The Dispatch Podcast - Will The Real Fiscal Conservatives Please Stand Up?

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

With the the State of the Union in the rearview mirror, Declan and David join Sarah to break down Biden’s re-election chances and the mood of the Democratic Party. The crew also takes a look at polling between Trump & DeSantis and their sway with voters. And yes, some balloon content drops, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Declan Garvey and David Drucker. And boy, do we have a lineup today. We're going to talk some state of the union, what it looks like a few days out now. And what it means for Joe Biden's administration and what it told us about Republicans moving forward. Got to talk about the balloon a little. Just touching on some balloon content. Trump Desantis comes to the four. So does Biden Harris. Let's dive right in. All right, David, it's been a couple days since the State of the Union. Net. Was this a win for the Biden White House, the way that his advisors are touting it? I mean, they're taking some real victory laps this week. Yeah, really good question.

Look, I think it sort of depends on exactly what they hope to accomplish. Democrats broadly were very, very happy with the speech. And you could see it across social media. I could sense it on the Hill. I was on Capitol Hill for the State of the Union, talked to a number of Democrats after the speech as they were leaving the House chamber. And even Democrats that still aren't sold on Joe Biden for 2024 had nothing bad to say about the beach and a number of Democrats were, in fact, very energized by it. The key question I wanted

to ask, and I think what the White House really wanted to accomplish here is to put President Biden in a place where party regulars are comfortable with him as the 2024 nominee. If he runs, which we expect, he will be the nominee, but are they going to be comfortable with it? Are they going to be energized by it? Right. And going back to last year, when things really went south for him with his approval ratings and concerns about his ability to govern and navigate a very difficult national, international political environment. There's been a lot of talk about, we like Joe Biden quite a bit, but we're just not sure that an 80-year-old man who's going to be 82 when he would take office for a second time is up

to this kind of a job, which, Sarah, Declan, as you know, you go into the presidency at age 45, as we saw with President Obama, early 50s with President George W. Bush, and you come out looking like you're 85 years old, right? So how is it going to be for somebody who's 82 on their way into a second term? And the sense that I got from the State of the Union and talking to Democrats and just watching them is that they feel a lot better about Joe Biden as their nominee in 24 after the speech than they did before. I think the question is, where are the rest of the regulars, right? The professional operatives, the activists that are involved in party politics, not necessarily progressive anti-establishment politics, but party politics. Are they really confident

in him? I think that this speech might have helped him in that regard, but I still think he has a waste to go. Yeah, I mean, to that point, there was a huge drop-off in viewership. Now, maybe you could argue that it's not really about watching the state of the union, but 27 million people, which look, that's a lot of people, but we were talking in the 40s and 50s for, you know, past presidents, even for Joe Biden's first state of the union address, I believe it was in the high 30s. So a big drop off there if you're trying to convince the majority of Democrats who don't want to see him as the nominee. But as I said, like maybe it's not watching the whole Maybe it's just watching that clip of the back and forth with Republicans where watching it in real time, I believe there was a chance he could really sort of lose the microphone, if you will, and lose control of the room.

And instead it went the exact opposite way. You know, there aren't a lot of politicians who I think could have handled that as well as he did. And I think it did undermine the narrative that, you know, he's mentally not all there. that took a lot of acuity in the moment and a lot of quickness to get the room back and actually turn it into a political positive for him. Declan, I want to dive in on a few specific moments, particularly not part of the state of the union, the Mitt Romney George Santos back and forth. Because it's sort of, it's this roar shock test, right? On the one, hand, I'm hearing from the right, this looked like some sort of ploy by Romney to get a lot of love and

attention from the MSNBC crowd who's broadcasting this nonstop this morning. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't a very nice thing to say to George Santos. On the other other hand, there's a lot of hands on this question. Mitt Romney's right or Mitt Romney's defending the party, you know, et cetera. And today just announced that Mitt Romney has given this sort of all-access diaries, emails to McKay Coppins, who will be publishing a biography of Mitt Romney, a book about Mitt Romney while he's still in office, this like all-access book. So what's Mitt Romney doing, Declan? You know, I think he's really just saying what he feels. He kind of is over a lot of the, you know, when he was running in 2012, when he was thinking about running in

2016, he had to be a little bit more calculated, a little bit more careful with what he's saying. And at this point, I think he could take or leave, whether he serves another term in the Senate when he decides whether or not to run for re-election in 2024. And he really just is saying what he feels. And what he feels is that George Santos does not belong in Congress. I don't think it was a ploy. to, for a certain crowd or whatnot, I think he's just frustrated by, by what he sees and what he sees in his party. You know, I think that it's funny seeing the split screens of how

Romney recounted the conversation to how Santos recounted the conversation to different reporters. It's, I can't imagine Romney ever saying the word ass, which just, which is what Santos says he said. I think Romney might have said took us or he could have said rear end or something like that, but I don't think he would ever call him an ass. So I think you know, it's it got a lot of attention. They're not by for all intents and purposes, they're not members of the same party. I know they both have the R next to their name, but it really is just not an intra-party spat. It's it's a bipartisan spat there. I do want to touch on a point David made there, and I think it was a good one that Democrats are really engaged or were really encouraged

by Biden's speech. I think it's a little silly that, you know, the fact that he can stand up there for 80 minutes and give a speech totally changes the perspective on whether they want him to be president for four more years. But I do think there's some truth to it. I mean, somebody who gave a progressive rebuttal to his speech last year, Rashida Talib, representative from Michigan was shouting encouragements to Biden during this speech when he was talking about his wealth tax that's never going to be implemented.

But he really has managed to consolidate the party around him, despite being not a particularly transformative figure or particularly popular figure for that matter, given the polling. I know there's polls showing Democratic voters don't necessarily want him to run for another term, but there's not that same appetite among people in D.C. I think we've talked about it on this podcast before the Saturday Night Live skit from a couple months ago where a group of friends

sitting around being like, we probably don't want Biden to be the nominee again, right? And then they think through who the alternatives are. And then they come back pretty quickly to, no, no, no, no, we're good with Biden. So I think that's where we're at. I mean, we'll see what happens with the document scandal in the next coming weeks and months. And, and, and, you know, there's always the possibility of a health scare between now and next November. But for all intents of purposes, it seems like it's Biden 2024. David, what did we learn about the Republican Party? And specifically, I'm thinking of the same exchange, right, on Social Security and Medicare.

This was an intra-party dispute in some ways with Rick Scott putting out his plan ahead of the midterms, where he calls for all legislation to sunset. Well, all legislation, in theory, includes Social Security and Medicare, even though he didn't mention them specifically. And that's what sort of gave Democrats the talking point that Republicans want to end Social Security and Medicare, even though sunsetting just means you could reauthorize it, et cetera, et cetera. Mitch McConnell shut down the Rick Scott plan immediately and said,

if we take back the Senate, I'll be majority leader. Basically, Rick Scott doesn't matter. and what we saw at State of the Union, I mean, Republicans literally stood up to repudiate the Rick Scott plan in some respects. At the same time, you have Republicans saying that they're budget hawks, that they want to cut spending. I'm confused how you're going to do that

without touching entitlement reform or even talking about it, two of the biggest line items in the budget. And also after four years of the Trump, Trump administration where they learned how good it feels to never have to say no, right? Spending is fun, man, and not spending is not fun. Austerity. How lame. So where does that leave the Republican Party? Is there a fiscally conservative party now? Yeah, Sarah. All really good points. Listen, I've been saying this for the past several years. There is no constituency to cut spending and get our

debt under control. The only constituency that exists is a constituency to cut spending that is favored by the party that I don't like. So when there's a Democrat in the White House, Republicans rediscover their fiscal conservatism. And when there's a Republican in the White House, Democrats borrow that occasionally rediscovered fiscal conservatism because it's all in the service of opposition to the enemy. The American people are not interested in cutting spending. They think that they pay so much in taxes in all sorts of different ways that government should actually be spending more for them, not less. And while in theory, they would say that they want the nation's fiscal house in order and that exorbitant debts are bad. And you can poll these

and, you know, every other day, there's some new outfit that favors a reduction in spending. and taking care of the debt that will tell you the American people in our polling are in favor of a responsible plan to control the deficit and cut spending and deal with all of these programs. Once you tell them what those programs are, there's always a constituency that is for keeping those programs because those are the good programs. Right. And when it comes to Medicare and Social Security, you're also correct to point out that if you want to get the debt under control, you have to deal with the biggest drivers of the day. And for the un-initiated, it's not like on some big walk,

but the un-initiated, Medicare and Social Security do not have to be reauthorized every year or ever. They are automatically renewing programs, if you will, that spend whatever they need to spend. Occasionally, the Congress can vote to increase Medicare benefits or increase Social Security benefits, But otherwise, these things just keep spending more and more money to handle more and more customers, if you will, more retirees, more health care recipients over the age of, that hit the age of 65. And seniors happen to be reliable voters every two years without fail.

They vote in small elections, big elections, nobody wants to make them mad. And even a few years back when Paul Ryan tried to suggest reforming these programs only for younger workers, which included people under the age of 50, So I don't even know if I'd qualify anymore. Apparently, you wouldn't be able to touch my Social Security anymore as I'm over the age of 50. Well, you know, the Democrats ran ads that he was throwing Grandma off a cliff and so much for that. So the biggest fun I've had in a long time in regard to a State of the Union, which is plainly not fun, is watching this speech where Biden rolls out the attack on entitlement programs, Republicans and mass boo. And he says, okay, well, I guess we're in agreement. We're not touching these programs. And he

declared victory and went home, so to speak. And so there you go. You do not have to worry about Republicans or Democrats messing with your entitlement programs. Although for political purposes, the president is still running around the country saying that that's what Republicans want to do based in part on the fact that some Republicans, like Senator Rick Scott, still believe these programs need to be addressed. And as we saw in Madison, Wisconsin, the day after the state of the union, the president pulls out Rick Scott's handy-dandy, glossy brochure where he talks about all the changes he wants to make to the federal government, which includes the sunset of all federal programs or the reassessment of all federal programs every so many years. By the way,

Senator Scott responded to that by some, with bringing up some old plan that Biden had proposed some decades back, in which he believed all programs should be looked at as well, which I'm sure the president was happy to see because it continues his ability to push this message that Republicans secretly, quietly want to take things away from it. It reminds me so much of the polling that every pollster at this point has done, which is, do you believe that politicians should compromise more to get things done? 76% yeah do you believe

politicians compromise on your side compromise too much on the issues you care about 78% yeah you know everyone's for cutting spending when it's the other guys ox being gourd but

you don't actually cut the stuff that you enjoy that you like from the government Declan what did we learn about the Democrats so in Biden's state of the union speech, it was very interesting what wasn't really emphasized. The balloon, not in there, you know, very, very brief reference on immigration. Fascinating. It is fascinating. It really was

an economic-driven speech, which is something that you might not have expected to be the case six months ago, even three months ago. But the rate of inflation has come down in recent months, the job market as evidenced by last week's jobs report, which was very well-timed for Biden to be able to say we have the lowest unemployment rate in 53 years, just days before this State of the Union. So they really were driving this economic message. And it is kind of nuts that I think I saw it was John Podoritz in commentary made it made a note of this he's Biden spent about 270 words talking about the junk fees reduction uh act something like that and 180 words on China in this speech um which which I sort of thought you know talking to other folks there were people who were

eye rolling at that I thought it was great politics man you want to talk about what people spend more of their time complaining about China or the fact that their family can't sit together on that flight. I promise you it's the latter. You are correct. It's good politics. But the same token, like Rick Scott's plan, really, really, really, really bad politics, as evidenced by what happened in the midterms, by Mitch McConnell's reaction to his plan, not necessarily bad policy by any mean. I mean, if you do think that these entitlement programs are running us off a fiscal cliff, which they are, at some point, somebody has to put forward a plan to deal with it. Even set that aside, if you think Congress isn't doing its job,

if you sunset every major piece of legislation and just force them to vote more often in order to keep things like Social Security and Medicare running, forget even cutting them. It would actually maybe, you know, be like having a regular workout session where members of Congress remember what it's like to take votes that aren't actually hard but are harder than the votes they're taking now to rename the post office after someone everyone like. Right. And so you see this on both sides with Biden not mentioning just if we don't talk about immigration, it's not going to be a focus. If we don't talk about China, it's not going to be a focus. But at the same time, Republicans are saying if we don't talk about entitlements, it won't be a focus. And then here we are barreling towards this cliff. So somebody has to talk about it at some point. And, you know, somebody has to talk about China at some point. And, you know, somebody has to talk about China at some point. too, which we could do now. Let's talk about China.

David, what is the foreign policy vibe right now on the hill? You know, we talk so much about Russia and Ukraine in the last year. But there's China just looming over there as a very different adversary, but in many respects, a much more existential one than Russia would be. Yeah, Russia is a. a faded power. China is a rising power. And China wants to supplant the United States as the globe's preeminent superpower. And they have the sort of economy and economic clout internationally that they're a much different sort of competition than the USSR was. And I say this as a

Cold War kid, but you know, it was easy during the Cold War as an American, as an American-based corporation to not do business in the Soviet Union because there was no business to do in the Soviet Union. China is the world's second largest economy and it has a consumer market that is huge. Their consumers actually buy products and it's this sort of hybrid between a authoritarian communist regime which controls life in China but also allows a large degree of independence, at least enough such that you can buy products and you can watch movies and you can go to basketball games. It's such a fascinating difference from the Cold War because in some respects what China's

doing is very similar. I think their investments in Africa, while I think larger and more productive than anything the USSR was doing, like it's the same game plan. Maybe it's better executed, you know, as when the USSR was trying to build out alliances as well. But the integration of American companies into China would now be impossible to unwind. American companies don't want to unwind. The market, as you said, is huge. And it's such an integral part of their bottom line, night and day difference. And it makes this entire conversation about what you do about China, quote unquote, this ain't the Cold War anymore because they're not viewed as at the

in the same way when so many of our companies rely on their business. Right. And American consumers rely on Chinese products. Now, a lot of that manufacturing has been diversified throughout Asia, so it's not only China. But again, the Soviet Union made zero products that we had to rely on. They were not a part of our supply chain. And so it's a different sort of a confrontation and a foreign policy challenge than the Soviet Union was. On the other hand, And one of the things I've noticed in the past few years is that concern about China and an understanding about the threat that China faces and how China is trying to overmatch and out-compete the United States has really become a bipartisan issue on Capitol Hill.

In some ways, more than I ever remember foreign policy differences between the parties existing in the past. I mean, there was always this sense among Democrats and Republicans years ago that the Republicans were hawkish. They wanted military buildup in order to deal with the Soviet threat. Democrats thought that that was too provocative and wanted less in defense spending. And while both sides will have different opinions on defense spending, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus among the mainstream of both parties that China is a threat that must be addressed and addressed aggressively. Now, there are populist Republicans on the right that have slightly different views on how we should handle this. There are progressive Democrats on the

left that have slightly different views, but the mainstream. And the Democrats and Republicans that are so hawkish on Ukraine and helping them repel Russia are hawkish in part because they that this relates directly to China, that China and other authoritarian nations are watching Russia's actions and the response from the West. And if the U.S. and the West go soft on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that's going to be a signal to China and other authoritarian that, at the very least, all you have to do is wait them out, and they'll go soft on us too. And that will be a green light for China to consider even more so taking back Taiwan by force and other authoritarian nations who have territorial designs on their neighbors.

And we're going to end up with a lot, with many more problems to deal with on that front. On the other hand, we stand strong in terms of our military and financial support for Ukraine. And it's not just us, but the West. And those nations and China are going to continue to, if not reassess, just try, tread a lot more carefully, even though the bluster will continue. 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

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Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. And Declan, politically, how does the Biden administration think they handled Balloon Gate? Where does that leave us on Balloon Gate? Well, I do have an update on Balloon Gate. The State Department issued a release just a couple of minutes ago saying that after they collected this balloon from the Pacific Ocean and intelligence agencies have been doing analyses of it, that it was, quote, clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment on board weather balloons.

It was, quote, likely capable of collecting and geolocating communications and that it had solar panels on it to allow it to flow. around for quite a long period of time and transmit data back to China in real time. This was part of a program that the military, the Chinese military has been operating for over five years traversing 40 countries across five continents. So this is not a not a weather balloon. The poor person in the Chinese Weather Service who got fired last week over this seems to have been in error. He seems to be a scapegoat for something. Could have, could have predicted that the minute it happened. But yeah, I mean, this is, I said this on Dispatch Live earlier this week. It could be a moment where this forces us to actually think about the amount of surveillance

China's already doing and that they've been doing for years that we are okay with. Big balloon floating around the sky, bad Chinese surveillance app downloaded to your phone that you can watch videos on, okay. You know, we're taking steps. The government's taking steps to block Huawei and other, you know, Chinese infrastructure companies, Huawei is a telecoms company that, that has been, you know, building out national infrastructure and countries around the world. The United States has said, no, you can't do that here anymore. But there's all these other things that we are okay with. We're okay with, you know, having Amazon Alexa's in our home that are listening to all these different things that we're doing.

We're okay with downloading TikTok. But if there's a big balloon in the sky, which, again, not good, not good that there's a big balloon in the sky, but it's, you know, priorities here. I don't see. Do you have TikTok on your phone, Declan? I do not, no. I might have at one point, but I did not. I do not now because I read Clon Kitchen, because I read Clon Kitchen.

But I finally guilted me into getting rid of it. I miss it. I think the the politics of it. Republicans in the House stood up a select committee on China. I think that was a really smart thing to do. It not only kind of creates a centralized place for a lot of these conversations and debates to happen, but it also helps them elevate the issue in that, you know, when when reporters are writing about this stuff now, they're going to go to Mike Gallagher, who's who's chairing.

that committee and asking him and one of the best people that Republicans can put out there on this issue and kind of give him a little bit more of a platform to work on these issues. And so I think it will only continue to be a bigger story in the coming years. And if it takes a big balloon floating over the country to kind of get the country to focus on it and pay attention to it, maybe it could be a good thing in the long run. is it a fair criticism that the Biden administration should have shot the balloon down earlier and that this shows a weakness on China or that Joe Biden is afraid of upsetting China in the pocket of China. This is proof of corruption.

I mean, where does this fall on the spectrum? What's fair? What's not? Look, I'm still trying to gather information about the balloon so that I can understand or come to my own conclusion as to whether the president was weak or made a wrong decision in how he allowed it to traverse the continental United States before shooting it down in the Atlantic Ocean, in our territorial waters where he had the right to shoot it down and recover it. For anybody that has studied and followed Joe Biden's political career, he's typically been hesitant to take military action or support

military action. He's been very doveish over the years in that sort of classic modern Democratic Party sort of way, although that hasn't stopped him from supporting military engagements over the years when he was a voting member of the United States Senate. So when you look at Joe Biden, you can come at this with the presumption that he's cautious, sometimes overly cautious, at least in the eyes of some, particularly those on the right, that he worries about the consequences of military action, sometimes seemingly more so than the consequences of inaction. But I think that when you look at how he's handled Ukraine

and when you look at his rhetoric and some of the moves he has made in the Asia-Pacific, I don't think it's fair to say that he's necessarily been weak on China. China. I think time will tell whether he's been effective, whether he should have been more aggressive in combating China. But I'm not sure that he's been weak. And with the balloon specifically, look, I comment this from somebody who just wants to shoot things all the time. Right. I mean, you even get close to our territorial waters, shoot it down. People threaten us. You make it clear that we've got the bigger stick. So I, I I'm not a dove by any sense, but maybe the president made the right decision in dealing with this balloon. And, you know, I think we're just going to need to learn more. And I think time will tell, you know, as it relates to whether this was handled properly and effective. I think that your last point there, David, is absolutely the correct one. I think it's easy and natural for anything, especially something like this where it's so.

visible and tangible to jump to your corners and I'm a Republican, so it's bad that we didn't shoot it down or I'm a Democrat, so it's genius move that we kept it. We don't know anywhere near enough right now to conclusively say that one way or the other. I mean, stuff will start trickling out. The Pentagon has said that they were able to jam a lot of these antennas or data collection devices and once they acknowledged it and they were able to stop China from collecting some of the data. If that's true, then sure. I think it's fine that they waited until there was no risk to harming any civilian infrastructure or people. I mean, this was the size of three city buses falling from the sky with all this equipment attached. And so in one sense, that makes sense.

in the other, it could also just not be true that the Pentagon was able to block all this stuff and that China was collecting. They were floating this over Montana, where we have nuclear launch fields. There, you know, balloons are able to collect certain radio frequencies that satellites are not. So there are some reasons why China would be doing this rather than just relying on their satellite constellation. But we also from this State Department report a couple of minutes ago saw that the United States was doing U2 flybys of the balloon over the past week. And that was how they collected some of this information that they have about the program is from those flybys. And so if they needed to keep it in the air to kind of get a sense of the patterns or how it was

being controlled, whatnot, maybe that's another thing to consider as well. But I just think think it's too early to definitively say one way or the other. Biden seems to think that he told an interviewer yesterday on PBS NewsHour that this does not hurt relations with China at all, that they totally expected that we would shoot it down once we saw it. I don't know that that can be accurate. I think relations are different now than they were a week ago, even if it's just because of the public pressure that the Biden administration is now under. They withdrew Blinken Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's meeting in China over this. And so we'll have to see if it's a long, has a long tail or if this is something we'll forget about in the week. But I just think

it's too early to say one way or the other. All right. Well, let's move on. Polling in the Republican primary. It's fascinating. As Nate Cohn at the New York Times pointed out, there is a 30 point margin in some of these polls, between some of these polls, I mean, of where Trump is versus where DeSantis is. Maybe they're neck and neck. Maybe DeSantis is up a little. Maybe Trump is walloping DeSantis. And these are in the multi-candidate polls. Nate Cohn did a nice job walking through why the polls might have such variety and discrepancy and ruled out a lot of the normal culprits, finally landing on the fact that clearly there's a problem in who they're asking. But we don't know which

group is right and which group is wrong. But he came down on the side that there's some reasons to believe that Trump is weaker. It's not the, he's 30 points ahead of DeSantis. It's, you know, he's a weak frontrunner, probably. And by the way, I covered this in the latest sweep newsletter. So if you want to read more on what Nate Cohn was saying, are these polls. Feel free to go check that out. But what I'm more interested in is how Trump is acting. So he has taken several swipes at Ron DeSantis over Ron DeSantis' handling of COVID, then over Ron DeSantis on immigration and how he voted in the

House, saying you wouldn't have endorsed him if he'd known. And then most recently, over a photo that's allegedly of Ron DeSantis with some women. They might be girls, I don't know. It's very confusing, saying that they're high school girls, that he was their teacher, and it's pretty gross. And Rhonda Santis responded. He said, I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida

and fighting against Joe Biden. That's how I spend my time. I don't spend my time trying to smear other Republicans. This has been heralded as a brilliant response, totally shutting down Donald Trump and this roadmap for the path forward on how to deal with these sort of more and more outlandish Trump attacks. And my thought about this is, I think it is perfectly tuned to the 2023 political landscape in the Republican primary. But the idea that that would have worked in 2015, if you're Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz or Chris Christie.

No way. They all tried versions of that many, many times over. And everyone was like, yeah, yeah, but what do you say to Trump? And it was all about what Trump's next thing would be. And so for me, what's so fascinating about this is it actually is highlighting how different the GOP primary in 2023 is than it was in 2015. And again, I think it looks a lot more like the 2008 Democratic primary where you have Hillary Clinton as, you know, the juggernaut frontrunner and Barack Obama as the underdog everyone's

rooting for type thing because he's not Hillary Clinton. And then everyone just pours their hopes and dreams into the empty vessel of the other candidate. I think there's plenty of Republicans who have issues with Ron DeSantis's record. And we'd probably have more issues with it if they spent more time with his record. But Ron DeSantis at this point is filling in the not Donald Trump part. And as a la pundit, nay, Nick, also put out in his newsletter, this is going to be a referendum on Donald Trump. And that makes it much different and much, you know, easier might be the wrong word in some ways. It opens up a lot more options for someone like Ron DeSantis than candidates had in 2015. So with that incredibly long intro, David,

do you find the Trump, DeSantis, back and forth better for DeSantis or Trump? I mean, we're still talking about it. Trump's still getting the attention. And as I said at the beginning, probably still leading in the polls. Where's this all going to shake out? Yeah, well, look, a naked man running down the street is always going to get attention, even if you don't want to see it. There's just no way around that.

Look, Jonah said he didn't know that people were watching. Well, it's hard not to watch because the accusations and the mud slinging is, it's just impossible not to see it. But I think there are some key differences. And I think you're getting to this here between 2023 and 2015. And I'm going to sound like a broken record here for anybody that's hear me say this. But in 2015, Donald Trump was the ultimate change agent. He was a known person in America, but he wasn't a political operator as a candidate.

He had never run before. He was known because he was a famous businessman, not because he was a politician. So he's the ultimate change agent. There was something else that was a very, very big deal in 2015 that is not the same now. all of the Republicans that he was going after, the Republican voting base was happy to have him go after them for depending on who we want to talk about, whether it's Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or, you know, there were 38 of them. There were all these reasons why Republican voters didn't like them, didn't trust them, didn't want them. And so even if they

were unsure about Trump, which they very quickly were not unsure about Trump, as we saw in the polling, which continued basically all the way through, except for a few interruptions, even if they weren't sure about Trump, they were tired of the same old thing they had been getting from the Republican Party. And so when he criticized them or attacked them in ways that we've, you know, that people like us, generally speaking, found untoward, unconscionable, improper that voters had never accepted before, the voters were happy to pile on and say, yeah, exactly, I don't want these people, look at them, they're awful. And therefore, even if Trump's being a little bit over the top, and even if I wouldn't actually approve

of my own family members or children or spouse talking that way, I'm tired of all these politicians. They've been lying to me and cheating me. And finally, somebody's saying what I but never wanted to say. But this time around, and particularly with Ron DeSantis, well, Republican voters like Ron DeSantis. They think he's been doing a bang-up job in Florida. And he's been proving to them that he is a fighter. And he's fighting all the right people on all the right issues in all the right ways. So when Donald Trump goes after Ron DeSantis in the same ways that were so effective in going after his Republican competitors over the years, it's not necessarily going to work the same way because they like him. They trust him, meaning Ron DeSantis. And so the reaction might be,

well, I know why you didn't like those other people, but what's wrong with Ron? Ron's one of the good guys. He's kind of governing in your image. In fact, he might be doing a better job than you on the ways in which were the whole reason I liked you. And so this is not fair. How could you do that to him? By the way, I've seen this among some Republican voters. And look, there are going to be other candidates in this race. Some of them may be viewed as throwback to the Reagan era, in which case Trump's attacks will work. But in many cases, they might not because we're dealing with a, you know, if known quantities and a newer generation of Republican politicians that have made their bones in the Trump era as opposed to the previous era, even if they've been around a long time. And by the way, I'll just then get back to this final point here, which is really important.

Trump's now been on the scene for eight years. In some ways, he's like an incumbent that everybody gets tired of, even though he didn't get his second term. And so his attacks are not going to land the same way because he's not viewed the same way. And Declan, that's sort of the point that I'm interested in as well, which is, like any treadmill situation, what you have to do to keep the same response. you know, your first time eating chocolate cake? Incredible. Your 50th time eating chocolate cake? Still great. Your 10,000th time eating chocolate cake?

Well, now it's just chocolate cake. You know, the hedonic treadmill effect here. Especially when it's all in one day. I do love chocolate cake. And so for Trump, the things that he was saying were you didn't know what was coming out of his mouth next. Everything was this new outrage. And it was so easy to capture. all of the oxygen in the room, all of the attention.

What he's having to do and say now to even get a fraction of the attention he was getting before is pushing him, I think, more and more into a place that has actually a backlash effect where it's like, oh, God, well, we can't have this again. And that's a fascinating reaction because it's driven by us. It's driven by media. It's driven by everything. You know, at one point a couple weeks ago, he suggested throwing job. Josh Gerstein, the Politico reporter who published the Dobbs draft into jail.

Imagine him saying that in 2015, and that would have been a week-long news story. This time around, most people never saw it. They didn't notice. Nobody cared. Nobody covered it because he'd kind of already said stuff like that multiple times over the last six years. So what is this time? And I wonder how much room that's going to give these other candidates, like a Nikki Haley, or Kristen Nunu or whoever else to get into that field. Because when I mention it, you know, looking like

2008 in some respects, there were a lot of other Democrats who ran. You know, who's the John Edwards of the Republican field who, you know, has like a respectable third place showing until it wasn't respectable for other reasons. But, you know, there was Dennis Kucinich. There were lots of other people who ran, but it was the narrative was always from... Joe Biden. That's right. From... the, you know, from January when Clinton and Obama both announced, it was always Clinton versus Obama, really, from that point forward. Yeah, I mean, I think the non-Trump, non-Dissantus challengers are hoping in some way that that,

I mean, their only chance is that Trump and DeSantis kind of get locked into this death match early on, and then they both kind of tumble over the cliff together. just bring each other down. I don't know that that's a incredibly likely scenario, but it's enough clearly to encourage Nikki Haley to get in the race, to encourage some of these other governors and maybe Tim Scott to throw their hat in the ring. And so it's not a 0% proposition. I mean, I do think your point about Trump's outrageous statements is correct in that only the outrageous stuff is what's breaking through. And even that is not breaking through anywhere near the amount that it used to be. But it also is not that far out of the norm of what he's saying. I mean,

you see some high-profile DeSantis backers in the media in recent days, basically expressing the sentiment like, oh my goodness, what a what a low blow by Trump. He's never stooped so low. this is this like he accused ben carson of being a pedophile in 2015 and then he appointed ben carson to service his homeland or hud secretary for for all four years of his administration this is not anything new uh you know sarah you know well the the lengths that his campaign was willing to slander people uh and and uh campaign staffers and whatnot to uh to to move forward in this race so it's not anything new um it's just the the the The target is different. As you mentioned, David, it's somebody that is actually of kind of to go back to the Mitt Romney, George Santos point. In 2015, 2016, Donald Trump had an R next to his name, but he was not really a Republican in that sense. Jeb Bush and Donald Trump were not part of the same party in any real way. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are. Their fellow travelers, Ron DeSantis, remade himself in in Trump's image.

to get the endorsement in in 2018 and to go as far as he's gone already. So it reads a little differently. I do think strategically from the Trump side, it shows a real weakness on his part that he is coming out of the gates swinging like this already before DeSantis is in the race six months before DeSantis will probably declare. And that leads, I mean, it shows that he's worried about him. It shows that he might not believe that any of that polling that shows him as a frontrunner really is legit. But I also think that it shows that his goal with this kind of stuff now is not necessarily to damage DeSantis, but keep him from running altogether and see if he can kind of dissuade him from getting into the race at all.

There have been kind of rumor campaigns that we've picked up on in D.C. that Trump's people are shopping around dirt on DeSantis and DeSantis' wife and that, you know, if they get in the race, things are going to get really, really dirty and ugly and you don't want to do this. We're going to air out all your dirty laundry. I have no shame, so you can say whatever you want about me and it's already been out there, but you guys, it'll be really tough for you if you decide to run. I don't think that DeSantis is going to back down from a race because of that. I think his entire public persona to date is that he does not back down from this kind of thing.

But it is a real consideration for these candidates and their families is what they're going to have to go through if they mount this bid. And, you know, Trump is going to make it incredibly unpleasant for anybody who decides to challenge him. And, David, last question to you on this, which is, why is Nikki Haley running or pick anyone else? Tim Scott, Krista Nunu, any of these other folks we've talked about, Chris Christie, Larry Hogan. And obviously, the answer is not going to be the same for all of them. but A, do you think they believe that they have a real chance to win this race? B, you know, there's been some comment that maybe Nikki Haley is actually trying to run interference for Trump against DeSantis and looking for a VP pick. Three, there's just no downside to running for president anymore.

It ups your name ID. It increases your fundraising base. You get to be on a debate stage. And so, yeah, you don't quite know. Maybe it's a cabinet position now, maybe later. maybe it's an ambassadorship down the road maybe it's a board position who knows but why not because it's all good yeah it's different for everybody i think niki haley believes she can win i don't buy conspiracy theories because politicians aren't smart enough to pull them off if anybody's watched

any government run anywhere in the united states you might think that conspiracy theories are far-fetched because the thing just doesn't work properly most of the time um niki haley's a very ambitious Republican. She's wanted to run for quite a while. She's managed to keep herself relevant for the past four years, basically, since she left government service, and you do not stay relevant forever unless you go back into government service or you run for office. She's a former governor, a former ambassador. And the timing for her may not be perfect because Trump didn't disappear or because the party seems to have flocked Governor Ron DeSantis. But we've seen often where we don't think somebody is doing well or could do well

because their polling isn't good or they don't seem to have a relationship with the right people in the party and they surprise us. So Nikki Haley has a very developed political operation, whatever her faults are, and we could list them. It's one of the more developed political operations of any of the potential candidates. And I just think she wants to be president. I think that there are others that know that it might not be in the cards for them. Let's take a governor, Chris Sununu, a very capable politician, very popular in New Hampshire,

a very big deal on the Republican nominating calendar because it's the first traditional primary, second nominating contest. I haven't asked governor sooner to this directly, but I've had a number of conversations with them over the past couple of years. I don't think that he thinks he's what the party is looking for. but it never hurts a politician to bask in the attention of will you or won't you. You get more speaking engagements to push your agenda and talk about your views for the country. People want to hear from you.

And if you're in public service at a high level and being elected governor, being elected senator, even serving in Congress, these are high levels of engagement, then you want that attention because you want to affect policy and you want to be influential. You want to put yourself on the radar for cabinet positions. Yeah, sure, maybe. That often goes with it. Put yourself on the radar as a potential vice presidential candidate. Sure, I don't put past strategic moves past these politicians.

But as you say, Sarah, they don't actually have to worry about losing. Right. in the in the in the in the in the good old days when the smoke filled room controlled everything uh you know these outsiders that would come along we can argue maybe those were better old days too because you had better candidates even though they were controlled by a bunch of cigar chomping elites but um um you know the old days when you went against the party there were repercussions now when you're an outsider um when you're somebody who obviously doesn't have a chance in the world you get a lot of attention you get to be on tv you get to be on cable news you get to be on social

media and it just doesn't hurt like the worst that happens is you're still kind of a nobody but now you've got you know a million dollars in some pack account and you're called on tv you know once or twice a week as a vaunted strategist of something or other and you know doesn't hurt your side gig even usually you're making money in some way and now you're an influential person and if we've learned anything in Washington, you can be good at nothing, but if people think you're influential, they want you around.

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Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y Annex. All right. So let's go to the other side the aisle. Declan Kamala Harris's political team getting a lot of stories out there about how this is her time to shine. She's turning the page. It's a new vice presidency. What do you think? Good luck to them with that. A lot of this was spurred by a New York Times story that came out

either late last week or early this week, quoting about two dozen anonymous White House and Democratic officials in D.C. who are concerned that she has not taken the role of vice president and run with it. She has not done anything to boost her profile or prepare her for a national run, were she to succeed Biden in either 2024 or 2028. I would like to see these people be vice president, by the way, and do all these things. Look, I'm not someone who thinks that Kamala Harris is this incredibly talented politician. I don't. However, the vice presidency is a miserable, hard job that you basically can't win at. Correct. It's, it's, and especially when you're set up to fail like she was with Biden, where he got into office and was like,

Kamala, you take voting rights and immigration and abortion. And all things that I plan to do nothing about. and don't want to talk about. Correct. And by the way, if you're acting, if you're doing too good a job or getting too much attention, you're going to get criticized for trying to overtake your boss and steal attention from him. But if you don't do enough to get attention, then you're missing the opportunity and not seizing it. I mean, give me a break. It's a very difficult position she's put in. It was made more difficult by how close the Senate was last time where she could never be more than a couple hours away from D.C.

in case she was needed to cast a tie-breaking vote. I think she did that over 20 times, maybe almost 30 times in the first Congress because of the 50-50 nature of the Senate. And all that to say, she still hasn't done a very good job with the crap hand that she was dealt. I think that, you know, she did not, when she ran for president the first time, she did not make it to the primaries. I think that's evidence of something that she ended up in this job by being appointed, not by being elected.

I think that she probably would not be in the Senate. Were she running anywhere other than California? But it is interesting that these stories are coming out. I mean, just a little bit of how the journalism sausage making works is this kind of story does not come out of nowhere. This is somebody in the White House talking. to the New York Times reporters that they see every day like, hey, you might want to write a story about how Kamala Harris is not living up to expectations or not, you know, not meeting what we expect from her. And so it'd be interesting to see who in the White House that was. The only on the record quote in this story from the Times was John Morgan, who's a Democratic kind of operative donor in Florida.

But clearly, that's coming from somewhere, either the Biden team trying to gently nudge her off the ticket towards 2024. The Biden team concerned that she was going to mount a primary bid. I don't think that's a real concern. But these stories don't come out of somewhere. There's got to be a reason. David, thoughts, feelings on the vice presidency, warm bucket of spit or great opportunity? Well, the vice presidency has actually developed into a great. opportunity, or at least an opportunity to be involved, be influential, and help the president

govern over the past 20, 25 years or so. We saw Dick Cheney use it to great effect. We saw Joe Biden make himself relevant, but we saw Mike Pence make himself very, very relevant. It's almost amazing to me the way Vice President Kamala Harris has squandered a major opportunity to vest herself as the heir to the Democratic throne, given that her boss is of advanced age. And in some ways, I shouldn't be surprised because when you look at her 2020 presidential bid, here she has all of the tools, political tools you can't teach. She's got a certain charisma about her. She's got a presence.

She's telegenic. she's a former state attorney general and the United States senator but she you never got a sense of where she stood or why she stood there she kept trying to make everybody happy and was never centered and as a politician the one thing you need to do is you need to have a firm sense of who you are and why you're either where you are or trying to get where you're trying to get And then everything else, you know, you can mess with. And you can even overcome flaws, you know, like, I'm not that good of giving a speech. I mangled the English language.

But people have to get a sense that you're sort of a bedrock. And she just has not been able to use the vice presidency to establish herself as a figure. It's not the easiest thing to do because you're always deferring to your boss. But, and it's possible that her relationship with Joe Biden is not that great, which has made things, you know, difficult for her. But she's just, she has not been able to take advantage of this opportunity. And it's hurt her future prospects. And without betraying too much of where I live, I am within sniper's distance of the naval observance. conservatory secret service.

So Kamala, you're doing a great job. And I think that, you know, you'll be a great presidential nominee. You're all, you're all, I'm sure you're going to a cocktail party in Georgetown. All right. Last up, not worth your time, question mark. So Disney reports its first subscriber lost 2.4 million subscribers leave. they're planning to slash 7,000 jobs, lots of bad news for Disney. And my question to you two, just, you know, short form, is this proof of how you actually handle wokeness, et cetera, that the right is complained about?

You don't need to pass laws. You don't need to have sort of this government solution that the market actually will take care of it. Declan? Yes. I think that's where I land. I will say that in Florida, they did pass some laws specifically related to Walt Disney World and kind of the special district that governs how that is operated. And Florida's legislature actually announced this week the changes that that will actually entail. It's DeSantis is going to be appointing members to the board that oversees that special county. Yes, it's very strange. We did a TMD on it about a year ago. You should check it out. I talked to a Disney historian, which is a cool job for somebody to have. But yeah, I think there has been a legitimate and earned skepticism of Disney that's grown over the past couple of years, not only for however one of you describe progressive content that tends to be. leaning in one one direction, but also their presence in China and their willingness to bend their content to China's censors. Just last week, we saw that Disney Plus removed a

Simpsons episode that made some reference to the to the Uyghur genocide at the behest of the Chinese government. And so these are the, I was going to say roosters coming home to roost, but I don't think that's the correct saying. So the chickens coming home to roost in some sense. And hopefully, I mean, they change CEOs to ostensibly someone who is more progressive than their last CEO, but it seems to have learned some lessons while the previous leadership was kind of floundering here. So we'll see if there is a market correction here. It does seem like businesses are less willing to wade into the culture wars now than they were even six months a year ago. Look, we've been living in this populist moment where big business seems to many Americans

to be all powerful, all influential, and unstoppable. And there are many reasons why Disney could be facing a financial crunch and be forced to lay off employees. I mean, we live through a pandemic where everything happened at home, streaming businesses reap the rewards. And now as we are back into a more normal way of living our lives, we're not home all the time, it could just be a function of the business for streaming options, especially amid heavy competition, going back to a more normal footing, we're possibly faced with a recession. businesses have been acting accordingly to at least trim their labor force, if not reduce it significantly. It can also be the fact, and I'm sure Disney will study this, that they cost

themselves customers by taking a stand on politically charged issues on which not everybody agreed with them. But I think it's a good reminder that these things are not constant in permanent and that the market over time will reward companies that function properly. Other companies will suffer consequences. And sometimes you don't have to do anything wrong. Business just isn't as good as it was. And you have to make adjustments where you end up going out of business. And with that, we'll call it quits today.

Thank you for joining. And if you want to hop in the comment section, become a member of the dispatch. and we'll see you there. If not, feel free to throw us a rating wherever you're watching this, listening to this, you know what I mean. And it helps other people find the podcast when you rate us. Or just go about the rest of your day and live your life. Take a deep breath and marvel at the wonders around you. Trees are so cool. This episode. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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