The Dispatch Podcast - What Remains of Conservatism | Interview: Jay Nordlinger

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Jay Nordlinger, formerly of National Review and the author of the Onward and Upward Substack, joins Jamie Weinstein to discuss President Donald Trump’s MAGAfication of the GOP. They explore themes of corruption, transparency, American exceptionalism, and the evolution of the Republican Party, while reflecting on the legacy of conservatism and the future of conservative journalism. —The first 100 days—Andrew Jackson 2.0?—The Middle East tour—Stories about Bill Buckley—The future of conservative journalism Show Notes—Jay’s farewell post at National Review—Jay’s Substack The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—⁠⁠click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you lock the front door? Check. Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection,

and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design

that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to The Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Jay Nordlinger. He is a veteran political journalist who most recently was at National Review, but now has his substack up and running called Onward and Upward. I encourage everyone to go to Onward and Upward and check out his work. He's also the music critic at the new criteria. We get into all sorts of topics, everything that you would imagine with the news going on.

including Trump's first hundred days, his trip to the Middle East, what the state of conservatism is, Bill Buckley, and much more. I think you're going to enjoy this episode. So without further ado, I give you, Mr. Jay Nordlinger. Jay Nordlinger, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Thank you so much, Jamie. Appreciate it. But we are a little over 100 days into the Trump administration. Soon I can't ask this questions because we'll be too far advanced past 100 days. But since we're still pretty close, let me just start by asking you, what do you make of the first 100 days?

Well, Trump is being Trump. It's a real Trump term. Of course, the guy is fairly consistent himself. He remains Donald Trump. But the first term was different because of people around him, right? The chief of staff or chiefs of staff, cabinet members. This is a real Maga-Trumpean administration whose FBI director is Cash Patel, whose HHS secretary is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose Pentagon chief is Pete Hegeseth, whose director of national intelligence is Tulsi Gabbard and so on and so forth. So the man is the same, I think. The president is the same. but all the president's men, so to speak, are not the same. You say it's a MAGA administration, and I think you're right on personnel that you mentioned.

I just wonder, what is Trump? Is Trump instinctually, you know, MAGA with the Steve Bannon Wing? Is he instinctually the, is his heart with the cabinet members there? Or where would you place him on the ideological spectrum if you could, if you can even do that? If you can even do that, that is a very interesting phrase. I think Trump is caesaristic. He wants to be a kind of king or emperor, the boss of America. He wants to be the show. And I think that ideas are of secondary importance to him. He does have ideas, some very long held and consistently held. For example, since the 1980s even, when he was a mere tabloid figure in New York, he was hostile to him. He was hostile to. international trade. And he has always been sympathetic to Strongman. Otherwise, he's pretty flexible about abortion, immigration, and other things, including the Electoral College, which he decried, said was an insult to democracy until he was elected through it in 2016.

How do you view him through the lens of American history? Can you place him in American history? Is there another figure that is similar to him that you can look at and say, ah, I see this line to Donald Trump? Yes. Well, people like to compare him to Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson was made very stern stuff. He was a war hero. And, of course, he was a gaudy populist.

I'll tell you, this is both a real person and a fictional character, and you'll know what I mean, sometime during the first term, a professor of political science said to me, a conservative professor, said to me, I've begun assigning all the president's men by, did I say all the president's men? Oh, I said that earlier.

That's Robert Redford. No, the Willie Stark novel, the Robert Penn Warren novel, about the Kingfisher. And he said, I know it's a terrible cliche to say, it's all there. I mean, name me a book where really it is all there.

This professor said to me, it's just about all there, that this Huey Long figure. Trump has a lot of that. He has some George C. Wallace, one of the great populists. He has some Ross Perot, I suppose. He has some Patrick J. Buchanan. But he is an entertainer. And as I said, a would-be Caesar. I don't think he has a liberal-democratic bone in his body, honestly.

Has anything surprised you? I mean, obviously, you didn't have an optimistic take coming into the administration, but has anything surprised you in the first 100 days? I suppose not. One of the things I'd rather like about Trump, I don't know if like is the word, but one thing I think he should be given credit for, one thing I think should be acknowledged is he's not really a sneaky character. He's transparent all through the campaign. He said what he thought about Ukraine and Russia. He said what he thought about international trade. He said what he thought about immigrants. and immigration and refugees, he is a pretty candid fellow, and I don't think he sneaks around much. And so people voting with their eyes wide open had to know. You know, there was a famous column right before the inauguration or shortly after he was elected, reelected by Brett Stevens. And, you know, a lot of people like me kind of bought into it at the time. I don't know in retrospect if it holds up. And it basically went along with, you know, we, you know, we never Trumpers

have looked at Donald Trump negatively and for good reason. But now it's time to give him a blank slate. The American people knew about January 6th and they elected him after January 6th. Give him a blank slate to do it again. Was that the right approach? Was it right to almost forget what we knew about Trump and hope for the best? What did you make of that column when it came out, if you remember what I'm talking. Well, Brett is a smart and wonderful guy and a dear friend of mine, and I read everything he writes and always will. And if he has an opinion, if he has an argument, he makes it well.

And it's a reasoned argument. So I could take his point, yes. Personally, I think January 6th is emblematic. The fate of Ukraine is important to me. Realism toward Russia is important to me. I also think that Mr. Trump is spectacularly corrupt, but he's an interesting kind of corrupt in that he's so open about it, almost childlike, if that's not too condescending to say, he said, sure, come to this dinner on May 22nd, buy your crypto coins, whatever they're called,

get a tour, and think of this proposed or envisioned Air Force One. Blank Slate, I would say, no, I think we should always wish people in office well, and we should hope for the best. But, you know, cut the cards. The corruption is a interesting point you mentioned. We've never had a figure who so openly touts things that seem so obviously corrupt, whether it's the Qatar jet that he supposedly had a legal opinion written up saying that he can donate it to his presidential, or the government can donate it to his presidential foundation, maybe just a year after in service. The Trump meme coin, which two days before the inauguration, instead of thinking about what he's going to do in the world, what he's going to do in the White House, he is

launching a meme coin that probably has already produced hundreds of millions of dollars for his family and potentially billions, depending on how high this goes up. What do we take from this both in terms of the public caring about corruption, but also our law. against corruption. Is it possibly he's technically not doing anything illegal by monetizing the office? That seems unlikely, but I think of something that Andy Warhol said, my friend Roger Kimball, likes to quote this, Warhol said, Art is what you can get away with. Donald Trump is testing what you can get away with or what he can get away with in the White House. Will the public permit it? I suppose the public is permitting it. You know, some things we do just because they're normal. They are norms. It's a matter of

tradition. This is how we behave in America. This is what is expected of us, expected of our office holders. And Trump is putting all that to the test. I mean, I think of what Richard Nixon resigned over, you know. I think of what Bill Clinton was impeached for, and I favored that. With Trump, it's a whole new ballgame. So ultimately, it's on us, I think. on, as people like to say rhetorically, we the people. What did you make of his Middle Eastern tour? I think in a way, I guess if you were to frame it in the most optimistic light, he was, you know, borrowing from Janine Kirkpatrick, dictator and double standards,

these are our dictators and, you know, we need allies in the world and we're going to turn a blind eye to what they do. Isn't there something to be said of that compared to the past administration or previous administrations that were, you know, at least especially the Biden administration that wanted to push Saudi Arabia off to the side that, you know, there's no really alternative to, you know, you can get some good things done if you're friends with them in that region. Yes. Let's say a quick word about Jane Kirkpatrick. Yes, she was famous for that essay dictator. She's just from double standards. But when they're your allies, she said over and over, there are things you can do

to help them, so to speak, in a proper direction. She did this. advocated in Latin America and elsewhere. I often quote Vladimir Bukovsky, the great Soviet-era dissident, who said something like this. Yes, nations should go about their business doing what they must in realistic politics for the realistic foreign policy. But every once in a while, they should pause to ask, how will it look to the boys in the camps? There are a lot of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia, and Trump made his first trip as president the first time around in the first term to Saudi Arabia. And when he got there, he read, I think, on the tarmac, and there were other dictators there from elsewhere. I think on the tarmac, he gave a speech saying, we're not here

to lecture, we're not here to tell people how to live, what to believe, so on and so forth. And that's music to dictators' ears, because it's their job to dictate. They're the ones who tell people how to live, what to believe, so on and so forth. And since you mentioned Kirkpatrick, let me tell you a story involving Andre Sartner. Soakaroff, the great dissident. Sometime in the glass-nosed perestroika period, there was a delegation of Americans to, I think, Moscow, and included Henry Kissinger and others, and Gene Kirkpatrick. And Sakharov comes down the stairs of his building and this dimly lit vestibule, and he says, Kirkpatsky, which one of you is Kirkpatsky? And they gesture to Jean, I call her that because I knew her.

and he said to her, your name is known in every cell of the gulag. Your name is known by every Zek, every political prisoner in the Soviet Union. Why? Because she named the names of Zex of political prisoners on the floor of the United Nations, and it meant the world to them. Well, you know, that leads to my next question, which I, which, you know, in your farewell column at National Review, you mentioned a columnist you met with recently, and you speak of something that you wrote about him. You spoke of his first trip. to America in the 1980s. He first went to America in 1987 when he was 20. I remember getting off the plane at JFK and feeling like I was 10 feet tall, the opportunity, the dynism, the energy,

America, he exclaimed. Note the exclamation mark. I almost feel in a way that describes your view, almost your conservatism, your ideology there, the idea that you get off the plane and go, yes, America, you're a dissident in a camp. You say, America means something. Am I wrong there? Is that the J. Nortingler, in a way, ideology? Well, I think of something that Vice President Bush said in 1988 when he was accepting the Republican nomination for president. It was in New Orleans at the Republican convention there. And Paul Kennedy, the great Yale scholar, had published a book about, I think, American decline. And so there was a debate about this. And Bush, of course, was knocking his opponent, Michael Dukakis. And he said, what are we? Another pleasant nation

on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe. I think a lot of people want us to be another pleasant nation on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe. I'm a believer in American exceptionalism. I think we ought to stand for something in the world. Of course, the national interest ought to be paramount in foreign policy. But you find that a decent regard for others can be important in one's national interest. It's earned America a lot of goodwill. all over the world. You remember what Trump said. He said it twice. He said it most famously, I think, to Bill O'Reilly. I believe on Super Bowl Sunday in 2017, O'Reilly said to him, Putin's a killer. Trump said, yeah, what, you think we're so innocent? There are a lot of killers.

I don't think the United States is like Putin's Russia, and it certainly should not be. So that's a pretty low bar, I would say. Well, you speak to an interesting debate within what you might call the modern Republican Party, which is, I think, very different from the Republican Party of a decade ago. There is a debate between what is America? Is America an idea? Is America this universalist vision of, you know, anybody can be a come to America and you come here if you believe certain things like our Declaration of Independence? Or is America more a land and a people that has a long history, which is very different from other peoples in history, and it's not just adopting certain ideas that become American. I have an idea where you stand on this. I think it's the same

place I stand on this. But discuss that debate and why you land on the side. Well, maybe I could just cite a fact, a detail. The two major party presidential nominees last year, Harris and Trump, three of their four parents were immigrants. And the fourth one was the son of an immigrant. these were our presidential nominees. That's a pretty powerful testament, I think, about what America means. Harris and Trump, these aren't Mayflower Americans, but they're certainly Americans, as American as anybody, no matter what we think about them. So, yeah, Lincoln spoke very powerfully to this, very powerfully.

And so did Reagan, so have others. Sometimes people feel that they're born American, but in the wrong country. And they get here as fast as they can to borrow, I think, a Texas expression. I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could. And I've known a lot of natural Americans who are from elsewhere. And they're a great blessing to our nation. At the same time, we ought to have orderly and legal immigration. It's not like I'm running for office.

I'm sorry about that, Jamie. I don't mean to sound politician-y. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden law. 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.

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I don't want probably the Republican, but the conservative movement for sure you've been a part of for, you know, several decades. What do you make of the current state of these two major entities? It's funny to see parties evolve, isn't it? Live long enough and you do. Republican Party was very proud to stand for freedom, democracy, and human rights at home and abroad, I had a generous view of immigration, preached fiscal conservatism, whether they practiced it or not, the idea of character and office, personal responsibility, virtue, family values, all that jazz. And there's been a great evolution. And the Democrats have had their own evolutions as well. So parties shift, movements shift, but ideas remain. And that's why I think

it's best to cling to ideas rather than persons or parties. Yeah, the Republicans are the red jerseys and the Democrats are the blue jerseys. But what does that mean beyond laundry? You know, Jerry Seinfeld said about sports, we root for laundry. We don't really know the players, but we root for our team colors. It's natural. It's natural to people. But yes, there has been a very big, very big shift. In the case of the right, a very big shift, a very big shift. into populism and nationalism, of course. I believe in the old verities. I believe in the American founding and enlightenment ideals. I remember what Donald Kagan said to me toward the end of his life. He said, they used to call me a liberal, then they called me a conservative. I'm not sure

if they're calling me now. I really believe the same essential things. And so have I, limited government, the rule of law, individual rights, separation of powers, so on and so forth. How many people actually have set ideas that they believe in. And let me put it in context. It was just a decade or so ago, a little bit over a decade ago, that there was a tea party. That was the force within the Republican party. It was a conservative movement that. I loved it. Loved it. I was a tea party or myself. But then that dissipate, whatever that was became the part of the MAGA movement. And it made me wonder, was the conservative movement, people that actually believed in those principles, ever more than some magazine and think tanks along, you know, K Street in Washington, D.C. or some offices in New York.

Was that really the only place this movement that we thought was so widespread truly existed? I don't think so. That's a little narrow for me. Maybe a little bit cynical. Perhaps you're right, Jamie. There are a lot of people for centuries have believed that liberal democracy is unnoticed. to people. It's contra natura. And that's being tested all the time. People way back referred to the American experiment. Will it work? I've cited to you before a French historian. I think he's Ernest Renaud maybe. A nation is a daily plebiscite. A nation is a daily referendum. What do you want to be? And frankly, autocracy is attractive to a lot of people all around the world. I learned that in my lengthy, or at least years-long study of dictatorships.

There are a couple of dirty little secrets about dictatorships and terror movements. They always have a degree of popular support. Maybe not majority support, which is why these guys don't risk free and fair elections. Fidel Castro never did. Neither did his brother. Neither has their successor. But these dictatorships always have a degree of popular support. That has to be watched. And the values of liberal democracy. Radik Sikorsky makes this point. He's the foreign minister of Poland again. He had a stint before in the same position. You always have to argue for the ideas and ideals of liberal democracy because people keep being born, which is annoying. You have new generations and they're finding out about the world and figuring out what they believe. And even if you think the arguments and ideals should sell themselves, they don't. You have to keep at it. Because it You think of Chavez in Venezuela, one of the great populists we've ever seen. Brilliant guy, bewitching.

He practically mesmerized a nation and brought it to ruin. Enrique Krause, the great Mexican historian, wrote a book about this phenomenon called, I think, Power and Delirium. Hugo Chavez was wildly popular and drove the country into the ground. So, look, these are old questions, old ideas. And you have to keep out it. Well, speaking of the conservative movement, you knew Bill Buckley, who many argue founded the modern conservative movement.

Tell us a little about your interactions with him, what you learn from him. And if it is not too presumptuous to ask, what you think he would make of our current political moment? He taught me so much, personally and through his writing. And one thing I often say about him is it's not that. he taught me what to think. He taught me how to think. He believed in right reason and it was wonderful to hear him think out loud and so on and see it on the page. And I just owe him a great deal. Also, he was a constant reexaminer. He reexamined positions, shed some of them, adapted some

of them, and so on. He was a constant reader, a constant learner, right up to the end. And Personally, he was electric. He was just vivid. You felt, frankly, more alive when he was around. Everything was in technicolor when he was under. All the senses were heightened. He loved life. He had a great gusto. He had a great joie de vivre. And he communicated it to others. He was often battling in his career anti-intellectualism. People called him a snob and eastern seaboard elite, worse, all the names in the book. And he elevated conservatism, elevated conservatism. Elevated conservatism from the bigotry of the birchers, for example. And also he associated it with high culture to which he himself was devoted. And he was a raging economic liberal. He was a raging free marketeer. He once subtitled the collection of his reflections of a libertarian journalist. So, and of course he prized good character in life and particularly in office. In fact, he gave a speech, I believe at the Reagan Library. It might have been an inaugural speech there, saying that the character of Ronald Reagan was the decisive factor in the last stage of the Cold War.

There's been a lot of people who would claim to be economic liberals and all of these sort of things that, you know, all of a sudden, sometimes they're speaking from the White House, you know, talking about how great tariffs are. You know, people seem to do 180. Would Buckley find himself in opposition to the White House, do you think, today? do you think he would have, you know, strong, strong opposition. He opposed even the administration of his friend Ronald Reagan when he thought it necessary. I believe in the INF Treaty, for example. So sure. Bill was a very, very large-hearted man, as magnanimous as they come. But he was also principled. He wasn't rigid. He often quoted his friend Whitaker Chambers, to live as too much. maneuver. He maneuvered, but only to a point. He wasn't a jellyfish just floating around. He believed in things and took strong stands, even when it cost him something. I mean, the stance against the birchers cost him a lot, supporters, donors, subscribers. And also, he was one of

the very few conservatives to oppose, beg your pardon, to support the Panama Canal treaties in the Carter administration. Another one was his friend George F. Will. And as you know, Buckley and Reagan had a famous debate over the Panama Canal Treaties. So he stood up to the left, of course, constantly. And when he thought it was necessary, he could do the same in the other direction.

We've had both in the last several months two well-known professors, Professor Diamond of Stanford and Harvey Mansfield of Harvard. Oh my gosh. Two diamonds, so to speak, with a small D. Both are concerned about the administration, but to varying degrees. I think I'm not mischaracterizing a professor. Mansfield to say that he believes institutions will hold, whereas I think Professor Diamond is much more concerned about whether the institutions will hold. Where do you place

yourself? Are you concerned that Donald Trump could actually not only run, but somehow finagle his way in or manipulated his way in or somehow illegally maneuver his way into a third administration? Or do you believe our institutions will stand that all the threats to them will be beaten back by them, that law and order will survive some of the attacks on it? I wonder, Jamie, you've asked you've put your finger on that. A great question. We're all taught in kindergarten, or not long they're. thereafter were a nation of laws, not men, you know, that ought to be so. I always thought that the United States was on a kind of constitutional autopilot or cruise control. Elections didn't

matter that much. Politics was played from the 40-yard lines. You know, you went to bed one night. Then it was election day, and then other people got in, and life continued because we're a constitutional republic. More and more have come to understand that the so-called guardrails are human, their flesh and blood, paper protections aren't enough. Mike Pence, for example, was a human guardrail, a flesh and blood guardrail on January 6th. So, as our founder said, I think John Adams most famously, the success of our republic, the success of our constitution, depends on a character of the nation. Otherwise, you know, bad folk will go through our constitution, said Adams, like a whale through a net, and that is a simile that a New Englander like Adams might have thought of like

a whale through a net. There's a lot of ruin in a nation, said Adam Smith. I think he said a deal of ruin in a nation. And America has limped on in certain periods and then gone more robustly forward in certain other periods. Jamie, I'm just not sure. I often say that it's hard enough to analyze the present without predicting the future. I think the American people are tolerant of more abuses than I might have expected once upon a time. Let me close with this, these two questions. The first is, is there any issue you think is being undercovered by the press, whether political or not? Oh, what a great question. Bill would say that question is like Peking Duck requires 24 hours notice, an issue that is undercover. As soon as we pang up

I'll give you three of them. But let me mention civic education. It's so important. When I was in ninth grade, we had civics. My teacher was Cynthia Payne. We memorized the preamble. I think we did so. We learned the words, the preamble, via a song.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and so on and so forth. I have always plumped for. I have one of my themes over the years has been the revival of civic education what are we for why were we founded what is the American way simple rules of citizenship

I believe in that old fashion stuff that old Fourth of July Rotary Club stuff that has been sneered at by so many people over the years I must say I believe in Betsy Ross and Emma Lazarus, and yeah, it's old-fashioned, you might even say quaint and romantic, but damn it, it stood us in pretty good stead for a long time. And it's produced the likes of Jamie Weinstein. Thank you very much. Talk about hope for the future. Well, let me close on this question, Jay. You know, when you got into conservative writing,

conservative journalism, it was, there's a lot of examples that still to this day are icons we mentioned Bill Buckley. I wonder, Jay, if you are coming in now, you just graduated college into conservative journalism, and you saw the lights of conservative journalism being Jack Persobiak or people like him, and a movement that doesn't really share some of the values that you've laid out here, not only doesn't share them, is maybe openly hostile, in some cases to do them. Do you think you would have jumped into conservative journalism, conservative commentary? I have often thought of that. When I was growing up, we had Reagan and Goldwater and Kemp and others. We had Bill Buckley and George Will and Tom Sol and Irving Crystal and Michael Novak and

James Q. Wilson and Robert Conquest and Paul Johnson and so many others. And today, what are their equivalents? Look, there are a lot of good people on the right at the dispatch, at National Review, at commentary, and elsewhere. There is a diversity of opinion, a range of opinions and different types of, oh, writers and public advocates. So, yeah, you have to, you might have to be a savvier shopper than before. I think we're in an era now where people tend to read individuals rather than publications. And sometimes the individual is just floating online somewhere. You're not even sure to what publication that writer is attached on, on social media and so on and so forth. So it's a new media age, but though personalities change,

ideas and debates remain pretty steady, I think. Sometimes your side, sometimes your values are up, sometimes they're down, but they're still your values. And I've always borrowed the slogan of the motel chain, Motel 6, will leave the light on for you. And I think conservatives of a classical liberal or Reagan stripe, they ought to leave the light on. Their views may be popular, they may be unpopular, maybe in between, but the light should remain on. And might does not make right. And if I can give you another bromide, one on the side of God is a majority. As Reagan said, we shouldn't claim to be on God's side, but we should hope that...

He's on our side. Oh, you know Reagan's words. Yeah, exactly right. The Gipper would have delivered that line very well. Me and recollection, not so great. Didn't mean to get religious. He teaches me to get religious, stumbling over my words. Jay Nordlinger, thank you for joining me this match, bye.

Thanks for doing what you do, Jamie. I'm going to be able to be.