it can be very bad and Joe Biden's not good on TV he's not good at this and he is my my interpretation is that Biden who seems up for this right coming back on the airplane engaging with the press pool which is something they don't usually let him do he seemed mostly with it, mostly alert in his 60 Minutes interview, which is another very hard

thing to do. So, you know, we'll know after, was he pressing his luck or was he seizing the opportunity and it'll depend on the performance. But I think what he's mostly interested in doing is that the Republican Party right now is in tatters, right? I don't know where the speakership elections will be by the time this airs, but the Republican Party is a mess. And this is an opportunity for Joe Biden, who lost so much on foreign policy matters after the debacle of the Afghan withdrawal. This is an opportunity for him to be the commander-in-chief. This is an opportunity for him to look decisive, and this is an opportunity for him to do all those things. But to conclude, he knows he's got the clock because, Sarah, the divisions that

you talked about, and I think you saw the flashpoint with the, with the grievous journalistic errors around the hospital calamity, there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party who are primed to really go after Israel here. And we heard it in comments from former president George W. Bush. There's a limited time period that Israel has here while its enemies are in abeyance and that the United States needs Israel to succeed fast. Steve, we talked about this last time that Israel's on a clock, both in terms of time frame and intensity, the hospital explosion, I think, shows maybe that was the wrong way

to think about it. A lot of people who don't like Israel had to wait because there was a terrorist attack against Israel, but they sort of knew there'd be some moment at some point where they could stop pretending to give, you know, thoughts and prayers. And so maybe our way of thinking about that last week sort of missed the point. Israel wasn't on a clock. The clock was already over. It was just, you know, people waiting to show what they wanted to show all along. Yeah, I mean, I think, unfortunately, you're right about that. I mean, it's worth sort of stepping back and just taking a moment to appreciate exactly what an abrupt and dramatic change this has been. we had seen in the preceding six or seven years

sort of gradual movement of other countries in the region, including countries that had been, you know, not just not allies of Israel, but truly hostile nations, drifting toward improved relations with Israel. MBS in Saudi Arabia, since he ascended to a position of power has been saying, in private, very emphatically, in public, somewhat less emphatically, but nonetheless in public, saying that warmer relations with Israel were on the way.

You'd seen improved relations through the Abraham Accords in the Trump administration. And things were certainly moving in that direction with these attacks. And then especially with these bad reports, these countries have at least in public sprinted in the other direction, ended this drift towards normalized relations with Israel, improved relations with Israel. So it may be the case, Sarah, that you're right. They were looking for a, you know, a reason to return to status quo ante. And this brings them that one can have some hope that some of this is being said and done because they are afraid of their own people. But even if that's the case, it's hard to imagine undoing what we've seen over the past 10 days,

which is awfully disappointing. beyond just the lives lost though david i mean some of why this was so catastrophic for israel so dangerous for israel was that it showed them as incredibly weak yeah right these are guys with bulldozers going through fences and they just made it through and so it shattered this illusion of israeli invincibility which was part of why those relations were normalizing was that israel was seen as such a strong both economic and military power in the region i take your point that there's still the strongest military power there with their neighbors. But that's why this attack was dangerous for Israel, not just the lives lost.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of comparisons to 1973 for a good reason. So one comparison to 1973, this is the Yom Kippur War, is obviously the ability of the Egyptian army to take the Israeli army by surprise, the IDF by surprise and breached the Barlev line at the Suez Canal, was totally. unexpected. And so one of the objectives of the IDF after it fended off the initial Egyptian and Syrian attack, where the first objective of the IDF was just to preserve the nation state of Israel, because there was a time in the opening days of the Am Kapoor War, where especially on the northern front, there was a real concern that the Syrian army was going to break all the way

through deep into Israel. So once IDF reestablished its defense, a purpose of the remainder of the war was to reestablish deterrence. So in other words, reestablish battlefield dominance. And so there was a race against time at that point for the IDF to defeat, decisively defeat the Egyptians in the Sinai. They defeated the Syrians in the Golan to defeat the Egyptians in the Sinai. And that involved penetrating into Egyptian territory, encircling Egypt, I believe it was the third army, and holding a Essentially, an entire Egyptian army is a bargaining chip in all the negotiations that followed. So it was an imperative of Israel in 1973, not just to fend off the attack, but to reestablish deterrence.

And that's a very similar dynamic is in play here. What happened here was worse than 1973 because the consequence was mass killings amongst civilians. The initial attacks in 1973 created high casualties in the IDF. This was high casualties amongst families and children. So in many ways, this was worse. And so what Israel has to do is not just defeat the attack, which it has done. It has cleared Hamas out of Israel, but it has to reestablish deterrence by defeating Hamas itself. And one thing I would note about the reaction in the region, you know when relations are normalized, when relations are normal, actually.

not just when people say they're normalized. And I will tell you, this is a demonstration that relations have not been normalized, that in normal relations between countries, your new relationships don't seem to end the instant your own citizens are subject to a mass murder. But here's what happened. And you respond to the mass murder. But here's what happened. You had these nations immediately distancing themselves, not just from Israel,

but then after this fake news, what appears to be fake news out of Gaza involving this hospital, then cutting off and ending or canceling meetings with President Biden. These are countries canceling meetings with President Biden, by the way, that are highly dependent on American aid, and they're canceling visits with President Biden. And so what this raises, the question for me, were relations really ever normalized or were they just sort of slightly improved? I think you've answered the question.

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. Chris, I want to go down a little cul-de-sac here because it wasn't just the other countries in the region that jumped on this misinformation, which I guess I found not surprising. You know, Hamas claims that one of their hospitals was hit and that 500 people are dead instantly, which would be really hard to know first.

of all, you know, it was dark, as Steve noted, when this happened, by the time the sun came up, it was just very clear that, for instance, the hospital itself hadn't been hit. It would be very hard to know whether you killed 500 people immediately like they did. Also, if the hospital wasn't hit, how were 500 people killed? I mean, there's none of it, none of it made sense very quickly. And yet, again, not surprised by the regional response. Here's what I was surprised by. After years of lecturing by mainstream media outlets about misinformation and disinformation, the speed by which nearly every major media outlet took the Hamas version of events and got headlines out there. Now, it's not that the headlines were

necessarily inaccurate. The headlines would say things like Israel strikes, Gaza hospital killing 500, comma, says Palestinian health authority. So, and that's not untrue. That is factually accurate. But, um, a, what about this misinformation and disinformation

that they were so willing to believe here in the United States? Not in Jordan. Not in Saudi Arabia. Um, and B, I found that to be far more dangerous in a lot of ways because it provided Like, you're never going to take that back. It doesn't matter if they fix the headline later.

I assure you that if you ask large swaths of people, they believe Israel struck the hospital. And none of the like, well, actually, that comes the next day is going to make any difference. And that's why misinformation is dangerous because you never really get to correct it. So how am I supposed to deal with that from our news outlets? Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

And what the fact that that was confirmation bias for them. The fact that they weren't skeptical, like even a little bit to say like, well, wait, why would Israel, like, none of, even on its face, many people were like, that doesn't make sense immediately, but not our major news outlets. Why was that confirmation bias for them? So confirmation bias is really powerful. And miss it, I think, from a larger perspective. the discussion of misinformation and disinformation is revealed in its substantial error because one man's misinformation is another man's truth-telling. And the idea that there could be, and we saw a mass failure of fact-checking, yet again,

the idea that there could be authoritative voices and say, well, we can definitely trust these people to determine misinformation and disinformation. And I hope every time somebody makes a proposal for government intervention in fact and that we will have, that there will be a truth authority that we can point to incidents like these to say, confirmation bias is really powerful. It was particularly powerful in this case because two narratives meshed. So you have, and we're reading reports today about complaints from Muslim Americans, Arab Americans inside major news outlets, inside the Biden administration, who say that they feel silenced and that they feel that they're being oppressed because they don't feel free to speak their own minds and share their own points of view.

There is a loyal and often radical minority in American media that is deeply committed to describing Israel as a colonial occupier, an apartheid state, and that is a narrative that, and we saw it certainly in the colleges, where a lot of these people went, that there's a just-add-water, ready-made constituency for that. So you have the hard bias part, right? So you have the actual bias part. But more powerfully is the desire for conflict. The narrative took shape in the first hours of the attack, even while the initial attack, while news was still filtering in, what was the narrative? Oh, boy, Israel is going to overreact. Israel is definitely going to overreact.

And that's the big concern. And so that narrative is in there, some of it because of that underlying bias, that actual bias. And part of it because, and this is a sad truth about human nature, a war is a big story to cover, right? It's the same reason for hyping coronavirus and beyond even the limits of its lethality. And you have a similar story here where the desire for the big story, the desire for the narrative, the desire for the narrative. meshes up with the actual ideological bias inside some newsrooms and you get green lights across the board because it confirms what people expected to happen and it meshes with the bias of the minority. And, you know, I would just say, I think in this case, the error

has been helpful to the Israeli cause because it was, yes, you're right that it in most cases, the correction gets a lot less traction than the error. But this was so effulgent. It was so big. It was so wrong and it was so dumb. And the timing of having Biden there at the moment, right, of having the U.S. president there embracing Benjamin Netanyahu and Biden hitting it hard,

I think this will end up buying Israel goodwill and time. And as far as what we used to call. David and Steve will remember the Arab Street. What happens on the Arab Street? The people rioting in capitals across the Arab world, they don't need the New York Times to give them permission to be arsonists and lunatics. They woke up hating Israel today, and they'll hate Israel no matter what. All right, Steve, let's move to the domestic politics of this a little bit.

In our world of negative polarization, do we end up in a situation where if Biden is so staunchly pro-Israel that we actually see something like we've seen in the Ukraine-Russia shenanigans within the Republican Party where there becomes a larger portion of the Republican Party that turns anti-Israel as that response? it's such a good question the appropriate answers I don't know I suspect not but I've been surprised about a lot of things

that Republicans have done over the past several years in an era of negative polarization so I'm open to being corrected on this we have seen some movement that remember Donald Trump and I believe we talked about this on the podcast last week

made these bizarre bizarre for anybody but Donald Trump sort of consistent with the way that Donald Trump thinks the world remarks in a speech where he'd probably going too far to say he praised Hamas for being smart, but he assessed Hamas. I mean, sorry, Hezbollah as being smart in a speech and then really took some shots at Benjamin Netanyahu. This is within, I think, the first 48 hours of these attacks, maybe 72 hours, for not listening to him and not supporting the U.S. when the U.S. decided to strike Qasem Soleimani,

the former head of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps. Bizarre stream of consciousness trumpy attack, elevating the personal over sort of the policy and the strategic. And it was sort of a moment. And immediately you saw other Republicans criticize him. They often don't criticize what Donald Trump says. And other Republican candidates, most of whom have run against Donald Trump, sort of going through the motions.

They've run against Donald Trump, but they've attacked the other people running against Donald Trump, more than they've attacked Donald Trump, decided that this was a moment where they were going to go after Donald Trump. And you saw Trump do something Trump almost never, does was walk it back or change his position. He later put out a truth or whatever we're calling these things these days saying that he stands with, I stand with Bibi and being praising the Israelis praising the Kurdish Israelis. So I think you've seen Donald Trump a little bit worried, or at least his campaign a little bit worried that being on the wrong side of this

might leave him permanently on the wrong side of this and that Donald Trump is not in a position unlike so many of the issues over the past seven, eight years on the Republican side of things, whether you're talking about trade or, you know, we can go through the long list, national security,

where Trump has been able to bring Republicans with him to his point of view, in some cases, against what the traditional Republican view has been, I think you're safe by Trump's own actions that he doesn't feel confident that he can do it this time. I will say on the Democratic side, I have been a little surprised. Surely there are divisions on the Democratic side. You have Rashida Taleb, progressive congresswoman, and other members of the so-called squad, who staked out a position early on this hospital explosion and have stuck to it through evidence.

proven that their position was wrong. They have made arguments saying that this was an Israeli strike. Rashida Taleb was on the mall yesterday in Washington at a protest rally. Many hours after her own government had said, we have proof that this was not an Israeli airstrike, that this was, in fact, a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You have Rashida Taleb taking the word of Hamas over her own government, on the provenance of those attacks.

So you have that, but in my mind, there isn't as much of a divide on the Democratic side as we might have expected. The squad is pretty isolated on this. You've had some other Democrats put out statements that are more or less equivocal or both sides in the question, but I've been struck that a lot of prominent progressives

have not done that and have stood fairly strongly on the side of Israel, most notably perhaps John Federman, Senator from Pennsylvania, who he just makes no bones about it. I'm for Israel. Israel's right here, Hamas or terrorists, and they're bad. And he's getting a ton of grief from, I think, sort of the core, you know, rank and file progressive movement, but not really much from other elected Democrats. But doesn't that remind you, David, a little bit of where Republicans were, say, in 2015,

where you had elected Republicans saying, no, this is what we believe. And the base saying, yeah, but we want something else. And in the end, the base wins. Yeah, it's not clear to me, though, that the Democratic base truly understood. There is certainly a very online, radical element of the Democratic, well, I would say of the left,

which includes people who would not call themselves Democrats who believe the Democrats are squishes. And that are highly concentrated, in the elite academy, major media markets like New York, but I have not really seen evidence that they have an enormous amount of sway with the Democratic base. You know, what's fascinating to me here is we've had a few voices on the left, Rashida Talib, Ily and Omar, some of the squad members who really honestly have long since been sort of pushed to the side in the House caucus.

All of the hype around the squad has largely dissipated, except mainly if it weren't for conservative media, no one would hear about the squad these days. And so I do think this is actually a symbol of their marginalization in some interesting ways. When Federman feels completely free to dunk on this stuff, it tells you something about the state of their influence within the party. I'm also, you know, I'm very interested in what's happening on the right

as well, because we've seen coming out of TPUSA in particular, which is for those listeners who are blissfully unaware of TPUSA is probably the most powerful youth organization on the right right now, where you've had some really gross anti-Semitism coming out of actual TPUSA influencers. You had Charlie Kirk after Trump said his extremely foolish words about Hezbollah. to openly speculate whether there had been a stand-down order given by the Netanyahu government to permit this massacre to bolster his standing. We have seen other elements of true weirdness break out in the online ride in a way, in a way that is very similar in fashion to the bloodthirstiness and weirdness on the campus left.

and to the point where, you know, this horseshoe theory that the two sides get closer together, the more extreme they get, is now becoming the circle that you're seeing emerging in many ways of the far left and the far right. And one of the things, if you dig a little deeper into this, you'll see, this is actually connected to some of the elements of the Christian nationalism movement on the right. Because what does Christian nationalism mean historically? Christianity. Christian nationalism historically means conflict between Protestant and Catholic, conflict between Protestant and Protestant. It means a lot of anti-black racism in the United States. And guess what Christian nationalism always means over time, anti-Semitism. Yeah, but every political movement means that. Well, yeah. But Christian nationalism historically, and that's one of the reasons why,

by the way, the United States has been more of a home for the Jewish people than Europe. Because the United States was never a formally Christian nation in the way some of these European nations were. And so from the beginning, we had an establishment clause. We had a free exercise clause. And very importantly, we had a letter from George Washington. I was going to mention the letter. Yes. George Washington's letter to the Jews.

Right, exactly. So from the beginning, we've said we are not a formally Christian. Christian nation. People of other faiths are welcome. And in particular, our very first president, the hero of the founding of the Republican, of the Republic, specifically said to the Jewish people of the United States of America that you have a place here. Every man, he used the verse, Micah 4-4, one of my favorite verses. Every man shall sit under his own vine and his own fig tree, and no one shall make him afraid. And that is not the viewpoint of Christian nationalism. All right. We're going to move to the speaker topic, but I did want to end our conversation.

about Israel, quoting something that Jonah wrote, Jonah's not here. So we'll give Jonah the last word, which he'll be shocked that I'm giving him. And I think, you know, as Adam has pointed out, our producer, when these terrorists came in to kill people, they didn't say, find the Israelis, kill the Israelis. What they were saying was find the Jews, kill the Jews. And I think that's just such an important distinction to make as people question whether this was really just about disagreements with Israel's policies. And here's what Jonah said. Indeed, I've long thought that one of the things that arouses so much irrational hatred of Jews is the way they have demonstrated over and over again that victimhood is not a permanent anchor, that oppression need not be an iron

cage. To borrow the language of the people who think losing a job offer is violence, but cutting off a Jew's head is the dialectical unfolding of justice, the truth of Jewish success and perseverance does violence to the whole speak truth to power paradigm. Great words, Jonah. Well done. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. 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. Chris, we're moving to the speaker's race.

We gave it incredibly short shrift last week, by which I mean no shrift. Shrift was not given. We're sort of in the middle of this. We don't want to make our podcast stale. There isn't a speaker right now, and that's what's important, I suppose. But can you give us a bigger 30,000-foot understanding into what we're witnessing? Because there's one version of this, for instance, where, okay, the Republicans had a few members oust their speech. now it's been two weeks and they can't find a speaker that they can all agree on and that maybe

this is just because they have a really, really small majority and it doesn't say anything else about the Republican Party. It's just what happens when you've, you know, got too narrow a majority and that, you know, the flip side of that like, well, Nancy Pelosi didn't have this problem when the Democrats had a really slim majority. Yeah, but she was Nancy Pelosi. She was a true elder of the party who had been there for so many years leading her party. Yes, she came in with more both moral and political authority than did Kevin McCarthy, who was elected speaker for the first time with a very, very slim majority. As in, does any of this matter, big picture?

Well, I suppose it's possible. Certainly the small majority that the Republicans have make things worse. But Republicans are much worse at this than Democrats. John Boehner quit. Paul Ryan left. This is not something that started with Kevin McCarthy. This would have happened to John Boehner if he would have stayed and he left rather than get thrown out. And, you know, the Republican Party is unwell. And part of its illness is rooted in a positive thing for Republicans, which is their electorate and their members are fiercely independent, right?

The independent streak, what Michael Brown used to call the Jacksonian Belt, what I call the Hillbilly Firewall, David's people and my people, there is a cussed independence, independenceness in them. And that's, that has some cool political attributes. What I think we seem is, yes, the divisions, the deep divisions within the Republican Party, the fratricidal, you know, one of the reasons that in a rematch with Donald Trump, I'd favor Joe Biden to win, I don't know that any Republican under these circumstances could unite the party and beat a Democrat just because there's 25% of the Republican Party that hates Donald Trump like God hates sin and there's 30%, 35% that just loves him. And I don't know that the percent that loves

Donald Trump would accept Nikki Haley. And I'm sure that the percent that likes Nikki Haley wouldn't vote for Donald Trump. And that's that that's a fatal division. So we see the fatal division play out over and over again in the Republican Party. But I would say, I would say what we have is really good evidence of how the House, the adhocracy that has formed to allow the Congress to function has broken down. If Matt Gates is right. Matt Gates is right. And not just about what happens if you snort erectile dysfunction drugs. He is right about, and I'm sure he was grasping at rationales for removing McCarthy, if the House doesn't work its will, if the committee process does not work, and if the purpose of leadership is to protect members from taking problematic votes of legislating, right?

So how do you get elected the leader of either party, but particularly with the Republicans? You have to protect the members from voting. You can't let these committees cough up legislation. Can we just say that that's a really sad statement on what the purpose of leadership is? Right. That's the problem is we don't have a Congress. The problem in many ways in American politics today is that we don't have a Congress. And we could talk about how the dynamic of Republicans thinking of themselves as the executive party

and Democrats thinking of themselves as the legislative party played into that. We could talk about the consequence that you alluded to of what you alluded to, Sarah, with close election after close election after close election. And when you have narrow majorities to invoke you've all lived in here, when you continue to have a narrowly balanced nation politically, it's hard for anybody to get any running room. And all of those are things. But one of the core problems we're seeing, we saw it in the failure to convict Trump after January 6th. but we see it in the fact that we haven't had a real budget since 2007. You see it again and again and again, which is what members are voting for is incumbency.

And the failure of the imagination of the founders, you know, the founders knew slavery was a problem. They didn't say, well, this will work itself out. This won't be a problem. But what they, the failure of imagination of moral imagination, that in Mr. Madison's beautiful architecture was that one branch would intentionally devolve its own power for the purposes of just keeping their keysters in their seats.

The members of the House don't want power, they want to stay. They just want to be there and where they're dumb lapel pins. So what we're seeing here is if you cannot let the committee system work and if you cannot force votes on, by the way, the things that Americans want, Americans would like to have a better immigration policy. They most assuredly would. And there's broad consensus on that subject.

But we don't get it because the incumbent members of Congress elect leaders who will prevent things from being legislated, not who will push legislation through. And Kevin McCarthy was sort of the apotheosis of this concept of incumbency protection leadership. I, and again, I don't want to date what we're talking about here. But it would be really refreshing if what happened in the House was that an inertia has a lot of power. If Patrick McHenry was empowered to be a sort of a nonpartisan speaker to enforce the rules and let the committee's work and do the stuff because it would be nice to see. And when you see the people who are voting against Jim Jordan, you know, Kay Granger doesn't just say, I was mad at him.

So I decided, no. Here's somebody who says, I lead an important. committee. I would like my committee to work. So to keep to end this diatribe on an optimistic note, it would be nice to see what would happen if the House was able to work its will and if the system was allowed to work. And we just had rules instead of negative partisanship and incumbency protection at all costs. Okay, but Steve, this is a little contradictory, right? If Congress doesn't actually legislate, which they really don't very often, they do

sometimes. God knows those post offices are getting renamed by someone. Then does any, does this matter? Like, okay, so they're spending all their time arguing over who, you know, is going to put more candy in the, you know, vending machines for recess. Fine. That's as good a use of their time as anything else they were doing sitting on cable news or otherwise. As in do we, there was sort of all this hand ringing about like, oh my God, there's no speaker and like, how can our government function? What? What 1992 world were you living in last week? Well, I think if you compare it to last week or, you know, when we most recently had a speaker, your point is valid. There isn't a huge difference. But as Chris points out, that's not the way the legislative branch is

supposed to function. We're so far away from the proper functioning of the legislative branch. that just having a speaker in the seat while it helps procedurally doesn't get us back to what the legislative branch ought to be doing if it's functioning properly. But I want to focus for just a second on Chris's ending note of optimism because I feel it too. It means we're screwed, Steve. It means if you and I both feel optimistic about something, you know we're screwed. Right. So let me, let me. Inside the Republican Party, what's been happening for most of the last eight years is a desire from non-Trumpie Republicans to avoid a fight with Trumpy Republicans. It determines everything they do, everything they say. Many, many Republicans oppose what Trump is doing. Many elected Republicans don't, aren't enthusiastic about going along with the MAGA Horde, but they do anyway.

Call them cowards, call them whatever you want. That's what's been happening. What we've seen in the past several days with Jim Jordan's potential ascension to speaker is some of them, a very few of them, beginning to speak their mind. and say I've had it. Enough is enough. I don't know. My optimism has limits. I don't know that we're going to see this continue.

But from where I sit, what the Republican Party has needed most urgently for the past several years, almost since this began, is to have the fight that most Republicans have been seeking to avoid. Have the fight. Because I don't give a shit

whether Republicans control the House. I don't give a shit whether Republicans control the Senate. I care that Republicans get back to being sane. And Republicans aren't going to get back to being sane unless they have this fight and the side that opposes legislative nihilism, blowing it up for blowing it up sake, the conspiracy theory dominated Republican Party that Trump has ushered in, until those people succeed.

and they may not succeed. Nothing's going to get better. So have the fight. If this is the beginning of it, great. I'm for it. But have the fight. And I hope that this encourages more of the people that I've spent the past seven or eight years talking to

who tell me privately that they really are concerned and troubled and then go and give a press conference praising all the stuff that they say they're concerned and troubled about will actually start to speak honestly. And if we can get to that moment, the fight could produce better results than we've seen. You know, what's interesting about this fight is unlike previous fights, 10 people can win it. So, you know, one of the problems you saw, say, for example, with the Paxton impeachment effort is you were going to have to get most Republicans in Texas on board, elected Republicans or you weren't going to win that. When you had the impeachment fight for Trump himself,

you had 10 House Republicans who stood up against Trump. You had, what, seven Republican senators, they weren't enough to win that fight. Ten Republicans can actually win this fight. They can win it, not just defeat Jordan. Now, it would require them to make a deal with Democrats. Would Democrats be willing to do that? You know, it's not looking very promising, but one distinction between this fight and others is that a few can actually win and do the reverse gates. They can trump gates because if there is a deal to be made, they can make a deal. Now, I don't know if they would have the willingness to do that. I mean, that might be, you know, political suicide to the highest degree, although a number of these people who are standing up are in Biden districts, so who knows.

But I would say this, let me, there's this note of optimism that actually 10 people could win this thing, unlike many other previous fights with the MAGA world. But here's the note of pessimism. The fact, when you have Matt Gates and eight people, was it a total of eight blow up the house, you can look and you can say, that's a you problem. The eight people, Matt Gates and his seven, dwarves is a you problem. When you have 200 members of the house, then moving to Jim Jordan, that's an us problem. That's a GOP problem. That he, now I can see moving to Steve Scalitz. I can see that. But Jim Jordan, what has he done? Okay, I'll tell you what he's done. He's been on Fox a ton, a metric ton of Fox appearances. I think 570,

70-some-od Fox appearances since 2017. That's a ton of Fox appearances. So he's been on Fox. He's tried to steal an election. That's what he's done. But you know what he's not done? He has not legislated. It's not just that in 16 years,

not a single one of his bills that's become law, not a single one. Only three things that he's proposed to have even passed the House alone. And one of them was just a resolution regarding the events in the state of Ohio. and if you say, well, it's hard to pass bills because Congress doesn't legislate. For most of the last decade, he's been one of the lowest performing legislators in the entire United States Congress.

So the only thing that is getting him his 200 supporters right now is that he is a fighter on Fox News and he is a loyal, loyal, loyal Donald Trump foot soldier. And that to me is where, you know, this idea that this idea that this, fight for the soul of the GOP. Yes, I am all for these 10 or so people or 15 going to the mat. But it is deeply depressing in many ways that after Scalise, the caucus turns to Jim, Jordan. And I haven't even mentioned the Ohio State wrestling controversy because I just, I just don't think we have enough evidence there yet. But if you just look at how he has behaved in Congress, this is one of the least impressive legislative. tours in the entire house, and he has the support of about almost 200 of his colleagues.

Well, overall, to Chris's point, I think part of the problem with Congress is that, frankly, they're all not impressive legislators because there's not a lot of legislation moving. So if you're judging legislators by bills that actually got passed into law, they're all going to fail. The question is whose fault is that? All right. With our time remaining, I have a worth your time, question mark, and I'm coming to you first, Chris. This is an aggregate survey from some key battleground states. So Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,

North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. So in surveying voters in those states and sort of lumping them all together, Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by four points. Biden has lost the backing of 14% of voters who supported him three years ago. Donald Trump has lost the backing of 9% of his 2020 supporters. Three and four say the economy is headed in the wrong direction. Bidenomics, not good, according to these voters. We're 13 months out from the election. Do polls like this tell us something about the election

or tell us something about today? and does something like Israel actually have the ability to change this? Well, who did the poll? Morning Consult. Oh, no. That's a absolutely not to ever consider polls from Morning Consult. That is a discard. Polling, even bad polling is useful if it is consistent.

And we can compare voter attitudes over. Over time, right? So it's like the stop clock is right twice a day. So you can see trends. I think what we have not yet seen. So Joe Biden has been very much in the news. And Donald Trump, oddly, has not been much in the news. There has not been an extraordinary amount of coverage around Donald Trump. We went through a huge burst that helped him with the Republican electorate around his initial criminal charges. And since then, he's been sort of off camera. and busy doing these other things. Well, there's been this enormous scrutiny on Joe Biden. I feel like in a general election match, this is, if it's a rematch, Americans right now are thinking about, yeah, things were better under Donald Trump. It was better under Donald Trump. Inflation, we didn't have these problems and Joe Biden and he's old and all that stuff.

But the capacity, and, you know, if you go to Arizona, if you go to swing states and you see the ads that Biden and his campaign are running. So they're heavy positive for Biden now. They're pushing in hard on Biden now trying to shore him up. What you'll see at the end is this is not a referendum on Joe Biden. It's a question of whether or not Donald Trump should be allowed to return to the presidency. And for a lot of people who right now are thinking, you know what, Trump, he's funny, I don't know,

are going to be confronted with the reality that a person who tried to steal a second term in office and who is enthusiastically lawless will be right on the, will be in the red zone to punch it in for another term. And that will affect thinking. I guess the last thing I'd say about polls like that, they all start with a false premise, which is if the election was held today, but the election won't be held today.

And the electorate will be different and the candidates will be different. The conditions will be different. I would still, I'd give Donald Trump a two, out a five chance right now of beating Joe Biden. Not bad for a retread, but not not the favorite by any stretch of the imagination. Steve, what do you make of the 2024 election right now? Is it worth our time? Let me go way out on a limb, Sarah, and say that neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden will be the nominees of their respective. That's an increasingly expensive limb that you're out on, friends. I'm not sure it is. I'm not sure it is.

We still have to sort through how we're going to make that determination. I think it's whoever accepts the nomination at the party conventions. Can I actually ask you a different question? You can ask me whatever you want. You're in charge. I guess that's true. Do you agree that this is the best week of Joe Biden's presidency to date? I don't.

I think he has been pretty solid in response. to the Hamas attacks in Israel. I think his prepared remarks have been good. They have been well received in Israel, well received here in the U.S. His, when he speaks extemporaneously, all of the things that give people concerns about Joe Biden are obvious

and they're obvious in an instant. He gave prepared remarks, I believe it was the Tuesday after those Friday, Saturday, Hamas attacks, and they were good. They were very strong, almost universally praised, including by people who are strong critics of Joe Biden. And then he had an event in the White House a couple days later with leaders of a variety of Jewish groups. And his prepared remarks were fine, and then he went off script. And when he went off script, it felt like the prayer scene from Meet the Parents, where Ben Stiller has no idea what he's doing, but he just

keeps talking. And you're just watching and thinking, in the Meet the Parents case, this is hilarious. In the Joe Biden case, not hilarious at all. It was very bad. He did a brief press avail on his flight back from Israel yesterday with some reporters who had traveled with him. they did it on the record. They did it on camera. And it was bad. It was, it was utter nonsense. That's a problem when you can't put your principal out, the president of the United States, the leader of the country out and expect that he can make coherent points. I mean, they're not even arguments at this point. He just loses the thread very quickly. So that's point number one. That's his problem, right? We're talking about an election.

that's a year from now. If you're a Joe Biden supporter, that does not bode well. Number two, his campaign is increasingly focused on making the case, a positive case for Biden based on quote-unquote Bidenomics. It's not working. The case isn't working. They're not convincing people. They're trying to tell people things are good.

And people look at their grocery bills and look at the cost of living and say, eh, things are not good. and you're not going to paper over that by running ads on television. People get it. People understand this. And you can be frustrated that they don't appreciate the price of ground beef is two cents lower than it was a year ago when it's 15 cents higher than it was three years ago. It's just not going to work.

So I think on the surface he had a good week because he's been strong and pretty well respected domestically and internationally. Beneath, though, this was not a good way. David, feel free to weigh on 2024, but I also have a question for you. Do you mow your lawn? Yes. Have you ever ridden on one of those lawnmowers?

There's like riding lawnmowers where you're like sitting on it and it's like a car, but that's not what I mean. I mean the type where you're standing behind the mower and it's like a hoverboard-looking thing. I know it's not a hoverboard. It's attached, but it's like swinging.

like almost independently. They look like so much fun and I'm just wondering you're the gadget guy like do you have one of these lawn mowers are they worth my time? So I think you're referring to like a zero turn lawn mower?

Yeah, yeah. So they are interesting, fun. I'm never going to say that mowing your yard is fun. But it could be if you had one of those. That's my point. So my current yard is too small for one of those.

So I live in a pretty, densely packed development, so I just have a little push mower. So that is unfun. That is the opposite of fun. Did you make your son do it when he was of age? He's done it a few times. I just usually, it takes so little time. It's just like not a significant part of our lives. Whereas when I was growing up, mowing was a big part of my life because it's what I did to make money from middle school for a long time. I would, you would see me on my riding lawn mower just driving through the subdivision

to the next yard that I was mowing. And so that cured me of the idea that mowing was fun. All right, well, listeners, if any of you have the, what do you call it, a zero turn, David? Zero turn, yeah. One of these, like, hoverboard lawnmowers,

hop in the comments and let me know whether it's as much fun as it looks like, because it looks like a lot of fun. And obviously, as the mom of two boys now, one who is almost seven weeks old. I'm already thinking about my lawn mowing future. And to

be clear, zero turn doesn't mean it doesn't turn. It means like zero turn radius. Yeah, yeah. It hivots. Right. That's maybe the word of... So I'm mowed I'm mowed for a living through most of college. I worked landscaping and worked for Milwaukee County

to make money in the summers. And road I was on a riding mower for eight hours a day and for the most part I prefer those to the zero turn mowers but there were certain places that the riding mower couldn't get to you couldn't cut it so we would use either a standard push mower or something but those zero turn mowers would have been great had we had them at the time you know the prevalence of young kids mowing was actually one of the things it was like a ride of passage you know when I was growing up and it also taught you about motors because one of the things

things that you were often doing is these riding mowers were not as reliable then as they used to be. So you had to learn how to not just mow, but to maintain your mower. And it was a great little hands-on learning experience about how to, how for like a kid who also was a dungeon master and Dungeons of Dragons to learn how to work with my hands in a way that wasn't rolling a 20-sided dice. Amazing. I mean, what a time to live in, what a country to be in where we now have the zero-turn mower. That's what I have to say. God bless America. You know,