The Dispatch Podcast - What Midterm Polling May Be Getting Wrong

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Chris Stirewalt to discuss how the midterms are shaping up less than one month out and what to expect from a Democrat-controlled Congress. The Agenda: —Interpreting polling —GOP redistricting —2028 Democratic candidates —Can Democrats moderate? —A Democratic Congress —NWYT: A Taco Bell ultramarathon Show notes: —Wall Street Journal reporting on Kimberly Guilfoyle —CNN: Trump is clearly trying to buy votes with taxpayer money —Will DOJ Be a Menace in the Midterms? The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠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

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we take a big picture look at the midterms, which are now less than a month out. Can the Republicans hold on to the Senate? Will the redistricting efforts save some Republican seats or will that backfire? And are the polls we're seeing reliable? And then for not worth your time, a Taco Bell, Ultramarathon? A warning for sensitive listeners, if you're eating while listening, you might want to pause the podcast as you finish up. I'm joined today by dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, politics editor Mike Warren, and politics editor for News Nation and contributing writer for the dispatch, Chris Steyerwall. Let's dive right in. Chris Steyerwell, I want to start with you. Two new polls out at CNN this morning.

The headline over the news is two deep red states are in play as Democrats' eye path to Senate majority. I'm not going to ask you about the races. I'm going to ask you about the polls. Oh, come on. You are a reader of the polls. You have been doing this for a lot of the polls. longer than any of us, you've read probably 10 times the number of polls carefully that Jonah,

Mike, and I have even skimmed. You know what you're talking about when it comes to polling. When you see a headline like that and you click in and you do read the polls, what's your reaction? How do you read a poll in today's environment? Do you look at those numbers and say, take it to the bank? This is exactly how the race is going to turn out. Or do you say, we can't trust this stuff? There's historical undercounting of Republicans. I don't know what I can believe. How do you look at polls?

It was five polls that came out this past weekend in the New York Times. There's this CNN poll today. What's your first reaction when you read a poll? How are you going to make me talk about CNN polling with my friend Jonah Goldberg? That is not. That is... Jonah is not a company man. I mean, look, he is loyal to CNN.

I assume he wants to remain there. He does a good job when he goes. goes on CNN. But he's not going to operate you for criticizing a CNN poll or any other poll. I might. I might. It depends on the criticism, but go on. I make a point. We make a point about methodology over what it says. And here's what I can say about the CNN SSRS polling operation. It meets the methodological standards that I require for the use of a poll in the Whole Hog politics polling average, right? I use it. It's in the mix.

I would then say, so if we look at, if you want to do those polls, so first of all, don't pay attention to the margin very much, right? So these polls have Sherrod Brown, former senator from Ohio, leading by six. and Ashley Hinson leading the Republican Congresswoman from Iowa, who's their nominee for Senate, leading Josh Turek, the Democrat, by two points. The margin isn't what you should dial in on. You should look at the percentage. So in Ohio, this is very worrisome for Republicans because Sherrod Brown has 49 percent of the vote. He's leading by six, but he's got 49 percent of the vote. I'm here to tell you that John Hustead, the senator from Ohio, is not going to get 43% of the vote in Ohio. No, that is not going to be what happens.

The floor for a Republican in Ohio, I don't know, Vivek Ramoswami may find out, but the floor for a Republican in Ohio statewide is what? 46%, like 45, if it's a particularly bad year. Hustad is beneath his floor. The polls that show Republicans, and this has been a problem in how the parties have engaged with polls this year and every year, which is you're the party in power.

The party in power is unpopular. You are polling people, and you say, hey, do you want to vote for somebody else or do you want to vote for the guy you don't like? And people say, I don't know yet. I don't know. I don't know. if there really were in Ohio, if there were 8% undecided, really in Ohio, how would those undecided voters break? Mostly for the Republican. If they really vote, mostly they're going to

break for the Republican. That's because Ohio's traditionally, it's become a red state. There are more Republicans than Democrats. If you go by results over the past seven, eight cycles, that's why you think they break for Republicans. Well, and just because, history tells us there's a floor there. I don't know what the floor is exactly, but there's a floor. You can go back through time. So I went through the generic ballot average for the previous midterm 2022, but also went back to bad Republican years in 2018 and 2006. And here's what we find, is that in those years, the Republicans were understated, that 1.6 points in 2022, 2.3 points in 2018,

and 2.9 points in 2006. Democrats were understated. Ah, this is the part that people want to forget. Democrats were also understated by less in 2022, by less in 2018, but by about the same in 2006. So both, whatever the polls say, whatever the averages say, whatever you put in, at the end, both of these parties are going to end up with more than what they have in the final polling average, unless there's massive polling error. So the question is, is the Republican overperformance this year going to be sufficient to carry them past the Democratic overperformance? And it just doesn't look like that's what's going on.

Yeah, that's a terrific explanation. When people are reading the polls over the next three weeks, bearing in mind what you said, there is, we've talked about this very briefly in the last episode, but I wanted to get you to weigh in on it. There is this phenomenon that serious pollsters are talking about. It's been a discussion with a lot of back and forth with pollsters on social media about the Republican undercover potential. Republican undercount, the reluctant Trump voter or mega voter, how real is that and how much of that is a factor? When you look at these new polls that are released, do you think about that? I think about that they're both understated and that the Republicans have traditionally been understated more. This is not because of shy Trump. This is because the core constituency in the Republican Party are working class, white men, older working. class white men. They don't respond to polls. We heard a couple of pollsters say that their response

rates in rural parts of the Midwest and the Great Plains are garbage, that they can't get enough respondents. Yeah. Now, if you're a Republican, you can say, well, this is because they are shy Trump voters and they're definitely going to go vote for the Republican candidates in these states. if you're a Democrat, you're going to say they're not going to vote. Their extra low response rates are predictive of the fact that they are disengaged and they're not going to go vote. I don't know. And neither do they.

Neither do they know how rural Nebraska, rural Kansas, rural, we don't know. That's why we're going to have the election. But I will shut up by saying, the inverse of saying that polls have understated Republicans, though not always, 2012, very famously, a huge understatement of Democratic performance. Another way to look at that is, though polls have consistently in the Trump era understated Republican performance, they've been pretty good about polling Democratic vote share. Again, if we're not looking at the margin, if we have a bunch of polls that say Sherrod Browns at 50 percent or 49 percent or 51 percent, that's pretty good. This is why the Texas polls,

if you see a poll that is Tallerico-Paxton, Talarico up five, and they're both in the 40s, no, but if you start to see polls as we have that show Talleyico 50, 51 percent, that's where you say, okay, they, the polls have been, the inconsistency among Republicans also points to a consistency among Democrats, which is worth noting. Great. Okay. Thank you for indulging me on the poll question. I know how you think about these things.

I thought it was worth having our listeners hear about it too. Mike, I want to- Weird dork. Talk about it. I mean, I love that you were like, yes, I've been going back and studying the details of the undercount in 2006. And you probably weren't even doing that on working time. This was like what you did on the weekend for fun. So just right.

True story. This is a long time ago. True story. A friend of mine was an editor at the public interest of Blessed Memory. And talking to Michael Barone about an article that he had written that had nothing to do with what came next. And Barone just, just matter-of-factly, starts sending. I remember when the first tracks of census data for Long Island came out from the 1950 crop. And I was going through and looking at the Levittown stuff, blah, blah, blah.

And my friend who's the editor is like doing the math. So you're looking at the census data when you're 12? That was Michael Barone's attitude towards like data. He made Chris seem like a trucker. Michael Barron, just did one more on that. Michael Barone, when I left the Washington Examiner to go to Fox News, and Michael Barone was talking to me about it. I'd been his editor, and I was talking to him about it.

And he said, oh, yes, Arnne in Michigan, who runs the Fox News, who's the guy who's the nerd number one, Fox News decision desk, and I said, I was very excited to be working with him. And Michael said, oh, he's very good. He knows almost as much as I do. So perfect. Mike, Warren, I want to ask you a question. about some reporting that we've seen this week.

We've spent a good chunk of the past year off and on talking about this sort of rare move by the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, to engage in this mid-decade redistricting effort. The idea, none of it was subtle. The idea was Donald Trump sort of hounded Republicans in various competitive states to redraw districts ahead of the 2026 midterms

so that Republicans, could win. I mean, this was the explicit argument. Nobody even pretended otherwise. And Republicans in several states, several Republican-run states, did it, some of them eagerly and enthusiastically, others more reluctantly. But a number of them did it. As we head into this final month of the midterm campaign season, if you look at polling in some of these states where this mid-term, mid-term campaign season, if you look at polling in some of these states where this mid-decade redistricting had happened, some of the assumptions that Republicans have made about what the results of this redraw would be

do not seem to be what they had imagined. Can you explain that, walk us through it? Well, you could look at it one way, which is that had the Republicans not pushed for this mid-day redistricting, that the projections for the Democratic margins in the House would be even bigger than they are now. So in a way, they sort of hedged their losses a little bit by pushing for this.

But, you know, you look at a place like Texas where the Texas legislature pushed through these changes and withdrew these districts. They were made, particularly if you look at South Texas, they were made with the assumption that the gains that Donald Trump had made with Hispanics in South Texas, Hispanic voters, long-time, low-propensity voters, but Democratic, pretty, pretty regularly Democratic voters along the border in South Texas who came out for Donald Trump in 2024. Those districts don't seem to be, for instance, generating the big Republican gains that

may be in their wildest dreams that Texas Republicans and Donald Trump had in mind when they drew those that redistricting. So you can redistrict in order to improve your lot. And I think you can see this in Florida and in Tennessee as well. This has been done just to sort of get more Republican districts and more Republican districts, if that makes sense. So you get more in terms of the number of districts that you can get that are reliably Republican, and you can make those districts that you already have more Republican than they were before.

But I think there's a problem here that these Republicans are looking at, which is that the voters aren't going necessarily in the way. way that they predicted. And you can, again, as I mentioned, the Hispanic voters in South Texas are one example of this where there's been a real shift. And those voters who were low propensity and had shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 2024 have shifted away. And so it changes the math in a lot of these districts. But at the end of the day, the problem is that you can't redistrict enough. I mean, I suppose you could theoretically redrawl certain districts in certain places so that you could, as Republicans,

retain the majority, even in this environment. But I think it gets really difficult. You run into the problems that he faced when, say, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats responded, Illinois, the same thing. So, you know, I think in the grand scheme of things, it was probably a slight Republican advantage, but I don't know. Maybe Chris has a different view of this, but I don't think there's really, there is a universe where there are universes where Republicans retain the House, but it's more likely than not the Democrats win the majority of the House. And the redistricting just didn't, couldn't match with where the view on the economy, the view on the war, the view on affordability, the view on the president himself, which that's, that's,

that's really where the House vote ends up, you know, going is it's really tied to the presidential approval. And you just can't redistrict out of a really poor presidential approval in so many of these states. As I said long ago, on, I won't use the F word, but I will say on the, well, I'll use a different F word, the fantastic remnant podcast. Whatever, whatever, the Republican get if they say, well, at the end, if we were like, actually, it saved them two seats or three seats. Actually, the Republicans, the three seats, it will not have been worth it. It will never have been worth it. It was never going to be worth it in the best case scenario, because if you lose the majority, you've lost the majority. And what the Republicans did with this FACTA, another F word, redistricting,

is activated a bunch of Democrats. So if you're a Democrat in Texas, Texas. You have now been at war, right? You have been on a war footing since July of last year. Because Republicans were like, ha ha, suck it hippies. We're doing it. We don't care. The expense of it and the antagonism of it, whatever happened was not going to be worth it. And this is why I do understand it. But here's the thing. As they said in Bull Durham, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains. Sometimes you just lose the midterm. most of the time you lose the midterm. Second midterms are bad.

Okay. You're going to lose a bunch of seats. And then you're going to get a bunch back in the quadrennial after that. And it's okay. This apocalyptic thinking and rigging and doing is bad. I'm anti. Yeah, I'm anti too. And I want to suspend actually probably the second half of this podcast in a discussion

broadly about this apocalyptic thinking in the context of politics and what it means and what the practical differences are. Chris, are you surprised that Donald Trump didn't have, didn't take the long view here when he was contemplating this redistricting that he didn't see the potential longer-term effect of doing this? I mean, I know that you are, I know that you are joking. And obviously, the president never disappoints his worst critics, almost never disappoints his worst critics in the world

and often lives down to their expectations. However, I will say that in this case, the fault lies not so much with Donald Trump. I mean, yes, with Donald Trump, but with the Republican strategists who came up with the plan, you saw the story about Trump's campaign manager, Chris Las Savita, and what's his name?

James Blair. James Blair. going to work on the campaign of a Serbian separatist pro-Kremlin dude. What? They are just, Chris, so sorry, so that we can orient our folks, they are the president's most recent campaign director, campaign chairman in 2024, very smart guy, Chris Lasavita. Chris Lasovita did a great job for Donald Trump in 2024. Real, real good job.

Yeah. Can I just correct real quick? It was a Bosnian pro-Russian. Bosnian party. I don't want the Serbiaks mad at me. I don't want the Bosniaks. I want no acts mad at me. And don't get me into the Slovaks and the Slovenes. I'm not looking for trouble. You may have gotten confused because our former Fox colleague Kimberly Gilfoyle, now Ambassador Greece, was also involved in pushing pro-Russian stuff. Or it could be Donald Trump Jr. who took money from a Russian oligarch to fund his two-day wedding reception.

I mean, there's all sorts of Russian stuff in the news lately. Is there a better expression of the state of the current Republican Party than Marco Rubio gives this big speech in Athens and it's like, is it a framing speech? Is it an anti-J-D? Is it whatever? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And the whole thing gets obliterated by the fact that Kimberly Gilfoyle is sitting in the front row

on the day that the story comes out about what did she say, Honey, please, was in the chat about why she wanted this guy who wanted help from the Trump Internal Revenue Service to put 100,000, thousand dollars to pay off her Amex bill before confirmation. Because her med spa side deals weren't going well. It is one of the most extraordinary stories. I think it better captures maybe anything that I've read about the grifter culture in Trump world than anything else.

If you think Jonah and I aren't going to build on our success of sandwich-based content with a med spa, you're crazy. If you think I'm leaving that money on the table haze, you're wrong. So this is, let me let me just do two things. we don't usually talk about the next Dispatch Podcast episode because things could change, and I'll give you that caveat, things could change. But two things. One, we will put, because we just talked about it now, we will put a gift link to the Wall Street Journal article in question in the show notes for today's episode. And then next Monday, we are going to turn back, depending on the news,

we're planning to turn back to a global discussion. We'll talk about the Marco Rubio speech that Chris made reference to. We will talk about the Kimberly Gilfoyle piece. the broader efforts in the news about. I ran ahead of the news. It was entirely appropriate for you to bring that up. We're happy to have you bring it up. But I want people to know, while we're going to ignore it in the short term, we're not going to ignore it in the long term.

That's a very Baptist approach. So this is one of the best podcast episodes ever because we're 22 minutes in, and Jonah hasn't really said anything yet. So this is the way I like to design these podcast episodes is just to keep Jonah silent as long as I can so I can look at his face getting angrier and angrier as I deny him the opportunity to speak.

But Jonah. Hey Steve, hey Steve, can I butt in here? Steve, let me cut in on this real quick. Okay, so I would say now having done that or acknowledged that that's one of the reasons I always come to you last, I want to compliment you for an argument

that you've made persuasively, convincingly, and consistently for the entirety of the Trump era. And that is Republicans who are going along with crazy schemes by Donald Trump or supporting the things that he's arguing about that are norms bashing or constraint breaking should always ask themselves, what will Democrats do when Democrats get back in power? Because at some point Democrats will get back in power. It is certainly the case that in the instance of mid-decade redrawing of districts, we know Democrats are going to do this. Democrats went tit for tat in this latest round, as one might expect them to. But I want to ask you about that in another context. Who among us remembers the controversy over the Obama phones back in the

day? I remember. The objection from Republicans was that Obama was allegedly giving phones to poor people in a sort of not-so-suttle bribe to get them to support him, to get them to go vote for, him and that this was electioneering so unsubtle and shocking that it ought to have negative repercussions for the Democrats who were responsible for it. I want to Joe to point out an article that was written by CNN's Aaron Blake, who I guess is technically a colleague of yours, is here, a contributor there. I will say Aaron, 24 minutes in. 24 minutes in counting. So Aaron Blake is a terrific reporter for CNN.

I would say of the people who I read pretty regularly, he writes stuff that normally sort of channels my thinking. He may not take that as the compliment I intended to be, but he has a terrific piece at CNN, the headline of which is Trump is clearly trying to buy votes with taxpayer money. This is October 5th. We will put this in the show notes as well. And he walks through this very unsubtle effort from Donald Trump to buy votes with taxpayer money.

So he talks about the 500 checks the administration sent to nearly a million Obamacare recipients last week. He talks about his $5,000 pitch per voter pitch, talked about it. It rallies in Alabama and Oklahoma. If Republicans will, if Republicans maintain the majority, voters will get the, these $5,000 checks from the federal government. He has had the government running these campaign ads that we talked about here. He announced these economic projects in Alaska and Iowa, where he made a big to-do about Dan Sullivan and Ashley Hinson bringing in money for their state.

He's talked about additional ways of giving direct payments to Americans. And he'd sent $90 payments most recently to Medicaid. recipients. What can we expect Jonah from Democrats when they once have full control of the federal government, which if I were a betting man and I'm not, could happen as early as January 2029? Yeah. So I think as you put it, my brilliant and incredibly consistent point that I've been making for years still holds, but just quoting you back, your judgment, not mine. But I will say, I think it's worth thinking about, so like, yeah, Democrats are going to pocket a huge number of precedents that Trump has established. Like, which ones, like, hard to guess.

I mean, it's not hard to guess, but it's like, there's so many that they could use that it kind of depends on which personality is next in charge of the Democratic Party and which is what the next Democratic president is. but this this approach is one that Republicans have no idea how to they know how to argue against it. They have no idea how to argue against the charge of hypocrisy because there is no defense on it, right? So if they start, Democrats start cutting checks to people for this, that, and the other thing, it's going to be a real mess for Republicans. That all said, I do think it's worth keeping in mind that some of the things are, we're seeing in the Republican Party have to do with the fact that the coalition, the Republican Party, has changed. And where parties respond to their coalitions in weird ways, and not always in timely fashion, but eventually they start to reflect the interests and the aspirations and the demands of their

coalitions. So Republican Party now is more than it has been a white working class non-com. college-educated party. They've given back a big chunk of the coalition that they built for 2024 in terms of Hispanics and blacks that they added to it because they made the same mistake that every party has made for at least the last quarter century, is assuming that anybody who ever votes for you once is now permanently part of your coalition and you don't need to worry about holding them or about pissing them off. It is a simple fact of math that if you add people who used to be Democrats into your coalition, Democrats are going to be adding people

that used to be Republicans into their coalition. And it is possible, I'm not betting on it, I would not bet on it, but it is possible that now that the college-educated suburbanites have moved into the Democratic coalition, that the Democratic Party will not respond, will not take every opportunity that we would have predicted 20 years ago

Democrats would take, because they're less of the sort of Tammany Hall model party than they used to be. Oh, I will take your bet. I'm not, I said I wouldn't bet on it. I said I would not bet on it. I will easily and gladly bet that Democrats will do exactly what Trump has done times a thousand. I don't know about times a thousand.

Oh. Because I think part of it is the bad taste in the mouth that people have about what Trump is doing. Look, I am in a very uncomfortable position to be put into the into arguing the Democrats will have learned lessons and behave better, you know, because of taking the positive lesson from Trump. You know, it's funny. When you guys were talking about the redistricting thing and Chris's point about how it wasn't worth it no matter what,

I've been making this point for a while that, like, remember all the fun before Times debates about dynamic scoring, that you shouldn't just have this green-eyed shade kind of understanding, and you have to recognize that growth builds upon growth and you should have a much more, you know, just don't have a bean counting kind of you take from this column, you have to add to that column kind of approach. And I always used to have some sympathy for some of that, less so now, because it's basically just used as a way to lie about overspending.

But an undertaxing, that said, I wish people had more of a dynamic scoring when it came to cultural stuff, that you have to understand that some fights piss off more people than winning the fight is worth. You know, it's easy to see with things like some of the trans and sports stuff. I get thinking it's a matter of, to be even a profound justice. But winning that fight for the Democratic Party is kind of not worth losing swing seats all across the country. The redistricting stuff, the Trump, the, some of the stuff that Trump is doing is so self-interested,

that the dynamic scoring aspect of it, it's like, let's say he has 100% win on the frigging ballroom. You know, gets his ballroom. It's fantastic. It's got drones. It's got snipers. How good is that for the Republican Party?

Like, how much do you get in response from that narrow win in terms of the broader branding of the party? And I think that, like, just to sort of get back to the point is that I think the Democrats may not behave exactly the way. Again, I think it's, that's why I was saying, saying it's personality-based. If it's Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom will do Trump stuff

times a thousand, as you put it. I think that's absolutely fair. If it's Rahm Emanuel, maybe not. Oh. I think he will on education, but he may not on some other things. Because he's oriented to thinking about

the marginal extra-democratic can win in ways that I don't think Gavin Newsom is. But he also uses Chicago mayor, which is probably why Chris's guffaw has some might. No, that's not what I'm laughing at. I'm laughing at the idea that if the Democratic party were capable of nominating Rahm Emanuel for president, that's fair. Before he did anything, we would have the answer to our question. The fundamental, there are several potential fundamental questions that will tell us whether the American Republic can survive. One of them is,

can the Democrats accommodate their new voters? The Republicans have, accommodated the heck out of their new voters. They have absolutely accommodated them. And as Jonah correctly points out, the power in the Republican Party, the reason that we can explain these tectonic shifts of the past 15 years is that the Republican said, we want to be the party of the working class, particularly working class men, and we have done it. And those folks have real power, and it's moved the Republican Party in profound ways.

just because of Trump, but it's because of the decision of Republicans down the stack to say like, okay, good. If this is how we can win, that's how we're going to be fiscally, liberal, socially conservative, let's go. The question before the Democratic Party is, can they absorb, the Republican Party absorbed the refugees from the Democratic Party in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, on an intellectual level among elites, among neoconservatives, but certainly among voters. Right? The Republican Party was able to take the voters that the Democrats were losing, and it built a winning coalition. I don't know that Democrats can accept college-educated suburbanites who are going to be what? They're going to be moderate. Moderate to conservative, in fact, on many issues, on cultural issues, but certainly on national defense, certainly on taxation, certainly on public safety.

I don't know that the Democratic Party is ready to say, yes, we want you. We want Loudoun County, Virginia to be the heart of our coalition. I don't know that they're there. I don't know if I quite agree with that, Chris. Because I do think winning makes a huge difference. Yeah. And I think Democrats have a strong desire to win. And I know that sounds almost like a obvious truism, but it's breaking.

Right, right. No, it's very true. And so, you know, for instance, one name that keeps coming up as a potential 28 Democratic candidate and nominee is Josh Shapiro. And I've been hearing for a while that the Democratic Party of 26 and 2027 and 2028 will not, will not nominate a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat as their presidential nominee. And I mean, it sounds right, right? It sounds correct. And yet he's on his way to a massive victory picking up, you know, big amounts of votes. among Democratic, you know, bubble voters, right?

We saw Trump, like, do okay with black voters in parts of Philadelphia. And, like, Josh Shapiro is on his way to winning big with those voters as well. He's got basically a non-competitive Republican challenger. But I think those kinds of things can matter and do matter. And the kind of voter that Josh Shapiro brings in, I think more likely than a Rahm Emanuel. Sorry, Jonah. I just think, like, Josh Shapiro is a, is a better politician. A different version and a better version, correct, of that Rahman manual.

I think it's so much driven by personality. Now, maybe Josh Shapiro doesn't have the personality either, but so much of what Donald... Okay, well, no, no, I... It could be Ossoff. It could be Ossoff. It could be awesome. Actually, the Ossoff is the best version of this type of type of time. I don't think he's got the legs.

He's too thin-skinned. He gets sucked into the... arguments, the post-facto reasoning of parties, as you have seen among Republicans, they have realigned themselves around the things that Donald Trump says. If Donald Trump, if he would have won the 2016 election in a fluke, and then it would have, the Republicans wouldn't have lined up, but they did line up. And it changed. It changed the party. It changed everything. That was post-factor reasoning. So it is possible that an Assoff or any moderate Democrat

who can run the gauntlet that can survive the AOC, that gets through what is going to be a grueling, dehumanizing just such a fraught space where every question, as Asov goes

into, you know, which begins 30 seconds after the polls close in Georgia, when he goes into the tougher space and it's like, okay, no, really, what about Israel? No, no, no, really, really. We're not giving you a pass because you're running in a red state. We're going to start beating you up.

So if a moderate somehow survives, then, yes, you're 100% right that the Democrats, if they get a president who is a moderate, will become more moderate and say, yes, we like the win and we want to do it. My point is that if you look at the insanity, chaos, and self-defeating actions of the Republicans in this election year, they want to win too, but they're not scared enough to do. the right thing. They're not scared enough to do the smart thing because they believe just, it's like Lucky Jack Aubrey. They just win. We just win. We always outperform the polls. We just win. So they've lost the willingness to do the things that are necessary to win.

Democrats right now are willing to do the things that are necessary to win. Does that persist into 2028? I have my doubts. Well, I think that Aossoff has actually supplied me with a better example than Josh Shapiro in this regard, which is, I hear you on the, on the Israel stuff and the stuff that he's, that Ossoff would likely face, right? Ossoff is also a Jewish Democrat. Australia is I can tell us. Correct. Australian Jewish Democrat.

Amazing. Who went to Pidea, which for my fellow Atlantans, that that means something for high school. But I do think that the important group in the Democratic primary, and I think what will matter, I don't know why we've sort of gone off on the 2028 Democratic primary, but I think it's important is, right, the backbone of the primary electorate are black women. And John Ossoff is about to win re-election in Georgia, thanks to the votes of a large number of older black women. And I think that matters a whole lot. And in terms of sort of making a broad, he's younger, right? He's a millennial. I think he has probably the type, he has the approach to the Israel issue that I think would

probably speak, say the thing that everybody across the party's coalition would want to hear. I just think we have to, the personality is going to be extremely important and make the decisions about sort of, as you've said, Chris, what the coalition ultimately goes along with. Totally agree. I just think we discount too much the power of that personality. And I just will shut up by saying, the future of the republic, in my mind right now, depends more on the Democrats' ability to do that than whatever happens with the Republicans in 28. I think that that's, I think it's a more material question about whether the Democrats can

reject radicalism, because I don't think the Republicans are capable of rejecting radicalism at this point. I'm highly skeptical that that is possible because I think what's coming after the election is going to be some brutal and vicious recriminations. Future historians will note that this was the moment that Jonah and Chris decided to launch the new wig party. I'm down. I'm in. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. And we're back. You are listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. So that actually takes me kind of nicely to the question I want to end on today. As you follow these campaigns, we're now a debate season, watching the debates and Senate House, Governor's races,

following the rhetoric of the candidates on the stump. Arguably the line that you hear as much as any other line is that this is an existential election. The fate of the country hinges on the outcome of the 2026 midterms in a way that hasn't been true for years. And while I have, and we've discussed here, great concerns about the continued viability of the American experiment given the way that our politics has gone over the past 10 years. As I applied this thinking, I went out to Wisconsin and visited some terrific doctors out there, gave a little talk for a couple of our dispatch lifetime members. And as I was thinking about this question, preparing for those remarks, it occurred to me that my view is basically the opposite.

I'm not sure, as long as I've been covering politics, there has been an election that matters less in terms of its immediate implications for governance, for what happens in, say, Washington and Congress, interaction between the president and the legislature, then this election in 2026. I don't think it really matters in a significant way beyond judicial nominations and potentially some administration positions, whether Democrats, whether we have divided government, Democrats control one or both houses of Congress, or Republicans continue to control one or both houses of Congress. Jonah, do you agree with that? I don't think so, but I kind of want to hear why, you think that?

Before I say it. So there's a really interesting study done by Sahel Kapoor. at NBC News recently, looking at the relative productivity of recent Congresses. This 119th Congress passed 119 bills that were eventually signed by the president. If you look at the first two years of presidential terms in recent history, that is well below the threshold for the activities of Congresses, whether or not they had the president, the president who signed the bills had majorities in Congress. So I start with the working assumption that not a lot got done.

There were a big tax package. There were some other minor efforts in various areas. There are certainly some implications for defense spending, for overall spending. But I start with the assumption that not a heck of a lot got done in these first two years of the Trump presidency that required Donald Trump and Republicans working together to get it done. Trump did a lot of stuff. Republicans made certain arguments. And so I start with that premise and then looking forward to the final two years, which are always less productive than the first two years in presidential terms, there's just not much I see happening if Republicans were to retain the House

and the Senate in terms of actual movement of a policy agenda that requires collaboration between the White House and the Republicans in Congress. Again, stipulate that there will be judicial nomination fights that won't happen and investigations and impeachment and all of that. I'm a little torn on this because on the one hand, I think you're right in the sense that there's not going to be a lot of policy, that a lot of the stuff Trump has done he'll keep doing, right? I mean, because he's been governing as if he has monarchical power rather than power granted him by the Constitution and the Congress, and he'll keep doing that. He'll do

pen and phone on steroids, whatever. At the same time, one of the things that has allowed him to do that style of governing is the fact that Republicans control the House and Senate and let him. And they've been a rubber stamp. I mean, the House more than the Senate. But, you know, as far as I can tell, Donald Trump has a mason jar on the resolute desk with Mike Johnson's.

We know. All right. We know. His glasses? Again, Democrats could completely blow it. But if they own, if they control the House and the Senate, there are ways to thwart possibly forcing a constitutional crisis, which I would not blame on Democrats, but if they tried to like withhold funding, with, you know, rescind funding, you know, whatever, and Trump refused to go along with that, we're in constitutional crisis time, right?

And the oversight stuff is going to generate a lot of heat and a lot of drama, in part because Trump will not participate or cooperate with any of it. And so, while I agree with you, but the policy thing, I think the reason why I ultimately disagree with you more broadly is I would be fine. I'm fine with, like, if Trump were a normal president and Congress wasn't getting anything done, that's fine with me. You know, I can live with that. I mean, there are some serious problems that I wish we were to address, you know, and spending, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. but Congress doing nothing is better than a lot of the do something that Congress has done over the last, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 50, 100 years, since the first protozoa emerged

from the ocean. And so, but politically, I think a lot will happen. Politically, this matters enormously in terms of branding the parties in terms of setting up the presidential election of 2028 in terms of which leaders in each party are set up to inherit the mantle, as it were, of the party and of gauging Americans support for craziness from left or right. I think this election actually really does matter quite a bit. And punishing the crazies and rewarding normies regardless of a D or an R after their name

would be a good thing. Look, I personally think it's a very good thing for the country, regardless of any partisan considerations. The Democrats are overperforming in red states and underperforming in blue states. Word. Like that is a sign that people in, that the majority making voters are reluctant to lean into the worst representatives of either party. And that's the kind of sentiment that Chris and our minds new Whig Party is going to lean into. Yeah.

I just, for the record, I totally agree. with you, this was where I was going with. I think it matters almost not at all in terms of governance, even if there's a big difference between the intensity with which Democrats can investigate, the substance, the possible conviction or impeachment and removal of the president. I think all of that on substance in terms of what the legislature would actually do between 2026 to 2028. I just don't, they'll be doing different things.

There will be different kinds of activity. I don't think that activity is likely to lead anywhere that makes significant changes. In terms of politics, I think you're absolutely right. I think in some ways, this election matters as much as any I can remember, at least for the past two years. That's a very neat trick you pulled there, Steve Hayes. There's a very neat trick that you pulled. Do my best. Just ask yourself if in the face of, so the Democrats lead on average by 9.6 points as of right now in the generic ballot.

and the president has is 28.2 points underwater in his presidential approval. If the Republican Party was kept in power, just imagine what would happen. Just imagine how Democrats would react and imagine how Republicans would respond. It would be utter pandemon. It would be the full pandemonium. The radicalizing effects at this point. of a Republican win. And let me just offer a dark, let me just as you're closing us out here,

let me offer a really dark scenario. And the really dark scenario is early in the evening, I'm watching Ohio, and Ohio is coming in, starts coming in early, 7.30, we love you, Ohio for an early poll close. And it starts coming in, and it's close. It's close. But it's increasingly clear that,

Hustead is going to pull it out probably, right? It's going to be close, but he's going to do it. But surprises fall, things happen, and now we're looking at Texas. And the 51st Democratic vote, before we get to John Fetterman holding his party hostage, the 51st Democratic vote is going to be James Tala Rico. What is Cash Patel doing? What is Todd Blanche doing? What is the Department of Homeland Security doing in this moment? Which ballot? are getting seized? Which stuff is... What insane things are happening? And it's a red state. So on the one hand, you'd say, well, they should be confident in their results.

But on the other hand, is Greg Abbott going to say, no, we stand up for Texas. We're not taking this off of you. We're going to... Is that happen or does he say, well, we should let the process work and the 100,000 ballots that the Department of Justice has seized and put into a warehouse in Metro Houston?

and we'll just let the process play out. We're playing with some really dark stuff here. And in a world in which the Republicans pull this thing out, at this point, now look, the facts of the case can change, right? Iran can capitulate, gas prices can plummet. You know, three weeks is not very long. Six states are already voting. But like if the situation changed and you saw a surge for Republicans

and then they pulled it out, you'd say maybe. But man, the world. world of a Republican win, under those circumstances, a contested, disputed victory would be a real, real tough moment for a country that is not feeling very confident about its civic and political institutions right now. Well, let me add to your dark scenario with a couple of points. And getting to the point, I think there's a lot of potential obstacles to getting to the point where we even know who has a a majority in these respective legislative chambers. One, I would point listeners to a terrific reported piece that our colleague John McCormick did in early September. Headline is,

will the feds be a nuisance or a menace at the polls in November? Those, it seems to me, are the two options. So it's an aptly drawn headline. And John reported on some funny business in Wyoming, of all places, a deeply red state where Department of Justice officials were looking into the way that elections were being conducted in Wyoming. And people were asking questions, what's happening here? Why are they doing this? Wyoming officials largely stood up to the feds. But there is some, I think it formed speculation that what we could have been seeing there, John includes this in his piece, was some sort of a dry run for federal intervention in early November. I was reporting over the last couple of days that the president hosted Tina Peters, the

disgraced Colorado elections official in the Oval Office as she made the case for the federal government to intervene in the polls. There is a Trump advisor at Martin who is making the case. The president should step in. You have lots of people playing the role of Sidney Powell from the 2024 election, looking ahead at 2026. So, Chris, I think you're right. There's also just one more data point, which, again, I think in the grand scheme of things, I would normally say, so what? But just, it's sort of the dynamics going point of like knowing how people will interpret it. The fact that they did it is a sign.

It's a bad sign, even if there's nothing to it. Right. For 30, 40 years, we have, the United States has invited election observers from the organization of Gitchie Goode goodness of the EU to watch our elections. And it's just a sort of like custom, I assume, for most of the last 40 years, it's just been a great junket. And in exchange for us inviting the Europeans here, we get to send people there who get to go sit and...

Lends moral authority when we go to other countries that we open ours up and that when we did that in the Philippines or whatever, yeah. Yeah, it's a nice, good government thing to do. I'm not trying to be too snarky about it, but I just don't think it really mattered much in the grand scheme of things. They've told the European... mission, again, I apologize for not remember what it's called. You can't come.

You cannot observe our elections. And the way it's being read in Europe is precisely the way you would think it would be read in Europe. And the way it's being read on MSMS now is precisely the way. And so, like, those are the kinds of small facts. Yeah. That if they do try to pull anything or if Democrats just have a disappointing night, people are going to connect dots, some of which deserve to be connected, some of which don't,

but you could see a real sense of paranoia and lack of trust in things that could get ugly as hell. So watch Ohio, watch Ohio. Well, and think about California as well, where we know that there are going to be races that won't be called on election night, the day after the election, three days after the election, maybe a couple weeks after the election. You know, does the president say, as he said in the past, and sort of Chris knows something about stop the count. This is where, this is where, where did all these ballots come from? Yeah. Yeah. What are we doing here? No, I think that's entirely possible. And Jonah, just to speak

directly to your point, you know, when I was out on the campaign trail, you know, 2000 to 2000, Mays, 2004, 2008, 2012. I effectively was on the road for several months covering presidential campaigns and primaries. And one of the things I did with some frequency, and I was, I can't remember who invited me to do this. But I used to speak to those. European delegations, sometimes Asian delegations would come in and they would observe our elections. And then I'd sit in a room with another reporter or local election officials and we'd talk to them about how the elections unfold and we'd walk them through what might seem to be idiosyncratic or strange election practices. And I will say in a weird way, and I don't want to be schmaltzy about it, but I took great pride in attending those sessions because it was so obvious that. that they thought, this is the way to do elections.

Like, the reason that we're here is because you Americans know how to do these elections, and we admire what's being done. And that was really pretty consistently true over all of the groups I spoke to. Sometimes I would take people around on my reporting trips, and that was the general sense. It's no longer the case, obviously, that outsiders feel that way by and large, and certainly blocking them from access will not... And let me just say, if you guys are keeping a thought for me, as you should, and the country,

if the Democrats are going to miss on the Senate, let it happen early, right? If the Democrats are going to miss, then let it happen in Ohio. If Sherrod Brown loses decisive, if it's clear that he's going to lose in Ohio, the discussion will change. Because there's no plausible argument for how the Republicans keep the House at this point. That's not, that Mike Johnson is even talking about the next chapter. Like, that reality is coming in. About his presidency of Liberty University? Is that right?

No, I don't know. But it makes total sense. He said he might go back to Shreveport and start a lawn care company. I think he's, I think he's being a little. Four seasons, total landscaping? Yes, total landscaping. The name is, the name is available. If the House is gone and the Democrats are going to miss on the Senate, let it come early so

that the fight is lessened. If the Democrats are going to win a Senate majority, let it happen in Maine, let it happen in Ohio, let it happen in Michigan, let the blue wave crest so that we don't have to talk about it. Because I think something you alluded to, Steve, is the formation of a new Congress happens in a Schrodinger's Congress fashion in which the previous Congress is dissolved. and then the new Congress is convened by whom? On what authority? It's not like the presidency, right? It's not like that where you say,

this is who's in charge of this, this is who confirms this. There is no judge of the membership of Congress except for Congress itself. Yeah. And so a decisive result would be much appreciated. Yes, I agree with that. And the final point I'll make

before we skip to our all-important Taco Bell discussion is I think the 2026 midterms could have profound political implications for what's to come. And I think the greater the Republican defeat at the polls in 2026 makes far more likelyer that there will be a real sort of look back or analysis and a willingness to say the things that we have been doing, this is Republican speaking, have not worked. They haven't worked in terms of governance and they haven't worked in terms of politics, we ought to really rethink this thing. And I think there's little that could benefit the country more than a dramatic rethink of what the hell we've been doing over the past

decade. Yeah. Before we take an ad break, please 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 the dispatch.com slash join. And if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month for free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you could upgrade to a premium membership, no ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. So I want to end in a not worth your time. This is a Jonah special, and it's great. I came unprepared. I had a couple of things. I know I'm giving you way too much credit.

I shouldn't. I had a couple of things that I thought we could do for not worth your time. My only regret about this particular one is that Sarah's not here to enjoy it because, you know, she loves it when we do things like this that are so far off the news and have to do with food, but she's not. We'll have to come up with a clever one for her upcoming appearance here. But Jonah shared a really interesting ultramarathon. I assume you shared this because you're thinking about doing an ultramarathon. I think of doing another one. Ultramarathon. Do people know about your Ironman tat on the back of your calf?

Is that why you always wear shorts around the office to show off your Iron Man tattoo? So the headline on this article is from Wyoming with love, the 50K Ultra Marathon that made me barf on Denver. And this comes from Cowboys State Daily in Wyoming. Claire McFarland writes about an ultramarathon where, the marathoners had to stop and I believe it was 10

Taco Bells and eat something as they ran their ultramarathon and finished the L'L's Marathon. I will start with you, Jonah, since this was your

your brainstorm. If you were running this ultramarathon next year, and I think we should take up a collection to send you, You could write about it.

It could be a G-File. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Is there a Taco Bell menu item that you would focus on at each of these, I believe it was 10 stops so that you could continue to run as effectively to the completion of this ultramarathon as possible? Yeah, so like, we need to pull back the curtain a little bit here. Gross. leave the curtain

we need the curtain uh close the back fly of my surgical gal um the reason this came up is you were casting before you were even let us know that you were casting about for not worth your time

we were talking about gastrointestinal disasters that soiled people's lower quadrant wardrobe to put it in as euphemistic way as possible. And I said, oh, that reminds me of all this stuff about this Taco Bell thing. And now it's being put on

me as if, like, this is the topic I wanted to talk about. I think all... I'm giving you credit. All listeners I think can agree, certainly our August panel here can agree that the implausible thing about asking me what menu items

I would eat on an ultramarathon from Taco Bell is not me eating at Taco Bell. Bell, right? That is like, that is like, what would Jonah do on a Wednesday, right? It's like, no one's shocked about me eating at Taco Bell. It's the doing it while doing the ultramarathons. So I think, since we're in the hypothetical here, it's like, if you could fly or be invisible, which would you pick, right? If we're going to talk about this incredible otherworldly thing about Jonah running ultramarathons, I'm going to lean into it. And I'm going to pick the,

most unlikely the most manful thing I can which I think would be the cheesy gordita crunch

with extra beans and cheese wow I would just do it because like a highly suspect choice

wow look if you're talking about it's like you think okay well if you had Superman's powers who would you

want to fight I wouldn't say I don't know Orville Redenbock Orville Redenbocker I would say the Hulk right

So, like, the whole choice here is to lean into it and pick the thing that everybody running behind me regrets that I picked. Oh, Jonah. The worst. Why did we do? Why did you force this topic on me? Jonah yanking the wheel at the end. Right into the ditch. Now we have to have a big discussion about whether we do this or not.

It's called the Crop Fuster 100 for a reason. Jonah, I mean, Jonah, you are the one who says you, one of the reasons we did the dispatch was to set an example of the kind of journalistic quality that we'd like to see others pursue. And now you go. And then we created not worth your time to give us an excuse to deviate to have an exception from that rule. That is the point of this. It's really terrible. Really terrible. Mike.

You ask the question. I don't get credit for it. You are the moderator of this panel. You are the one who decides what this topic is. is and you leaned into it in the context of the disgusting conversation that we had before we started recording. Mike, let me, let me, that was not at all what I was thinking. I was thinking actually in terms of peak athletic performance, what are the, what are the things that would give you the kind of carbs that would allow you to win a 50K ultra marathon if you were going to do this race?

Mike, strategically, what would you choose that would fuel your victory? How would you Taco Max? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's Taco Bell Maxing here. So I interpreted this question in that way, but I also want to think through how something with, you know, heavy on protein and carbs could weigh me down. You know, like that, like I don't want to be, you know, and obviously as you can, as anybody watching a video, you can tell, I'm clearly in my top physical form at this moment. So I know a thing or two about that balance. But I have to think. the lightest is what I'm going for. And I know we said before we started recording that you couldn't count the little chero chips or whatever they are. The little cinnamon twists. So we're talking about entree options. But I'm looking for something that is going to be light in my stomach, is not going to be weighing me down. So my initial thought was like the bean burrito is a bad call for many reasons. But one, that's just a little heavy. So I think a little lighter. is the cheesy roll-up, which is just a flour tortilla with the cheese product that Taco Bell uses rolled up.

You can, like, eat it very quickly. I love the distinction between the cheese and cheese product. Like, I haven't looked at the exact ingredient list, but I'm guessing it's not. There's a government distinction in what they call this. So you can eat that quickly. You can sort of shove it in your mouth and run on to the next one. Because I imagine, like, if you were to do something, not that I would recommend this, but like something like the Mexican pizza,

which is like big and messy. You've got to, yeah, you've got to like stop and sit out. I'm also thinking about what can I eat most quickly. Yeah. And so cheesy roll out. You could run with a plate of nachos. You know,

this is what deep male performance looks like. I mean, we should point out, you know, Chris, I want to ask you the specifics of the ultramarathons that you've run over the past five years. But I will just point out, I've never done an ultramarathon. I couldn't finish one, no matter what, but I have done some century rides on my bike. And there are these sort of refreshment

nourishment stops every 15, 20 miles, you know, the peanut butter and jelly crustables and bananas, and there's pickle juice, which apparently helps with cramps. And there are all of these kinds of things so that you can choose strategically what kind of nourishment you take in so that it will propel you to the finish. Chris, when you think back to your most recent ultramarathons, which of the Taco Bell menu items today do you think would serve that function best? Well, first of all, you're not going to want to do this in bike shorts. That's one thing I can tell you right now. That is not the correct garment. Or white tie. Yeah. The, okay, so I did not receive your question as including superpowers to run this for time. So if a 50K is 31 miles,

I'm figuring this is for me, four days, three days, if I'm pushing it, this is a long, I could do three. I would be, but there'd be like, I'd have to camp and there would be, there would be a process. So I'm, I instead receive this as a, what would I would I like to eat 10 times from Taco Bell. And the answer is easy. Over the course of a week, yeah. Yes, by my three days of Taco Bell only, sleeping alongside a highway in Denver, what is it that I would want to eat? And the answer is close to Mike's.

So the ultimate Taco Bell menu item is the Big Beef Maxi Melt. Now, you may find that at your Taco Bell, the Big Beef Maxi Melt is not available because it's a limited time. It's the McRib. It is the McRib of Taco Bell. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes it's not there. If they do not have the Big Beef Maxi Melt, I don't think they call it the Big Beef Maxi Melt anymore,

because that's, I think, was too aggressive. But if they don't have the Meximelt on their menu, you can order Mike's cheesy roll-up and ask them to add beef and pico de gallo. Yes. And then you have a Big Beef Maxi Melt. And the Big Beef Maxi Melt is the ultimate Taco Bell menu item. happily eat those for two or three days as I traversed Arapahoe County. So this is, I like that answer.

Me too. We're now veering hard into service journalism. It really is the case that although most Taco Bells don't have Meximelt's on the menu, you can go to most Taco Bells at any time and order a Meximelt and they will make one for you, even though it doesn't appear on a news. And if they won't, you can order the cheesy roll up and have them add beef and pica. the beef. This is a good, that's a good workaround. I mean, now I feel like we're, this is the fast food equivalent of, you know, the off menu items at a fantastic,

at Del Frisco's, at a fantastic steakhouse. We are giving people the inside scoop on how to get those things. We're like the wire cutter for bowstowing fast food. So this was a far more interesting, disgusting conversation than I had imagined. And I had imagine it would be. I will say in my younger days, high school college days when I ate, I don't eat much Taco Bell these days. Don't let that if

Taco Bell representatives are listening. Don't let that keep you from sponsoring the Dispatch podcast, but I don't eat at Taco Bell very often these days. But back in the day, I would say, it felt to me like there was somebody working at Taco Bell in the creative

menu item creation department who was living in my head, they would come up with the kinds of things put on their menu as specials that I thought about all the time or that I was doing. Tater-ta-ta-tacos? Yes, like that kind of stuff. And there's a new one. I'm not the kind of person. This would be an interesting sort of follow-up, not worth your time, if you will. Of the food commercials that you see, are you the kind of person who, when you see a food commercial on television, you run out to get that thing.

Like, is it possibly create a food commercial that makes you so excited to go get the food? And you would think that as much as I love food, the answer to that question for me would be yes,

because all you have to do is flash it in front of me and I want to... But it's not the case. Rarely do I see something and think, next time I'm out, I'm getting that.

It sometimes can plant the idea in the back of my head, but I really don't do that. There's an exception. It's Taco Bell, and it's within the last couple of days. I saw an ad.

I think this was during the Brewer game last night. The Brewers, for people who aren't following baseball, defeated the San Diego Padres to return to the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was watching the game, and there was an ad, I believe it was during the game. Go Brewers. Yes, Go Brewers is right.

There was an ad for a crunch rap, slider, Diablo Chicken Nugget Supreme. or something to that effect. I'm screwing up the name. But it's like a mini crunch wrap, like a slider-sized crunch wrap, filled with spicy chicken nuggets, Diablo's sauce that fits in the palm of your hand.

And I thought, by golly, I am going to go get 10 of those at some point in the next few days. It's the Diablo Ranch, crispy chicken crunch wrap slider. I mean, come on. Could you come up with anything that sounds better than that?

So I will go get one. I will report back to people on how good it is. I will not, nobody's envisioning me doing any part of an ultramarathon, so I'm not going to pretend. So we should have like, like, just, I want to put it out there into the universe because, you know, we have this thing at the dispatch called the Sid Goldberg rule, which basically is that as long as it doesn't violate your morals or your principles, you can put a price on it. And I recall that Hugh Hewitt used to have a special ad read on every show where we would

listen to him take his relief factor. And he would talk about opening up the package of these pills and, like, pouring a glass of water or clip soda. And, like, you'd hear him take his pills and drink it because it reduces inflammation and has, you know, all the electrolytes, you know, that Brondo does, but half the cost or whatever. I can't remember the exact pitch. If Taco Bell wants to advertise on the remnant or on the dispatch, Steve and I will eat Taco Bell in the ad. Yeah, whatever the product is and happily so. So, you know, I'm just putting that out into the universe. We would disclose that this was an advertising.

For sure, but like we would be psyched. An exchange of funds. And then the wire cutter phenomenon. You just have to disclose it and then you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Taco Bell representatives.

Let's just sellouts. You can find the contact information on the dispatch.com. Or just send an email to Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even from people who don't eat Taco Bell. If you get that, I'm getting my be. on this. You're cutting me in for a taste. You're coming back. You can't really do a gross food episode without me. So be real. I'm for it. What would be the fast food restaurant that you would at least want to have to do live consumption of the product in the ad, man? Hardies.

Hey. Jack in the box. Hey. I'm offending you, Chris, with my hearties. Harding's and Carl's Jr. for our friends west of the Rockies has a very good breakfast and Taco Bell will be there for you. I'm going to go, are you including pizza chains? I guess. I mean, now I'm thinking about it,

there's actually no inedible fast food, right? I mean, like, Little Caesars, Little Caesars is the body rejects as you try to consume the seizures. Long John Silver. Pizza pizza. Not great. Yeah. Is Long John Silver still a thing? Totally. And would do either Long John

or Captain D's without compunction. Would 100% be there for either one of those? It's fast food seafood itself. That's the problem. Those shrimp aren't real seafood. You just get a shrimp basket. You're fine. Don't worry about it, brother.

Have the hush puppies and the little fried bits and the coleslaw. You're fine. All right. We could go on for hours on this. We've already gone on for a long time. But I need to get to a lunch. We haven't already, yeah. Got to get to a lunch.

I do have to get to a lunch. I do have to get to a lunch. Can't make it up. I'm going to run to the border. He's got to live Moss. All right. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Mike.

And Jonah, I will see you next time. Yeah, screw you. Finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, as I said, even the ones from people

who don't eat any Taco Bell at all. That's good to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in, and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening.

Please join us next time.