The Dispatch Podcast - Why You Should Watch the Biden-Trump Debate ... On Mute | Roundtable

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Sarah, Mike, and Jonah analyze Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s debate strategies, or lack thereof. Plus: the futility of fighting political headwinds, executive overreach, and a new Dispatch newsletter. Agenda: — Why presidential debates don’t (and do) matter — Improving Biden’s comms strategy — Veepstakes for Trump — Politics of Biden’s immigration policy — Congress, do your job! — This weekend: the new Dispatch Faith Show Notes: — The Dispatch’s The Collision — Advisory Opinions’ Living Anachronism — Bump stocks decision — The Skiff’s Interview with David French The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isgar with Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren. Mike, we just need to start. This is the last podcast episode that we will do before the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. This is the earliest that we've ever had a general election debate. Will you just give us like a lay of the land?

Why are we having a debate in June? What is going on? What are the rules? Why are we having a debate in June is a really good question. It seems to be a weird kind of trench warfare

or the result of like some trench warfare mentality between the Biden and Trump campaigns where both sort of acted as if, like, the other wasn't going to be willing to debate, and then negotiations happened, and as far as I can tell, bluffs were called on both sides. And here we are having this debate in June, which actually makes a lot of sense, I think. I've never quite understood

why the debate, I guess I understood intellectually why the debates happened in September and October of the presidential election year. That's supposedly when people are starting to tune in. But this is such a weird election cycle where you basically have two incumbent presidents running against each other. Trump effectively, the Republican incumbent, it was the nominee long before, presumptor a nominee for a while. So why not get the general election started? This is, this debate will be on CNN. It will be no audience. There will be a coin flip to determine who gets to stand at which podium. There will be the moderators will have the opportunity to, I believe, cut off the microphone. I don't think they can talk. I don't think one can talk while the other is speaking.

And I believe that's in the moderator's hands. And otherwise, it's going to be kind of a straightforward presidential debate rerun of the 2020 debates. And it's going to be the first time that Americans will kind of see the choice that is laying out before them and maybe come to grips with the reality that one of these two guys is going to be the next president. whether we all like it or not. Jonah, what are your actual expectations for this debate? Is this going to have any policy involved in it? Is this going to be all bickering? Where are you entering this conversation?

Well, I figured I'd start with, you know, maybe a white wine or a light beer. And then get to the really heavy drinking about 20 minutes in. So, no, I think both of these people are going to come out looking worse. more so, obviously, to the people who already don't like them, you know, so partisans on one side will think the other guy did much worse than their guy for all the obvious reasons. But I think generally, both of them will come out looking worse. I think the main reason, and we talked about this when they first announced this, I think the main reason this is likely, with the caveat that Biden cannot have a major catastrophic senior moment, right? That will be, if there's something

truly bad that happens in that regard, that will start a whole new round of about do the Democrats need to get rid of replace Biden stuff. Assuming that doesn't happen, and I don't think that will happen. I think the advantage is mostly for Biden in this insofar as if the Biden campaign people who say even off the record that there is a significant chunk of people, probably single digits in the actual

it, but that matters, who still don't actually believe that it's going to be Trump versus Biden, and those people break Biden's way. And so telling people in June, hey, this is actually your choice, actually will get some likely Biden voters to get back in the coalition. I don't think it's going to pull any likely Trump voters into the Trump coalition, unless on the substance, something really dramatic happens. But, yeah, there are going to be no real issues. I think that's an advantage for Trump. I think it's going to be the kind of thing

that Roger Ailes would say, don't turn up the volume. Just watch it on mute and see whose body language is better. And Trump will win that part of the contest. It doesn't worth point out that historically, first debates for incumbent presidents are always bad. And I think even if you're aware of that,

that there's, it's very difficult for someone like Biden to overcome that. So it's going to be very vibey. I actually think, and Sarah and I, you know, I talked about this before. I think the Biden campaign may have miscalculated with the mute mic thing. I mean, muting Mike Warren always makes sense. But muting the microphones is more problematic because when Trump interrupts, It actually is, that was good for Biden in those 2020 debates. When Trump behaves like an ass, it was good for Biden because it made Trump look rude,

which, I mean, which he was. But it also, in a way that the Biden campaign doesn't like to admit, it helped Biden because it foreclosed the necessity of finishing his sentences, which Biden really has trouble sticking the landings now on closing his, you know, completing a whole thought. And if Trump keeps stepping on that, It just makes it easier for Biden not to have to. It makes the issue Trump's interruptions. And so this is not exactly something where you have to take your Aristotle's politics off the shelf to consult before analyzing these debates.

It's going to be kind of very superficial, but this is the life we have chosen. Mike, the theory that the Biden campaign has of this race is that they want to make this a referendum about Donald Trump being a threat to democracy, right? It's all about January 6th, political violence, Donald Trump's character. That is what they think this race should be run on. That's their theory for success in this race. There's a lot of Democrats who are getting very nervous about that theory of the race. I'm curious what you think they will do in this debate. Are they going to stick with that theory for the debate itself?

How will they handle Trump's conviction? What are we expecting from your reporting? Yes. It's one of those situations where, you know, you go to war with the army you have. There is not the option for Biden to go out at the beginning of this debate and make a really strong case that he's had, you know, the most successful four years, first term for any president in recent memory. Like, he just doesn't have a record. They will have an argument for why certain policies that they passed and, uh, and legislation that they pushed forward have been good for the country, but it's not their first shot. They have to go with this referendum, or in a way, it's kind of a choice election argument too.

Do you want more of the chaos from four years ago, or do you want to stay the course kind of thing? What they don't need to do is to have it be a referendum on Biden, right? So it's all about directing the audience, directing those undecided voters to think about what it would really be like to have Trump elected again. And so what I'm hearing from Democrats is particularly on the convicted felon stuff. So this will be in our collision newsletter, which we'll have already published hopefully by the time this podcast lands that, you know, I talked to one Democratic strategist who said they were already putting money behind this. Trump is a convicted felon.

So he has to sort of underscore and reinforce that message on stage. What Democrats, I think, want Biden to do and hope that Biden does is try to make this into a bigger narrative, not just, ha, ha, look at him. He's a convicted felon. Convicted felon equals bad. But to try to make a broader argument than. that Donald Trump believes he's above the law. Donald Trump believes that the rules and the law don't apply to him, and they should. And he's been called to account, and he's got all these other cases as well, where he's done bad things.

And to emphasize the kind of moral element to the crimes as much as the legal, you know, the legal convict. and the legal jeopardy that he faces with these sort of outstanding trials. I think that's a really difficult case for anyone to make, but particularly Biden. But that seems to be where they want Biden to take it. So I have an interesting view on the Biden theory and strategy. Basically, I think their theory is right and I think their strategy is wrong. I think that their success will be based on voters just not being willing to take the risk on Trump

and thinking that Trump overall is a bad guy. But that's very different than I think what their strategy is, which is that Biden should be running on that, if this makes sense, right? Like, they should be making sure that that's in the public narrative. It already is, right?

There's wall-to-wall coverage of Trump's convictions, right so that's already happening they don't need to do a whole lot on that but more importantly their candidate doesn't need to be spending a whole lot of time on it because i don't think there's anything joe biden can say that will move that needle that will convince people who are on the fence about whether trump's a threat to democracy oh well joe biden said he is so now i believe it um if anything i think joe biden talking more about it can have the opposite effect so but what if he gives you his word as a biden what i think joe biden should be worried about heading into this debate is this expectations problem like i think they're preparing to have this what do caucus

should have done moment because they know the trump will bring up hunter biden and they're like really practicing and really pumped to have a how dare you you know talk about my son get his name out of your mouth type thing except that's already baked into the expectations right everyone already thinks that joe biden should be able to master and you know high EQ moment on the debate stage when it comes to his family. If anything, he can only fail, I think, to meet that expectation. Biden has to surprise. And the surprise does a couple things. One, it shows that Biden is thinking on his feet, is having sort of quickness, which Biden is very capable of. We saw it at the State of the Union, for instance. And I think the surprise also needs to be a substantive surprise.

So that's Sister Soldier moment where he breaks with his party or the far left on something. And there are so many options. Just literally throw a rock. You'll hit some far left loony saying something on immigration, anti-Semitism, transgender surgeries on children. And so I think that for Biden spending a week at Camp David preparing for this debate, their biggest concern should be that he comes off sounding like the incumbent who's memorized talking points from his team, is having faux emotional responses that he's expected to have and that it's all too rehearsed.

And Jonah, you're right. Incumbents mess this up. They usually mess this up by not preparing enough. They're like, I'm president. Every day's debate prep. Clearly, the Biden team's taking this very seriously, but I wonder if they're

sort of heading in the wrong direction with like Biden having zingers about Trump's convictions, which I think will not work. Sarah, are you suggesting that Biden needs to recreate the Will Smith slap moment

from the Oscars Keep my son's name out your effing mouth. That's what I think they are practicing and I just don't think it's going to work very well. It's like a little bit of the Kamala Harris and I was that little girl.

It was so rehearsed. They thought they had this great moment and in fact everyone else was kind of like I mean, yeah, I guess if you... I can see the stage directions. I can see the script. And then you're just not that impressed. And then you had the T-shirts ready to go.

I'm worried the Biden campaign metaphorically and maybe literally has the T-shirts ready to go. It'd be awesome if you said. And I was that. That would be a surprise. Yeah, see, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. Yeah, so the point I agree with you the most on... I mean, I agree with all that.

But I think the post I, the point I agree with the most on... is this thing I've been complaining about for a long time, or just marveling at, Biden White House does not use surrogates well. It's got a few people who could do it. Ramando, I think, is a pretty talented politician. She's the Secretary of Commerce. Yeah, I guess that's right.

I mean, that goes to my point. That goes to my point about how they're not using surrogates well. But yeah, Congress. And Buttigieg, I think they overreact. I think they overuse because he is their idea of a real,

an extremely persuasive person that nobody could argue with and he's a lot of normal people's idea of the kind of person whose guitar they want to take and smash against the Delta House wall. It just grates on people as just like too friggin clever,

you know, sort of like there's a great scene in The Simpsons where one of the writers on the Itchy and Scratchy show comes in, and of course he went to Harvard, because they all went to Harvard. And the producer who's like this old cantanker as Jewish guy says,

hey, sing me a couple bars of Fair Harvard. And the kid starts to sing, you know, oh, move it. And then the guy takes his name plaque thing and throws it in his mouth. Like that's the reaction a lot of people have about Buttigieg. And but like, there are lots of things that there are a lot of messages that White houses want to have out there that would be really bad for the president to be the communicator on. or really not helpful. And the key one is this whole Biden is weaponizing the, like the whole

Trump criminal problems. Everyone has been talking about that for a gazillion years, right? And all is fair in politics about bringing it up. But when the president does it, it goes straight to Trump's claim that this whole thing has been politicized. Biden should be above the fray. I remember it was great. And one debate with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, Clinton made some comment about one of the independent counsel investigations into him. And then Bob Dole said, frankly, I just think it's inappropriate for the president in the United States to be commenting on ongoing criminal justice investigations into his administration. And then the reporter said, do you have any follow-up to that, Mr. President? And Bill Clinton said something like, I'm going to take Bob Dole's

advice, and I'm not going to have any further comment about blah, blah, blah, blah. And it worked perfectly and like he no longer could talk about it and it took the issue away Biden should be having surrogates out there saying all sorts of crazy stuff that then he can then condemn his surrogates for saying so he says oh you know like bill clinton did that great with james carville carville will go out and say crazy ass stuff and then clinton would say i have no control over that guy i can't you know it's not what i would i wouldn't put it that way you know but he's understandably angry. And they don't do any of that kind of calm stuff,

and I don't really understand it. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious.

That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on Trust Pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos.

Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's ethos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right. So let's move on to Trump. Hard to say exactly what Trump's theory of the race is. Because, of course, whenever you see surrogates for Trump, say, what their theory of the race is,

you have no idea whether they're representing Trump or pushing. Trump and trying to influence Trump, which I think makes Trump very difficult to debate. I think that's one of his greatest strengths is that the Biden team does not know which direction Trump is going to come into this debate from. Donald Trump has also been preparing in his usual but unusual way. He doesn't do debate prep. No one plays Joe Biden. He has these informal sessions where they, you know, shoot the debate stuff.

with people he wants to talk to. So J.D. Vance has been mentioned. So is this, Mike, Veep Stakes meets debate prep? Sure. I was thinking it sounds more like a sitcom writer's room, you know, where they're all sort of like throwing out jokes and bringing in, you know, special guests, special guest writers and things. But I agree with you that the unpredictability of Trump makes it hard to prepare

to debate against him. My big question is, what surprise is Trump going to bring to this debate? Does he announce his VP pick on the day of the debate? We expect it. We've been told that it's coming, you know, on the eve of the convention next month. But Trump loves a surprise,

loves to kind of shake things up a little bit. in a show business kind of way, and, you know, that could be interesting. The other thing is in the debate itself, I'm interested to know if we see a version of Trump, which I think we've seen on the trail, which maybe people who haven't been following it that closely this campaign would be surprised to see, which is maybe a little bit more of a low-key Trump, and, you know, someone who, who kind of, everybody expects him to kind of rant and rave and go crazy when baited. And he kind of stays on the Chris Lasavita, Susie Wiles, you know, full-proof plan for winning election this time around, which is just stick to the

message that Biden is corrupt. Biden has failed America, and I'm going to make America great again. I do think there's a possibility that all of our expectations for a wild and crazy debate will be undermined by a more in control than we think Donald Trump. I think that's possible. I also think there's a possibility that he has a kind of flop-swept panic about there not being an audience. Ooh, interesting. There are times when, like I have this rule about I have some jokes that I tell audiences at the beginning of speeches that I tell mostly at this point to tell what kind of audience it is because I've been telling these one-liners I've had for a long time and I know what kind of crowd will laugh at something and what kind of crowd won't. And when a crowd doesn't laugh at one of these things, I know like, oh, they've given me an 8 a.m. speech, you know, and everyone's cold or everyone's distracted by lunch or everyone is a pastor. Who knows? But, like, you can just tell the nature of the audience,

but there's something that's really freaky about doing schick and getting no response from anybody. And you start to feel like you've wandered out of off the path psychologically in some ways. And so I could see that causing, helping Trump control himself, or I could see it causing him to panic in a weird way, because he has not talked to a group of people that he hasn't gotten a big reaction from, both behind closed doors

because everyone sucks up to him in his entourage or audiences. Even the libertarians, he got a good reaction out of people, but no reaction. I don't think he's talked to an audience that had no reaction to him in 10 years. And that could freak him out or cannot. I just don't know,

but he seems like the type that's definitely possible. We'll see. Last thing on this is that there's, also, you know, originally, right, my newsletter was called The Sweep, and it's this metaphor about curling, that there's this, you know, 40 pounds stone going down the ice. That's actually how elections are. You can't change or move world events, the economy, like the weather, and it's all just baked in. And you, the campaign, are sitting there with a broom, furiously sweeping at the ice.

And we spend all of our time talking about broom tactics and not enough time talking about the 40-pound frickin' stone that's going to head in the direction it's headed with some very small changes based on that sweeping. Campaign simply cannot make that stone go 90 degrees so that even the campaign that's doing everything right

can still lose, right? It's the best strategy. It's the perfect strategy. And it doesn't matter because it's the 40-pound stone going down the ice. so to spend just a couple seconds on the 40-pound stone there is a realignment going on with voters and as that happens I just wonder

how much Trump or Biden can do much about that in the moment right there's a realignment around education there's a realignment around gender which may be driven some by the educational realignment as well that's then having trickle-down effects where you have for instance more black men and Hispanic men saying that they're going to vote Republican this time around. And it seems like that realignment is simply working in Trump's favor more than the

realignment that's working in Biden's favor. And I wonder how much we'll see that reality at the debate, Biden acknowledging this reality of who his new voters are, these voters that he's losing, is he going to try to win any of them back? Because this idea that they're going to win, the Democrats are going to win the 2020, 24 election using the 2012 coalition of voters? That's certainly not the case. Even trying to use the 2020 coalition of voters, I think, is a mistake. You will not have a 2020 coalition on either side. And I think the team that, you know, goes to war with the army that they have, not the army

that they want, is going to be better off. But the most important thing heading this debate is that there's actually no academic evidence that any presidential debate has mattered. So, you know, there's always a first. You never know. Maybe this one will. But, you know, here's one that I quoted. Debates neither helped undecided voters to make up their mind, nor cause those who had already made a decision to switch their candidates. Well, that's sort of the ballgame.

That's how elections work. Why didn't you bring this up before we just discussed all of that about the debate, Sarah? Then we could have just moved on to something, Justin Timberlake or something. As someone who's done a lot of debate preps, the time that campaigns spend on this actually also affects all of the campaigning that comes after it. Because it's some of the only time that your most senior people are going to have this much set aside time with the principal to sit there and talk strategy of the race. how do we reach these voters? And so in some ways, it's some of the only like big picture thinking

you do on a campaign aside from before you launch the campaign. And so debate prep can actually have these like long tails for months of how the campaign then is going to run. So you sort of, we look at the debate to try to discern what those strategic decisions are that they made heading into debate prep that are really more about probably the campaign

for the rest of the summer on both sides, if not through the fall. So I'm going to take a point of personal privilege here and pick up on something, a point that Sarah made. Like, I think presidential debates are stupid and pointless and basically for the benefit of the media. And the conversation about, and I say this is someone who has to fly to Atlanta to do two days of debate coverage at CNN. Yassina loves that you say this is all pointless. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's good for ratings.

I mean, there's that point, right? And it's good for journalists. But there's a whole sort of like hit a macro F10 spit out the same column every four years about debates kind of stuff. you hear every year, but how this is a great tradition in America, and it's all about democracy. Okay, so first of all, first presidential debate ever in a general election was 1960. That is not a long story, right? I mean, it's not nothing, but it's, you know, 60 years, give or take, 62 years. The thing that everybody has to say at their nice rubber chicken lunches when they're having

their panels about debates and how important these things are, is they all like, oh, Remember how Richard Nixon was said to have won on the radio but lost on TV and doesn't this show the importance of television in the modern era? And he was, because he wasn't clean-shaven and he looked sweaty and didn't have makeup. You kind of sound like Nixon, Jonah. Yeah, I know. I do that sometimes. And so the problem is, even by this great story, this William Sapphire political dictionary,

remember the trivia kind of story, it's conceding the point. that people thought someone won because he didn't shave. That is not exactly Periclean democracy at work, right? I mean, this is just like a bunch of people thought that the prettier guy, rather than the guy who looked like an unshaven gargoyle, won a debate. And then ever since, all we ever talk about are like the one-liners. Like, when is a president of the United States,

when is the ability to get off a good one-liner, you know, the key thing you're looking for in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because we elect people who are good at running for president. Right. And that's stupid. That's my point. There you go again, Mr. Goldberg. So just on a meta level, the whole thing illuminates a certain amount of stupidity in American politics. Well, that's certainly true. Can we do some quick veep stakes for Trump? Have either of you moved around on who you think is a likely VP candidate, new names, old names coming off?

changes, thoughts, feelings, love. I mean, I believe the reporting that Doug Bergam, Marker Rubio, and J.D. Vance are in the lead for it. At this point, it's kind of a crapshoot if I were to, if I were, if I were placing bets on this. Jonah. Yeah, I generally agree with that.

I mean, it's hard for me to gauge because I think J.D. Vance is better about talking about the buzz of J.D. Vance and his team are better at it. and whether that actually means he's getting closer. It felt a little bit like maybe Tom Cotton, but I don't think Trump wants Tom Cotton because he doesn't trust that Tom Cotton will do the wrong thing when the times require it. And the only one I would say that I feel,

I watched the Sunday shows last week, and Tim Scott's bad at running for vice president in this time. Oh, that was on my show. Yeah, he was just, he's not good at it. But you know who is good at it? Byron Donald's. And I got to say, I don't think he's qualified to be vice president. I mean, he's a nice enough guy.

I've met him a couple times, but I don't agree with him on a lot of things. But he is much better at the auditioning process than Tim Scott is. And if Trump is convinced that he needs an African-American, I think he doesn't pick Tim Scott and he picks Byron Donald. That would be my sort of, I'm not betting that it will happen, but I will be less surprised than a lot of people. I thought Tim Scott's interview on ABC was catastrophically bad and also exactly Tim Scott's ability level, which is what made it catastrophically bad, that he's trying to prove that he has this skill set that he absolutely does not have. And then he's going out and highlighting that he doesn't have this skill set that he really needs to have, I think, to be picked as Trump's VP.

Tim Scott is beloved when you see him speak in a room full of Republican donor. for instance. He has this pastor stick that I find really off-putting, but that rooms love. But when it comes to television and someone asking him questions, that's not his memorized speech, it goes really poorly. And the questions from John Carl on Sunday were not difficult ones. Like, will you vote to ban bump stocks now that the Supreme Court has said it's up to Congress? just not a hard question to answer one way or the other. But there wasn't an answer. The pivot was weird.

And then he starts talking about like, you know, only in America can someone like me. And it's like, what? And finally, John Carl says, thank you, Tim Scott, in the middle of like his Americana, like, some speech because it was so non sequitur. And that's how the interview ended. Next up, Biden is doing some interesting policy things. things. So a week ago, he announced that he was doing some major changes at the southern border when it comes to immigration and asylum seekers. This was met with disapproval from some of the left on immigration issues. The ACLU has said that they will file lawsuits to stop Biden's

policies from going into effect. And now Biden has announced that he is also going to provide a sort of fast track for about a million illegal aliens who are married to U.S. citizens who meet a residency requirement, a time, et cetera. This, of course, is now angering people on the right who see this as amnesty, encouraging more illegal immigration, et cetera. So they're going to file lawsuits as well. I want to talk about the politics of immigration policy for Joe Biden. Where is he actually, but also why the flim flim, coming around, why not announce these at the same time, at least? But then also the sort of executive branchness of this whole thing, you know, you're heading into an election. Republicans have said

they don't want to fix immigration because they think it helps them. This is almost certainly going to get enjoined by courts. Maybe half of it, maybe all of it, maybe half of it now. And, you know, you never know how these cases timeline-wise move. And doesn't Joe Biden run? the risk that only one half is stopped or that both are just stopped, like the sort of politics of executive action that we've seen, whether it's student loan, debt forgiveness, eviction moratorium, he keeps making these big announcements. Then they're taken away. Are voters going to actually punish him for that or reward him for doing things that I think he knows he actually doesn't have the power to do? But let's start with the immigration side of this, Mike. What is Biden doing?

on immigration? Where is he on immigration? I can't tell. Oh, I was hoping you had the answer to that because I don't know either. Look, I do think immigration is an issue that Joe Biden himself as a political figure does not have a lot of passion for or interest. And I think he is driven by people around him more so on this issue than maybe on others. And that is reflected in his decision making and what you just described, the sort of olive branch to the right on immigration from recently. And then this kind of olive branch to his left, I agree it would have made more political sense to announce them together. and it kind of make a, it's dangerous to use the word comprehensive when you're talking about immigration in Washington,

but kind of make a comprehensive message about what he was trying to do with immigration and even sort of acknowledge that, I think it would actually benefit from acknowledging that this may not, well, I don't know, there may be a problem with saying, like, look, the courts may enjoy this and they may not let me get this done, but to sort of set it up as I tried to get something done in Congress and the Republicans blocked me. I'm trying to make this very complex issue work and reelect me and reelect Democrats into the majority and we can actually get something done on this. I just think it's too confused and he benefits from a kind of, hey, I'm trying on his border

executive order, and then he kind of takes a step back with seeming like he's granting amnesty. I mean, on the policy itself, it seems like kind of a rational, reasonable approach, but politically it seems confused and complicates and muddles the message he was trying to send, I think, with the initial executive order. Jonah. Yeah, so I've struggled with this as well. I had Matt Contenetti, who follows this stuff pretty closely. on the latest remnant, and I asked him just like, hey, steal man this for me.

Like, what, what, what's Biden doing? And he didn't have, I mean, there's not a criticism. He didn't have a great answer either, but part of it was, which I think is right, is I think they thought when they did the border enforcement thing a few weeks ago, they would see some movement in polls, and nothing happened. The needle didn't move at all, except that it pissed off all of these stakeholder activist groups on the left. And so maybe this reinforced for them the belief that they've got to get their base in order and that this is going to be a base election. And so they know how to pander to their base effectively or at least get positive feedback for it. So they went with this. That would explain why they didn't do it all at once because it was always

planned on, it wasn't planned on being done. The second half wasn't planned on being done at all necessarily. But I don't know. I think it's, it, again, it's sort of like my point about watching the debates on mute. If you just watch, if you, if you ignore the policy on a whole bunch of things that Biden does and just look at the politics and the maneuvering, it just feels like the guy can get pushed around. It feels like the guy, and I think that underscores the age issue for him.

Because, you know, on Israel, on border stuff, on student loans, they think it conveys I'm a fighter. They want to convey this Bill Clinton thing where I never give up, I'll never stop fighting for you message. And I think it comes across because of Biden's personality in his age as I can't get this done, but I'm going to keep trying, and I keep changing my position to convince you of this, that, or the other thing. And it just, it doesn't come across as forceful and presidential at a sort of meta level. And it's just a problem for it. So I attribute the beginning of this to Obama's Year of Action in 2014. It's not perfect. There were certainly things before this when it came to executive action.

But Obama's Year of Action was like doing a cannonball into the pool. Maybe some other people have been swimming around. But like, it was huge. This was 80 executive actions in 2014 after comprehensive immigration, um, reform had made it with bipartisan majorities through the Senate, and then Boehner in the House gnawed it, basically. And Obama had a choice at that point. He could start over with Boehner, negotiate a new immigration deal that was going to obviously involve more compromises to Republicans in order to get it through a Republican-controlled House after he'd gotten it through a Democratic-controlled

Senate. And Obama just like, was like, no, let's let it die. I think this will be better for me then it will be for him. So in the year of action, there were 80 things that were done. They ranged. They weren't all immigration by any means, but several of them were. And voters, I think, did reward Obama by and large.

Now, again, this is like a whole thing on Obama, but certainly Obama wasn't punished as, you know, not working with Congress, for instance. So fast forward to Trump. Um, you know, he rescinded almost all of Obama's Year of Action. And then, to my total shock, right-wing activists were like, yay, our turn, year of action.

And they did religious liberty guidance letters, obviously a bunch of the immigration executive actions. Bump stocks is a good example. And the Mexico policy quotes from activists, Catholic, you know, bishop-type folks saying like, yes, Donald Trump re-instituting the Mexico policy, this is what prevents non-governmental organizations from providing abortions in the countries

that they work in. It was like, yeah, this is like a huge accomplishment. And Biden rescinded it in the first week of office. And in the following weeks, rescinded everything else that the courts hadn't already stopped by saying Trump didn't have the power to do it. Biden just went ahead and rescinded it, except bump stocks, which of course the Supreme Court did last week.

And again, I just didn't see voters really not only not punishing Trump from the right, but even understanding why these things happened or that they were gone, which is even worse. So Biden comes into office with this backdrop, and I feel like he just turned the amp up to 11 because he gets the press release saying he did the thing.

And it doesn't matter that the next president will either rescind it or that the courts will say you don't have the power because the activists don't seem to care, the voters don't seem to punish you, but I do wonder Jonah if, you know, a song that plays really nicely in, you know, a

nice upbeat tempo doesn't work at like insane tempo. And so what if he had done half of the things that he had done, maybe it actually would have worked better, but by doing so many and so many high profile ones like student loan

debt forgiveness that did just make huge headlines when the Supreme Court said, no, like, you can't, the president doesn't have the power to do that. And then he's had to do these piecemeal ones that oddly, instead of looking like he is a man of action, it actually is making him look more feckless, because every single day he's announcing some new thing that he's trying to do that then doesn't actually seem to happen. So if you're doing it on student loan debt forgiveness, people kind of notice when that doesn't happen. If you're doing it on shutting down the southern border, people are going to notice when that doesn't happen. It's very different than Obama's executive actions,

which were on, you know, equal pay issues and DACA. It wasn't as universal, I guess, as what Biden's been trying to do. I don't know. The executive branch politics of it, I'm very curious about because this will be the next president. And the president after, because if Congress isn't forced to do anything, has no incentive to do anything, around and around we go. And, of course, my beef in that.

is that the Supreme Court keeps getting blamed because presidents keep doing things. Then the Supreme Court says, no only Congress can do things. And everyone says, oh, Supreme Court, such buzz kills. Why won't they just let the president fix this problem? And it's a little like my beef with the beefs with originalism, this, you know, well, we would not have Loving v. Virginia an interracial marriage with originalism.

No, what we'd have is a law from the federal government that allowed for interracial marriage or maybe a constitutional amendment that required every state to allow interracial marriage. But there's no sort of acknowledgement that when you move the law in some area, you disincentivize movements in other areas

and particularly, it seems, in the political areas. So I think what Biden has done has accelerated this catastrophic atrophying of Congress, but the question is whether it's going to be politically successful. And I'm very hopeful to hear you say, Jonah, that you think it hasn't worked for him very well. I think it's just this really weird, ironic moment in sort of political intellectual history

where the right developed conservative legal movement. It took 50 years, training people up, doing it the right way, making the arguments, doing your home, work, going through the process, going through the politics of it to get, you know, all the way up to Dobbs and all of that. And right now, we saw with the bump stock case, we see the Supreme Court really, and maybe in the Chevron stuff, we don't know yet, right, but really saying, hey, we actually mean this Congress, do your freaking job.

And at precisely this moment, Republicans in the, because of the myth that we never did anything successfully are saying, you know, we don't need the conservative legal movement anymore. We need judges who know what time it is. We need Pam Bondi on the Supreme Court. We need Judge Janine and Tom Fitton, who's not even a lawyer. These are the people who know what time it is and get things done at precisely the moment where the payoffs are really starting to flow in

in terms of restoring the constitutional order from the judicial side. At the same time, you're like, you know, our friend Yvall Levin, you know, he wants there to be the equivalent of a federalist society for Congress to figure out how to get Congress to actually know how to do its job again. And it's a long-term project. He doesn't think I'll necessarily take 50 years, but it could take 20. And at the same time, nobody on the right, or I shouldn't say nobody on the right, the three of us do, but nobody in Congress, nobody in the Republican Party has the slightest interest and actually,

they like to talk about the Constitution, but actually restoring the constitutional order means nothing to them. I listened to Doug Bergam yesterday talked about how Joe Biden's a dictator because he gives all these executive orders, what, five days after the Supreme Court shot down Trump's executive order on bumpstocks

for being just a grotesque, you know, violation of separation of powers. And so I am not all that optimistic about this getting fixed anytime soon. I'm also concerned that it's just, it's not only, so again, I'm thinking back to the Trump years and sort of my own experience, I don't know quite out of explain it, but it's almost as if the right-wing activist wouldn't have even preferred congressional action that would have actually been lasting and permanent in the, you know, permanent-ish sense. Because that, of course, involves compromises of some kind. they actually seem to prefer getting everything they wanted in a press release that would only last for two or three years than they would have with having to compromise with, remember, Trump had a Republican Senate and a Republican House when he came into office. They could have pushed for some of this stuff.

And they didn't. And that politics really is the most concerning part to me, Warren, not that nobody wants to take the time. to work with Congress, but they actually seem to not want Congress to do it compared to the sort of fundraising high that these activist organizations get from getting the press release from the president. And then they get to fight it again in a few years, right? It going away actually helps them. It keeps them alive. There's a kind of like permanent revolution attitude going on here where, you know, the revolution is really profitable if you can just keep it going. I will say there was a kind of, if you look back to the way that, you know,

people used to denigrate, you know, special issues groups in Washington, you know, oh, all they care about is, you know, fighting for their, for their thing, whether it's, you know, the original kind of iteration of Grover Norquist's group or the groups on the left. I mean, you do, there was a sense that they were all, you know, trying to actually get some, some bit of legislation, you know, through and like, and would, and could be satisfied with moving, moving the ball a little bit in their direction on whatever their issue was, whether it was taxes or, you know, or labor policy or whatever, what have you. And what you described now, Sarah, as a kind of the success is the press release. This is success is the fundraising email, the ability to keep it going, keep the outrage going. You can see it from, you know, the way that right-wing media operates as well. I mean, there can be no victory because then what are we all supposed to do after, you know,

that's what that's what motivates all of the you've been hearing this since since 2016 you know what did conservatism ever really conserve and you know that is the benefit of um of conservatives winning a bunch of victories over the previous you know 20 30 years was like people didn't even know it's like fish didn't fish don't know they're in water um and and and i think that is uh it is all put on overdrive by having a leader of that movement be a controversy instigating entertainer at his core. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one.

Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching

your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right. Well, let's do a little special segment here coming in at the end. It's not a not worth your time because this one is very much worth our time. Michael Renaud is joining us. Hello, Michael. How are you all? Good, and you're up to something. What are you up to? Yeah, happy to talk about a new newsletter we're launching this weekend called Dispatch Faith. We're covering a lot of religion content, similar to what we've been doing the last few months every Sunday on the website, but excited to

deliver it in a new way into folks' inboxes every weekend. So give me an example of a question you'll be covering. This weekend's essay I'm pretty excited about. Karen Swallow Pryor, who's a very well-known literature professor, author, speaker, thinker, is examining how Christian nationalists really are exhibiting a failure of imagination. She goes back to look through classic texts that she's familiar with. She's written a lot about. And really it looks at how the things we hear parroted by so-called Christian Nationalists,

today really are a result of not having a big enough imagination about how to live together in society. So stuff like that we'll tackle. Won't just be about Christian nationalism every week, won't just be about even Christianity per se. We have to tackle a pretty broad range of subjects and questions. So I have one idea for you guys to tackle going forward. I mentioned the other day on the remnant that I'm actually really interested in the differences between like what makes a Methodist different than a Presbyterian, different than an Adventist different than a Lutheran, different than a Missouri Synod, whatever, all that kind of stuff. And I've got a lot of email about it. Some people trying to explain it. Some people

saying, hey, I will explain it to you, but first, I need to know that you'll read it because it's going to take a lot of work. Some people wanted to do maps. I just want to know where will you see the pastor with a guitar and where will you not? But anyway, I think a sort of, a sort of cultural, you know, high and low divisions theological and otherwise would be a useful primer for a lot of people. And I don't think just non-Christians. I think there are a lot of Christians who have like, no, like my wife is always like, Jonah, I don't know what the prods think about that. And so I think it would be a useful sort of field guide. No, absolutely.

I think we can probably even do like a flow chart with here's where you'll see a guitar and here's a church where you'll see drums and here's a church where it's just all a cappella or whatever. We can get right on that. Here's where you're expected to bring potato salad to the picnic and when you're not, all that stuff, you know? No, well, we can do music. We can do food for potlucks, whatever.

No, but a lot of the stuff that we've done, if you go to our website and click on the religion tab in the top menu bar. We've done a pretty wide variety, everything from personal essays. We had a great piece a few weeks ago about what it was like for a Catholic kid to grow up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish kids on Long Island and was very different from stuff that we've done but really resonated with a lot of folks. And then if you go back further, we've done several explainers on the crack up among United Methodists. We did a piece in the fall about why evangelical Christians get so worked up about Israel issues and kind of unpack that from a theological perspective. So I think that's right in keeping. Joan, I think that's right in keeping

with the kind of things that we want to do and include in this. And Michael, I think the institutional internal politics in some of these church organizations, you know, we've heard a lot of recently about the Southern Baptist Convention. You mentioned the breakup in the United Methodist Church doesn't appear to be united anymore. Everything going on internally, I think getting into some of those issues is something that is endlessly fascinating for me, and I think for a lot of our readers. So I cannot wait to read more about all the drama going on in all of these different faith traditions. Can we have a section dedicated to just attacking David French in this newsletter?

I'll get back to you on that. No, but we should say speaking of David, just for a second, like David used to be, you know, when we were launching the dispatch, we really wanted to cover religion. And this is before Mike came on board. It was before David came on board. And part of the argument was that mainstream media generally covers religion very badly. The way it covers it is usually through the prism of look at those scary Republicans. The scariest

Republicans are the ones with, and there's Sky God, that kind of stuff. And then it got even worse under Trump because then it was all just, you know, through the prism of anti-Trump stuff. And so we've wanted to, on the principle of hit where they ain't,

we've wanted to cover religion from a broader perspective that actually understands it on its own terms, and Michael's sort of the perfect guy to be spearheading this. David, you know, his Sunday column used to sort of scratch a lot of this itch. But now that David's gone and Michael's doing this, it allows us to actually return to the original vision that we had, which has got a lot of different voices, covering a lot of different stories, not done through the prism of the Beltway or partisan divides. Is that about right, Mike?

Yeah, that's absolutely right. So Steve, tweeted about this last week, and I think he mentioned it on the podcast last week, but the former New York Times editor, Dean Bacquet, several years ago, uttered this now kind of famous or infamous quote, we don't get religion. The New York Times Newsroom doesn't get religion. And you can't really get America without, at least in some rudimentary sense, getting religion in some way. And I write about this in the introduction to this week's newsletter. But that's what we want to do here is try to help folks get religion. In some way, we're not going to cater to one particular religion or one particular tradition within a religion or within a denomination or anything like that. We just want to help

readers understand where religion intersects with policy, politics, and culture, and why it's important to understand what's going on, and offer, you know, helpful critiques, hopefully helpful, spirited critiques in the spirit of David French. When it's warranted, we're not trying replace David. You can't replace David. We're trying to do something a little bit different, but still, as you said, Jonah, kind of scratched those same inches. Well, thank you, Michael. We look forward to reading it. And for all the rest of you, we will talk to you after the debate. So our next episode won't come out until Friday afternoon next week, because we'll make sure to, I don't know. I mean, we'll watch it so you don't have to.

I'm going to be.