The Dispatch Podcast - What’s Left of the Right?

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Chris Stirewalt, and Megan McArdle for a live recording at 92nd Street Y to discuss what’s left of the right. The Agenda: —What happened to Donald Trump? —The Trump doctrine —Truth-telling in government —Future of the Republican Party —Character in politics —2028 elections —NWYT: Seizing Greenland on Red Lobster's behalf The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everybody. My name is Ellie Fox, an associate director on the 92nd Streetwide Talks team. So nice to see so many of you here for this. Thanks for being here. Tonight's program is part of the Newmark Civic Life series and is brought to you through a generous gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Within the series, we aim to feature leaders who are propelling pro-democracy efforts at this critical moment in the U.S. and around the world. And tonight, we are so grateful to be with these guiding, voices who are doing just that. Within the Civic Life series, we're also raising awareness for Take 9, a public service campaign created to help protect individuals against cyber threats by taking a nine-second pause before you click, download, or share.

Here tonight, to dig into the biggest news stories of the week and to talk about what's left of the right is the dispatch founder, Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, with contributing writers Megan McCartle and Chris Steyerwalt for a special live taping of the Dispatch podcast. Before we get started, please note that we'll be taking your questions, so please start thinking of those and write them down. Our audience, or excuse me, our ushers will give you cards. If you're viewing on the live stream, hello out there, you can submit your questions in the chat. Thank you all so much for being here and for supporting our programs. And with that, please give a very warm welcome to Steve, Jonah, Megan, and Chris.

Hey, everybody. How's it going? Welcome. Happy to be here. Thanks to the 92nd Street Y. We are very happy to be here. Happy to do this taping. We're in good company.

They've had lots of people who are more important than we are over the years. But we're happy to be here. Happy to have you with us. And we want to jump right into it. And my first question is going to be for you, Jonah. On February 28th, Donald Trump launched a war against Iran. This followed the June 2025 air strikes. There was then some intense bombing in the Caribbean of drug boats. There were air strikes on Christmas Day last year against Islamic radical terrorists in Nigeria.

January 3rd, the United States extracted Nicholas Maduro from Venezuela and the president has threatened military action against Cuba, Greenland and a few others for good measure. This is the same guy

who ran for president pretty consistently promising I'm not going to start a war I'm going to stop war. I'm going to stop war. What happened to Donald Trump? Hmm, all right, so first of all, we want to get to a lot of stuff, so like Trump's ceasefire, as my answer won't last very long.

I guess, I guess, I kind of reject a little bit of the premise. There's a shocker. Literally the first question. Trump said lots of things when he's campaigning. You know, I always used to joke about Joe Bolmese. Biden that there was always a non-trivial chance that at some point he would just start shouting, get these squirrels off of me. And something similar to applies to Donald Trump. He says whatever the room wants to hear. I think no more forever wars, no more wars was coded to mean a certain kind of war,

like a certain kind of commitment. He also, you know, in his first term he took out Soleimani. He did all sorts of things with ISIS, right? And that was all popular with the base. And I think he thought going into it, also, it depends on, I mean, campaign trail is one thing, but you got to remember he also really wanted a Nobel Peace Prize for a long time and kept talking. He has the FIFA Prize, Chona.

You act like the FIFA Prize isn't real. Well, and he also has that, um... What's the Florida senator guy? Oh, Rick Scott. Rick Scott, Defender of Freedom Award. Yeah, the Defender of Freedom Award, which was just like literally, let's go to the trophy store. and buff out MVP of soccer league and put Freedom Awards.

Well, and also you have to remember all of the incredibly brilliant the Nobel Prize winners, the top CEOs and so forth, who called Donald Trump frequently to tell him that he's the smartest, most brilliant. With tears in their eyes. And they say, sir, sir, sir. And so I think that it's really important to point out because when you say,

the premise of the question is that Trump somehow betrayed some campaign promise, the only time anyone ever said he was betraying a campaign promise about starting wars was when he attacked Iran. Before that, they had no problem with, you know, Megan Kelly and Tucker and all those people and, you know, and Goring and Himmler. They had no problem with, they had no problem with him doing all that stuff. It was only because the Iran thing was clearly,

as the kind of wars that that crowd thought you shouldn't do. And then it got compounded with the fact that he messed it up, right? I mean, his plan was a Maduro redux. There was going to be a quick thing. He thought he could just roll up victory win after win, and he thought this would be very fast. And he was, you should guys write this down? Wrong.

And so I don't think anything happened to him. I think Trump is the same. I mean, he's getting a little weird, to how much he likes to talk about the male physique of some people. But for the most part, he's the same guy has always been. He's just unrestrained. And in the moment, does whatever he thinks he needs to do to get out of a moment if it's a bad moment.

And so I don't, he was never constrained ideologically by anything. Yeah. So, Chris, I mostly buy that answer from Jonah. But it was the case that a lot of people invested sort of confidence or hope and done. Donald Trump, that he would be the guy who wouldn't start wars. That was what J.D. Vance wrote in his editorial endorsing Donald Trump for president for 2024, which is that he didn't start any wars.

And that he was- And he also added, and I love his musk. And I love his musk. When Trump ordered the Operation Midnight Hammer, which is also a marital aide, when he ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, and he loved the reaction that he got, right? people who normally hate him were like, oh, that was pretty good. And then you can listen to him, talk about the bombs and the bombers and do all of that stuff.

So he's getting positive feedback. The audience likes what he's doing. And then the Maduro thing was like a dream come true, right? It generated memes, the Maduro in the sweatsuit and doing all of that stuff. And there's a really revealing interview. What kind of dreams do you have? There's a lot of rendition. If you listen to Trump or read Trump's interview,

I think it was with The New York Times, but he said it in a few places. What he said about Iran was that we would do a Venezuela, right? And that what we were going to do in Iran would be the same thing. We would remove this leader. We would replace a better leader. Not a better leader, but replace them with a more pliant leader that would do the things like Delci,

Rodriguez in Venezuela. We'd install somebody in Iran who would do the things that we wanted and the sort of the suzerainity of Iran. And we were going to take the oil and it was going to be great. So here's what I assume happened. I assume that people from the Pentagon, people from the CIA, people from the NSA said to the president, well, we could do this in Iran and it might go like this, it might go like this or it might go like this, or, you know, five or six weeks, and maybe we'll get somebody else in place, and it'll go great.

And Trump was like, I want to do that one. And they said, we didn't mean that that was our option meant that the range of outcomes included quick and relatively easy, but the high end of this is going to be hard and painful. And so he believed the best. We're not far from Norman Vincent Peel's Church and the power of positive thinking.

And Donald Trump is going to be. governed by the power of positive thinking. How's it going to be? It's going to be great. How's the 4th of July celebration going to be? It's going to be the most fantastic ever. Everything is the best. Everything is always going to be better than anything that ever happened before.

He glommed on to it. They went for it. And then, of course, when the generals came back and said, okay, well, now we're in. And now we have to, like, do more. Now we've got to commit more force. We've got to do whatever. He was never going to stay in fight because I think Jonah's broader premises, right.

So I think he liked the adulation that he got. from the military interventions overseas. He wanted to be the new Teddy Roosevelt and expand the United States and do all that stuff. And then when it got hard, he just said, no. I do think the power of positive thinking thing is one of the most important aspects of Trump. He thinks he can make the wish the father of the thought

if he just keeps saying it. So like today, he said 19 million barrels, which I don't know that that's actually true, but he said 19 million barrels came out of this trade of Hormuz today, an all-time record. I looked it up. I, EA, you know, all the average, the average per day

in February before the war was 20 million barrels a day. So not only was it not a record. This is the low record. So it sounds to me, Megan, like neither of the gentleman to your right believe that there really is such a thing as the Trump doctrine.

Do you think there's a Trump doctrine? I mean, yes, but it doesn't have anything to do with like American power in the world or anything else. The Trump doctrine is that whatever Trump believes should be true, that he believes he is the greatest man who has ever lived in history. I actually don't know. So there's this interesting thing about depression. I'm going to land this plane. Give me a sec.

There's a word for people who have a very accurate perception of what other people think of them, what their skills are, how smart they are, and that word is clinically depressed. And Trump is, like most people have an optimistic bias because you need it, because the universe is a little scary out there sometimes. And Trump is like, in some ways the opposite of that,

but I don't know whether that conceals underneath a hollow fear that none of it is true and awareness that he's full of it or whether he is like, you know, like a kitten that thinks that if it can't see you, you can't see it, like that he thinks if he lies, the way you thought, I don't know, when I was in like third grade,

I thought if I told people like fantastic stories about my family, they would believe me and then it would be socially true because I was in third grade. And some people kind of never grow out of that. But also he's really good at like selectively forgetting anything that has ever gone wrong in his administration. He may actually believe his own nonsense. I really don't know.

But the Trump doctrine is basically anything that is good for Donald Trump is good for the world because Donald Trump is the world. He is like the, you know, the we are the world. concert, except it's just him. Just him bellowing at everyone else. And, you know, I remember

when, you know, John, he was running, he was talking about John McCain, and John McCain said something mean about him. I don't remember what. Condemned some outrageous thing he'd said. And he said, oh, you know, I like war heroes who didn't get shot

down. And I thought about that when he claimed that he'd been against the Iraq War. He wasn't against the Iraq War. He was against losing the Iraq War, which joined the club. And somehow he didn't think it could happen to him, or somehow he thought he could just BS his way through, like maybe if no one, it's like the Jedi Mind Trick theory of American politics, right?

These are not the Straits of Hormuz you're looking for. Gas prices have never been lower. And this shockingly has not worked. which just on a policy point that's why all of us could point out flaws with the MOU right I think that's fair to say

in a very real sense MOU memo of understanding oh I thought you're about to do the Mickey Mouse thing MOU sorry but the simple fact is he could not give a rat's ass what the thing actually says and neither could the Iranians right right and so a lot

of this is like a distraction for people like us. And clause four of the 14 points from Versailles, which is just crazy, right? People want to argue, oh, this doesn't make sense. In some ways, Vance is right when he said, and it hurts me to say that. But when he says words don't matter,

like Trump just wanted a document to get the straight of Hormuz open, he might comply with it. He might not comply with it. He probably will comply with some of it, like lifting sanctions, which is terrible, and letting oil revenues go to Iran. because he has to do that much just to, like, kick the can.

But, like, this three... Why is settled for $300 billion for this reconstruction fund? It could have been $500 trillion, right? Because it doesn't matter to him. Yeah, no, it's sort of like you used to be able to save up a certain number of cereal box stops and send away, and then you could get your secret decoder ring and your membership in the...

The Pepsi Jet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this is basically that. It's like he is saving... up all of his box tops and he sent them to Iran and he got back his very important piece of paper that allows him to say that he has ended the war.

Donald Trump adopted the phrase, America first. And when he did, people said, this is resident of the American Nazi party. This reeks of the isolationism of the 1930s. I don't think Donald Trump was dog whistling. I think he liked the way it sounded to say America First. Yeah, America First, that's good.

I think he liked it the way that John McCain liked to say country over party or whatever. It sounded like a good slogan. I'm sure he thought he made it up. In the same way he thought he made Make America Great Again up, even though he didn't make that up. There is an America First movement, though, and it long predates Donald Trump. Is it connected in part to the Lindbergh, Henry Ford, vibes of the 1930s, 30s? Yeah, but it's definitely connected to Pat Buchanan. And it's definitely connected to the right-wing populism that has been present in the Republican Party for a long time. Those people are

not isolationists per se, but they are definitely not internationalists, right? They're willing to blow things up. They're willing to kill people. They're willing to do whatever. And what J.D. Vance sort of represents in this is the fullness of the Pat Buchanan. canonism, the fullness of, I'm not going to say John Birch because that's not exactly fair, but it's the same current that runs through. I think those people are genuinely angry at Israel. I think that those people are genuinely upset about Donald Trump's internationalist turn. I think that they're very angry about all of this stuff. And they're the same people who would have voted, the same kinds of people who would have voted in previous primaries.

Do you think the Herman Kane success, the boomlet of Herman Kane, was because people loved 999 as a phrase for taxes? No, he was talking to those same voters. Is it anti-internationalists, though? Because, like, the people who have been telling me about, like, we don't need to get into foreign wars, we don't need to do all this, became curiously silent when we just randomly started kicking Venezuela around

for no particular reason. my favorite theory, by the way, of why we invaded Venezuela, is that Donald Trump wanted to invade Mexico and in order to talk him out of it. You know what we could do, though. We could do, though. We can't go to the movies tonight, but you know what we could do, we could watch something on Netflix.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm not vouching for this theory, but it did strike a certain resonance with me when I heard it. But none of those people seemed very interested in Venezuela but boy, when we did something with Israel all of a sudden and look I am actually the person

who has long been saying like don't call everything anti-Semitic don't get into it like but no it's it seems like it's not really about international they didn't get upset when he started messing around trying to buy Finland how many O's do you put in the word Jews

is the question right? It's like it's not really anti-international It's just anti-ist. So this gets to me, like, I agree with Chris's version that it does directly come from Buchanan, but the connective tissue there is very strong because Pat Buchanan, like, literally wrote a book

called America First, that hearken back to the America First Committee and all that. And then became a Holocaust denier. Right. And so, yes. And, but like, so listeners of my niche podcast have heard me talk about this many times,

but, you know, I have this thing about certain words that people use just to describe the versions of that phenomenon they don't like. So everyone talks about censorship. Oh, I'm against censorship. And then they say, well, what about, you know, like hardcore porn on Saturday morning broadcast TV?

Oh, that's ridiculous. That's just community standards. No, that's censorship. And it's fine, right? We just use the word censorship to describe the censorship we don't like and everything else has some other, like, community standards, some other doctrine.

We do the same thing with isolationism. Pap Buchanan, during the Balkan War, who had carved out this massive amount of space for himself, as a quote-unquote isolationist and reviving the American First Committee, wanted to send, I think, the seventh fleet to protect Christians in Kosovo because they were part of the main

and they had all this sort of grandiose stuff. It's the exceptions that tell you who people are. So like, you know, Israel, like the UN, I keep harping on this, going by the standards of, you know, institutional racism and disparate impact, the UN is structurally anti-Semitic because it has a same.

separate standard just for the one Jewish country. These guys didn't complain about threatening NATO allies to take Greenland, right? They didn't care about Venezuela stuff. They liked Trump going around being strong like bull. But then when he did something that protected the Jews and made the Jews here happy, they lost their minds. And that's the revealed preference, right? Their exception to this, like Trump can do whatever he wants,

he's bestriding the world like a colossus. It's awesome. Screw Ukraine. whatever. All that stuff is great, but don't help the Jews. And that's what set these people off. To be clear, I was against this operation in Iran. I did not see how this was going to end well. And you can argue, like, look, this was much more of a quagmire, it had bigger costs. That's all fair. But the thing is that, like, it was not obvious that Venezuela was going to go fine immediately.

No one had... Nor is it clear it's going to end well. Yeah, indeed. No one had an opinion. Like, they didn't... wait on Iran. They dived right in and like how can we do this you know. I don't know anything about

foreign policy but I do know that Venezuela is a hollowed out petro state that has been overrun by drug lords and has a population smaller than Texas and knocking over Venezuela.

Look, I do not think there is a cogent doctrine by which the United States can pick and choose which leaders of which country in the world without congressional authorization, without anything. We've killed 200 people in the oceans off of the coast of South America, more than 200 people, totally extrajudicially.

The United States government has ordered the killings of these people, including some people, that may not have been those people. Call it unconstitutional, call it illegal, call it whatever you want, but it is way outside the bounds of normal behavior for a decent country that holds itself to the kind of Puan Duhawk, Boys of Pondu Hoc standard of what the United States is supposed to be in the world. But I feel very certain that if you took the offensive lines

of the SEC, they could take Venezuela. I feel pretty good about the U.S. We could take... How about West Virginia's National Guard? I like West Virginia's National Guards, chances against Venezuela. But they go to Iran, and it's like Iran, right? And you're like, no, Iran is huge and ancient, and the Persian culture goes back all of this time,

and it's a complicated, and it's possible that some of the people that have these fanatical belief, here's a core problem Donald Trump has. It's a problem he had with Mike Pence. He doesn't think anybody else believes anything either, right? he thought that when Mike Pence said, I love Jesus, it is the animating principle of my life, it animates how I am married, it animates every,

it is the tent pole that holds up my life. Donald Trump thought, well, that's some stuff that you say, right? That's just some stuff you say to get elected or whatever, but you don't really mean that. And when it's in your interest, you're going to do whatever you want. And I think he assumed the same thing about the suicidal cult of the, of intent. Tehran, that it was like, yeah, they say that.

But when we give them the opportunity to get rich off this thing, they're going to come right over. Which is really funny for a guy who was a critic of the Iraq War. Yeah. Do not have observed exactly where it all went wrong. But if you believe that you go with your gut and you can solve any problem when you get into it, you don't think through the consequences, right? It is a childish behavior of saying, well, we'll just get into it and then I'll know what to do because I'm different and I'm special.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if.

Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. So let's talk for a moment about those. consequences because I think they're likely to be very significant and long-lasting.

Jonah, if I heard you correctly, and I don't have to invite you to correct me if I'm wrong, because you will. Like a whole married couple being with you too. You said Donald Trump didn't think much about these words, and the Iranians didn't think much about these words either. So I disagree with that. I think the Iranians thought long and hard about every single syllable in the memorandum of understanding, and what we're seeing them do now is exploit a situation where we sent Steve

Whitkoff to negotiate the terms of this memorandum of understanding or J.D. Vance, who didn't care then, and I don't think really cares now and seems to have gotten virtually every aspect of the memorandum of understanding wrong in his subsequent public statements, but the Iranians know what's in it, and they know what it gives them permission to do, and they know what they're getting from it. United against nuclear Iran's interest group that tracks the stuff very carefully, estimated that between the 14th, when the memorandum was signed and yesterday, that there were 33 million barrels that went through the Strait of Hormuz, giving the regime roughly $3 billion. That's real money.

That's the kind of thing that Republicans, when Barack Obama did it as part of the JCPOA, went absolutely apeshit over. and you're not hearing anything about it now, what are, in your view, some of the other consequences that we're likely to see as a result of this memo? Yeah, I want to be clear. I think you were right, and if I said that...

Mark it down. In the sense that Iran cared about the MOU because they wanted to roll the United States and embarrass the United States and get what they could up front, right? I agree with that. My point is, they don't care. what the thing says insofar as if they think it's going to restrain their ability to control the straight-of-war moves and they're like screw that noise right and that's the whole thing about the

60-day thing and we're never going to get another final document right they're just going to keep kicking the can on this they want to be able to claim that they can toll the straight-over moves after 60 days and they're going to toll sort of in one way or another service fees right it's like the like when I go to hotels driving across country and I say are you allowed to have dogs and they say, yeah, but you need a deposit. And I'm like, oh, a deposit, okay. And, well, it's not refundable. A not refundable deposit is a fee, right?

But so that part, I think you're right. They rolled Whitkoff, I know, that's shocking. Look, I think there was a period where this thing looked like it was going really well, right, where you could see how China and Russia were scared. Oh, my God, look at how these guys can project power, They're sending this signal that you want to be America's friend, not our friend.

Russia is getting its ass kicked in Ukraine, yada, yada, yada. The Chinese were like, oof, this makes Taiwan seem kind of scary. Fast forward to now, America does not look like this country that you necessarily want to invest in. I mean, you don't want to be left holding a bag of crap like BB is, right? So, like, how much do you want to line up with these guys? Because you're going to get burned. That credibility thing, I think, is real.

I think that there are just... Anytime you give a bunch of fanatical jihadis billions of dollars, there are going to be consequences that you don't like. How they manifest themselves, I don't know. But, you know, Israel is now left holding a bag in such a profound way because it's standing in the world has taken a hit. I think Minnightheimer is totally defensible and was a good thing.

But this thing, it's going to make America seem like an even more unreliable ally going forward, which is impressive, given how much effort Trump made it to seem like we were an unreliable ally beforehand. And other than that, I don't know. I'm sure there are some more legal technocratic things that are coming out of the MOU that are bad

and I have long-term consequences. But on that front, I think it's more just this idea that strategically we lost, even if we won militarily. Chris, I want to ask a little bit more about the credibility question. Eric Erickson, conservative known to all of us, probably to most of you in the room. Nobody would describe him as a fan of Donald Trump. He's supported Donald Trump sometimes reluctantly.

He's criticized Donald Trump. It's a transactional kind of support. It's on this, well, it's support on that. Right. He had a post today looking in particular at J.D. Vance and his spinning of the memorandum of understanding and said basically everything that J.D. Vance said as he went on his his book tour, MOU promotional tour. The pickle cake incident?

Yes. The whole thing. That Vance was spinning things and making claims again and again and again that proved not to be true. And that the Iranians, when they were describing what was in the memo of understanding, point by point by point, those things turned out to have been basically true.

And he ended his post by writing, last week when Iran disputed American statements, it turned out the Iranian side was telling the truth. Can we believe the vice president this week? And you don't have to answer that question. This is sort of a bigger question. I think we all probably have moments like this that hit you, that this is a moment. Are we really wondering out loud whether the Iranian negotiators are being more honest

with the public, with the world, than the Americans? I mean, I don't think the American people have a very high expectation for truth-telling from our... I don't think... I think part of the reason Donald Trump won in the first place was that when Hillary Clinton was like, how you can't have this person ever be president? And the people said, look at you. Like, what are you talking about? So I think the...

Since I don't know anything about foreign policy, I will just give you the politics answer that I know more about. And that is, today is primary day in New York. New York has 25 primaries or whatever you people do up here. It's insane. It's super annoying and it makes my life more complicated. But it's primary day in New York. And Zoran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing a no-look pass

so that they can make sure that every single most radical Democratic socialist candidate in New York has a high-profile endorsement so that they could put a picture. of one or the other. He endorsed the ones that she couldn't conveniently endorse, and she endorsed the ones that he couldn't. And so it is a full boat, and I don't know how the primaries are going to go, but I know that Washington just elected, de facto elected a Democratic socialist. I know that Graham Platner is probably going to be the next senator from Maine, right? That's the safer bet. What J.D. Vance is going to tell America and tell Eric Erickson about... whether he lied or didn't lie.

He'll say, do you know what time it is? He'll say, why don't you shut up with your cavailing and you're complaining about whether or not I told the truth about our conflict with Iran, with Iran, when these radical socialists, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to come and eat your liver, when Zoroam Dani is going to put you in a prison camp, and you're going to talk to me about whether I did that.

and we are in the stakes for the things that don't matter are insanely high which of these two terrible parties is in charge matters relatively little as it turns out neither are competent, neither are able, neither are deserving of the public trust. So it doesn't really, it's easy for me

because I don't really care which of these terrible parties is in charge. On the things that do matter where trust is important and those things are important, like the competent carrying out of government functions or telling the truth about what the government does. It matters a great deal, but we've traded one for the other. I want to congratulate, Chris, on definitely segueing us

to what we were supposed to be talking about tonight. We're right on schedule. We're about halfway done, and we were shifting to politics. Megan, let me go to you next. There is a Republican Senate lunch tomorrow on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump is reportedly showing up to this lunch, If you read the previews, this is going to be something of a battle royale, the Republican senators who have been restrained for all of these years.

Throw their fruit cups at him. The Yolo caucus. They're going to give it to them. They're going to give it to him on Iran. They're going to give it to him on this weaponization fund with money theoretically designated for January 6thers. They're going to give it to them on a number of things that we've heard these Republicans speak out about. recently. Why are those Republicans speaking out now? Look, there is nothing more offensive than writers who quote themselves, but...

Stand by. Allow me to offend. I wrote a column a few years ago when they were thinking about nominating Donald Trump again, which I was opposed to, and I said there is no Trumpism. Right, there's all of these guys who thought, well, you know, it's like listening to someone talk about their decision to stay in a really bad marriage. It's like, you know, sure, she drinks too much. She hates my kids. She stole my television and sold it to pay for drugs.

Sometimes she hits me, but my ex-wife hates her. Right? And like not a good reason to stay in that marriage, but they had decided that he seemed to have some sort of magic. And they were going to hitch themselves to that star. And then they were going to fight to be the next Trump. Right? They were going to pick up the mantle of Trumpism

and carry it forward into the bold future. And as I wrote then, there's no Trumpism. He has no ideology. He doesn't even have a movement because he's incapable of being loyal. He is the fable about the scorpion on the frog that's swimming him across the water. And he is definitely going to sting you and kill you. Because he can't help it. He just can't help it.

He can never think long-term enough, systematically enough, or about things like loyalty and character. He does not happen in him. And he's, you know, while I like to believe that we're all capable of personal growth, I feel that it's 79. 80. 80. Yeah, you have probably reached the end of your personal growth phase,

or at least the rapid phase. And so I said, like, look, you can't pick up the mantle. It's him. It's just him. And he is, meanwhile, that thing is going to destroy your party. He is going to do, again, writers who talk about the predictions they got correctly are terrible, But he is going to do crazy impulsive stuff that's going to be bad and is going to be a bad look

and that people will not like just like he did in his first term. Correct. And he's going to turn this party into a cult of personality. He will not appoint a successor. You can see he hasn't, right? He has not really leaned into who he's grooming for the succession because that would mean admitting that he's not. not going to be in charge forever.

And he is going to leave you with a hollowed out shell of a party. He will damage your brand. And you can see all of it. Look at poor John Cornyn in Texas. With his, what was it, 99.3% votes to support Trump. Fat lot of good that did him because he didn't endorse quite fast enough in 2024. And so we got Ken Paxton in Texas instead because I guess what's really important is not whether someone is, I don't know, of good character, an able administrator,

able to keep his own party from voting to impeach him for a dereliction of duty. But is he obsequious enough to Trump? Does he not merely bend the knee but touch the forehead to the ground in front of him? That is what Trump is selecting on. And he's going to destroy your party and he's going to destroy you. And damn it if he hasn't done it. But they have just figured out that, like, they need. knew he'd done it, but that, like, they're going to be free in two years.

And that there's nothing he could really do because he's super unpopular and he's losing his own caucus. And guys, you could have done this earlier. You could have saved so much if you just did this earlier. Many, I am not the only person who told you. Everyone told you, if there's any Republican senator listening to this, I'm sorry, I told you so. We all told you and you deserve what you're getting now. Too little, too late. I mean, better late than never, but too little, too late. Joan, I'm going to go to you next to try to follow up on that.

Megan mentioned a couple of specifics there. I think actually the endorsement of Ken Paxson over John Cornyn really was a motivating factor. Those guys were pissed. The Republican senators were pissed, both because they liked Cornyn. He'd raised a lot of money for them. they knew that that was going to make it harder for them to keep the Senate,

not only because Ken Paxton has to get elected, but because a lot of the money that would have been going to other competitive races is now going to flow to Texas to try to get Ken Paxton elected. But if you look at the other issues, is it just because people like Bill Cassidy not coming back, Donald Trump did him dirty, Tom Tillis had been outspoken, he's not coming back, Donald Trump did him dirty.

John Cornyn is now sort of the leader of the Yolo caucus in the Senate. He's speaking out about anything and everything. Certainly seems to be liberated. And you add to that group, people like Mitch McConnell, who was speaking out before, and Lisa Murkowski, who's quirky and Susan Collins, who more or less speaks her mind, is it just that? Is that all it is? Or is there something more?

Is this sort of an awakening? Are they understanding, yeah, we could have done this before? We blocked this weaponization fund. We could have done this before. Well, I want to offer a little less nuance than Megan offers. Look, I think the yellow thing is a big part of it, right? I mean, it's the political equivalent of FU money. Right?

They get, like, they're all going to go home and make more money, you know, even if they just get weird little cynicier jobs because senators don't get paid that much money and they're going to have time, and now all of a sudden they're actually thinking about, crap, historians are going to write about me. And my record so far is basically, you know, the cranial insertion past the sphincter version of ass-kissing

for the last decade, maybe I need at least a footnote that says I criticize the guy, right? So there's some of that kind of thing going in. There's also, I mean, like, I think they also can see that even though I don't think Trump has fundamentally changed, I think what's changed more is the deterioration of guardrails, right? I mean, this term, like, there were a lot of people in that,

I mean, we've been talking about this for 10 years now, the number of people who will say to you, you have no idea what we stopped over and over again in the first term, right? Those people, I think there's some at the margins in there, You know, like Scott Besant doesn't want the economy to create her, so every now and then he'll step up and that kind of thing. And Rubio, I think, at the margins, tries to, like, he picks his fights a little too selectively,

but, you know, he does what he needs to do. But for the most part, there's nobody there saying, slow your role. Susie Wiles is no John Kelly, right? And so these guys now are the next line of defense in a certain way, and they're seeing this thing really kind of go off the wrong, A lot of these guys actually believe in NATO. Like, they're those kind, they're still kind of Reaganites somewhere in their recesses of their soul.

And they care about Israel. And they think this stuff is folly. And so I think at that level, they're like, first of all, I'm out of here. So why bother lying anymore? And second of all, the responsibility is washed out to them more than it had, and certainly in the first term. And it's also just becoming apparent, the stuff that Megan was talking about. about, like, he gave a quote, someone from CBS posted it yesterday on the Twitters.

He said, Trump said in effect, look, it's really simple, if you like me, I like you. Right. And... That is almost, I think that is a direct quote. It is the quote. And it is such an important heuristic,

like, second to the power of positive, positive thinking thing, that's how Trump sees the world. If you like him... You are nice or not nice. Yeah, you're nice to me or you're not, right? Remember when he got schelacked in the 2018, midterms, and he went and gave a press conference saying that all of these sort of, like,

moderate Republicans who got killed because Trump was so unpopular, that they all lost because they didn't embrace him, right? My favorite example of this thinking is when he was asked about pardoning, was it, Did he, or Kanye? Who's the guy who got into the sex parties? Oh, sure, act like you don't know. Act like your backpack's not full of baby oil, Jonah. Okay, sure. Well, now that the straight of formula I want, finally the oil prices are going down. But he said, hey, look, he was asked, would you pardon him? And he said, well, you know, this is a really, like,

thoughtful for Trump, right? You know, best gas station sushi in Alabama, thought, you know, standard, but still, he says, you know, this is a really interesting question. Because he said some things about me that weren't nice. and then he started saying things about me that are nice and so I'd be inclined to give him a pardon but like we haven't figured all that

literally this awesome power that I think needs to be seriously amended in the Constitution that we've given the president about the ability to suspend you know to just to erase criminal convictions for serious wrongdoing the standard for him wasn't has he served his time

Was he unfairly prosecuted? Has he shown repentance or remorse? Is he, you know, all that? Purely personalist, was he nice to me? And I think a lot of these guys on the Senate, and the Cornyn thing I think is one of the things that really sort of crystallize it for them. They're like, I can never be nice enough to this guy

that if he has the opportunity to screw me, he won't screw me. So maybe I should stop trying a little bit at the margins. I mean, I don't want to talk like the Yolo Conference is just this, you know, caucus of Reinhold knee-molers and like these heroic truth-tellers now, they're doing a little bit closer to what decent people should be doing in politics

and we should celebrate it. Can I offer... So if you were playing tennis with an orangutan... As one does. As one does. As one will. You're playing tennis with an orangutanang, right? And the orangutan beat you at tennis. You're going to be super...

You're going to be super embarrassed because it's an orangutan. And like, maybe it's a smart orangutan like the any which way but loose orangutang, but it's still an orangutan. So you're all like, I've lost to an orangutan. But then, right, you're still playing by the rules. The way that the orangutan beat you is that you're still playing tennis and he's just throwing feces at you. He's just doing orangutan things and you're over there still playing tennis.

the members of the Senate believe in the idea that elections have consequences. They're lifetime politicians. John Cornyn has been in elected office since the earth cooled. He has won 10 million elections. John Cornyn never lost an election until this month.

He was a very good, very successful politician in Texas. Successful career as a judge. So he, we knew, the whole thing. And John Cornyn backed other people to beat Donald Trump. Donald Trump won his party's nomination. The name of the game that he's playing, his version of tennis, is like, okay, well, they won. My side lost. So now I have to follow the 11th commandment and not criticize other Republicans and do it. But also by

his version of this game of tennis now, now he can throw excrement back. Right. Like, now it's over. So the consequence of endorses, against somebody in your own party, coming out against a sitting senator, then under the rules of tennis that John Cornyn plays, that these people play, well, now it's on. And what you're watching in John Thune right now is a person who wants to be a institutionalist, somebody in the mold of Mitch McConnell, wants to save the Senate from itself, wants to keep the Senate the Senate, and do all of this stuff. And Donald Trump is throwing excrement at him, but he's also throwing lawn furniture at him and bowling balls, and he's climbed to the top of the fence around the

tennis court and is just raining it down on John Thune. And John Thune is like, I think I may have to stop playing tennis, right? I think I may need to have to stop playing tennis here because we are at the point. And the last time we stood at that point was after January 6, 2021, where the Republican said, I think we should keep playing tennis. And the orangutan is going to go away. and we don't have to worry about this, and we're just going to continue to play by the rules. And what you see now is they're playing by the rules, but they're in the Ali-Axon-Free phase, the lame duck phase,

and I don't think they are prepared for what's next. I want to slightly quibble with the idea that they were playing by the rules. The rules are that when you get elected Senate, and you have someone who has attempted to stage insurrection, auto coup, whatever you want to call it. Right. The rules are you're supposed to impeach the guy. I know.

Bar him from office for the rest of his life. Those, that was the oath they took. Hand on the Bible. Do you think I would play tennis with an orangutan? I would never play tennis with an orangutan. I'm just saying. I don't think they were following the rules. And like that is a big, because like, this is the thing,

is that actually in the end, character matters. and in the end, it actually does matter to have rules. And they thought, well, Donald Trump apparently suspended the rules. I guess I'll go along to get along. And if I attach my lips to his ample behind with sufficient sucker-like force, perhaps he will just drag me and my party, yes, and he did. He dragged you in your party, but not where you thought you were. But a place, that's why Mike Lee got all those scabs on his...

Oh, my gosh, it's rough up there. It's a very rough. We're going to get an E for this podcast. Yeah. Where are we going to publish this? Well, no, so we left out of it. So the yellow stuff, I think, is interesting. It's worth talking about.

But the people like Mike Lee are in some ways much more interesting to me, because this is a guy who has to, on an intellectual level, know how wrong he is at some... You would think he would have to know. I was on the convention floor when he attempted, when Mike Lee led the attempt

to get the convention to nominate someone else. He knew then. Vote your conscience. Yeah. He knows now. Ted Cruz is pushing really, really hard to get Mike Lee appointed to the Supreme Court. And I just think you can literally,

like, you know, that whole, like you can just take a core sample to understand what, like, thousands of miles of Arctic ice, get the chemical composer over this. any 24-hour period of Mike Lee's Twitter feed is enough to disqualify him for the Senate, never mind the Supreme Court,

but there are these people who have like, they're like, screw this, tennis. You know, like, have you ever... I'm an orangutanan. Have you ever flung orangutan poo? It's awesome. And he's got the best orangutan poo flinging arm I've ever seen, and they love it.

And that is like the corrupting. power of his character in some ways, and that's going to take a long time to fix. And if I can just add one last thing. Of course you can. Keep going. The last thing is, if you look at the president's endorsements, he didn't need to endorse in Texas because Ken Paxton was going to win anyway. So he just wanted to back a winner.

And he didn't need to endorse. So if we look across at these endorsements and his choices, where the report, Republican electorate agrees with him, he does great. Where the Republican electorate disagrees with him, we just saw it in Iowa, right? We just saw it in Georgia. People, you could do, you can write the piece that says Trump flexes his power because all of the Indiana state senators that got voted out over redistricting, he put a bounty on their heads and they were gone.

Or the radicalized voters of Indiana wanted gerrymandering, right? That's true, too. because just like the Democrats in Virginia wanted gerrymandering, I assume the Republicans in Indiana want to eat the livers of Democrats. The president's power among the Republican base is great.

The endorsement is valuable, but it won't work in places. In Iowa, it was a straightforward repudiation of the Trump-back candidate, right? They went for the Maha-Ajacent, like, cuckoo-Banhas candidate, very intentionally spurning the candidate that Trump told them to back.

So I think we should just bear in mind that he only looks like he's leading the parade when he makes sure that he's out in front of it. So let me offer a slight note of hope, and this may just be naivete. But I do think that Trump really is just sui-generous. I think that he's a celebrity candidate and celebrity candidates played by completely different rules.

He bypassed all the gatekeepers, and therefore, like, someone like Trump normally doesn't go anywhere in politics because you can't get to the point where you're running for president. Right. Without this incredible confluence of, like, really crowded primary field, everyone in the primary field,

with the noble exceptions of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, behaving like a completely insane person and running, like, Jeb Bush, burning his whole war chest to destroy Marco Rubio. That's an amazing thing I've ever seen. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, yes, close second. John Kasich, staying in for no apparent reason.

Pizza with a fork, though. Yeah. You know his dad was a mailman? Oh, you guys are so... It's the meanest podcast I've ever been on. And Trump, so Trump is of unusually bad character for a politician, right? I think we can all agree on that. And even by the arguably low standards of politicians,

you know, standard joke, I won't argue whether it's true or not. But the thing is that, like, after he's gone, whoever replaces him is going to be another normal politician. It's going to be someone who is part of a coalition. They will have loyalties. They will have some investment in how the rules work. And so I actually think in some ways he has done phenomenal damage, both to the political system, to the Republican Party, to many things.

But I think nature will actually probably heal faster than we think for this reason. If you saw what happened, right, he didn't, in the 2016 primary, he didn't get a majority, right? He got a plurality. But the thing was, so there's like his base, but there's actually, I would say, a larger group of people. I think we've talked about this before, Chris. There's a somewhat larger group of people who were just party loyalists.

Yep. Right? They hate Democrats, right? They can all agree on that. But then they were mad at, like, the establishment trying to get Trump because they were like, he won, and those are the rules fair and square, and now, like, we all have to rally behind him.

And they were mad at people who said no. But here's the thing, when there's a new nominee, and there will be a new nominee, they will get mad at Trump if he tries to destroy that nominee. His base will stick with that. But the actual, like, that kind of in Kuwait mass that just thinks, like, we rally behind Republicans, they will get pissed off at the MAGA Bays.

Always, never Trump, always Republican. Yeah. The three-cats. Yeah, they always Republicans are the biggest group. And I think between those two things that we are going to have normal politicians again, I'm not saying our politics will be good. Look what's happening in the Democratic Party now.

Not great, Bob. But there's nothing there with the exception of Graham Platner, who I assume is not going to be president, God willing. They're just kind of more normal folks, and that politics is not going to be, like, great after this, but I do think it will be better and faster than you would think for the sheer amount of damage is done to our institutions, our party, and our country.

So I want to get back to that. point because I want to end with a conversation briefly about 2028. I want to work in a couple of the questions that we got from the audience. But I have a specific question for Chris first. Jonah mentioned sort of old Reaganites scratch some of these senators that they have some Reaganism in them. If we were to look at the current Republican members of Congress, House and Senate, and we put them in three buckets, sort of Reaganites, party firsters, Republican type, and MAGA. Give me percentages.

Well, I mean, I guess I would just say conservatives, the people who are conservative conservatives in the Culligian, Taftian sense of the word, of the ancient faith that Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were a part of, have always been a very small number, relatively speaking, in the Republican Party, right?

that the Republican Party has not typically been a conservative party. They've been more conservative than the other party, but having the reason that those three in the 20th century stand out is because they're unlike what Republicans, Republicans are typically a lot more like Richard Nixon, not characterologically, but like they're more like Herbert Hoover. They're more like the people who are like Mitt Romney. It's not that I'm against big government, right?

I'm against big government run badly. I just want to be in charge of it. We should have a powerful government, and if we have the right people in charge of it, it's going to do well. So the number of actual conservatives of the Reaganite kind is, I don't know, two in the Senate.

I don't know what the number is. The number of people who are more conservative than Democrats and always Republicans is like most of them, right? That's the overwhelming majority. when John Barrasso and, you know, John Thune and whoever else, they would rather be conservative than they would be whatever. But they'd rather be conservative than nationalist,

but they'll do what it takes. So on the MAGA front, discerning between which members of Congress are pretending to be MAGA, which ones are really America first, really whatever, I think Megan's 100% right. We will not know until after the show is over, right? Because as long as Trump is around, we won't know whether or not they have been changed by the experience

and think differently now. But in the Senate, just... It's going to be like Lord of the Rings, the finale. It's going to go on for like 45 minutes. Right. John Barrasso going back to Hobbiton and like... So like there are people, Bernie Moreno, Senator from all.

Ohio. He exists because of Donald Trump. Bernie Moreno would not be a senator if it were not for Donald Trump. But was at one time a never-Trumper? But was it one time? Well, there's a bunch of those people, right? Like many. I believe Vice President J.D. Vance. Vice President J.D. Vance was hardcore.

And then I guess I would just say in the Congress, it's probably fairly reflective of what the Republican Party is nationally. I think it's probably fairly representative open to correction on this, that there are some conservatives, there are a ton of Republicans, and then there's a small band of, whether you call it America First

or whether you call it MAGA, but this nationalist edge here, and we don't get to find out until later how much of those people are Trump suckers who are just along for the ride and then later we'll cast that off to be something else, or how much has the nationalist energy that's entered the Republican Party,

How real is it? I don't know. Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join, and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month for free.

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And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Final question before, not worth your time. And you can choose to answer this question any way you like, starting with Jonah, then Chris, then Megan. In 2028, will Donald Trump be the most important Republican in the 2028 cycle? So I get to answer it anyway?

Does that mean like I could do it in Esperanto? Esperanto? That's amazing. Yes. He will be the most important person in the Republican cycle, but what that means, I think, is hard to figure out, right? Look, the most important figure you could argue in the 1976 presidential election was Richard Nixon, right? Ford's, you know, pardon of him, you know, Jimmy Carter, I'll never tell a lie, you know, like it was all cleanup operation for Watergate and for Nixon

and all that, and you had this insurgency from Reagan that almost pulled it off, which was a response to, in many ways, a response to Nixon too, right? More of an ideological one. Like, so much depends on whether or not there's going to be an impeachment.

Whether the impeachment is total performative ass clownery or, like, really justified splitting the Republican caucus. Is there a more than E-rating that we're going to be? Exactly. Tonight on the main stage, performative-ass clownery.

That's right, put your hands together. I think I saw them touring with nine-inch nails. That's right. They opened for nine-inch nails. So, like, I think it's unlikely Trump ever gets a very high approval rating again, but it's very possible it gets higher than it is now, right? And this is one of the reasons why we don't have to do my full, why I think the Vance inheriting the mantle thing

is wildly overdone. Historically, we don't, like the math of sitting vice presidents running, they have to run for four more years. Running for four more years when you have an unpopular president is just not a great slogan, right? So there could be a real headwind against him.

But how you responded to Trump, what Trump says about you, whether you were in favor of, you know, his last gasp effort to seize Canada or not. I mean, there's going to be so many unpredictable things that we don't know. The Iran thing, look, Iran, people say Trump will never bomb Iran again, and I understand the argument,

and I think that's the way I would bet. But it's entirely possible that we get to some critical mass thing where he's just so humiliated by Iran that he's like, screw it, let's take those bridges, right? And so it's very difficult to predict, but no matter what, the idea that he's going to, recede into the background and let the Republican Party

figure out who they want to succeed him, I think is inconceivable. I've heard more and more people in green room chatter talk about how it's too soon for Don Trump Jr. to run for president, but maybe vice president.

And, like, that could be some whole weird subplot. It's why I may continue to cut myself for another five years. So I don't know, but yes, he will be the most important figure. Chris? There's only one thing that Donald Trump, the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media, or whatever's left of the mainstream media,

agree on. And that is that Donald Trump should be the focus of every single political story, right? Every story, every question should be about Donald Trump, and that's how Donald Trump likes it. And there is no way that the former proprietor of the Miss Universe pageant and the former host of this celebrity apprentice is going to let this go off untrammeled, right? There's no way he's going to be like,

you guys go and figure it out. JD's got my blessing. You guys have fun. It's been fun. You go enjoy yourself. So there's that part. But then there's this part. What in the heck is going to happen this November?

How do we think Donald Trump would respond? If the polls are predictive, and they may not be, and the polls will change, and Jonah's point is right, that the president's job approval number, which has been roughly equivalent to that of wet baloney, has like, let's say it gets back up to the lukewarm baloney level. Let's say he's back at a 40% doing whatever.

But if the current polling is predictive, the Republicans are in for a brutal November, right? They just lose. They're losing everywhere, and Democratic turnout primaries have been through the roof. Do we think that Donald Trump is going to accept the results? of the midterms and say, you beat us fair and square

and I look forward to working with Hakeem Jeffries on the priorities of the future. No, right? It's going to be absolute bedlam and he's going, when somebody puts an idea in his head about, well, you could call out the National Guard, you could seize the ballot boxes, you could do whatever.

Send in ICE. Send in ICE. It's all going to be discussed or actually happen. It's going to be called Nice. It's going to be called Nice. Steve, don't call them ice. They're nice. If they lose the Senate, that trial is going to be, the impeachments

and the trials are going to be brutal. It's not going to be the little pliant Republican Senate giving you a little show trial. It's going to be grueling. Yeah. And so how that goes, tell me more.

I would just shut up by picture. Quadrenial elections now are backward looking and the consequences of midterms shape the perceptions of the electorates for the quadrenial election. It used to be the other way around is that they were echoes.

Now what people think happened in the midterms and I have no idea what is going to happen in the midterms in that way. Megan, final word to you on this. Who was the most important person in the 2024 election? It was Joe Biden and he wasn't even on the ballot, right? It was all of, but it wasn't just the fact that he had sort of broken the story of his cognitive issues on national television after the mainstream media inexplicably failed to get the story. Cover up.

Well, like, no, that was not fair, actually. There were some people, Alex Thompson and Axios, Annie Lindski, at the Wall Street Journal, who did great work on this. But in general, like, there was too much credulousness. and that drove so much of what happened afterwards, right? Structurally, just because Kamala Harris, I'm not actually sure, I think it might have been better for Kamala Harris if she'd had like a month. But I think maybe she had too long.

But he will be the most important person in the race, but I'm not sure he will be the most powerful person in the race. And I think those are two different things. A word. So what he has done, done will shape the race and the probably unlikelyhood of his successor

getting another term, whoever that is, another Republican term, I should say. But I don't think he's going to get to drive the outcomes. I think, and I don't just mean that he's not going to get to drive the outcomes in the general, which he definitely is not. But I think, like, okay,

so you imagine he's going with a Republican presidential candidate who is, you know, like, tell you what, I'm going to endorse you in the primary, and then you have to make Don Jr. the vice president. Right. Okay, sir, I'll do that. How does he enforce that?

What are you going to withdraw the endorsement? At that point, it might help you to not have the endorsement of Donald Trump in the general. He has no power. Yeah, I think it's a good distinction. He'll be the most important issue, but he may not be the most powerful person. He may not. He's going to want to keep. pulling the puppet strings,

but I think they will slip out of his hand at the moment when the nomination is clinched. The next person is going to be in charge of what happens. And you know what? They're going to be kind of like Harvard. Their job is going to be to go out and fight valiantly and lose. But kind of like the Harvard football team.

But whoever it is, I don't, I'm not really sure why you should want this job, but they're going to make the decisions. It's not going to be Donald Trump anymore. finally tonight not worth your time i bring you thomas danz chairman of the u.s arctic research commission a trump appointee influential advisor to the president on greenland oh i saw this told the new yorker magazine the other day making a case for why the United States should take Greenland. Quote, my view is the United States could take all the seafood Greenland could produce

and cut out the middleman and keep it from China, and you could bring back all you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster. So question to the panel, starting with you, Chris. Yes. If you were advising our marauding president on which, country to attack next so that you can have an endless supply of one food. What country would you invade and what food would you consume until your heart's content? Or explosion. My heart's content or explosion. I'm going to say, I guess I'm going to go with

Spain. I'm going to take your adopted homeland. 30 dog. For the ham. For the ham. I love Virginia ham. I love the ham. I love the surrey ham. It's fantastic. It's great. Edwards, feel free to send me another ham. I'm here for you. I love you.

But the Spanish ham is a banger. And you can't really get that. We can get all the beef we want in the United States. But the Spanish ham is really, really good. The acorn-fed pigs. Yeah, the acorn-fed pigs. So I'm going to... Also, Spain's, you know, they're a little lippy.

So let's just, let's go. We'll take Spain out. And then I get unlimited ham. I'm in. Let's go. I mean, we could end right there because that, in fact, is the correct answer. It's delicious hands.

Both ways. Megan. Are we prepared foods or, like, raw materials here? Prepared foods. Okay. I think I'm invading France for the cheese. I mean, first of all, those of us who lived through the war-blogging years

during the Iraq War, remember the famous epithet for the French, the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. So hopefully it won't be all that difficult. Although, no, I shouldn't say that. Actually, France has probably the best military outside of Ukraine at this point in Europe. But I'm sorry, my French brethren. I love your country, but I love your cheese.

I'm taking it. Jonah. This is tough. Because, I mean, first of all, you know, and I've written this column several times, Trump ruins a lot of the ideas that I think are good ideas. I was in favor of going for Greenland before, like, peacefully,

a negotiated thing, like have them do a referendum. And their shrimp is actually really good. And I like all you can eat shrimp. But if you're talking about prepared, I think, first of all, it would be wrong for me not to be on brand. So it's a toss. Cuba has ruined its cigar industry, and we're going to get it anyway,

so I don't need to talk about them. And it'd be a little weird if you're eating cigars. Don't eat the cigars, I should point out are not food. If we could do an entire leg. It's an expansive answer. It's food for the soul. I think, I feel, and I don't give a rat's ass that I'm extending beyond the boundaries of your self-imposed question.

But I do feel bad because I really love the tartan army. and I think I love that stuff in Boston. You want all the haggis? I don't want any of the haggis. Although I have to say, I actually really do like blood sausage now, which I never thought I would.

This is how we keep it sexy for the younger listeners. And I was thinking about... I was actually... Keep it on board. Blood sausage. I was thinking about pissing off Chris and saying, because he's talking about how great the West Virginia National Guard is and just say, well, we can get all their spam.

But I think I got to say I want Scotland Scotch. And... Okay, if we're going expansive, I want to invade Israel. We're going to be in for another three hours. I want to invade Israel. I know. Like, you know what?

We're not playing on easy. You're at the 92nd Street. Why? You cannot talk about... No, no, no, no, no, no. But listen. And we don't want to give Trump any ideas. Come.

Israeli hotel breakfast buffets. Amazing. If you know, you know. Oh, my God, yeah. If, like, and besides, like, it seems too easy to invade France. Let's go. So let's play. We're playing on brutal.

Yeah, I want the Israeli breakfast buffets. I'm keeping ham. I'm good with ham, Steve. I want you to know. I'm playing tennis, whatever these orangutans are doing, I'm still playing tennis. I will join your coalition of the willing and take all the wine in Spain.

Please join me in thanking our panel for a wonderful discussion. Thank you all for coming, and thank you to the 92nd Street. why for hosting us. Good night.