The Dispatch Podcast - What Should We Be Doing?

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Sarah, David, Jonah and –– believe it or not! –– Steve discuss whether and how the United States should support dissidents in China and Iran, ponder the poetic timing of the Fuentes dinner, and lament the intractability of America’s gun debate. Also: why is it so difficult to enjoy America beating Iran in the World Cup (besides it being soccer)? Also also: will David’s scotch-taped computer survive the whole hour? Listen and find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgher. And today we've got David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes. The gang is back. And we have plenty to talk about. We will talk about China, the rolling protests and what the U.S. can or should do. The Trump dinner, but more what it says about where Trump is within the Republican Party than anything else. Mass shootings, red flag laws, and what Congress.

may accomplish during the lame duck session. And finally, a little, is it worth your time at the end? Let's dive right in. David, I'm going to start with you about these protests in China. Rolling protests throughout the country, China's government, acting like an authoritarian government, doing what they can to suppress those protests, and even knowledge of those protests, frankly, both inside and outside the country. What is a possible U.S. response? What should the U.S. response be? There's been sort of a mixed message coming from over here, and it seems pretty tepid. Yeah, it does seem tepid when you're talking about some of the questions posed, for example, to Biden administration's folks.

people and they want to what do you want to say about the protesters well the protesters speak for themselves has been kind of a message that you've seen from the podium and it it seems tepid counter to that the Biden administration has been pretty hawkish on China to this point the Biden administration many members of it have said they learned from the way the Obama administration responded to the Iranian protesters in 09 admitting that was a mistake so the Biden administration has been much more encouraging of the Iranian protest. So what's going on in China? It's a really good question. And there's been some back and forth internally here at this dispatch, back and forth online, as to how much more forceful should Biden be or Biden administration folks be. And on the one hand

is the argument that, well, you know, look, going all the way back to Reagan and before, it's entirely possible to be very forcefully, forcefully on the side of dissent. while at the same time in the right circumstances reaching agreements with hostile regimes. And my view is really a sort of a simple conclusion, but with a complex answer as to how to get there, is we have to treat each protest movement as its own thing. And if there is a sense that vocally and aggressively supporting the Chinese protests now

may de-legitimize the protests in China, then you should be more cautious. If you don't think it'll delegitimize, then it definitely be more aggressive. But the one thing, the one thing I think we have to do is very concretely stand for the human rights of the protesters and indicate that there would be real consequence

for any kind of crackdown like we've seen in 1989 in Tianmen Square. it's just a very difficult call to know what is the proper public posture if the regime is going to try to use your public posture to demonstrate that the protests are entirely the function of outside agitators. So I think that's the dilemma. The goal should be to do whatever we can that is most effective at supporting them. And for what that is, I'm open to persuasion. Steve, are these protesters being treated differently by the administration because they are about COVID restrictions?

That's a good question, and I don't know the answer to that. But I do think that we have an obligation, moral and otherwise, to speak out much, much more forcefully than we have been. I look at what we've gotten from the Biden administration. I'm embarrassed by it. You had Anthony Blinken, in addition to the Tepin statements that the White House put out yesterday, you had Anthony Blinken yesterday take a question about this. And it's fascinating to read what he says. He basically gives a review of the COVID policies and suggests that what China is doing is not something that we would do.

And then he says this. I think any country where you see people trying to speak out, trying to speak up to protest peacefully, to make known their frustrations, whatever the issue is, in any country where we see that happening, and then we see the government take massive repressive action to stop it. That's not a sign of strength. That's a sign of weakness. Think about what he's doing there. He's just describing what he thinks, the sort of reaction. it's a description of the Chinese government and the potential political effectiveness of what they're doing is and what it says about the government. There's nowhere a condemnation of the moral problems

he should have, a Biden administration should have, I think all Americans should have, about the repression itself. And I guess it strikes me as a missed opportunity not only because these protests are unlike the localized protests that we've seen in China in the past, they're much more aggressive and they seem to be spreading. The state apparatus that usually has been very successful

in containing these and keeping them local is not working. You're seeing protests pop up in university towns throughout the country. There seems to be a movement. They seem to be catching fire. Not only that, but you have to look at this in the context of what we know the regime is doing elsewhere, particularly with respect to U.Gers. I mean, we have been making arguments, the U.S. government has been making arguments that China is, in effect, engaged in genocide with respect to the Uyghurs. And not only are we not saying never again, which had been the cry for decades until recently, we're not even willing to speak up about the nature of the Chinese regime in that broad context, it feels to me like a tremendous moral failure on the part

of the United States. And I think if you, to David's point about the effectiveness of this, I think we shouldn't underestimate what the United States can do. I'm not necessarily sure it'll be effective, but what the United States can do and what the effects can be when the United States speaks out forcefully on behalf of human rights. And of course, Ronald Reagan is the obvious example. I mean, listen to the things that Natanzhi said inspired him and inspired the dissidents back in the 1980s. And it's a pretty clear case. So I'm disappointed and frustrated that the Biden administration has been so weak on this. Jonah, there's a few versions of this argument, right? The U.S. is not speaking out more forcefully because, as David suggested, there's a concern that it would

actually undermine the protesters by giving China, the talking point that this is driven by foreign agitators. The U.S. is not speaking out more forcefully because this is about COVID lockdowns and they feel squeamish about COVID lockdowns that they're kind of in favor of. The U.S. government's not speaking out more forcefully because we are so entangled with China

and the corporate interests of this country have done quite the opposite, not just Apple, which I think has sort of become a bit of, of a scapegoat almost in this conversation. Apple, of course, pushing a new functionality only in China that certainly hinders protesters' abilities to communicate to each other, you know, through memes and some of these pictures. And everyone kind of jumping on that, fair enough, I'm not going to excuse it. But my goodness, Apple's not the only company that has done everything it can to make itself amenable to the Chinese market, regardless of the authoritarian requirements.

put upon it by the government. Is that why our response has been so tepid, perhaps? I was waiting for D, all of the above. But I think there's another one that's worth pointing in there. Again, I'm not going to sign numerical percentage values to all these things. But there's also the climate change thing, you know, where John Kerry, who definitely has Biden's ear, he constantly says, we can chew gum and walk and chew gum at the same time. They have to have dual tracks.

and we can condemn genocide, but we really got to work with them on climate change, right? So there's that kind of mentality going on. And I would also add this probably a little of the Ukraine war dynamic going on here is that not pissing off the Chinese might keep them. Chinese have sat on the fence a bit more than you might have expected, given these supposedly new bold alliance between Russia and China. and maybe there's the thinking that you don't want to push them even more into the Russian camp

that they actually start sending weapons and whatnot. All these are good reasons to think carefully about what to do, right? And I don't, you know, I would love to accuse David of runaway isolationist foreign policy realism and restraint, but I don't think it's that. All that said, as I think a lot of these problems are pretty, solvable with good speech writing. And I think that, you know, Blinken's comments, it's funny. Like, I agree with Steve on the moral judgment about Blinken's comments.

But analytically, I think Blinkin's comments are pretty correct. What China is doing is a sign of weakness. You know, countries that aren't worried about their long-term survival don't behave this way. the Chinese Communist Party is terrified of the Chinese people. And that's why it does all this Orwellian dystopian stuff to monitor them. And so this gets to sort of one of my foreign policy bugaboo is about how everyone who thinks it's obvious that the Chinese Communist Party is going to be in power for as far as the eye can see. They're basically making a straight line projection from the current moment. and they don't have the moral imagination to realize the empires and brittle, evil regimes fall all the time.

I'm going to think it's going to happen tomorrow. But on the assumption that it might happen sooner than we think, and they always happen to seem to happen sooner than we think, best that we actually say what we believe and stand up for something and having a consistent moral message, where you can, I mean, you don't have to say, hey, look, we are notionally and morally with you, but we're not going to help you at all. I mean, you don't say those words, but that message, I think, is still a worthwhile one to send

because, first of all, you don't want to get people's hopes up so that they stick their necks out and then get killed. But at the same time, you want to lay down markers that say, this is what we believe in. We root for people fighting for their freedom wherever they are in the world. This is a consistent position of ours.

And, you know, one of the few arguments that I really have no serious patients for is this we don't want to feed the regime talking points about how these guys are all foreign influence the regime is already saying that these people are literally making that case now yes yeah so like i mean i if you can't you know you can only fill so much over the five pounds into a five pound bag and they've already made that argument and um i agree that we shouldn't give them some visual talk you know we shouldn't be like they shouldn't be able to run video on the nightly propaganda channels on Chinese TV of like USA emblazoned aid packages, you know, being shipped

into Shanghai or anything. But beyond that, you know, you want to have a consistent moral message about what you stand for, what you believe, what is sort of a non-negotiable position of the United States of America, even if as a prudential matter, we're not willing to blow up, you know, literally go to war with China over, you know, it's, it's, it's protests, it's domestic protests. But I think that one of the problems that Biden gets himself into and that Blinken gets himself into is they have great language whenever there are no consequences to it. And they have crappy language whenever there are consequences to it.

That's true. And so you had Blinken. at that summit in Alaska, I wrote a column about it at a time, when the Chinese straight up just went through the class. It's like they just grabbed flyers off of a Burlington Community College, you know, social justice bulletin board and talked about American racism and America is evil and America, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Blankin said, yeah, we have problems, but we're working them through.

And in democracies, he just room for self-improvement. And it was like, wait a second. China does not get to lecture us about any. of this stuff, but Blinken didn't feel like he could actually defend America in forthright moral terms. We don't have Jim Crow anymore. They got it in China right now. And similarly, Biden, when he's running for office or when he's talking about how he wants an infrastructure package, he says the contest, right, we have to pass all of my legislation because it's a contest between democracy and autocracy. This is an existential battle for the 21st century where it's

our model versus their model, and the future of freedom is on the line, yada, yada, yada, yada. And then when actually people are sticking their heads out to fight for freedom in China, it's, you know, Yogi Berra saying when you come to a fork in a road, take it kind of rhetorical different splitting and talking into his sleeve. And we could use a good deal bit more of Reaganite rhetoric on a lot of this stuff and just simply say, this is what we believe in. we wish we could do more right now but these people are basically

there's nothing we can do and China should do everything it can to recognize basic human rights human rights are not purely Western values their human values yada yada yada use their own language against them and we're not doing that

and I find it kind of heartbreak you know I should just just real quick point to add to that it's not just that we know that China will say that foreign governments particularly the USA are behind the protests. They're already saying that. They're already being mocked for saying it. I mean, you've seen some of the protesters actually respond by saying, really, we're being manipulated

and driven by foreign influence. We can't even watch TV that originates outside of China. And yet they're so omnipresent in China that they're that they're running our protests. To me, it's a silly argument. They're going to say anyway. they censor big chunks of the World Cup because they don't want to show the crowds sitting there maskless. Yeah. They take out chunks of the video

when if somebody scores a goal, there was somebody who posted this and they did a side by side of a goal scored in the Croatia game and showed what was shown on the world, the feed that the world saw and what was shown on the feed that the Chinese saw and they took out, they edited out

on a 32-second delay. Every single image that was of the crowd because they didn't want to show the Chinese people that elsewhere in the world, they are not subject to these strict COVID lockdowns. I think there's a huge advantage there. I mean, I think there's an opening. And look, I mean, I think it does matter whether the United States makes these arguments. I went back and I was in preparing for this. I went back and, of course, I reread some of Ronald Reagan speeches and I watched some video of his comments. And there is, there is, such power in the moral straightforwardness with which he makes his case.

Now, if you make an argument that the United States is in a less advantageous position domestically to be in a position to make those moral arguments, that's a fair point. But I think we shouldn't be kept from making those arguments because we might upset the It's also, by the way, last point for me, if you look at the kinds of things the Chinese have been accusing us of, it's awfully delicate to think that we can't make a straightforward argument on behalf of human rights in this context. Think back to the kinds of things they were saying about the United States, creating COVID in a U.S. Army lab and exporting it to the world, Things that were made up out of whole cloth as part of, you know, this big move that Tom Jocelyn wrote for us when he was doing his newsletter on their wolf, the warrior diplomacy, the kinds of things they were making.

It'd be a little precious for the Chinese to object to us saying, hey, by the way, you ought to treat people nicely. David, I want to broaden this out before we leave the topic, which is just we still have the Ukrainian conflict. And I think back to the Cold War, and during that time, Russia had a lot of allies, but they were subsidiaries. There was no other superpower level equal to Russia. In this post-Cold War era and Russia invading Ukraine, I'm wondering whether we're starting to see, you know, an Axis and Allies team here building with Russia, China, Iran, maybe North Korea there in sort of the Italy was in World War II kind of way. Do you see them coming closer together from a year ago? Yes and no. So here's the yes. Russia and Iran have kind of always been friends of convenience.

You would not say that their interests are completely aligned when Iran is organized as an Islamic Republic and Putin is casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization. So at some level, they're very fundamental interests diverge, but they have common enemies. They have common interests in sort of sowing chaos in that Western world order. Had a great conversation on the Dispatch podcast with Fred Kagan, and he was describing this relationship. And what was interesting to me is if Russia and China and Iran are sort of a new axis,

which is, you know, they do all have common interests. They do not seem to work together very closely. It is really interesting to me that Russia, by all indications, is turning to Iran for weaponry and not the giant economy it is theoretically allied with. So if you look at, you know, one of the things that we need to wake up about the current struggle with China, if you look historically at the difference between the GDP of the United States and Soviet Union,

and you have sort of one of these kind of deterministic, historically deterministic outlooks that the side with the most stuff wins, ultimately, that we were always going to win that thing. Like even when we were in the 1970s falling behind militarily, we were still leaps and bounds ahead of the Soviet Union. And then in the 1980s that when the Reagan economic buildup was matched with the Reagan military buildup, the Soviet Union was falling behind economically at just a stunning rate, we never confronted the Soviet Union as economically powerful as China is. And one of the reasons why it's economically powerful is because of massive entanglements

with our own economy. And the interesting question to me is, okay, in this. Russia-Ukraine situation, if you have an industrial giant that is allegedly your closest ally, why are you getting second-tier Iranian weapons? And so there's a lot going on here. There's also the keen awareness that in multiple war games, the United States is unable to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Now, I'm not necessarily one who believes those war games. I've talked to folks in the Pentagon, you do not believe those war games that Taiwan's a much tougher nut to crack. But there's a lot going on here where China is not yet as close to Russia as you might

think if they are going to be called allies in the middle of a shooting war where Western military stocks are being drawn down at a pretty high rate where we feel vulnerable in Taiwan. As I said, there's a lot going on. And the other thing that I would say that was very interesting to me in talking to Fred was I said, if you're in, if you are in the Oval Office with Joe Biden right now, what is the number one piece of advice that you are giving Joe Biden? And Fred absolutely agrees that public statements are important, but that was not what he said when he was talking about what's the number one thing that you could do to aid protesters in Iran. and he said that immediately was facilitate their communication. In other words, make it where they're able to communicate.

And it's really interesting that literally about an hour after I read that, I read about the Apple Update being pushed through only in mainland China. And what does this Apple Update do without, you know, boring you too much with the technical details? It changes the AirDrop function. And the AirDrop is the thing that allows you to send information and files via Bluetooth to phones that are in your area and it's highly confidential

and if you leave your phone with airdrop open to everyone which I do not recommend that you do in the United States of America but if you do it in China if you leave it open everyone people can send you files and it's a way of sending confidential messages well in China and only in mainland China Apple pushed out an update where your air drop function goes back to friends or contacts only after 10 minutes. So unless you're literally updating your settings

every 10 minutes, you cannot receive these files. And that's a way that totalitarian countries control communication. And so translating that principle from Iran to China, what is it that we can concretely do? Well, I'm not sure there's much we can do about Apple. Apple is responding to Chinese law.

It's about as entangled as you could possibly get. But that's the kind of thing that I thought was really, really instructive when we're talking about on the ground, how does a foreign power help a dissenter movement? And we tend to spend an awful lot of time talking about rhetoric and not as much time talking about actions, in part because rhetoric is about the only thing we can see.

We don't really know what the actions are. But I wanted to highlight that because this is a very, very complicated fluid situation where we do not necessarily need to think that the public statements that we make, and I am 100% for making the most helpful public statements we can, sometimes the public statements we make take a backdrop are less important than a lot of things we may not really know about or understand.

And the thing about Reagan, and I feel like Rick Petino when he was under siege is a Boston Celtics basketball coach and the team was floundering and he was like, Bill Russell is not walking through that door. Larry Byrd is not walking through that door. Meaning, well, Ronald Reagan is not walking through that door.

So what are we going to do? And the thing about Reagan is this pressure, this rhetorical pressure he placed on the Soviet Union was what one piece of a much diff bigger picture. And that much bigger picture I've been reading Will M. Bowden's new book, The Peacemaker, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War and the War on the Brink. There was a lot going on in Reagan policy towards the Soviet Union, placing the Soviet Union under immense pressure. And I don't see evidence of any kind of equivalent effort towards China now.

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Why is that different today? And what does it say about Trump's stature within the Republican Party? Yeah. So, like, as we discussed, so the answer to the question up front, like a year ago, it wouldn't have been as big a deal. And two years ago, it would even be a smaller deal. talking about in the eyes of God, I just mean in terms of like how it was covered and how it was talked about. Um, but, um, the, uh, I hope God has better things to do. I mean, truly, we think

that from time to time. And I know like, oh, no, but God knows everything. But like, seriously, there's there, there's divine providence in the fall of a sparrow, far more than in this dinner. Um, and, uh, but, and that's because the, the maneuvering room, the oxygen allowed for criticizing Trump among Republicans was much narrower or much thinner, depending on which metaphor of mine you're going to grab hold of. The tiny, the beauty of this thing was that you had the midterms, which ushered in a long overdue conversation about the lessons the GOP needs to learn that it wasn't able to have after 2020 because you only are supposed to learn lessons from loss when you admit that you lost

and because Trump wouldn't let anyone talk about how he didn't actually lose or no one was allowed to admit that he actually lost. You couldn't have the sort of after action kind of conversation about how you move forward. So it got kicked down the road to the 22 midterms where which almost perfectly, with one or two exceptions, demonstrated that Trump is a bad influence on the party's electoral success. I mean, it was almost surgical in the way it just highlighted

with, you know, a few outliers about abortion and, you know, J.D. Vance and whatever. But for the most part, the more MAGA you were in tone, rhetoric, or association, the worse you did. And all of a sudden, Republicans are like, we can't keep ignoring this conversation, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what does Trump do? A week later, he announces he's going to run for president.

And with the hope, the plan being, you know, and this is all planned when he thought he was going to do really well on limit terms. And it had the opposite effect. And people are like, crap, this is really not what we need right now. And then it's almost like East German scientists designed this dinner. to maximize all of the problems with Trump. He goes and has dinner with a self-medicating bipolar anti-Semite black hip-hop guy who happens to bring along one of the foremost neo-Nazis in America,

who's an in-cell, an involuntary celibate who has accidentally revealed he's into gay porn. and another prominent promoter of the alt-right who is also literally I think the only actual confirmed pro-groomer of anybody in public life in the last five years and Trump has dinner with them and the only person he's mad at is the bipolar guy for saying that Trump should run as his vice president. And I think everybody on this podcast has been denounced more passionately and more frequently by Donald Trump than any of the people who were at that dinner two weeks later. And so my point of going through the timeline

is that it's like each stage, like a booster rocket, each stage accelerated the conversation on the right about how, man, we got to get rid of this guy. And it's still way too sub-Rosa than it should be, right? It's still way to, you know, like Mike Pompeo sub-tweeting Trump, right? You know, like great profiles and courage. Who would Churchill sub-tweet? But you can just feel it.

The tectonic, you know, the undertow is all there. And because Trump has no formal power anymore, it's just, just easier to get on the wrong side of him without paying an immediate consequence. And so the analogy I used, David and I are certainly old enough to remember it, at the end of the Clinton administration, where liberals put up with everything you can imagine that Bill Clinton did for eight years, and they all basically rallied around him. And then almost literally, as he's going out the door, he pardons Mark Rich. And all of a sudden, E.J. Dionne writes his columns about how, oh, but that other stuff, that was all hyped up by Republicans.

But this is an outrage. And basically, everybody got to prove their intellectual credibility about being willing to criticize Bill Clinton as he was no longer of any use to them. And I think we're seeing some of that as all you sort of, it's not, it's not born again, never, Trumpism, but there's a lot of born-again Trump skepticism. And I welcome it. Steve, do you think that this is evidence of a symptom, rather, of Trump's fall within the Republican Party more than it is causing it? Or is this more like post-January 6th where, yep, everyone denounced it for a few days. And then once they saw that, you know, where are my people going? I must lead them. It was right back where it was. So I think it's much more the former, but there's something more exciting to come out of Jonah's answer than even that substantive question you asked me. And that is

that he lumped you and I together generationally and he and David together. So I'll hit you up on tick talk later sir i don't even know if that's the right thing to say i didn't mean it i was just i was alluding to david and mine's you know uh experience and wisdom um where we have to sort of bring you guys along i take whatever however you meant it however you meant it that's great this is like when adults used to think netflix and chill meant like sitting on the couch and watching netflix boy i'm telling you yeah i do not say you want a Netflix and chill with your kids. That's not what you think it is.

So, okay, so I, if there were some innuendo to hit you up on TikTok that I don't know. I don't even know. I was just trying to find something. You're going to slide into my DMs later. Young people saying TikTok is popular with the youth.

So I do think this is, I do think this is more, serious for a couple of reasons. For the past two years, I've been having a running conversation with Anthony Gonzalez, the representative, Republican representative from Ohio, voted to impeach President Trump, then chose not to run for re-election. And his argument, he's been making an argument consistently, and I think persuasively that the Republican Party ditches Donald Trump when the Republican Party sees Donald Trump

as a loser and that whatever their moral qualms about, you know, inciting an interaction, insurrection or things like that doesn't really stand up to, doesn't matter to them nearly as much as Donald Trump potentially being a threat to end their political careers. And I think he's right. I think he's right. I think that's what we're seeing is that people no longer see Donald Trump as key to their survival. And I think we've seen this in the aftermath of the election in a couple different ways. One is, as we talked about, on a Dispatch Live a couple weeks ago, the speed with which the election deniers, the people who ran on election denialism abandoned that argument immediately afterwards. Some of them obviously

conceded their own races, but nobody's talking about that anymore. And that makes very clear that election in the context of the 2022 election was simply a means to an end. And it was an effort by those candidates to win support for Donald Trump so that they could win their primary Watching them abandon it with such speed, I think has to raise questions with even the most diehard Trump supporters about what this whole thing has been about for the past year and a half. I mean, it's so obvious that they didn't mean it because nobody's talking about it anymore that I think if you're the mark in the con, you have to sort of recognize that you were the mark in that con at this point. And I think that's a problem. The second big argument, I think, is it feels different. The reasons that Republicans, we have had some Republicans speak out about the Nick Fuentes

dinner and the anti-Semitism, and it's so gross and over the top. The only person who's, I mean, really offering much of a defense at all is Kevin McCarthy, a fact that surprises nobody. Kevin McCarthy, who's lashed the House Republicans tightly to Donald Trump in the weeks after Mara Lago is still suggesting that Donald Trump might not have known who Nick Fuentes was. I find that highly implausible. I believe Donald Trump knew exactly who Nick Fuentes was and was happy to meet with him. And Trump-

One point on there, I just interrupt one quick. This is a classic, Sarah that talked about this last time she was on the remnant. Like this, Trump constantly offers explanations that he thinks absolve him, which are actually crazily damning. Right. And it's sort of like his explanations about classified documents was, well, I wanted them, so I declassified all them. I said they're declassified even though, you know, whatever. It's like it's not true, but even if it were true, that's crazy. Right. Right. And similarly, like, take him at his word for a second. He didn't know who Nick Fuentes was. He still invited he, right? He still said, he bring however you want. That's great. Right. And he still has the kind of staff that lets him do that kind of stuff. That's not like, that's like, oh, well, then there's no problem, right? Right. I agree with that. But I don't buy it at all. I mean, if you look at the circles that, for instance, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., many people on Trump's staff currently run in the people

that they communicate with openly and in public on Twitter. Roger Stone? Yeah. Of course Donald Trump knew who Nick Fuentes was. And by the way, when Jake Tapper, whatever it was, six years, ago confronted Donald Trump on his unwillingness to unequivocally condemn David Duke, Trump pretended like he didn't know who David Duke was in what he believed. I mean, this is a common thing for Trump and it's preposterous. It's really silly. The point is, when you look at people like Kevin McCarthy offering this, you know, sort of silly, kind of pathetic, Trump didn't, maybe didn't know who Nick Fuentes was, there aren't many other people doing that. What you've seen from most Republicans is this attempt to not have to answer the question that the people have

spoken to it have condemned it. Having spoken to a number of Republican strategists and current and former elected officials on the Republican side in the past couple weeks since the election, and in particular since this comment or since this dinner, the people who are ducking comment are not ducking comment for the same reasons, it seems to me. They're not trying to avoid enraging Trump by condemning his Nick Fuentes dinner. They're just tired. They just don't want to have to talk about it.

They don't care much. They don't want to weigh in. It's like before there was this determined effort walk through the halls of the Capitol and people, you know, you'd see Republican elected officials after a moment like this, doing their level best to avoid the throngs of reporters

that were coming at them to ask them. and the questions they knew they were going to be asked. Here, it's not even that. They just, ah, I don't want to talk about it. I'm done. And I think that exhaustion grows from the sense that he's just not as big a factor today as he was four weeks ago, four months ago, or four years ago.

You know, look, I am extremely glad to see a number of Republicans suddenly finding their voice again. I mean, it's been more than just sort of the normal folks. I mean, Mitt Romney has been a reliable voice about Trump for a long time. It's been more than just Mitt Romney who found their voice. There's certainly a lot of the anti-anti-Trump people who take a Trump controversy and use it to attack any critics of Trump who go too far in their view have been pretty silent. The pro-Trump folks have not really dug in behind this.

I mean, there's just, there's without question a change, without any question. at all. It's still nowhere near the way in which Republicans used to condemn Donald Trump in 2016. It is no, it's not even within shouting distance of the way in late 2015 or early 2016, you would have Trump rivals or Trump elected public officials come after him. And the real question to me is we've seen what happens when Republican elected go after his. while his base is still with him. And that is that the Republican electeds don't have any real influence to move those folks. The real question is, where is the base?

Where are the people? Because we also know if the people exert their will for Trump, then you're going to have all of these Republican electates. Well, not all of them, but 90% of them are finding their voice again are going to be doing the old French Revolution. There go the people. I must follow them for I'm their leader. So I tried to get a sense, where are we on this?

So there's the 538, 538 has every Republican primary poll since the election. So, well, let's just do the last, you know, the polls taken in the last two weeks. So since November 16th, they range, and I kid you not, from Trump plus 30 to DeSantis. plus 31. That is the range of the polls. And you can't even say that those are unequivocal outliers, though those are the outliers because I'm looking at a plus 20, a plus 15, a plus 15, a plus 12, plus on each one of these guys.

It's all over the place. And I just don't think we know yet where the Republican bases, you know, the vibe theory of politics kind of got crushed as it was going to because vibes is always going to be just so grotesquely subjective. So my vibes say something is different now. My vibes say there's this guy who has a house right away, right a couple of blocks from the downtown square in Franklin. And he had a Trump 20204 flag and doesn't have it up anymore. What's that say about vibes. I don't know. But I am glad to see Republican officials finding more of their voice. I am waiting to see if it makes any difference at all. And one thing I do see that

is different about 2016 is there doesn't seem to be a huge Republican field coming together for the presidency. One thing that feels eerily similar to 2016 is that the guy who allegedly has the best chance to beat Trump is doing just like what Ted Cruz did, not criticizing Donald Trump. And so, I don't know, we'll see, but I'm overall encouraged, but super cautiously. All of that sounds right to me. This certainly sounds like, again, a simple, of the vibes within Republican sort of elite leadership. Yep. And I 100% assure you that if Donald Trump starts performing well with the base in any of these

primaries, at any of these cattle calls, this will have never happened. And no, you will care. So, you know, it's all very meaningful until it's not anymore. You've got to say that because we've got a bet on it. but my bet's the opposite right well wait my yeah your bet is that he's the nominee my bet is that he's not yep yep you guys are like the pundit version of those guys on cnbc who just talk up their book i'm i'm i'm looking up the steak houses i'm looking up the steak houses right now you think i would rather you think i would rather a free steak dinner over the alternative no it has nothing to do with the

steak dinner. It has everything to do with being able to say to me, I beat you in the bat. Yeah, the country burns, but I beat Steve. Thank goodness. Jonah's, yeah, Jonah's like, those are the right priorities. That is why I did it, because if everything is going to be that bad, I want some silver lining, and that is going to be my silver lining. No question. That's very much why I took the bat. 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. Let's quickly talk about the gun debate that's happening on the Hill. Our colleague, Kevin Williamson, wrote one of his wonderlands about this. I just want to read a line from it. None of that matters because the gun control debate is not about guns. It is simply another front in the culture war, oriented not toward the criminal misuse of guns,

about which our federal, state, and municipal governments do approximately squat, but about the kind of people who tend to own guns. or at least the gun-owning villains of the progressive mind. Congress obviously debating another assault weapons band. I don't really see that happening in the lame duck, and it's certainly not going to happen when Republicans take control of the House. But David is our resident gun nut, not to at all diminish Steve and Jonah's gun enthusiasm.

But I don't know that y'all are nut level. Wait. We're not truly deranged like David is. That's right. That's right. I'm curious if you agree with that sentiment because I don't know that I do, actually, on a few fronts. I think that there are people at this point especially

genuinely concerned about gun violence in this country who are tired of elementary schools being shot up by lunatics who happen to be able to get their hands on a gun because it's so freaking easy to do it. and at Walmart, and at the grocery store, and in the movie theater, and also at the high school, and at another elementary school, and a college. I take the point that for some people, this is another aspect of the culture war. And also, I will say that, at least from like the DOJ federal perspective,

enormous resources percentage-wise are put into trying to get illegal guns off the street. And there's just so many. it's like taking sand out of the beach. I think there should be a lot more resources put towards it, like endless, endless resources to not only on the police side, go out and find those illegal guns, but actually on the prosecution side

to try and indict and prosecute and put in jail people who knowingly sell and profit from the illegal gun sales. So for me, part of the reason why I am hesitant on new gun laws is because if we don't put the resources behind the gun laws we have, then why should I care about some new gun law that we're not going to put the resources behind doing anything about? But David, I was very curious about your perspective and you in particular think have fought for a long time that red flag laws are sort of the path to pursue. But as we just

saw in Colorado, you can have red flag laws and they don't do you any good again if you don't use them. Right. So let's do the smaller question, then go to the bigger question. The smaller question is, for example, about the red flag laws. So we have now seen three shootings, Illinois, 4th of July, Buffalo, New York, Colorado, El Paso County, the LGBT club, where states had had red flag laws, didn't use them when there were indications that the individuals could, I mean, a red flag law could have been used. So, there's really a huge difference from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to how these things are used. For example, in Florida, they're used all the time ever since Parkland. It was very publicized that these things existed. And it's interesting, you know, in DeSantis's Florida, red flag log orders are very common in the thousands. Okay. In Illinois, they were in the dozens.

Now, Illinois isn't that much smaller than Florida population-wise. in New York rarely used. So as you were saying, Sarah, you got to use them if you're going to pass them. Just throwing something on the books doesn't do jack or squat. Now here's the same. Oh, but yes, it does. It does for your campaign. It does for your cable news hits.

That's the problem. It does do something. It just doesn't stop someone from walking into my kids preschool with a gun. I toured, by the way, a preschool yesterday. Incredible place. Absolutely loved it. One of the first things they mentioned on the tour was the double set of doors they have in the buzzer system.

and that all the doors lock from the outside so that the kids can get out through those doors if they need to, but that no one can enter in through them. It was awful to have to do that on a preschool tour. So in Colorado specifically, there's a red flag law, extreme risk protective order law, and the reporting is indicated after the shooting at the LGBT club that the El Paso sheriff had never sought a red flag seizure,

never initiated a red flag seizure. Why is that important? Well, there was an incident where law enforcement was called to the shooter's home before the shooting. This is well before the shooting. And under circumstances where there would have been cause for a red flag law, and rather than, and not only was the, shooter not charged, the charges against the shooter were dropped prior to the shooting.

This was based on the domestic incident at his house, and no red flag order was sought. And so here we go again. And this one seems to be much more of a ideological stance by the sheriff, potentially against red flag laws more generally. In this instance, you're left with the what could have happened, what could have not happened question. So I think we really have to focus on, hey, wait a minute, what tools have we been given and are we using those tools rather than let's pass another law? And then it sits on the books as well. But on the bigger question, Sarah, about sort of the culture war over

guns, I think it's super important to know that in my view anyway, a few things have changed. So throughout the 20 teens when you were talking about gun rights and even before the 20 teens you were dealing with a reality that while more people were buying guns gun violence was at a low that murders had been decreasing gun violence had been decreasing we were at 20 30 40 year lows and the murder rate and so this sort of idea that where you would say well here's a straight line between more guns is going to mean more crime and death was just not the case, right? That just wasn't there. But in the last three to four years, a few things have changed. Number one, murder rate has gone way up, way up. And for everyone who says this is just a big blue city thing, no, it is going up everywhere. Wall Street Journal had a super poignant, long reported piece a few months ago about what's

happening in rural America. gun deaths, gun violence going way up. The other thing is there's been a change in kind of, and some people fight me on this, but I think there's been a change in the gun culture on the right towards more openly armed protest, more brandishing of weapons, a more in-your-face culture regarding the weapons that you have.

And I think that is also, whether you want to call that culture war or what, that's really in many ways rightfully unsettled people. showing up in an anti-lockdown protest, for example, in Michigan is one thing. Showing up strapped with AR-15s and then walking into the Michigan legislature with AR-15s is something else entirely. And we've seen people showing up with weapons at people's homes to protest. All of that is really deeply dangerous, rightfully unsettling to people, intentionally

unsettling to people. So I think in a lot of ways, the debate is changing a great deal from the way it was in 2015, 2016, when you had historically low crime rates, a escalating problems with mass shootings, but again, those were isolated instances. Now you have a much broader version of a problem with gun violence, more mass shootings, and a culture on the far, right that it uses guns as instruments of public intimidation. And I think it's changing the debate. Jonah, does changing the debate matter? Does anything actually change other than we react to both the actual crime numbers and the feelings around crime numbers? I wish I could say yes, but I don't see it. I mean, I think part of the reason why I hate

the gun debate is that there really is a groundhog day. feel to it right and you see everybody on on either side of the debate they you know they wait to find out the first details about the shooter so that they can then grab the appropriate arguments off their shelf and figure out whether they're going to be on offense or defense and um i just find it all so gross and that said i think you know like i i am a supporter of red flag of laws david's convinced me on this it's worth pointing out though that there are no for want of a better term, silver bullets and all of this, right?

So word of fag laws will not solve the whole problem. I don't know Dave's ever argued that they would. One of the problems with red fag laws is that you need the people closest to the would-be shooter to be good people who are concerned about both the shooter and his potential victims. Now, I don't want to cast too far in the too deep in dispersions on this, but like, I've seen the interviews of this guy's dad

from Colorado Springs. This was not a great dad. He was far more concerned by the possibility that his son might be gay than the possibility that his son might have murdered a bunch of people.

And he also seemed like a meth head or something. I mean, he was crazy out of it. And like day drunk. Not that I can throw those stones too far. But like those kinds of people, are not the kind of people who are going to take time out of their day to run down to a court

and apply for a red flag law warrant thing about the other problem I think that I do think there is potential to actually fix to make real improvements is with is is is on the police side Democrats have realized that defund the police was just been politically incredibly stupid and they're they're very quietly backing away from it But there has been this effort with a lot of these very left-wing prosecutors to basically decriminalize gun laws at the back end by refusing to prosecute criminals, violent criminals, or would-be violent criminals, or people who brandage weapons, right? Or people who might the next time they commit a crime have a weapon. And the sort of decarceral project is a big part of the gun violence problem. And case in points is, you know, even if this dude, and I'm glad that we're not naming him,

even if the dude in Colorado Springs didn't have a family that was willing to take out, you know, a red flag warrant on him, the police could have because they arrested him for this bomb threat thing beforehand. And it seems to me like if you actually prosecute people for them, No one's disproven the broken windows theory. If you prosecute people for the smaller crimes, you prevent the bigger crimes down the road. And I think that there's potential for the United States to move back into a saner position on law enforcement

where, yeah, we'll have some social workers do some of the stuff with homeless people, but we'll also prosecute people for violent crimes. And if we can convince people on that, the data show, it's very clear, Black people are the biggest victims of violent crime, of gun crime. And if you can break through on that argument, I think you're not going to solve the problem of the crazy mass shooter necessarily,

but you're actually going to take a big bite out of the problem of gun deaths in this country. Can I jump in here real fast on this very point? Let's put the crazy mass shooter in one category, because about what I'm about to say doesn't really apply to these people because some of these people are committing suicide by cop. There's no sense, none of them have any sense they're going to actually get away with this. National Institutes for Justice

has some really interesting work that's essentially said, look, we know what deters crime. It's not severity of punishment because criminals often don't even know. You're imputing knowledge of sentencing ranges to criminals. One thing that disturbs crime is police presence. In other words,

If there is a cop standing there, you're much less likely to, you know, rob the CVS. So more cops visible helps prevent crime. And the other thing is certainty of punishment, not severity, it's certainty. I know I'm going to get caught. So these two things are pretty related, presence and certainty, right? But this is also where some of the progressive prosecutor's actions, I think, really are very harmful. because of the message is sent that their entire categories of crimes

where even if you're caught there isn't a consequence. So presence plus punishment is really the key to reducing crime and these progressive prosecutors who say there's entire categories where even if there's presence, there's no punishment.

That's a real problem. And this is where the defunded the police movement just absolutely and I mean it's sort of like piling on a runner who's already down on the field at this point but really just deeply destructive but it's more than just funding the police it's getting them out there in the community in an effective way and then actually prosecuting much more than it is stiffening penalties okay let's switch modes here for a minute um Steve I got to say you just kind of seem, look, vibe like a soccer fan. Have you been watching the World Cup? I don't know whether that's, whether you intend that as an insult or a compliment.

What do you think? But I have been watching the World Cup in the few spare moments that I have had over the past couple weeks. I grew up playing soccer since I was five years old, played all the way up into college. But isn't that what's so weird in this country? There's a whole group that we used to call soccer moms, like a huge voting block we referred to by that. Every kid in this country was assumed, presumed, to be playing soccer growing up, and yet we're a country not really of soccer fans at all. I've always found that strange. I think that's true. I mean, this is anecdotal. It's not widespread. And I will admit that I found this, that I was surprised that I found this moving. So I was the second half of the

U.S. versus Iran game earlier this week, in which the U.S. in which the U.S. prevailed. one to nothing. I was at Midway Airport in Chicago and waiting for a flight from Chicago to New York and watching it sitting at one of the restaurants sort of in the middle of the terminal. And I was sort of struck by how many people stop and watched and watched the whole second half.

Like I would say there was a crowd of a couple hundred people sitting around this thing who were really into it. and getting excited and at the end of the game when the U.S. prevailed after a very difficult to watch last 10 minutes,

the place went sort of nuts and it was cool. It was like surprisingly affecting. Now, if you hate soccer, maybe it wouldn't have been. But I was also, we haven't had that kind of a moment. And look, we didn't win the World Cup.

It's not over. I can see from the skeptical looks on the faces of the three of you right now. That's not why our faces are skeptical. That you don't care and you're anti-patriotic when it comes to soccer. But it was a cool moment. Like people were really excited. And I found it sort of surprisingly affecting when I was watching it. You totally misunderstand.

Like the Olympics, if the U.S. is playing any other country in any I'm super into it. I will learn the rules so that I can vaguely understand what I'm cheering for so I don't accidentally cheer for the other team. So yep, World Cup. I'm all in. I don't enjoy watching soccer. I find it incredibly boring. But my patriotism overcomes my boredom. However, didn't you feel a little bit weird rooting against Iran, which is a weird thing to say, but wait for because their team had, you know, not sung along with their national anthem, had been protesting their regime, and then we crushed them and kicked them out of the tournament.

And they later, they didn't sing the anthem at the first game of the World Cup. They sort of half sang it at the second game of the World Cup, and then they sang it at the third game of the World Cup amidst reports that their families were being pressured. No, I did not because I think many of the people who were protesting in Iran wanted the team to lose because of sort of the national pride implications of the loss. And you saw after the game and after the loss some protests in Iran that were celebrating the loss. But wait, which side are both?

I mean, my understanding is that both sides of anyone who is in Iran is celebrating the loss. Because if you thought the team was protesting and they shouldn't have been because they should have been, you know, representing their country, you wanted them to lose. and if you thought they shouldn't have gone in the first place if they were really dissidents, then you wanted them to lose two? The ones that I saw were people who were supporters of the protesters celebrating the defeat.

And what's their argument for celebrating the defeat? That this is a blow to the regime that the regime would have liked to have had this kind of propaganda victory Iran beating the United States, what have you. I mean, it's clear that there have been some really interesting stories about the players and former soccer teammates of one of the players apparently was killed in these protests.

There was, I think, a nice and by all accounts genuine display after the game where the U.S. team comforted the Iranian players who lost, some of whom were no doubt upset about losing in the World Cup. It's a high pressure, high stakes thing, and it's a big deal just to go. but you certainly got the sense that there was more going on there particularly again amidst the reports that the families of the players

had been pressured going in. Jonah, why don't we just do what we used to do in the Cold War? You show up to a tournament with our country and send us a little note that says want to defect and we grab you, we whisk you off and put you in South Dakota where you live a long and happy life in the cold.

Where you can raise chickens like Sam Neal wanted to and hunt for Red October. I thought it was bunnies. I think he wanted to raise rabbits in Montana. Yeah. Same difference. Look, I, same thing, same thing.

I don't watch the World Cup. I try a few times. I just have a sort of thing where any sport where people can watch for a very long period of time that ends in a zero-zero-zero tie and people can still say, wow, that was a great game. Isn't for me.

It's just not for me. And I've grown to appreciate that sane people that are not severely disordered can, in fact, enjoy watching soccer. I'm just not one of them. But yeah, no, I, the match itself, the Iran-U.S. thing was very poignant, and I don't know how you fix. How you make it not, you literally can't take out all of these outside considerations when you're watching it. It's just the context is just, it's too huge and too complicated. And it does kind of make you mystical war where it's just much easier to root for good guys versus bad guys. David, what did you think about the beer thing?

They ban on beer? Well, that they took all the money for advertising. and then at the last minute said, oh, and also we're not going to sell beer at the stadium. I mean, that's what you get when you have the World Cup and Cutter. And, you know, the... FIFA corruption. Yeah, it's all about, you know, these, as we said before,

like these Austin Powers level villains in FIFA, and this is what happens. But, Sarah, I'm totally with you on... I don't care what it is. If it's America versus X, I'm suddenly not just going to watch it I'm passionate about it and that's included about every wild sport

that's now ever been in the Olympics I mean it turns out I'm now into curling but the reason I watched any curling was simply because it was the US winning and beating badly other countries and for some reason especially our allies that that feels like good

wholesome and there's not sort of this looming sadness over the whole thing no, let's just beat the crap out of Canada once in a while. I'm happy to beat the crap out of Canada, but that's paled in comparison to beating the Soviet Union or East Germany and anything. Yes, yeah, but we don't have that now. Everything's complicated, like Jonah said. There's a lot of sad.

Well, I know. That's what I was going to say about the Iranian. And ordinarily, I would say, like, if this was U.S. versus Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps team, then I'm just overjoyed. But this was like U.S. versus Natanzhanskis, you know, like, imagine we're taking on the Soviet team and it's staffed with dissidents pulled from the gulag, you know,

and so you're thinking, yay, we beat the Soviets, but darn, like, these guys are in a world of hurt. This is, you know, so I, there were definite, I felt for those Iranian players and the level of courage that they showed, unbelievable, just unbelievable.

So they were inspiring, and I'm glad we beat them. The Iranian fans in the stadium were kind of a fascinating thing. because you had pro-regime fans and you had anti-regime fans but I'd assume the anti-regime ones were more like expats

coming from other places in the Iranian diaspora but I don't know. I mean it was fascinating. I have to I can't let this discussion end without pointing out the irony of being lectured about the boredom of soccer from you people who find things like Tron

and Battlestar Galactica scintillating. It's like the Dork Squad Revenge here and I'm not standing for any of it. Soccer is far more interesting than any of your sci-fi sci-fi crap that you guys are constantly pushing on us and our poor beleaguered listeners. Sarah, is that what you millennials call a drive-by? I don't think that any of you should be trying to adopt millennial talk. Didn't Steve teach you valuable lesson already in this podcast? See you guys on TikTok. I want to get back to 1920s like

flapper talk. Yeah. You know, like lots of like talk about malarkey and 23 Skidoo. What was it like back then? It was a simpler time. Things are, you can see them devolving. You can hear them. You can feel them.

Thank you all so much for joining us. Don't forget to get this a rating. It helps boost the numbers that then help the algorithm that then help other people find this podcast or so I'm told. And you can always hop into the comments section where we are eager to tell you why you're wrong, I just become a member of the dispatch. And it's a fun little comment section, good times. Otherwise, we will talk to you again next week.

about how his superior home set up? Exactly. Pretty far back in the rearview mirror now that you think about it. Our A.O. that was definitely only an hour or less long took an hour and a half because this kept happening. Mine been pretty good. Don't jinx it, Steve, but you're doing great. Really good.

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