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- [00:00]
A
This episode of the Dispatch Podcast is brought to you by Pacific Legal Foundation. Since they were founded in 1973, PLF has won 18 Supreme Court cases defending the rights of ordinary Americans from government overreach nationwide, including landmark environmental law cases like Sackett vs EPA. Now PLF is doubling down and launching a new environment and natural resources practice. They're on a mission to make more of America's land and resources available for productive use and to make sure freedom drives our environmental and natural resource policy, not fear. To learn more, visit pacificlegal.org flagship what's going on? I'm Arch Manning, Vuori athlete and college quarterback. Whether I'm running, training, traveling or just unwinding at home, I love doing it in my core shorts from Vuori. With a breathable boxer brief liner, they're quick to dry, super versatile and stand up to even my most intense training sessions. Plus, they come in three inseams and a ton of colors. Ready to try a pair? Go to vuori.com arch and get 20% off at checkout. I think you're going to love them as much as I do. That's V U-O-R-I.com arch and get 20% off your first order. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Have a great day. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we'll discuss the Minnesota welfare fraud scandal, then China, chips and AI. And finally, for not worth your time, would you work out in a mini gym at an airport? I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Isger and Michael Warren. Let's dive right in. Morning everybody. I want to start today with a story that has been years in the making. It's a story about the failures of the welfare state, about the challenges of assimilation, about culture and stereotypes and resistance and racism. In response to the challenges of the COVID pandemic, the state of Minnesota developed a number of programs designed to ease the crisis, including some efforts to step up the provision of food and ease access to housing. But what started as a series of well intentioned efforts has become one of the largest state level examples of fraud in US History. According to our friend Matt Continetti at the Wall street journal. Quote three separate plots to bilk welfare programs 59 federal convictions, more than $1 billion stolen from taxpayers, 86 people charged so far, with many more Likely to come. Mike, I'll start with you. There's a lot to discuss here, many different angles. But let me begin with the big question. How does something like this happen?
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B
That, I mean, that is kind of the question that, you know, invest investigators and prosecutors and the media are increasingly asking. You know, there's something here that reminds me of, you know, every single, you know, story about a small, you know, insular community. A lot of times immigrant communities that, where. Whether you want to call it sort of the racketeering that happens in organized crime or this is sort of a different version of that same thing. But I think what you. You have is you have a small number of people who are insulated by being a part of a community, an immigrant community, who take advantage and take advantage in a big way of a very generous, in Minnesota, a very generous social welfare program. So that's like one part of it, right? It's that people will find ways to try to bilk a system, try to fraudulently steal money that's up for grabs and try to get away with it. That's that. That's crime. The other part of this is the looking the other way that was going on by officials in Minnesota. And I think that's. That's the bigger scandal. I mean, okay, maybe I'm being a little too cute here. The stealing of $1 billion is pretty big scandal. Is the big scandal.
- [04:43]
C
Yes.
- [04:43]
B
Okay, so. So maybe I've over state of that, but if you understand and follow the way that these prosecutions have. Have gone. These prosecutions started at the federal level in 2022, I believe, and there's already been convictions, some convictions. It's that increasingly there's another example, another program, another organization that we're learning about that was doing the same thing. Right. It started with this feeding kids money that was put aside for feeding children during the pandemic and some fraud going on with that. And it's expanded now to autism programs, programs that are there to help kids who are autistic. And you had folks who were in the Somali community who were essentially signing up kids who were not autistic and saying that they were in order to get money and funnel money. It's getting bigger and bigger. And the, the only way that that happens is if the officials whose job it is to audit these things, to keep track of this money, to make sure that the system is doing what it should be, the money is going into the right places, they weren't unable to do those jobs. And I think that's the thing when we get beyond prosecuting the criminals who stole the money, I guess the second step at this point is, and it's already being asked is what, who was asleep or. Or looked the other way in Minnesota and what can be done about that? That's where I'm most interested in.
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D
And why did they look the other way?
- [06:25]
A
Yeah. Sarah, do you have a thought on that?
- [06:28]
D
I mean, it's certainly been suggested that they looked the other way because they were afraid of being accused of being racist, which goes to a different problem, as Mike has said. But I do want to stay on the welfare problem for a second because this has been, I mean, gosh, it feels so quaint. And I'm kind of just excited to feel like I'm in 1995 again. So, like, let's do it. The size and scope and role of government, right versus left. What a treat. You know, I thought Continenti put this well, you know, this is what happens when welfare isn't limited, temporary and conditional, but omnipresent and unreserved. Now, that was the fight we were having in 1998. I think what's changed is how immigration has factored into that fight. Because when we look back at waves of immigration in the United States, and I mean the big ones there wasn't the current welfare state. And I think what has changed the vibe of the immigration debates in 2025 versus, you know, 1870 or 1910, there was plenty of pushback and backlash to those immigration waves. And a lot of it didn't sound that different than some of it sounds today. They're not assimilating, they're not like us, they don't share our values. All of those things you would have heard from the Know Nothing Party about the German Catholics. But one thing that is different is this sense that not only are people coming here and they're not like us, but they're coming here, they're not like us, and they're demanding more of our money. And then because they're not like us, by which I mean Mike's point about sort of insular communities, again, nothing new about that in immigration waves of the United States, but when those communities then steal from the generosity of America's welfare programs, I think it undermines both the welfare programs as Continetti's point is making in a very 1995 way. But it also undermines our immigration system because we don't have a merit based immigration system like so many other countries. We have a different immigration system. Even our intended immigration system probably isn't compatible with a huge, as continent said, omnipresent welfare state. But this immigration system reminds me of the on ramp. When you're on the George Washington Parkway trying to get on 395, when the lane backs up so much, people cheat and move into the other lanes, skip the line, it backs up the whole freeway or, you know, highway to get onto the freeway. And everyone hates each other. And so not only does the illegal wave of immigration cause people who are waiting in line in the legal immigration line to, like, throw up their hands, they might as well enter illegally because the illegal line backs up the legal line at some point, but it also causes ill will from everyone toward everyone, that they're the ones who have caused the problem. And, and I just don't think you can separate any of that mess from the current fights that we have that aren't 1995.
- [10:04]
A
Right. And the community that we're talking about here, the Somali, Somali American community in Minneapolis, St. Paul in Minnesota, estimated between 80,000, 100,000 members, has become sort of a core part of the community in some ways. But there have been challenges and difficulties with respect to assimilation. And I think importantly to this story, they have become a key part of the Democratic constituency. So when these complaints were first brought forward, they were brought to bureaucrats in the Minnesota Department of Education, which was running this food program. And immediately, when questions were raised, the groups that were alleged to have been defrauding people, or at least, you know, submitting questionable invoices, unable to explain how they're providing the food they're allegedly providing, responded with threats via email saying that they were going to call the administrators racist and that they were going to go public with it and it was going to be ugly. And Mike, to your point about how challenging it is to get people to be responsive, I think this was. Remember 2020, 2021, 2022, Minnesota, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, where everybody was particularly sensitive about questions of race and nobody wanted to be thought of as racist. The. The lead prosecutor on the case said about racism, this was a huge part of the problem. He told the New York Times. Allegations of racism can be a reputation or career killer. So these people in Governor, Democratic Governor Tim Waltz's administration were afraid of being accused by this. And the Somali Americans who were at sort of the core of these, these, these fraud cases knew well how sensitive people would be about this. Jonah, how much of this is a discussion of racism? How much of this is problem of our broken welfare system, as I mean, our broken immigration system, as Sarah says. And how much of this is just old school big government fraud?
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C
Let's put it this way, rather than put it into portions, let's just say it's all of the above. Because I hate the cliche perfect storm and all that kind of stuff, but I hate everything about this story because every complaint is true and almost every complaint is kind of bad faith. First of all, it is not shocking at all to me that Somali activists in Minnesota after George Floyd had figured out ways to MAU MAU this, right, is to sort of intimidate and scare people. That is, it's like they have training seminars in the Democratic Party to teach people how to make these kinds of accusations, right? And they are not unique to Somalis. They are not unique to African Americans. They are, they are part of the grievance culture more broadly. Second look, I've seen a lot of stuff about how, you know, as, as someone put it, how can you have a creedal nation if people don't agree to the creed? And I think that is a perfectly legitimate rhetorical question to ask. I think it's kind of creepy and weird to ask it as if Somali Americans are the only people for whom that question can apply, given that, first of all, we have an administration that doesn't really believe in the American creed either, and they're supposed to be the super patriots. But second of all, I'm not a big fan. So one of these things. So from one perspective, this reminds me a little bit of what's happened in parts of Europe where you get very large numbers of Muslim immigrants, particularly weird towns in Belgium, sort of second, third tier cities in Belgium and Sweden, and they hit a critical mass. And then you get this red, green sort of popular front thing that happens where the Muslim communities and the hardcore left join forces and control local government in these places. And this is one of the things that causes people to freak out about creeping Sharia law and all these kinds of things. And I'm not saying that's what's happening, you know, in, in, in Minneapolis. But there's a similar dynamic where you get the ideological identity politics stuff married to old fashioned ethnic politics. And they're a really gross mix, particularly in an age where a lot of higher education and a lot of elite conversation is embarrassed by the idea of actually buying into the American creed. On the flip side, we're talking on Thursday, December 11, in the morning, two nights ago, Donald Trump gave a speech in which he talked about how he doesn't, you know, how he, first of all he admitted that he did say whole countries in 2018, and then went on a long rant about all these shithole countries. Sorry, we'll bleep if necessary. And then he went on this riff about how. How come we can't just get some from, you know, Norway or Sweden or. And at some point, I thought just as sort of rule politics, he would mention some non blonde country and instead he just listed all the Scandinavian countries.
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D
4 non blondes was a great band.
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C
Fair, great.
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A
Great is overstating it, if I can say.
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B
Totally.
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D
You're overstated, Steve.
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A
They had maybe a good song. I mean, maybe a good song.
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B
Overplayed too.
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C
But the last point. And so the reason that I bring that up is because he's also talked about how we just need to get rid of all the Somali Americans. We need to get out of our country. They don't contribute, they're at 88% on welfare, all these kinds of things. So he's leaning into the right wing caricatures the way that a lot of the left wingers who gave permission to this thing to happen leaned into the left wing caricatures. And to listen to some people, you would think this was the first ethnic group or immigrant group in America to defraud local government. And I'm not saying the whole group by any stretch, right? But there are networks and clusters of organized crime that emerge among Somalis. And I don't want to say that everyone is a part of it, right? And I don't want to say they all want to believe in Sharia, but, like, there are these activist hardcore people, and there are also these criminal hardcore people. And it's like, has no one ever watched the Sopranos or ever heard of Tammany Hall? The Irish built in today's dollars, billions. And again, when I say the Irish, I mean a criminal set in conjunction with corrupt government officials. Not all Irish people. Although, you know, there were times where my dad might have said otherwise. I kid, I kid. But the Irish beat him up in high school. And this is a very common thing, not just in America, but around the world for a bajillion years. You get insider outsider dynamics. People think this is basically the culture of gypsies. I'm sorry, the Romantch or whatever I was supposed to call them and send your angry letters elsewhere. And so anyway, I think just everything about this story has a kernel of truth to it. And everything about this story lends aid and comfort and oxygen to people who want to run away with it. The story that, like, somehow Minnesota taxpayers are funding Al Shabaab, which is one of the things that started this latest round on this. There's been zero indictments on that front, to my knowledge.
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D
No, they're funding usual grift, you know, nice vacations, fancy cars.
- [18:13]
C
Yeah. And it's. And they should all go to jail. And all of the politicians who aid, provided any aid and comfort to this or refused to do their due diligence should all be fired or voted out of office. Everyone should be ashamed of themselves. Taxpayers in Minnesota should get their act together and elect competent people. Tim Walsh should probably lose election because of this. We can just go down a very long list of people who have not behaved properly. I would throw Elon Omar out of office too. Just get rid of the whole bunch. But, like, it is not the end of Western civilization that people are turning it into in some quarters.
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A
So I want to go, I want to pick up on that and go back to the point that Sarah made and leave it to Jonah. I figured we'd have a nice long, meandering conversation exploring all of the different aspects of this problem and then end up where Jonah just took us, which was. Everybody's playing the caricature here. I mean, it's, you know, you've got the, the people who perpetrated the fraud threatening to, to go public if there was heightened scrutiny on minority owned businesses. They said that any delays in approving applications for minority owned businesses would result in public accusations of bias and would be sprawled across the news. That again, according to the prosecutor, paralyzed the people in the bureaucracies who were afraid of being. So they know that they can exploit these fears and these concerns in the sense that there's nothing worse than being called racist, however true or untrue the claim may be. Nobody wants to be called racist. And then on the other hand, you have Donald Trump's outburst in the Oval Office the other day where he said that Ilhan Omar and her friends are garbage and then broadened it and suggested that all Somalis go back to Somalia, which is a hell country. They have their own problems, as Jonah said, sort of revive the country's epithet that he used several years ago. He denied it back then. He confirmed it in a speech earlier this week. So everybody's playing their role, which I guess my concern is that keeps. These are real issues. They're real, I think, sensitive, but necessary, difficult conversations to have. And it seems pretty likely we're not going to have them because of these caricatures. Am I wrong, Sarah, as usual, like.
- [20:51]
D
Of course we can't have nice things, including nice conversations, I guess. So nobody on this podcast is going to defend Donald Trump, sort of. We could add the sentence there. But I guess I'm more curious about why what he has been saying and continues to say in various iterations is so effective politically now in a way that again, if it were 2005 or 1995, it wouldn't be effective. And I think that's a more interesting question. In a lot of ways, we have more foreign born residents and a higher share of immigrants in the United States than at any other time in US History, including those previous waves that I mentioned before. And I just think we're gonna look back for so many reasons and see Donald Trump as a symptom of a lot of things that were going on and not as the cause. Some of the causes, I mean, I've said before, right? You cannot say that Donald Trump. You cannot look for reasons for Donald Trump and only look to American things because the phenomenon has replicated in so many other countries. So the 2008 financial crisis seems like an obvious one. The introduction of the iPhone actually to me is becoming an increasingly important causal link. But immigration, I think, is going to be one of them too. And the US Again, basically giving up on having a functioning immigration system, a functioning border, making a distinction between illegal immigration and not that, becoming a political football where one side, maybe open borders isn't the right term, but boy, it's pretty close. Unwilling to enforce immigration laws and to make that distinction between legal and illegal immigration, except in the most sort of like, well, of course we don't want people coming here illegally, but we're unwilling to do anything about it to stop them or to make them leave when they get here, or to limit their resources when they're here, or anything else. And while I think the political moment has turned against Democrats on this, and Donald Trump has been very successful in doing that, we are still seeing the remnants of that. This is one of those examples still, the refusal to enforce immigration in a lot of these cities that are run by those who think that it will be politically popular for their side to say that they don't enforce immigration laws in their city. And so you see Donald Trump, I think, still trying to squeeze more juice out of this fruit. And the question is, it was successful in 2016, it was successful in 2024, will it still be successful in 2026 when it does feel like there's been a pretty big shift toward Donald Trump, by the way, toward his side.
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B
Will.
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D
It still then be the political issue where Donald Trump can stoke people to say, yeah, he's the only one willing to say this. He's the only one who's able to do anything about this. If it feels like everyone is kind of already saying, look, Democrats have just lost this issue, the permanent majority thing that they thought they were building in 2008, that's clearly not happening, or in 2026, are we gonna see these second, third generation Hispanic Americans refuse to vote Republican anymore? And then the whole thing comes back. I don't know.
- [24:37]
A
But isn't it the case that Trump can be both a symptom and a cause? I mean, I think that's what he's done here. He's sort of created permission, or as Jonah likes to say, permission structure for people who might have harbored some of the feelings that they've had towards immigrants or towards minorities or whatever. And he just says it now and says it in ways that are, I think, really gross as often as not. And while it's true that he's, you know, expressing deep seated concerns that people have had about immigration frustrations they've had with Democrats who as you point out, not only are refusing to enforce the laws, but are chest thumping about it and going out and bragging about it and being aggressive about it, which I think has, people should be frustrated about that. But some of the stuff that he says goes so far beyond, it's easy for people of goodwill, not just his political opponents, not people who don't like to look at the kinds of things he says when he calls, you know, people from an entire country garbage and say, eh, he seems less concerned here about immigration reform and changing the way that we do this than he does about just slagging folks who are different.
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D
Let me just say one thing. Time and again, Donald Trump has proven to be the mirror of the electorate, not the leader of the electorate.
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B
I don't know if I agree with that actually, Sarah, because, well, I think what you've described is, I could probably sum up as sort of like all these sort of systemic or kind of big epoch whole forces that are at work here right with within our political system. And I think all of that is true. And yet I think another hallmark of our moment here is the lack of individual leadership and people sort of setting aside the sort of base political motivations. I know those politicians have always been driven by that. But I also think there is a, and this is what I think the, the never Trump Republicans were arguing from, from 2015 is that sort of the Morality of leadership matters. And in this story, this is, this, to me seems to be the bigger problem because, yes, Donald Trump is, I believe, immoral to say the things that he says about Somalis and Somali Americans and to, and to dismiss an entire group of people, many of which, most of which in Minneapolis, in the Minnesota area, are American citizens, either naturalized or actually born here. So he is their president, it should be noted. But again, going back to the leaders in Minnesota, this is a system that was set up. We should underscore this, too. Minnesota has a much more generous social welfare program than the average US State. This goes back to its sort of Scandinavian heritage and all the sort of things that they've done. But this has been a sort of a decision by Minnesota voters and leaders to pursue this for decades. And if you have that and you are in a position of power, leadership and executive execution of those programs, you have a responsibility to make sure that those programs are being executed properly and fairly and to not be cowed by threats. Again, I know I'm asking a lot for people in government and elected politics to not be cowed by threats from a large, loud constituency, but that is the issue here. If, if people had stepped up and said, you know what, I don't care if you accuse me or my office of racism, the numbers don't lie. And this needs to be dealt with for the sake of the taxpayers of Minnesota, for the sake of the Somali American community, by the way, this is not good for them to have a small number of people stealing money. To me, you can't separate the leadership vacuum that's going on in states, in the parties, in the White House as well, from the story as well. Donald Trump and the, and the, and the Democratic, excuse me, the dfl, the Democrat Farmer Labor Party officials in Minnesota, they can't just be a mirror reflection of their constituents or a loud part of their constituency. They've got to be more than that. And maybe we shouldn't expect that from elected officials. But I say, why not?
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A
It's good to have high expectations, however unrealistic they might be.
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B
Very high expectations.
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A
Jonah, going back to Sarah's original point about this feeling like a 1990s era debate about the size and scope of government. Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal wrote a column in which she encouraged Republicans to, to make this at that, to say, hey, she said, you know, in effect, this is, yes, it's about immigration, yes, it's about this, but really it's about the kind of fraud that you have to expect if you have these kinds of massive government programs, and Republicans would be wise to make this about that and to make that argument and go back to sort of small government, a case for limited government. Look, I mean that I, I would love Republicans to be able to do that. Those, the cases, those are the arguments I get most fired up about. Isn't it a challenge for this current Republican Party spending the way that it's spending, showing maybe some occasional rhetorical interest in limiting government, but not much real interest in limiting government, to suddenly now pivot on the revelations here in Minnesota and say, yeah, you know what we're really going to go back and do? I mean, this is the same party that right now is, is debating with support from prominent Republicans, including, reportedly, the president, expanding Obamacare subsidies. Isn't it a hard thing for them at this point to say, yeah, we're the small government party?
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C
It's impossible for them to say the small government party? I mean, like, we don't want to do horseshoe stuff.
- [31:06]
A
We could do horseshoe stuff.
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C
I'm sorry, we just don't want to do it again. But it's very difficult for me to take seriously people screaming about how the Democrats are socialists in the wake of taking equity stakes in all these major businesses and public private partnerships. It's also hard for me to take seriously people, which is not to say that the Democrats don't have a problem with socialism. The problem is the Republicans have a problem with socialism, too. Similarly, it's very hard, given the fire sale on pardons, for example, for just one example that we're seeing in this White House, and the fact that the Trump family is getting rich off of the government in all sorts of ways. Trump has never divested or put his stuff in a blind trust. His net worth has increased dramatically since he's become president. It's very hard for me to take seriously the moral outrage about other people getting rich inappropriately off of the government. So, like, I think it does not surprise me that the Wall Street Journal wants to make this about a fight from the golden age of the Wall Street Journal. That's how they want to talk about taxes. That's how they want to talk about a lot of things. I don't disagree with Kim either, that, like, this is a good line of attack. I think what's been missing in our conversation, though, is this story in particular comes out of the COVID period, and you had a lot of people working remote. You had a lot of new programs being stood up really quickly, and, and a lot of money being thrown at problems indiscriminately. You know, I don't think the American, the aft, the teachers unions are monolithically Somali American. And I think they ripped off the government of a lot of money too. They may have done it more legally. You know, there was this famous book by this guy named Plunkett called Honest Graft. I think we are living in an era of honest Graft where lots of people are figuring out a way to game the system to make money off of government from the White House on down. I would love to have an argument about that. I just think this is not the GOP to have it. And on the just last point on the mild disagreement between Sarah and Mike and whatever about Trump, I think it's a both and not an either or thing. I think there are some areas where it's obvious that Trump is a symptom of our problems rather than the cause of them. I mean, at National Review we were saying for 20 plus years if responsible politicians don't deal with immigration, irresponsible politicians will take the issue.
- [33:55]
B
Right.
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C
And win with it. And I think Trump is proof of that. So like Trump didn't create the immigration problem, he's made it worse. And that's where I think is the connective tissue on the both end is, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from Orwell where at the beginning of the politics of politics in the English language he says a man can take to drink because he thinks he's a failure and become all the more of a failure because he drinks. We took to Trump as a country because of our problems and Trump made a lot of those problems worse. And to his credit or like to the credit of the Republicans or whatever, they dealt with some of the problems too. I mean it's not an all failure on all fronts kind of thing, but the cost of it was to radically change the way we talk about politics, to move again the Overton friggin window, to make it acceptable to talk about ethnic groups in vicious, grotesque and deceitful terms. You know, the person who's supposed to be the heir apparent to the Republican nomination is the guy who just admittedly lied about Haitians eating, rounding up cats and dogs. And when pressed on it, he said it was necessary to call attention to the problem, which is just the, it's a right wing version of left wing concept of lying for justice, you know, which I've been writing about since Tawana Brawley. So I'm in full, I'm in full friggin, you know, horseshoe Mode on. On all of this stuff, Sarah, all.
- [35:27]
B
I heard was Jonah said we were both right.
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D
Yeah, I guess. So. Wait, I want to push. Take the win on the Trump. Sorry. I want to push Jonah on the Trump has made immigration worse. Because if you just look at the numbers, the numbers at the southern border sure look a whole heck of a lot better. Like crazy better.
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C
Sure. That's exactly the thing that came into my mind when I said we should also say he did deal with some of the problems in productive ways. Right. So I think that's.
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D
So what about the immigration part has he made worse?
- [35:59]
C
Well, I don't know. First of all, it depends on what prism you're looking through. If you're looking at. Through sort of a moral prism, there are one set of issues. If you're looking through a Republican partisan prism, they're another set of issues they had just gotten in 2024. Let's do the Republican prism first, because it's the easiest one. Like trying to get a squirrel to eat out of your hand. That we've been trying. Republicans have been trying for generations to get Hispanics to vote Republican. Come here, little squirrel.
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B
Come here.
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C
And they finally come across in significant numbers and vote Republican. And they did so on issues like inflation.
- [36:37]
B
Right.
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C
And costs affordability. And Trump turns around and starts and originally said. And they all gave themselves permission to vote for Trump because they believe Trump when he talked about just going after criminal gangs and, you know, rapists and drug dealers and all that kind of stuff. And then they start, you know, arresting moms who are in the system with court dates, picking up their kids from daycare and scaring the bejesus out of people. One of the stories I've talked to Mike about this a few times. One of the stories I'm fascinated with is the modelo. The Mexican beer industry in the United States has plummeted far beyond all other beers because Hispanic Americans are not gathering in large groups anymore because they're terrified of either being falsely picked up or that somebody in their midst with bad papers is going to be deported. And so from a Republican point of view, Republicans got a winning hand on immigration, and then they handed the policy off to Steve Miller, who has gone far beyond what a lot of forget Hispanic voters, Republicans wanted on a moral issue. We're going around asking people for their. Rounding up people, basically, and asking for their papers in ways that I find kind of gross. We now have a vice president and a couple senators like that. What's that guy from Missouri, Schmidt, who are opening up A lane in the Republican Party for an argument for, quote unquote, heritage Americans, that somehow if your ancestors go back to the 1850s or earlier, or that if you're. I love how I harp on this, but Vance said not too long ago that if you have an ancestor who fought in the Civil War, you deserve a lot more say about the future of this country than somebody who just got here. And first of all, screw that noise, that's grotesque. Second of all, he didn't say if you have an ancestor who fought for the Union, you could have an ancestor who fought for the fricking Confederacy. And you're supposed to have, you know, more say about the future of this country than say, my father in law did. Screw it. It's. It's a way of talking about things that I think is a moral catastrophe for conservatism, for free market economics, for the Republican Party long term. And I think it was good to shut down the border. I was one of those people who thought he needed Congress to do it. He didn't. That's a good thing. Shame on Biden for creating a problem that gave people permission to vote for Trump and an opportunity for it. But I don't think you can say the subject of immigration is just a long column of unalloyed wins for the right or for Republicans or for the country.
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D
Yeah, I don't disagree. I just wanted to hear your thoughts.
- [39:33]
C
Yeah, that's fine. I just. I get some of this stuff makes.
- [39:37]
D
Me very, very cross directed at Steve. I mean, I don't know why. I just.
- [39:42]
A
Because, because, because that's your default. And it's Jonah's default too. Yeah, literally, Jonah has that in his. Jonah has that in his bio. Have you ever noticed that at the Dispatch, the last line of his bio is something like yelling at Steve Hayes for something or other. So I think people have come to expect it.
- [39:58]
C
I think this is a perfect sign of Steve's paranoia is that he read that into a bio that does not exist. But anyway, go on.
- [40:03]
A
That's an actual bio. We, we, we dwell, we work in facts here, Jonah, to go find. These things matter.
- [40:10]
B
Blaming Steve Hayes for various things.
- [40:12]
D
Steve wrote it himself because he just wants to think that you think about him a lot.
- [40:15]
C
Totally.
- [40:16]
A
Just so Jonah doesn't try to do a Trump sort of country on this thing and pretend it didn't exist. What does it actually say, Mike?
- [40:23]
B
This is the last sentence of Jonah's bio. When he is not writing the G file or hosting the Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.
- [40:36]
C
All right, fair enough.
- [40:36]
A
I mean, think about what he's put me on parallel with blaming me on parallel with family time and his dogs and cats. That's the sign of a sick mind, actually. Yeah. Now the worst thing is now Sarah's going to go and ask to put that in her bio. She'll probably try to one up on that.
- [40:56]
B
Wait a second. Can we all get in on this?
- [40:58]
A
Yeah. This is unbelievable. We're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. Every holiday, there's one gift that quietly steals the show. This year, as in past years, I'm confident that will be an aura frame, the hidden gem that becomes a favorite long after the wrapping paper is is gone. If you've listened to this podcast before, you've heard me talk about the aura frame that I got my parents. It allows them to see pictures of all of the things that their kids and grandkids are doing as the kids and grandkids upload pictures from every aspect of their lives, from dance recitals and basketball games to hockey matches, school dances, what have you. An oriframe comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. It already feels like a thoughtful gift before they even open it. You don't have to wrap a thing, and I'm not great at wrapping for a limited time. 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Try gusto today@gusto.com dispatch and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com dispatch one more time gusto.com dispatch before we return to the roundtable, I want to let you know what's going on elsewhere here at the Dispatch this week on Advisory Opinions, Sarah Isger and David French kick things off by revisiting the Slaughter case in responding to an insightful Access to Justice question from a listener. Then they break down the Supreme Court's latest GVR grant vacated remand on school vaccine mandates before diving into two fresh oral arguments plus the brief return of Grifter Sarah. Search for advisory opinions in your podcast app, and hit the Follow button. Now, let's jump back into our conversation. I mean, there's so much news this week, there's so much news every week. It's often almost always a chore to figure out what two or three topics we're going to talk about this week. But I thought the second topic we should spend some time on arose both in a Department of justice announcement and an announcement from the White House, which happened actually on the same day at close to the same time. On Monday, the Department of justice where Sarah used to work announced it had busted a smuggling ring that had been secreting very powerful H200 chips into China's for use in China's AI sector. Export of these chips and the equipment that makes them had been a key part of the Biden administration's effort to out compete China on AI and enjoyed, I would say, pretty widespread bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. The idea was that China is behind the United States in growing its AI infrastructure and an AI more broadly, depending on which expert you believe, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, maybe more, and that these chips were the things that could bring them closer to the United States in that race. So here is how the DOJ described the importance of its actions, importance of busting, of breaking up this smuggling effort, and how it describes the AI fight more broadly. DOJ statement here, quote, these chips are the building blocks of AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology. The country that controls AI technology will control the future. And that, they said, is why their actions were so significant. Well, apparently Donald Trump wants China to control the future or at least have be on a more even footing with the United States because across town, President Trump put out a statement on social media expressing a very different view. He announced that he had decided the US Would allow Nvidia to sell these advanced chips to China, with the US government taking a 25% cut. There was, in the aftermath of the president's announcement, I would say, bipartisan concern. Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, said the announcement caused alarms to go off. The House Select Committee on China, bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives released a statement of warning saying publicly available analysis indicates that the H200 provides 32% more processing power and 50% more memory bandwidth than China's best chip, the CCP. The Chinese Communist Party will use these highly advanced chips to strengthen its military capabilities and totalitarian surveillance. Sarah, what did you think when we saw this announcement from your old employers at the DOJ and the president at the Same time.
- [49:11]
D
So, first of all, I just am having this flashback to my DOJ days when I instructed my office that all Lacey act related press releases were to get the highest billing. The Lacey act is about illegal wildlife trafficking, and there was an operation Broken Glass that was incredibly successful. So shout out to my broken glass prosecutors out there for the illegal trafficking of glass elvers. These are juvenile American eels. Huge problem in the United States. The illegal trafficking of juvenile elvers.
- [49:48]
A
One of the biggest.
- [49:50]
D
But, yeah, the word for juvenile eels, by the way, is elvers. And glass eels are very popular for this. And elver harvesting is prohibited in the United States in all but two states, Maine and South Carolina. It was like a really happy memory. So thank you for that little personal walk down memory lane. But fine, I'll come back to today. It's funny, I heard from someone the other day having a little bit of a debate about the tariffs, and this was a person who was trying to defend Trump's tariff policy. And they said, you know, this was part of Trump's effort to push back on China as one of our chief adversaries. And I was like, that makes no sense because of a. His own tariff policy. If you were actually trying to isolate China, the tariffs would be solely targeted, or at least primarily targeted at China in other ways to move around China instead of what we've seen, which are, in fact the opposite. It's countries that we're pushing toward China. By putting tariffs on them, we would do more to combat China's presence in South America, in Africa, all things we're not doing. This is yet another example of. It's really hard to say that Donald Trump's policies are somehow meant to isolate, target, combat, compete with the rise of China as a global adversary. So I'm confused why that sort of talking point keeps making its way around, except that we should have a president that's doing that, but there's just not a lot of evidence for it. The times when he's pushing back against China fit into a much larger narrative of Trump wanting to be a deal maker on the world stage and China being a country that also makes deals. But it's not about seeing China as a rising adversary, a. A chief antagonist to American values.
- [51:59]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is exactly where I was hoping we could take this part of the conversation.
- [52:04]
D
The Elvers. Yeah, I know.
- [52:05]
A
I was. I wanted more detail on the Elvers, but we're going to have to wait. Maybe we can dedicate an entire segment to the Elvers next time. But I. I think that you sort of jumped to the, the real question at the heart of this. Donald Trump has cultivated a reputation of being a China hawk. Certainly, I think if you ask the American people if Donald Trump is tough on China, he talks tough on China, he is constantly saying, you know, China's ripped us off. We have to have these tariffs. They, they, you know, we have trade deficits with China. They're, they're stealing our money. And yet I think at important times, over the course of his first term and now his second, when he has an opportunity to really isolate China, really do something that would significantly set China back in its competition with the United States, whether we're talking about technology or military or China's economy, he does and he doesn't. The, the trade war on China, we can debate its merits, but whatever his original intent, he certainly seems to be sort of walking back from some of those things now. And, and then you look at this move and it at the very least sends conflicting messages, I would say is a big present to, to Chinese President Xi. The interesting thing in Donald Trump's social media posting about this, this is something that China has been clamoring for, for years. They have wanted access to these chips. They wanted to buy them. That's why there is this effort to smuggle them into the country. They understand how important they are to advancing their AI efforts. And in his social media post about this, Trump, with an exclamation mark said something along the lines of, and China is happy about this or and China is very excited to have access to these chips. Well, no kidding. They've been pushing for it for a long time. Mike, what's have you heard, have you talked to Republicans who have given you more reaction to this? I looked at Lindsey Graham, I looked at all of the statements I saw coming out of Capitol Hill on this. Lindsey Graham's was the most aggressive. That this caused alarms to go off. You had from other Republicans who almost uniformly oppose what Donald Trump has just announced. You know, expressions of concern. General you the kind of stuff you've come to expect from Capitol Hill Republicans on this. Is there any reason to think that their concerns will grow into actual outright opposition? This is if you talk to people who are experts in this area. You know, I hate the cliche a game changer, but really potentially a game changer.
- [55:01]
B
I mean, let's hope so. I'm, I'm cautiously skeptical. I don't know if that makes any sense. I'm skeptical with the possibility that maybe it could be right. This could be something because it's so blatant because it's there. I mean, there is a, the opposition, whether we hear about it publicly or not, is great among Republicans, particularly Republicans in the Senate. There was a. We're going to bring up our friend Matt Cottonetti again. He was interviewing Dave McCormick, the new senator from Pennsylvania, Republican about this. And I would say Dave McCormick gave what we would expect Republicans to give when they're really concerned about something, when they really hate something that Donald Trump has done, he said in sort of halting language, you know, like he was trying to figure out the right way to step through this without stepping on the landmine. Eventually, he's asked Matt Continent, he asks Dave McCormick what his reaction is to this decision. And McCormick says, I'm concerned. I'm not clear on why that is the right path for us. I mean, on this, on the scale of, of speaking out against the administration on something that, that's a lot.
- [56:22]
A
Blowing it up.
- [56:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's something. Look, I think the thing, the other thing to keep in mind in all of this, and it maybe explains why Republicans are so timid about going after Trump, is this administration, as opposed to the first administration, has, the clientelism has been, has ramped up to a degree, I think, whether it's foreign countries or CEOs, and in this case, we've got both in this story.
- [56:51]
A
What do you mean, what do you, what do you mean by clientelism? Can you just define that quickly?
- [56:55]
B
Right. So a politician gets some kind of personal benefit in exchange for some kind of public favor for a person, for a company, for a country. It is a special kind of, I guess, political graft and its, you know, patronage, whatever you want to call it. So when I, when I look at this story, for instance, it's so blatant that you can't believe that it really happened. But Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia, and he has essentially just been personally lobbying in terms of in person conversations as well as talking about this in any sort of media environment that he goes into about how great Trump is, about how transformative a president he is and oh, by the way, can we sell our chips in China? Would really be great. It would benefit you, Mr. President, who are so great and so wonderful. It's been blatant and it's the way all these people have figured out how to get what they want from the President. It's by going to him, telling him he's great and he's wonderful and he would be even more great and more wonderful if they did what he wanted to do. And, and he's, and he does it. And so we just can't deny the power that kind of approach has in Trump's second administration. And it's concerning. I don't really know what Republicans in Congress could do about it except to speak out about it and make. Hey. And maybe try to do a little more personal diplomacy on this front. Maybe they're doing it. It's. I don't know. I'm skeptical that, that it's going to do anything significant.
- [58:42]
C
Well, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, Sarah can correct me with their legal eldritch powers, but when you say I don't know what Republicans can do about it, you mean politically. Because politically, I'm sorry, legally, Congress could pass a law saying you can't sell these kinds of chips to China. And my guess is a lot of.
- [59:01]
D
Democrats, they tried that with TikTok.
- [59:02]
C
Jonah, I understand, but sorry.
- [59:04]
D
They didn't just try it.
- [59:05]
C
They did it.
- [59:06]
B
They did it.
- [59:06]
D
It was signed by a president, and two presidents have refused to enforce that law.
- [59:10]
C
Fair. That is a fair point. And that's why the last two presidents, the current president, the previous ones, both should be impeached and removed from office. But it would still be clarifying. It would be something, right? It would be.
- [59:23]
A
It would.
- [59:23]
C
And so, like, I think one of the.
- [59:26]
D
It would give me something to be upset about, like more things to be upset about. And that's pretty important in this holiday season.
- [59:32]
C
It is.
- [59:33]
A
It is.
- [59:33]
C
And I understand, like one of the superpowers this administration has, is in nurturing and encouraging and fueling the flames of LOL. Nothing matters, right?
- [59:47]
D
It's been 325 days since the TikTok law was supposed to go into effect. We have been told, I think four times, though, in fairness, I've lost count, that a sale is just around the corner and therefore we're going to unlawfully just a lawfully extend, delaying the enforcement of that law. And here we are.
- [60:09]
C
In fairness, they want to wait till they unveil their alternative to Obamacare.
- [60:14]
A
But I mean, TikTok, I mean, that, that also makes the point about Trump and Xi in the broader sense. Right? I mean, on the one hand, the president is pushing this tariff war, this trade war he announced this week. And I want, Joe and I want you to weigh in on this. A $12 billion bailout for U.S. farmers because in particular, those who have been affected by the China's refusal to buy soybeans from American farmers part of this tariff war. So on the one hand, he's quote, unquote tough on that. He's using taxpayer money. He's saying he's using tariff proceeds to bail out the people he's hurting. Although the effects of the tariffs will be much longer than a simple one time payout to farmers. The market is going to collapse and China is now buying soybeans from Brazil and other places. So the effects will be much longer than a one time bailout. But he's, he's simultaneously trying to look tough with China on that front, but caving on things like TikTok, which he had opposed then he was in favor of on these chips. How do you explain Donald Trump's approach to China? Jonah, can you give it to us in a paragraph?
- [61:36]
C
All right. Well, the easiest answer is to go back to what Mike was just talking about and say he's incredibly susceptible to flattery. And flattery can trump any ideological or other considerations except, you know, essentially de facto bribery. But he's a personalist in the way he conceives of these things and he doesn't. He considers consistency to be an unfair and unjust and illegitimate constraint on his sphere of operations. I think the place to put this.
- [62:08]
D
So does my two year old.
- [62:09]
B
Exactly.
- [62:10]
C
Well, remember that used to be that regular feature called the Toddler in Chief about how he was like a toddler? I mean, there's a lot. But I think if you want to do it in a serious way, I think this National Security Strategy document that came out, which we can all agree these things don't necessarily matter, but they are interesting for criminology purposes. And we should also say that Trump himself kind of gave sounds and signals that he hadn't even read it, certainly wouldn't be bound by it. But one of the explanations that has come out of the administration for its softer tones towards China is that Trump really, really, really, really wants a summit with Xi in April and they don't want to do anything that prevents that from happening. Trump loves these big summits and he's willing to make concessions on policy to get them. And so the Nvidia sale might be part of that to the extent it is not just Jensen Wang buttering them up, but I also think that these guys, either by default or for other reasons that are too complicated to get into now, they are settling into this spheres of influence, foreign policy. If you read this National Security Strategy document in the most unfavorable light, which, if you're a national security expert official in Europe you kind of have to. Your job is to consider the worst plausible scenario. This administration is basically saying that Europe is part of Russia's sphere of influence and that the Americas are our sphere of influence. Hence the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that comes out of this thing. And I've been saying on here for like a year now that Trump sees the world sort of like the way Mafia bosses see the world, you know, like that you treat your allies like crap because they're your underbosses and your button men and your henchmen and they're supposed to pay up to you, but you treat rival bosses with respect because they have the same status and stature as you, and you respect their territory so long as. As they respect yours. And that's basically what this, this Carl Schmittian kind of spheres of influence thing. There's a reason why Russia said about the national security document strategy that it largely aligns with their values and their views of the world. It's because that's how Russia sees the world. And in that case, if you're really not thinking about being the unipolar superpower and the hegemon and all of that, who cares about sending. There's just some more chips to China that you get a cut of. And that I think that attitude. It's difficult for me to figure out who actually thinks that way in there and who just basically. And sort of like Sarah's point about the TikTok bill eventually, like, why even bother doing the right thing since you're not going to win? And even if you win, no one will do the right thing even when they're supposed to. I think there are a lot of people in this administration that are just found that blowing up drug boats and saying we're the boss of the Americas is just easier and more fun. And gets guess he gets Jesse Waters all tumescent in excitement about how manly you are than actually taking foreign policy seriously. And that's sort of. So that's the context I see this in, is that Trump's going to do what Trump's going to do. We can sound like we actually have a doctrine if we just sort of work with his instincts. And blowing up boats in the Caribbean and, and making great deals with China suits him. And writing big checks to bail out farmers, who cares? It's just another few billion dollars. And Trump likes doing that, too, as long as he gets to sign the checks.
- [66:05]
A
All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch Podcast.
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D
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We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked asked Bronx if.
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A
He wanted to see the flight deck.
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C
And meet Kath and Andrew.
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D
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A
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D
That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
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A
These small interactions can shape a kid's future.
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D
It felt like I was the captain.
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A
Allowing my son to see the flight.
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B
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- [67:10]
A
That's how good leads the way. We're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. I want to close with a discussion about a bizarre press conference that took place at an airport this week featuring Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a fitness guru Dr. Guy, and Secretary Duffy's daughter. You may have seen clips of this online or if you're a big Fox News watcher, they've covered this extensively. And what Duffy was hoping to publicize is a $1 billion fund that billion with a B to improve airports that airports can apply for funding through including many gyms and workout facilities in airports because as the secretary and the doctor argued, flying is a sedentary thing and people shouldn't just sit around, they should really work out when they're at the airport. So they are talking about installing gyms in the airport pull up bars. And to demonstrate the possibilities of greatness here, the men participated in a pull up contest and Secretary Duffy's daughter Paloma also did several pull ups. Truly impressive, actually. So my question to you is if we start to see gyms across the country in airports, Sarah, will you do airport workouts at these gyms?
- [68:59]
D
In fairness, I don't do workouts without those gyms. I work out by chasing after children, giving boosties up and down the stairs and back up again and then we forgot the stuffy and around and around we go. When they run into traffic, I run into traffic. Like that's the kind of workout that I get so. No, absolutely not. I also think it contradicts the video from Thanksgiving that said, like, let's dress up for the airport. Which is.
- [69:32]
A
It could be in your, you can do pull ups in your suit.
- [69:35]
D
Really?
- [69:36]
B
I mean, RFK does it in his.
- [69:37]
A
Jeans, so they all did it in their dress clothes.
- [69:40]
D
Actually, let me just tell you, as a, as a woman, no, you can't. For many reasons. Yeah. I mean, if you've ever seen a woman have to wear like a mic pack for TV or anything like, those dresses are not very forgiving though. We'll say, I think this is actually a great idea. Like, I don't think there need to be like treadmills and stuff, but the idea that there's, you know, a space to go move around when you're in between long flights or about to get on a long flight and you've got time to kill, like versus just sitting on your phone. I am basically for anything that provides people something to do that is not sit and stare at that device in your hand.
- [70:20]
B
There are treadmills. It's called the moving walkway. Just go the wrong way on the moving walkway. There you go.
- [70:26]
A
Or just walking without the moving walkway. Just walking in the airport. No, this is. What about the, what about the, the party of. I mean, we just talked in our discussion about welfare abuse and fraud, about the Republicans reclaiming the mantle of the, the small government party. How, Mike, do you fit a one billion dollar fund to put Jim's and other things in airports with the party of Doge?
- [71:00]
B
Because it's not about small government. It's about imposing preferences, the preferences of decision makers onto. And like getting pretty small in terms of vision here onto the government and making other people do so. Like, first of all, I think it's something like 45% of American adults fly commercially at least once a year. So again, I think I've mentioned this before on this podcast. We're not talking about a ton of people who will be benefiting from this because you're talking about a small percentage of the American people who are even going to airports on a regular basis. And I mean, some people get to their flights right when the, right when the, the gates open so they can get on. They sort of figure it out and game the system. So there's not, it's not like there's a lot of time. I, I don't know. I mean, I've, I've certainly have long layovers and, and delays. I had one just this week, a long delay. But like for the Most part, I'm not spending a ton of time when I'm at the airport just like sitting, because it's time to get on the plane and go, so. But I don't know, like, I know Sean Duffy likes to work out. I know RFK Jr likes to work out. So, like, they're trying to impose what they want to do what they want to have at an airport. But, like, why can't we have, you know, more. More bars at airports? That's what I like to do, you know, when I'm at the airport, is have a drink.
- [72:31]
A
So just not pull up. Not pull up bars, but bar bars.
- [72:35]
B
Yeah. Introduce a little more competition. I mean, it's like, it's kind of ridiculous, you know, like $18 for a martini at the airport bar. So, you know, just like, if we're imposing our own preferences here, that's. That's where I'm going.
- [72:46]
A
Jonah, unlike Sarah, you are. You're constantly looking for these mini workouts, like during our editorial meetings. You're doing those tricep push ups, you know, on. On the back of your chair. And I imagine that you look at this favorably, even if you're not enthusiastic about the additional government spending. Yes.
- [73:06]
C
So I am somewhat shocked and appalled here. The Dispatch has not claimed a great many policy victories in the last decade, I think that's fair to say. But this idea was first incepted into public consciousness, was first bandied about by Mike Gallagher, former congressman on the Remnant, in our very first Half Baked Ideas episode where he literally talked about pull up bars in airports for these various reasons. If memory serves, he may have gone a little farther with, like, getting better seating on planes. The more pull ups you can do, which I think is. But I don't want to state that outright because I could just be misremembering. But the second this came out, my Twitter feed filled up with people saying, score one for the Remnant and half baked ideas. It was also the first place that I am aware of that episode was the first place I'm aware of where the idea of, in Mike Gallagher's case, in my case, peacefully annexing Greenland. So if you don't want to take credit for the Dispatch, I'll take credit for the Remnant for putting these really important ideas in.
- [74:29]
A
Well, as a matter of detail. And I think this matters. I believe that conversation took place in 2018, so it was technically pre dispatch, so we don't have to defend this.
- [74:42]
C
Fair. Fair.
- [74:43]
A
And. And that's fair. And Mike Gallagher has had a lot of good ideas it would be great to get Mike Gallagher's thoughts on, on the Trump's China reversal. Many other things. I, I saw him, I saw him recently. He said he would welcome the opportunity to come back and do another half baked ideas session with you. I think you should take him up on that. But I think this is a bad idea from Mike Gallagher, particularly with a billion dollars of government funding.
- [75:10]
C
I don't think the federal government should, should really be doing anything of the sort necessarily. I think it'd be perfectly fine for airports to do this. I think this is the kind of thing that airports, which, let's be honest, airports are weird in terms of their legal economic status. They're a little bit like Major League Baseball's exemption to antitrust, just in terms of like how much public, private, weird economics go on there. And so I don't see anything wrong with airports doing this on their own. I don't know that there's a law that says airports should have those bacteria germ fraps, which are the kids play area.
- [75:53]
A
This would fund more of those. Part of the funding here is to have more playgrounds for kids so you can exhaust them before you put them on the flight.
- [76:01]
C
Yeah. So I think those are good. I don't know that the federal government needs to get into it. I also don't know that it's a horrible waste of federal money given the other things that we're wasting federal money on. But given the fact that we're $38 trillion in debt, I would rather see the private sector take the lead on this and they get a little plaque in front of the, the playground where you get, you know, you get botulism or a cold for even getting near. I mean, that's the thing, this idea. Would I work out at the airport if I started working out again? Maybe. But like, the problem with it for me is I just don't like touching stuff in public gyms that other people have touched and all that. That's one of the things I don't like about airports in general is like whenever I get sick, I say half the time. It's when I've been traveling a lot and like being exposed to people. A lot of people sweat, both at the airport, but then also on the plane. Like, imagine sitting next to somebody just dripping with sweat, not because they raced to the plane, but because they just had a great workout, like right before they got on the plane and they.
- [77:13]
B
Still got the towel.
- [77:13]
A
I mean, airplanes often smell anyway, like before this. I mean. Yeah, what are we going to do then we can have government provided, you know, deodorant at these things.
- [77:25]
C
But you know what? I wouldn't mind because I often I'm a. And this is kind of a not worth your time kind of subject. I'm in a mixed marriage in the sense that my wife likes to get to the airport like literally when they're yelling last call. And I like to get to the airport with lots of time to spare and it causes marital friction. But when I'm there early, I wouldn't mind if one of the seats, if they had some of those like treadmill, you know, sort of unicycle y kind of stationary bike kind of things like just a. Instead of walking around the boring airport. Oh, look, another Hudson news. This is interesting. The problem with the pull up thing is that what I'll defer to you guys. What percentage of Americans do you think can successfully do a pull up? A real pull up?
- [78:14]
A
10.
- [78:15]
B
I would do maybe 0% of this podcast.
- [78:19]
A
I could probably do one.
- [78:21]
C
I'll tell you when my shoulder's better. No, I could do one.
- [78:24]
B
I could do one or two.
- [78:26]
C
Yeah. And so like there are. The attractiveness of the pull up bars is they're really inexpensive, right. For exercise. But if you're actually trying to get people to do entry level, you know, get them started, right with exercise, it's the wrong equipment. A stationary bike thing would be much, much better.
- [78:49]
A
I don't think they were serious about the pull up bars. I think they were proposing pull up bars one, because they're easy to put in and two, because it allowed them to do a press conference where they could do pull ups and be on camera doing pull ups and showing how.
- [79:01]
C
That is totally fair.
- [79:02]
A
Each of them look, I mean, actually impressive. Each of them, the doctor, Secretary Duffy, Secretary Kennedy and, and Duffy's daughter each, if, if I recall correctly, did more than 10. I mean that's, it's pretty impressive. It was genuinely impressive. But I don't think that that's the best case. I, I kind of like Mike's idea about more regular bars rather than pull up bars. Except I'm not sure that we want to add to that problem. Right. I mean, we've seen, as Secretary Duffy has pointed out, increased episodes of belligerence in the airport. Many of those are fueled by alcohol. I am blown away every time I go to the airport for an early morning flight at the number of people at the bars at airports at 6 in the morning who are drinking some actual drink, like some real drink or a beer. I mean, I'm a Wisconsin guy, so you know, beer can have. We used to do kegs and eggs.
- [80:02]
B
It doesn't count at the airport.
- [80:03]
A
But 6am beers before you jump on a plane. You think people need more opportunities for that?
- [80:09]
B
A little much. No, I don't. If you're serious, ask me.
- [80:14]
A
Not that serious. Jonah's thinking about it. Jonah is actually thinking about.
- [80:18]
B
I just want a cheaper drink. That's all I'm asking.
- [80:20]
C
I want. You know what I want is.
- [80:22]
A
I don't.
- [80:23]
C
They used to be, you know those weird product. You know those as seen on tv, weird products that we have infomercials for. I go to bed too early to catch those anymore. I don't know if they still have them. But there used to be these products which I will tell you this. If they worked, I would use which were like these things where you would attach electrodes to various muscle groups and it would stimulate them, vibrate. That would work you out like while you're watching tv. Like if those were worked, I would sign. I would like hitch myself up to that stuff at the airport while I'm watching.
- [81:00]
A
Have a six.
- [81:01]
C
That would be awesome.
- [81:02]
A
That, that is how you really could work out during our editorial meetings. So I have used those and this, this not worth your time is going way. It is truly not worth your time. It's going way too long. I have used those to rehab my knee after one of my many knee surgeries. And they put them on the muscle and they just stimulate the muscle to contract. Yeah, I, I would say they're not good for building muscle, but if your muscle is otherwise completely atrophied, which can happen after multiple knee surgeries, it does do something good to sort of give you a running start as you start your physical therapy. I would love to have you run a long term experiment and then write about it. Maybe this could be a Monday essay where you hook those things up to your belly for a year and see if you come away with a six pack. No sit ups and push ups, no other working out. Just that.
- [81:57]
C
And if at the end of the year I didn't.
- [82:01]
A
It'd be a short.
- [82:02]
C
It'd be a short right about in the, in this. In the second year.
- [82:05]
A
It'd be a short piece. We could just take a picture of it. No, just do it for every editorial meeting. Every Monday, 45 minutes. See if that works. All right, it's done. Glad you agreed to it. Thanks to all of you for joining us today as we push the limits of not worth your time and we will see you next time. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few easy ways to support us. You can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And we hope you'll consider becoming a member of the Dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up@thedispatch.com join and if you use my promo code Roundtable, you'll get one month free and help me win the ongoing, deeply scientific internal debate over which Dispatch Podcast is the true flagship. And if ads aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a Premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, episodes, two free memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and more. Shout out to a few folks who recently joined as premium members. Savasam Devore, Mark Patton and Marissa Gonzalez Martino. We're glad to have you aboard. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtablethedispatch.com we read everything, even the one from people who stink because they Work out before flying. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And a big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Max Miller, Victoria Holmes and Noah Hickey. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening and please join us next time.
- [84:06]
B
And Doug, here we have the Limu.
- [84:08]
A
Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [84:17]
B
Fascinating.
- [84:18]
A
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us.
- [84:26]
B
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [84:33]
A
Excludes Massachusetts.