The Dispatch Podcast - Why Trump Wants to Lift Russian Sanctions

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Mike Nelson to discuss President Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and the Pentagon’s planned execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. The Agenda: —The state of Ukraine’s defense —Can Trump legally lift sanctions? —Why Trump hates Zelensky —Do voters care about Ukraine? —Livestreaming Nidal Hasan’s execution —NWYT: Breaking news in gender science Show notes: —New York Times: Chris LaCivita consulting for pro-Russia republic —President Trump’s approval rating on handling of Russia/Ukraine —Sen. Tom Emmer on lifting sanctions—Edmund Burke’s “Birds of Prey” speech 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

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we discussed the decision by the Trump administration to lift sanctions on Russian diesel. And we attempt to understand Trump's continued infatuation with an appeasement of Vladimir Putin. And then the planned execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan by firing squad, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's promise that the execution will be live-strength. And finally, for not worth your time, some breaking news in gender science.

I'm joined today by dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, Advisory Opinions guest host and New York Times columnist David French, and retired Army Special Forces Officer and dispatch contributor Mike Nelson. Let's dive in. Mike Nelson, I want to start with you. This has been a very busy several days with respect to the U.S. position and the Trump administration's position on the war of aggression that Russia launched against Ukraine. We have seen sort of escalating rhetoric. In fact, I think we talked about it on this podcast a couple times over the last several weeks. Things seemed to be kind of simmering and moving to a boil. then we saw this past week some pretty aggressive rhetorical attacks from Donald Trump on Voldemir Zelensky, Zelensky defending himself, the Russians sort of sitting back and occasionally adding in a comment of delight at the tensions between the United States and

Ukraine. Can you just walk us through what's happened over the past week? And why is this happening now? What's going on? Well, we've seen over the past several months that Ukraine has done a lot of kind of creative approaches to attacking the Russian war machine that has attacked them. And it is continuing the war that, again, you know, despite the rhetoric that we saw over the past week, that one person has the ability to end, and that's Vladimir Putin. To that end, they have done a lot of innovations on the front line, the integration of new technologies and new tactics. But they've also integrated some of these deep strikes that we've seen of the past several months, targeting some of the Russian

infrastructure that allows them to continue the war. most notably against the Russian oil infrastructure. That number one denies Russia revenue that they use to support their forces. And it's also a direct input into the war. They need that fuel. They need those lubricants to be able to continue to move their tanks and BMPs and other machinery. So Ukraine has been very effective at targeting some of these capabilities and some of these facilities within Russia. Now, what we've seen is since about end of February of this year, the price of diesel went up globally, most notably because of the U.S. war in Iran. A lot of that was because of diminished flow of energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz,

as Iran has pulled that lever as a means to try to exert pain on the global community. Much of that has been offset now. We've been able to either escort shipping through the Strait of Hormuz or, you know, use other points of embarkation throughout the region to the point where we are about 90% of pre-war oil exports or energy exports coming out of the region, we have returned to about 90% level. What we haven't returned to is the number of refined products that are leaving the region. And largely, that's because Iran, as part of their counter-response, hit oil infrastructure in Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and we're seeing the Houthis are continuing

to hit Saudi oil refineries as they have expanded the war to become a part of the Iranian coalition. So these facilities that refine oil products into diesel fuel have diminished the overall global capacity or global supply and kept prices high. Right now, about 60% of refined products are leaving the region compared to what they were pre-war. So this has had an incredible spike in prices on diesel fuel, which affects American farmers, affects trucking and shipping, which which then affects the prices of goods all over because they're shipped via trucks that use diesel fuel. This has obviously become a pressure point for the president going into the midterms. And the primary thing he hears, or at least is responsive to,

is the idea that high gas prices are affecting his favorability and are potentially going to result in a blue wave. He seems to be upset by that, frustrated by that, and looking for someone to blame, besides the fact that the war in Iran has not been resolved and has had crucial. and has had greater effects regionally and globally than he anticipated. So, who does he go to and to express this frustration? Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, who he already has blamed at various points in time for the war that Russia started, where Zelensky is only defending his country. And instead of looking at the greater impacts to global diesel supplies coming out of the Gulf,

he blames the smaller impact of Ukrainian strikes against Russian infrastructure. Now, two is largely a performative measure. The president has announced this glorious grand deal he made with Putin to import Russian diesel. 300,000 tons, I believe, was what was announced coming to the U.S. markets, which I saw a calculation equates to about 14 hours worth of American demand. So it will have negligible, if zero impact on American diesel fuel prices. What it will do if this goes through is it will signal a crack in the firm resolve against Russia internationally and signal other actors that they can start trading on the oil markets with Russia and providing that revenue back to a pariah state. Now, what we don't know is whether this is legal in 2022.

The U.S. passed a law saying that we cannot import any Russian fuel. This executive order or this handshake deal between the president and Putin doesn't change that. And we've seen that Representative Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania has said he is going to introduce new legislation to make it doubly illegal. So whether this happens is still to be seen. But even if it does, it will have no positive impact. It couldn't even possibly get to the U.S. market before the midterms and therefore will have no impact on the prices, even if it were in greater volume. And it will have negative effects in trying to push back against Russia as they conduct this war against Ukraine. I love the idea, David.

I don't know if anywhere this exists in some legal theory going back centuries of doubly illegal. The Fitzpatrick measure making it doubly illegal. If we could do that, I would be for it. So what Mike is referring to there is a bill called the ending importation of Russian Oil Act of 2022. And among other things, it stipulated the President of the United States in order to lift the sanctions that he's attempting to lift, would be required by law to certify that Russia has. has agreed to withdraw from Ukraine to recognize Ukraine's sovereignty and certify that Russia poses no threat to NATO, among other things. So there's, I think, dubious legality to what

the president is attempting to do. So address that, if you will, but also Mike mentioned this showing sort of further ruptures in the U.S. European coalition, which was already fraying anyway. The Europeans have come out immediately after this and said, in effect, we can't do this. You ought not do this. And this is a problem. Yeah. Well, you know, let's deal quickly with the law first. I mean, whenever you're dealing with situations involving sanctions, national security, statutes

surrounding that, you can normally draft what you want as Congress. However, the question is, how enforceable will it be? And this is a different Congress than drafted it in 2022. that's a different president, obviously. And the question is, if he just wants to ignore it and plow through anyway, what will be the recourse? And, you know, the obvious response is, oh, court, going to court. But what we have seen is that in some circumstances, especially circumstances touching on national security, that sometimes it's difficult to find a plaintiff who has standing. And just sort of this free ability to walk in and sort of say, well, this is plainly illegal.

you can't do this, i.e. the ballroom, which seems to be about as plainly an illegal act as you're going to find. I mean, there are arguments on the margins. There are always arguments on the margins, but just reading the relevant statutes, how you can do this ballroom, this sort of escapes me. But who's going to stop it is always one of the key questions hovering in the background. And so it could be that you've rendered it illegal, but you have to have another piece of legislation to render it enforceable. in a concrete and meaningful way. And so watching that play out is, I think the less interesting part of this,

because the questions around enforceability, to me, the more interesting part of this is, if you want to look at Vladimir Putin, you would say he's had some evolving theories of how he's going to achieve victory. Theory number one, obviously, was some version, a Russian version of a Blitzkrieg, 72, 96 hours, dress uniforms in Kiev.

It was all going to be over there. in a blink and a flash. And a lot of people shared that assessment. I mean, I will say when I was in the run up to the war, when I was talking to people, there are a lot of people who said 72, 96 hours. I mean, I think there was maybe one guy I talked to in the Pentagon who said absolutely not, that is going to be very, very different. But that theory didn't work, obviously. Then theory number two was essentially I'm going to turn the Don Boss into mulch until I just kind of capture all of it, just sort of this rolling, grinding offensive. And that is reaching a point of diminishing returns to even where in any given month now,

the Ukrainians may take more territory back. And besides, they're inflicting casualties at a rate that's just absolutely unsustainable for the Russians over time, unless they do a general total mobilization, which would be very difficult for Putin to do politically, economically for a lot of reasons. So what's theory number three? Well, theory number three is I can drive a wedge between Ukraine and its key allies who are keeping it in the fight. That's the U.S. And he looks at Donald Trump and he sees a target of opportunity there because there's not much

heavy lifting you have to do to turn Trump against Ukraine. Because you remember all the way back to 2019 and impeachment one, remember, Trump, I kept jumping up and screaming at the top of my lungs. The Biden part of that 2019 impeachment isn't the worst part, believe it or not. The Biden part was, hey, we give you the javelins, you investigate my place. political foe. That's the one that everybody lashed onto. But there was another part of this. It was find the secret server. Remember this? We need you to find the server. What's the server? The server was going to contain proof that the whole Russia thing was Ukraine all along. Yeah.

That Ukraine behind the DNC. So he's literally been operating under this mindset that Ukraine is the source of his first term problem. So he hates Ukraine to begin with. So drawing a wedge there between the U.S., I mean, Ukraine and Trump, has been a work in progress for Putin, and this is another step down that road. And then you match it with the sort of the gray zone type operations he's been running, and some of have been more direct, sometimes quite direct action in Western Europe, eastern Europe. To try, in essence, I don't think, and I've talked to a lot of people about this,

I don't think he's actually moving to invade Estonia or moving to actually take the Baltics, although I would say that the Baltics right now are a lot softer target than Ukraine, given the disparity in drone warfare experience, but that he would act, not that he would actually try to invade the Baltics, but that he would try to make it look as if he was going to make some aggressive military moves that would cause Europe, as much as it wanted to continue to pour weapons in Ukraine, to pull back, to prepare to defend itself,

as opposed to using its resources to help Ukraine. And so if you can sever Ukraine through fear from its European allies, sever Ukraine through conspiracy from America and through vulnerabilities to Trump from America, then he can have the mono-e-mono fight that he longs for, where he thinks I can take Ukraine, where I can take the relevant portions of Ukraine, without all of this European and American help.

So how do I sever it? And so he seems to be, in addition to continuing his offensive operations on the ground, conducting a pretty elaborate influence operation to try to sever Ukraine from its allies. And it seems to be coming ever closer to working with the U.S. And it seems not to be working with Europe, but ever closer to working with U.S. And that is extraordinarily dangerous. And especially given that I think we can pretty, with some degree of confidence, predict that Trump's only going to get more unhinged as this term continues. And he really doesn't like Ukraine.

Yeah. And all of that together. And Steve, I think I lost your original question riffing. No, no, this is good. This is much better. This is much better than my original question. Well, Jonah, let me get you to pick up on that. We can go back and point to Donald Trump's moment in Helsinki, where he took.

the word of Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence community. There's so many of these moments mocked and derided by sort of MAGA world because of the quote unquote Russia hoax. But you can point to a constellation of data points of Donald Trump's affinity toward Vladimir Putin and increasing warmth, I would say, over the course of his two terms. There are moments that point in the other direction. There were moments before the Alaska summit where Trump sort of stiffened up and said some things, but it flows heavily in one direction. One of the things that we've been talking about,

really, or emphasizing over the past two years in the second Trump term as much as any, is the repeated references, and this comes from virtually everybody in Trump's orbit, who weighs in publicly on the question of Russia and the Russia-Ukraine war of business deals, broadly between the United States and Russia. We saw Marco Rubio say this from the tarmac in Saudi Arabia, I believe it was February 2025. He said that he had met with Russian negotiators, that they talked about the glorious business deals to be had once the war was over. You see this again and again and again. You see this from Steve Whitkoff. You see this from Jared Kushner. You see this from others in Trump's orbit. We know that those business deals broadly understood

U.S.-Russia business deals are a central part of the negotiations. In the past several weeks, we've seen increasing evidence that people in Trump's world have their own business deals with Russia, personal business deals, personal involvement in what Russia is doing. There was a report in the New York Times that Chris Las Vida and James Blair, two of the president's top political advisors, are advising a pro-Russian party in Bosnia. We've seen other reporting Susie Wiles' daughter involved with the same party. how much of what we're seeing is Trump just returning to his roots as somebody who likes and admires Vladimir Putin? And how much of it is, in your view, tied up in the possibility of business deals, either for the United States or for Trump world personally?

Yeah, it's funny. I maybe have some reason he buys here because I was texting with a friend just this morning where we both have this theory about. Trump, which I came to because having once worked for someone who had a similar issue, wasn't a bad man, but had a similar issue, which is that, I'll just put it this way, when something is in Trump's obvious self-interest that he can identify, financial self-glorification, whatever, he is capable of actual longtime horizon planning to the, a certain extent. The second something isn't clearly in his own personal self-interest, he kind of goes half blind. Like he just can't get his head around the idea of doing something

for someone or something that wouldn't benefit him. It's not that he's opposed to doing that. I think he actually, like, I have another friend who has this weird condition where their memory isn't in images. It's basically, for one of a better word, in text. He can remember where he was and what he was doing, but it's like a verbal story in his head. He can't remember the scenes. People's brains can be weird in all sorts of different ways, right? There are people who cannot visualize, like Charles Murray has this point about, you know, when you tilt a glass of water, the water level stays flat, even though the glass is tilting.

Women have a much harder time visualizing that, statistically speaking, than men do for whatever, because of the geospatial differences, right? All I'm saying is that people's brains can be wired in all sorts of different ways. Trump's brain makes him kind of blind. Like, it's almost like a spectrum disorder thing where he cannot visualize a scenario where he would do something that cost him effort, money, resources, prestige, because it was the right good, noble thing to do. And because of that, I think, you know, people, I've made this point a million times, a lot of people made this point, that he sees everything through the prism of a real estate developer.

And I think there's a lot of truth to that, right? That's a language he speaks. He says, like, he relaxes by doing the ballroom because that's what he likes to talk about, right? He keeps going back to these old stories and arguments because he's comfortable. talking that way, right? He's going back to his stuff from the 1980s when it comes to trade and stealing our jobs and all, because he...

And so the point I'm trying to get at is that the real estate developer thing, I think, is part of it. But part of it is also that once people figure this out about you, whether a friend or foe, that's how they communicate with you. Yeah. Right? Like, the Japanese had teams

studying how to, like, have a first impression with Trump when he got elected and they, you know, get this kind of golf club and make this kind of point and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You got the Swiss bringing him gold. And so in a world where you can't see outside of that bubble of self-interest, like literally it's your language. It's not just like your motivation.

It's like how you understand things. People are going to talk to him in those terms. Yeah. And I think that's why Kushner and Wichner, and Whitkoff and those guys win internal arguments is as they know him and they know how to have those speak in that language.

When Zelensky talks about fighting for national sovereignty and a free people and all this kind of stuff, he might as well be the dog in the far side cartoon, right? Because all Trump years is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

And so I think my point is, it's just a little more subtle than, oh, he's greedy, which he is. He's doubled his net worth in two years because he doesn't see anything wrong with any of this kind of stuff. But it also, like, we've had this with other presidents. Herbert Hoover was an engineer. He saw everything like an engineering problem. And people talked to him like he was an engineer. Woodrow Wilson was what social scientists call a horrible bastard. And so when Colonel House was asked, how do you talk to, like, how do you make a connection with, House was like Wilson's Colonel, you know, was like his Carl Rove. And he said, and he said, how do we get into the good with the president when I meet him? And he says, well, it's easy.

Find a common hatred. And I think that's a little bit with Trump too, right? He and Putin have a common hatred in Zelensky. You combine that with, oh, the deals that we can make. You know, look at all the money you've made off of Russians in your hotels and your other projects before. You can make 10 times that, 20 times that you know the Russians are telling them that stuff. And I think it sticks in his head in a way that freedom and democracy and allies and NATO and yada, yada, yada, just doesn't. And it's amazing how just the last point on this, because I don't think anyone mentioned this on this diesel deal stuff, the total amount of diesel that we're supposedly going to get from Russia or the going to be put on the global market or whatever is about two weeks of diesel from Canada.

and the Trump administration, I think yesterday announced that they're, in fact, going to say, never mind about the oil stuff with Canada. And I think it's just a small illustration of once you convince Trump that something is in his self-interest, he can see the problem with tariffs, right? He can see the problem with protectionism when it affects him. When it doesn't, he reverts back to this weirder, older theory that he's a department store manager and he's charging the world to put products on our shelves. I mean, that's how he explained it to, what was it, Time Magazine.

Anyway, that's my weird theory for the morning. Jonah, real fast that you mentioned Wilson. I teach a wonderful class in Nashville for lifelong learners. And mostly, it's probably people 70 and up who want to keep on learning. And it's a great class. I have a lot of fun. And I mentioned the Woodrow Wilson and the hatred, the mutual loathing of Woodrow Wilson and attributed to you as the first mover who really got me,

realizing it. And this very sweet older lady came forward and later and she had a little book in her hand and it was her grandfather's personal correspondence with Woodrow Wilson. Oh my gosh. And she said, we've always had a soft spot for President Wilson because of this. And I've never heard him being described as a bad person. Why do you dislike him so much? Oh no. And I said, well, I'm so sorry but he resegregated the federal government and he threw hundreds of his political opponents in jail. And to watch this very sweet person just deflate in front of my eyes.

Like all of these years, you know, this pride, this family pride. And I thought Jonah Goldberg did this to this family. Yeah, well, David, you know, you have an obligation to the truth, David. I know. However devastating it might be to Aunt Sally, You have to tell the truth.

I should point out on just Jonah's point on the effects of this. I mean, there's literally nobody. I've read nobody. I've spent days reading about this. Who thinks that this will make a significant impact on oil prices here, on the oil markets? This is just a, it's not significant. Our Rory Johnston, who's one of the authors of our dispatch energy newsletter, wrote, quote, I cannot overstate how much of a nothing burger this is, which is to put it.

it pretty plainly. David, I want to go back to you on the politics of this a little bit, the domestic politics of this. The ending importation of Russia Oil Act of 22, whether or not it's enforceable, was very popular at the time under Joe Biden in April of 2022 when the vote took place. It passed on a voice vote in the Senate, 100 to zero. So you had full Republican support for this. You do not have full Republican But you do not see Republicans who voted for that criticized Joe Biden at the time now coming out and criticizing Donald Trump. I also want to read a comment that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made during his nomination hearing. Besson, whose Treasury Department is responsible for lifting these sanctions now.

When he was asked about this in an exchange during his nomination hearings, he said this, I believe the sanctions were not fulsome enough. I believe that the previous administration was worried about raising, U.S. energy prices during an election season. I will be 100% on board for taking sanctions up, if that's what the president wants to do. What do you make of Republicans not supporting this? And I mean, that's sort of an obvious question. You don't have to spend much time on it.

Where does this go after the election? You have these Republicans, we know what they believe. They, unlike Donald Trump, I think they do have some of them a remaining sense of what's right and wrong. They know who the aggressor was. They don't want Putin to win. And yet they're quiet or in some cases even worse. Where does this go after the election? Well, I think that is the great question.

And look, as far as a political impact in the here and now, I just don't think there will be one. If you're looking at a president who's right now shaving down to 31, 32 percent in some polls of approval rating, he's down to the core. He's down to the people who are the rider-dies at this point. Now, he might, you know, there's a major economic catastrophe or military disaster or something like that, you might see him dip into what might be as actual hard floor in the upper 20s or whatever.

But if you're talking about someone who could be peeled away by Russia and Ukraine, they've been peeled already at this point. And I think, honestly, as far as the midterms go, we just have to wait. I mean, at this point, the polling is becoming so overweight. that there would be at least a moderate-sized Democratic wave slash tsunami right now that we've now entered into the phase of, I'll believe it when I see it, because we haven't seen anything break a logjam like this in a very long time in American politics, if the polling is correct. And so now you're beginning to see, okay, wait a minute,

are rural voters not answering the pollsters now? Are we undercounting Trump again? Is there something going on? Because I can't quite believe, Kansas in play, Iowa in play, Texas in play, Nebraska, South Carolina. It just doesn't, for a lot of people, you're getting the sense of, okay, now I'm stepping off the gas in my predictions because I can't quite see it coming out quite like this, given everything that we've experienced over the last decade, right? So I think there's a collective holding of the breath. And I'd put it like this. If there's a narrow Democratic win, you're going to see something along the lines of, remember how Joe Biden, in spite of losing the House, because he did better than the Red Wave predictions,

felt weirdly emboldened. The guy lost the House and then sort of feels emboldened like, I can keep doing this, I should go on. I think that that's what will happen if anything other than a blue wave. He'll feel emboldened is door number one. Door number two is maybe the polling is actually accurate and maybe you actually see Texas go blue and maybe even some of the polls are showing that Abbott is in trouble. That would be a massive earthquake. So maybe you do have the earthquake and that point I think the circular firing squad on the right will get extraordinarily vicious because there are an awful lot of Republicans who are just, they're even, I wouldn't say they're holding their tongue. They're mostly holding their tongue about

what Republican primary voters did with Paxton and what that sort of MAGA establishment did with Paxton. There's a lot of pent-up fury right now. And so honestly, Steve, I think that we are going through, we have multiple doors that we can walk through. Door number one is better than expected for the Republicans emboldened Trump. Door number two is a democratic wave, but not a tsunami.

And I think you kind of see MAGA retrenching itself and the circular firing squad getting particularly vicious. Door number three would be an actual blue tsunami. And in that circumstance, I think you're going to see a lot of people kind of turning on the whole MAGA influencer verse in a pretty aggressive way. Like the whole universe of the Jack Posobics

and Benny Johnson's and the wackos and weirdos in idiots who brought the party to this point. But we just can't know until we know which door we're walking through. And basically every smart person I've talked to is saying, okay, all the polls are pointing in one direction, and I'm suddenly getting a queasy feeling. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's a hyper-variable outcome. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $26 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology.

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Learn more at Bloomberg.com. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Mike, I want to come back to you in a moment about sort of the big picture of where we are in this war. But, Jonah, to you first on the politics of this again, there have been three polls on Ukraine in the last month. Trump's approval on Ukraine in these three September polls is minus 26, minus 22, minus 33, including in one of the polls, something like one in four Republicans who say that they disapprove of the president on this stuff. I want to play a clip from Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip, who was on with our friend John Carl. on ABC's this week yesterday. This is Tom Emmer who voted in favor of the bill that we talked about earlier, the ending importation of Russian Oil Act in 2022. He voted in favor of this. He was critical

of Joe Biden for not doing more on sanctions, not doing more to be aggressive against Vladimir Putin. He was asked by John Carl yesterday about that previous support and what he thinks of Donald Trump's new move to end those sanctions. Can we play that? Before we get to the midterm, what do you make of this plan to buy Russian diesel? I mean, you were obviously, you've been a strong supporter of Ukraine. You voted for those sanctions. What do you think of this?

Well, it's another example of our president thinking out of the box. You know, he's listening to the American people, John. The American people are hurting because of this world market when it comes to diesel and fuel in general. Our president is trying to find every answer possible to help the American people. literally moving forward. And when he talks about Ukraine and Russia, there is no one else, John, who is going to get this thing resolved. Donald Trump thinks outside of the box, put the American people first. But at the same time, he is the president of peace. I think he's two steps ahead of the press all the time. He's thinking about how you get these conflicts resolved.

Conflicts, by the way, that were caused by President Joe Biden and his failed foreign policy and date back to President Obama and his failed foreign policy. So, again, I think Donald J. Trump is the best negotiator on the face of the planet. I think this is just another step of trying to get that resolved. Oh, my gosh. Jonah, why aren't you able to see that the president of peace is just thinking outside the box? He's one of these people. Like, everyone thinks thinking outside the box is always this praiseworthy thing, right?

I mean, sometimes thinking outside the box is just bat guano crazy, right? Like, hey, I have a great idea for how we can fix this car. Let's fill the gas tank up with sugar. It's thinking outside the box, you know, but it's not actually a good idea. Anyway, that's just a linguistic peeve of mine. I watched that whole interview. It was excruciatingly painful because I'm not a huge Emmer fan. I'm not a huge Emmer foe.

but it's obvious that there's a better person. There's a decent little Emmer homunculus somewhere in there that is screaming at what he's being put through in having to do that. And I tweeted that yesterday morning, you know, I hope the rest of the Republican caucus appreciates just how much coprophasia,

which is a fancy word for having to eat a giant bowl of crap that Emmer is doing on their behalf. I'm with David on this. I actually don't think the issue of Ukraine moves many votes. That doesn't speak well of us. I just don't think foreign policy necessarily moves many votes. I think if the Iran war wasn't causing oil prices to go up, it wouldn't move very many votes. It'd be pretty high information voter or have personal sort of connections with the affected region to be a foreign policy voter in the United States.

But what I do think where it matters is that it just erodes more and more of Trump's credibility. It becomes another example that people layer into a lot of other examples about him not having real credibility on this stuff. And I think that the other political impact for it is, you know, like I've made this point all the time about how one of the benefits of the Trump era is that Trump has actually made some Sunday show interviews moderately interesting because you, you know, when an administration official or a high-ranking Republican is talking, it's not just spin for the viewer anymore, it's also spin for Donald Trump, right? Because they know he's watching, or they're afraid he's watching,

or certainly they're terrified that a clip of something they say will be shown to him. And so you get this kind of, you know, only leader Trump can make a boulder so heavy, only he could lift it kind of talk on the Sunday shows, which I think is actually bad for Republicans. Because, like, if it's that kind of environment that Trump taking up people's headspace

and making people feel crazy is one of the reasons why his approval rating is so low. And when you see someone that most Americans have no idea who Emma is, right? He's the House Majority Whip. They just see him as a generic Republican. And, like, the generic Republican ballot is doing badly because people assume that generic Republicans

are just rubber-stamping. for Donald Trump, and here comes this guy going on TV, being a rubber stamp for Donald Trump, and it just reinforces this idea that we need to throw those people out and get some sort of check on what Trump is doing. And that's what you hear in focus groups. That's what you hear in all sorts of things. We just need, you know, like the old argument for divided government is coming back pretty strong, and I think Emmer does not help Republicans.

I'm sure his response would be, well, we have to get out the base. and the base responds to this kind of stuff. Maybe at the margins. The question is, does that activate more Republican voters than it intensifies more Democratic voters or independent voters to vote against? And I think it's the against that it does more for. Yeah, I mean, I think you made a very important point.

I agree with you. I mean, we can look at there's actual polling that tells us how much voters care about Russia and Ukraine. It's not a ton. And there's a social desirability of those polling, right? Like, people think they're supposed to say they care. Very few people think they're supposed to say, I don't care. Right. And so I think it's over-representative. Right, right. But when you have the president say, as he did this weekend, that Voldemir Zalinski's

responsible for this war, or as he said, he wants to make problems for the world. That's a direct quote from Donald Trump about Voldemir Zilinsky. He claimed that Zalinski wants to hurt American farmers. and he's constantly suggesting that Zelensky is the one, saying directly that Zelensky is the one who can end the war, not Vladimir Putin. I think there's just like a basic common sense element that the American public has when they hear something like that where they say, that is total bullshit.

That is not true in any way. And I think coupled with Trump's down-talking economic problems, claiming that he ended inflation, all of these things that he's saying that are sort of facially demonstrative, structurally untrue do eventually add up. Now, I would have thought they would have added up a long time ago and people would have opposed Trump more than they have now. But I do think we're getting at the point where people hear this stuff and it's like, what is this guy even talking about? And to the extent that Republicans get his back on it, I think it is damaging for the party. Mike, I want to end this conversation with you. Just give us an assessment of where we are in the Ukraine, the Russia-Ukraine war today. You mentioned earlier that Ukraine was making progress, that they were continuing to innovate, that they had had some success in attacking these refineries. Is Ukraine making progress? And what does the winter hold?

So there are a lot of people who are critics of Ukraine who like to point out, or they'd like to claim, Ukraine will never reconquer all the territory that was seized through conventional means. And that is, there's a huge challenge for Ukraine to conventionally re-sease that terrain. during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we came to be familiar with a term called asymmetrical warfare that a lot of people misunderstand the original concept of it. It was originally identified in the aftermath of our loss in Vietnam in an article called Why Big Countries Lose Small Wars.

And the idea was that when a large country is expeditionary, when they send their forces elsewhere in a war of choice or where they have the option of departing, the smaller country, the attack country, can drive up the cost with the domestic population being the target audience to such a degree that they demand withdrawal. That, to a certain extent, seems to be what Ukraine is trying to do, I think, with some of these deep strikes. They are trying to make the war real for the Russian people. We saw that with some of their strikes against the Russians who are in the Crimean Peninsula,

I think there is the potential, and we're seeing this through kind of Putin's lashing out and his frustration, that there may be greater pressure on him than we realize on the outside. I think that is Ukraine's approach to keep the lines stagnant or progressing in their favor until such a point where Russia has to sue for peace or it is desirable to sue for peace. Now, we've laid out here a lot of the ways that the president may, if all things are equal, be predisposed against Ukraine, his number one kind of animosity going back to the original impeachment and also his desire for access to the Russian market, both through his business interests,

the Wickhoff business interests, and for the United States as a whole. But I think one of the other things we're seeing is the president tends to lash out of people who just don't do what he wants them to do, even when he reduces it to what he believes to be very simple things, including allies. As I believe David mentioned,

we saw sometimes he has been angry at Putin, and that's when Putin just didn't do the thing he wanted him to do, which he thought was simple. He's done it. he's lashed out at Netanyahu, who's obviously a close political ally of his, when he just doesn't do what he wants him to do. So I think that's what we're seeing right now is he thinks it's simple. Going back to Jonah's point about kind of his blindness of the situation, he truly believes that this war is only going on because Zelensky is so hard-headed, and why doesn't he just make a deal? So I do think one of the things that the president has a problem is he actually has lost some of his leverage over Zelensky.

We keep hearing from a lot of the isolationists, this ungrateful Zelensky who is taking our money. Well, we haven't provided direct aid to Ukraine since 2025. That was largely, you know, we are providing it through the Europeans who are paying for it. We are providing intelligence and targeting data to them. But there is some discussion that that could largely be replaced by the Europeans if we withdraw it. So the president has already played some of his cards in withdrawing support for Ukraine. We'll see if he takes it even further. Yeah, well, no reason to really be optimistic about where this is headed, at least with respect to the U.S. role in Russia.

I want to end before we get to not worth your time with a brief conversation about the announcement this past week from Secretary of Defense Pete Haguezeth that the fordhood shooter Nidal-Hassan will be executed by firing squad and that this execution will be, according to Pete Hagseth, live streamed. for the country. Mike, I'll start with you, your reaction to this announcement from Secretary Hegesa. So, first of all, Nadal Hassan was sentenced to death over a decade ago. I am personally opposed to the death penalty, but while there is a death penalty, there are a few people more deserving than Nadal Hassan, and he was duly sentenced. It happened under the Obama administration. You know, the actual imposition of the sentence is not controversial in my view, right?

I mean, DoD has several members in military justice on death row. We haven't executed anybody since 1961, I believe. So that in and of itself is not a controversial decision. It seems that this statement about live streaming it was made maybe off the cuff to Jack Posobia that, you know, we saw the president backtracking claiming that he authorized it, but maybe couching his qualifications. Vice President Vance does not seem to be very comfortable with the idea. I personally, yeah, I find it apporant, right?

this is being done, it seems like, for machismo and purian interest to watch the execution, there's an argument that the Secretary himself has made that it has a deterrent effect. I don't think that's borne out. The death penalty as a whole does not seem to have much of a deterrent effect against crime. And I will tell you, I watched more ISIS and al-Qaeda execution videos than I care to have done, and it did not have any deterrent effect on me. It had the opposite effect. I know that there are many people opposed who said they think this will be used as jihadi propaganda. I do think that's true. I also don't think that's going to be determinative. I think they have plenty of other propaganda and plenty of other causes they rile up.

I just think it's not good for the American soul to watch this with bloodlust. The death penalty should be executed with a kind of sober detachment. It has done, justice is done on behalf of the families and behalf of the United States. Like I said, there are a few people more deserving than Nadal Hassan of this punishment as long as it exists. Not only did he betray his fellow soldiers, actually a medical health care provider for these soldiers, a position of trust that these soldiers could have sought or should have sought help from. And instead, he shot and killed several of them. But I just think it doesn't speak well for us as a nation if we watch with this kind of voyeurism. David, there are indications that even the president is having second thoughts about this,

having expressed some reservations over the weekend in addition to the ones that Mike mentioned that we heard from J.D. Vance. If this were to go forward, do you think people would watch this? And if so, what would that do to the American soul? What does it say that Pete Hegseth would propose this? I do think that just sort of thinking politically and culturally, you know, these guys have imprinted in their minds somehow that they speak for real America, that somehow the average person, they're vocalizing what the average person wants and believes. And they keep missing the mark on that. Now, they're very effective at speaking for a subset of America, for, certain for sure. But they keep having this view that they are the avatars of real America.

And I think they keep getting surprised when there is backlash to things that they think, well, if it weren't for everybody being so weak and woke, this is what the American people would like. This is what we want. And the reality is very different from that. And I think that they're going to find out if they do live stream this, that it doesn't exactly speak to high tea, warrior ethos to shoot somebody who's paralyzed and in a wheelchair. I'm not sure that that is the image that if the American people see it, and if anyone tunes into it sort of out of curiosity or whatever, what they see there, I'm not certain that that's going to cause them to be fist pumping and singing, you know, God bless America. This is something that is, you know, I wish,

when I look back on my military service and I look back and Mike has seen things that human beings should not see. I have seen things that human beings should not see. Like Aquaman. Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Sorry, I couldn't. I think that is what the kids call a drive-by right there.

That is what the kids call a drive-by. Catch-in-strays. Catch-in-stray. That's right. Man, what an act of aggression. That shall not go unanswered, Jonah. You're right. That movie should not go unanswered.

Oh, Mike, not you too. Okay. At two, Mike. But this is, to the extent that it will have an effect, it will further polarize us, it will cause a sense of revulsion with some people. And in some people, it will cause a kind of bloodlust. We cannot forget that it used to be that public executions were public spectacles. People would bring kids to them. And I don't know that that is something, a culture and a lifestyle that we want to recreate.

And look, you know, a lot of this is just covering for abject failures in other areas. They haven't won a war. So live execution, everybody, they are in this mode of ripping apart some of the foundations of American national security, the foundations of the American rule of law. and they are at the same time trying to provide bread and circuses for them MAGA masses. And this is just part of that, but it's not working out the way they want it to. You know, if you look at sort of the defenses of this, the defenses are mainly coming from the most hardcore element. The last people to leave MAGA will be evangelicalist, the fundamentalist wing of evangelicalism.

They're the last persons who are going to leave. And they're the ones. they're about the only ones out there saying, oh, you know, look, in the Old Testament, all of the executions were to take place in front of all of Israel or the assembly of the Israeli people. And you're like, Leviticus is not the Constitution, guys. This is absurd. And that is not a message that's going to resonate. And, you know, I think Mike is exactly right. The jihadists have plenty of propaganda and reasons to hate us. This is. isn't going to make ISIS hate us more. You can't hate somebody more than a 10 out of 10. And ISIS

already hates us 10 out of 10, right? But that will drive a wedge between us. Well, I would say continue to drive a wedge between us. And a lot of people are worried that the United States, I think the word unreliable partner is maybe an understatement at this point, that the United States is increasingly becoming an unhinged society. And that is what people are, if you're going to talk about sort of the surface level analysis of diplomacy and all of this, is America's no longer a reliable partner. That's a sanitized way of a lot of our partners around the world, wondering if we're becoming a bit unhinged, if we're breaking from our moral moorings, if we're becoming not just an unreliable partner, but a dangerous entity.

And this is not as important in the global scheme of things as threatening Denmark. People still underestimate how catastrophic. That whole affair has been. It's way out of mind now, but it shouldn't be. But this isn't as significant as this, but this is another data point that says America isn't just unreliable, that something is breaking here. And they're not wrong. Something is breaking here right now.

that we're going forward with this. So I agree with everything that people have said. I want to just make a couple quick points. One, I don't think anyone mentioned that Hazan is in a wheelchair. Yeah, I said that. Okay, yeah. They're executing a man in a wheelchair, yeah. Yeah, but when you think about, like, the optics of that, right,

is he going to be in the wheelchair? Or are they going to prop him up, like, tie him to a wall? I mean, like, you start thinking about beyond the sort of talking point guy in a wheelchair, the actual logistics of shooting a guy in a wheelchair and the optics of it, it really hammers home how incredibly stupid this was, which brings me to my second point, of course, which is Chesty McBrosive,

when, you know, Mike very, matter-factly, said that Heggseth was talking to Jack Bissobiac. And I think that people can be forgiven. Normal listeners, even high-information listeners like we have at the dispatch, can be forgiven for not really understanding something. Jack Pesobiac, first of all, is a conspiracy theorist, racist freak. But more importantly, his big thing these days is propping up the legacy and memory of Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain.

On his show, he has Franco Fridays, where he and guests talk about how awesome it was. They unceremoniously slaughtered people, shot them in firing squads and all this kind of stuff. And I don't expect a lot of people to know that. I do suspect that Pete Hegseth knows that. For sure. And it's entirely possible that the Secretary of Defense was trying to flex and impress Jack Pesobiac because he knew who Jack Pesobiak is.

And that brings me to, like, so one of the most important speeches that Edmund Burke gave, that no one really remembers except Edmund Burke nerds, was called the Birds of Prey speech. and it was during the Hastings impeachment trial. His argument was that the way British officers and members of the British East India Company behaved in India,

really Bengal or whatever, but it was bad the way they mistreated the locals, exploited the locals, abused the locals. And that's not like very remarkable commentary in the history of human rights stuff that people can understand that. But one of the things that Burke sort of added to the conversation was by saying it's bad for the Brits. It's bad for the souls of British people who go off and make a fortune in the colonies and then come back to the home country with like birds of prey who have different attitudes.

They've lost their gentlemanliness. They've lost their decency because they're used to living someplace where they get to abuse people. And I've been talking about this Birds of Pray thing in the context of a whole generation of people in Magaland, you know, who have infiltrated or created, you know, like who are big part of TPUSA. They're the most of the gibronies at CPAC, groups like American Moment. You can go down a very long list. And the people that were on the chat, the group chat, talking about how based Hitler was and, you know, and all this kind of stuff, that just, J.D. Vance defended. They're those people. And Vance and that crowd are convinced that those people are the most important, most indispensable base of the Republican Party to win in 2028. And I think

one of the things we're seeing with this is Heggseth, who you're now hearing rumors about how he thinks he's going to run for president too. They're competing for basically the Jack Posobiac wing of the MAGA right. And for that wing, which I don't, I think David, is absolutely right about normal Americans, and I think he's absolutely right about normal Republicans. But for that wing, the phrase, the cruelty is the point, has real explanatory value.

Yes. And the idea of, like, owning not just, you know, like, I agree a thousand percent. The idea that this is deterrence is so unbelievably stupid, right? Like, people who are, go into suicide attacks aren't deterred by a threat of the death penalty. It's like axiomatic, right? But this crowd thinks that being as rude, as gross, as cruel as you can get away with

and hearing the lamentations of the libs and the normie Republicans and all of that, that's the point. And I think it is, I don't want to put people on edge here, but I think it's suboptimal that the Secretary of Defense is the guy, courting that constituency. Well, let me make things even worse, Jonah. The announcement that the execution would be live streamed that came from Pete Hankseth came in an interview with Jack Pesobiac.

Jack Pesobias. Yeah, that was good. So it wasn't just that he was trying to impress him in a Broadway. It was that the Secretary of Defense is sitting down with the lead conspiracy theorist of Pizza Ging. Mm-hmm. You know who else did? J.D. Vance.

Yeah. The week before. J.D. Vance. Yeah. There is, I mean, one of the undercover stories I think right now, Jonah made passing reference to Pete Hegseh, to rumors that Pete Hegseh wants to run for president. I think it's been reported by credible outlets that Pete Hegsth is telling people that he wants to run for president. And I think one of the things that we're seeing take place, or we're not seeing take place because it's happening behind the scenes, is this rivalry between Heg Seth and Vance. I think it had a contributing role to the resignation of Dan Driscoll at the Pentagon. I think we're seeing it play out here where they do back-to-back interviews with. Jack Posobiac who, I mean, we won't spend a lot of time on this, but PizzaGate was this conspiracy theory that Democrats and other left-winger were keeping children in the basement of a pizza restaurant in Georgetown.

Further up Connecticut. It wasn't Georgetown. Up Connecticut. Okay. Yeah. Glover Park. When you say it like that, Steve, it sounds weird. Right?

No, at one point soon, maybe after the election, I want to do an entire episode on just what it means that people like Jady Vance and Pete Hagseth are sitting down with people like Jack Pesobiac and that that's the way that people on the right are interacting. The right are interacting is true of Marco Rubio and Benny Johnson. It's a problem and it's, I think, underdiscust. But I think when you look at where this is going, I don't know that we'll end up seeing this live streamed or not. I think the fact that Donald Trump, I think he comments on it three times over the weekend

and the last one was something like we'll see, which suggests to me that he's getting a lot of feedback. He's apparently calling around as Trump does when something like this happens and taking input from everybody. It seems to be preparing to back back off. And at one point said, well, this is what they wanted to do

and I understand why they want to do it rather than taking ownership of the position. I suspect it may not end up happening. 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,

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All right, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. I want to end on a lighter note than insanity and conspiracy theories and live streams executions. I'm not a big fan of Twitter. Certainly not a big fan of Twitter these days, but every once in a while, Twitter surfaces something that had gone away or that we hadn't seen and brings it back into discussion. And that happened this past week with an article that was tweeted out. I don't have the exact number of views in front of me,

but I believe it's in the millions. And it's an article. from 2009, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. I just wanted to get your thoughts on this and ask on a personal level, since we have a manel, an all-male panel, if you've ever personally experienced this phenomenon. There's a study that was conducted out of Radbood University in the Netherlands. I may have mispron- I love their work.

It's a flash report by four different scholars. and the headline is interacting with women can impair men's cognitive functioning. What? And I'll just read the brief here. The present research tested the prediction that mixed sex interactions may temporarily impair cognitive functioning. Two studies in which participants interacted either with same sex or opposite sex other demonstrated that men's, but not women's, cognitive performance declined following a mixed sex encounter. in line with our theoretical reasoning, this effect occurred more strongly to the extent that the opposite-sex other was perceived as more attractive, study one, and to the extent that participants reported high levels of impression management motivation, study two.

The implications for the general role of interpersonal processes in cognitive functioning and some practical implications are discussed. I would like to discuss the implications for interpersonal processes in cognitive functioning. Mike, have you ever experienced deterioration in your cognitive functioning following such an interaction with the, let's see what they said, opposite sex, other? Well, like Joan, I'm a big fan of the work of Radbood University and particularly fan of their football team. They've got a strong recruiting program. Fusball.

Yeah. So what it sounds like in haughty academic speak is men will. will make stupid decisions to impress a pretty girl. And I have definitely been guilty of that. And I think it speaks actually, you know, we've seen a lot of discussion about young men today and the crisis of masculinity and what they think. I think a lot of young men are trying to be, quote unquote, based, as opposed to being willing. Actually, I saw an exchange between Jonah and who's your producer, Jonah for the- Victoria? Victoria, thank you. Yeah. Where she said, young men should be willing to make a laughing stock of themselves to try to impress a woman, right? Because it shows

sincerity, authenticity, a willingness to forego everything and, you know, stature for this woman. I do think there's something to be said for that. And I'm saying that primarily as someone defending my behavior as having made stupid decisions to impress a pretty girl. David, have you ever engaged, my favorite phrase in this whole little abstract is impression management motivation. Have you ever engaged in impression management motivation? Impression management motivation. You know, Steve, gentlemen, my competitive advantage is I was always so coldly rational around women when all of my, you know, peer competitor males were drooling idiots. You know, I, no, that is...

Is this how you won the heart of Nancy? I just, absolutely. Just stood out, just stood out for being able to be composed and calm and rational in the face of female beauty. Yeah, one of the funniest things you can do is you take a group of guys and this has happened during my service. And they kind of are really bonded. And then you bring in a couple of really attractive women into the mix, like into the group. And just watch everyone suddenly have like personality transplants just in that moment, you know. And I love these, I love these studies that.

are like, you know, double-blind peer review says the sky's, in fact, blue. You know, thank you for this. Thank you for this. But that is absolutely hysterical. I love this study. Jodda, here's my real question, the motivation for me bringing this up. It's well-known. You've talked about how you went, you were essentially in the first waves of men going to an all-women's college.

I wonder, just bearing in mind the headline of this abstract, and I'll read it again, interacting with women can impair men's cognitive functioning. If that explains what we've seen in your intellectual output for the past three decades. Yeah, well, that's why my philosophy 101 class was all in finger pain. No, I want to back up first again, because this reminded me of, I wrote this column April 30th, 2001. So 25 years ago, I'll just read you the first paragraph because it's relevant. On Tuesday of last week, the Associated Press broke a major story, quote, to say men, women, not alike.

On Wednesday, AP topped its own scoop by blaring the news, quote, study. Parents can affect teen sex, unquote. Then on Thursday, Reuters blew both stories out of the water with this blockbuster, quote, women want security, men want sex, unquote. But wouldn't you know it, before the Pulitzer Committee could file the pro forma paperwork, Reuters stepped on its own story by releasing the ground-pounding news, parent sexual orientation matters, study fines. The reason you didn't read much of this around is because the New York Times was busy last week, managing the firestorm over their major expose, quote, school bullying is common, mostly by boys, study fines.

And there is this tendency among journalists and academics to find the most frigging obvious things and report them as if we should be shocked by them. you know, this just in bears using our national forests as toilets. And I love this whole genre in part because I actually think there's something profoundly conservative about it. I remember Irving Crystal once said that all neo-conservatism was doing was working diligently using the tools of social science to prove that most of the things your grandmother said were correct. and I think that like the fact that boys are idiots around girls is something that both boys and girls need to appreciate more.

It helps explain why like girls think boys are just really, can be really, really weird when in fact they're really, really weird because they're around girls. And boys need to realize that they're being really, really weird when they're around girls. And that doesn't really end with, like, grade school or high school or whatever. But, yes, I have been prone to this problem. I will say that it's something that, you know, I've had to struggle with. But through the support of friends and family, I have managed to get my way through it in life. And every now and then, it will come back. Like, I will just find that it never really goes away.

It's one of those things that you can only manage. can't cure. You know, Jonah, though, to your point that people are outraged or, you know, shocked to find out studies that bears use our national parks as for us, there are a number of people who seem to be surprised to find out that the Pope is Catholic. Yes. As they push back against his basically Catholic pronunciations. But, you know, I think the best example of this, as I was thinking through our conversation, like Disney captured this a while ago. The Bambi scene where all the young teenage animals get Twitter pated. And they just turn into morons when they first see the female animals. So that's the example. That is the distilled down version of this study.

I think we need follow-up studies. I didn't know we were going to go there since I thought we were national security focused. I thought you're not worth the time was going to be, how are you going to counsel all of these very online maga types who suddenly lost about two-thirds of their friends over the last several days as Ukraine has bombed Russian data centers? So like Magababab in New Jersey, suddenly, like, lost a big bunch of his online friend circle. And, I mean, that's hard. That's hard. And many of those Russian trolls are attractive women. Yeah, is interesting. Interesting that you say that, David, because I was looking at that as a possible not worth your time. I think, unfortunately, or fortunately, as we learn more, we may determine that it's very much

worth our time to have an actual discussion about the extent to which those Russian bots have been shaping our online conversation. Oh, think about how much online traffic for AFD, the German right-wing party has dropped off. Yes. It's remarkable. All of a sudden, we may have the least foreign interference in any modern recent election because of Ukraine's Trump strikes. Yes. Well, more to come on that, and I think we need further studies on why boys are morons around girls. Thank you all for joining. We will see you. you next time. And finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us.

And for those of you who want to watch the show, head over to YouTube.com slash at the dispatch pods. That's YouTube.com slash at the dispatch pods or just Google the dispatch and YouTube. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even emails from people who give interviews to Jack Posobiac. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in, and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening.

Please join us next time.