A (6:02)

David, my question to Kevin was, is it the oil? And his answer I'm summarizing was yes. And my question to you is, is it legal?

B (6:14)

Okay, well, that, that's the short answer is no. The longer answer is heck, no, the longest an those. But there's no enforceable mechanism of recognizing that. The best thing that's written so far about this is Jack Goldsmith's piece that he wrote relatively quickly after the initial strike. And basically he begins by saying, okay, how are we going to think about the concept of law here? If you're going to think about the concept of law is here is a standard to which Donald Trump must be held, or there are mechanisms that require Donald Trump to conform his behavior. Well, that's largely absent, and it's absent in particular because of the unwillingness of Congress to play its role in enforcing our constitutional order. But if you're going to do a substantive analysis, I mean, Goldsmith is exactly right. For example, when he says this violates the UN Charter, it's not even close. And to listeners who might be saying, well, why do I care about the U.N. charter? Well, that's a Senate ratified treaty that we are, we have said we're going to comply with, that we're going to conform to. And so from the standpoint of American domestic law, a lot of the reasoning that has been used here is I'll explain it to you and you'll see how specious it is. So this is actually rooted in a 1989 legal opinion by Bill Barr. And, and now just to put a pause on that for a moment, I'm very curious as to why this 1989 opinion was even crafted. Because this was crafted to justify the Panama invasion operation Just Cause. And we had, under classic laws of war, we had the legal justification to attack Panama. The Panamanian government had declared a state of war against us. The Panamanian government had killed an American Marine, seriously injured another, kidnapped and brutally beaten a third. I mean, we had legal justifications for the use of force. But Bill Barr writes an opinion here in 89 that, wow, essentially is if we're doing a law enforcement operation extraterritorially, then it is, then you can use, you can use military force to, in essence, to protect the law enforcement operation. So if you're walking in to arrest a leader, well, unlike in the United States, where we kind of have control of the area, the, the Police don't need F16s orbiting overhead to execute a search warrant in the United States. But if you're going to execute a search warrant or an arrest warrant in Venezuela or Panama, you might need to have F16s overhead to help you. So therefore, it's just more like we're avoiding the whole law of war by saying, well, this is an arrest, it's not actually an act of war. That is absurd. I'm sorry. It's utterly absurd. And to just illustrate, to go back to, you know, like Kevin's analogy, does that mean we can just go arrest Modi? Well, Putin, Putin. There's ample evidence that Putin has committed crime after crime after crime. Do we arrest him in 2003? Could Bush have said, you know what, Saddam Hussein tried to kill my father, I'm going to swear out an arrest warrant against him, and we're going to attach FBI to the 1st Marine Division and go get it. And we don't need Congress, we don't need the U.N. we don't. Nothing, none of that. It's just absurd reasoning. It really is. And so you've got absurd reasoning justifying it under domestic law. It just clearly, clearly violates the UN Charter. So the answer is it's just not legal. But the political reality is that there's no enforcement mechanism here. There is nothing practically restraining Donald Trump so long as Congress refuses to do it. Because the Supreme Court has decided for a long time that it's not going to be in the business of enjoining a military operation. Now, it will make serious decisions about the commander in chief powers, whether it was the Youngstown steel and the Korean War stopping Truman from taking over the steel mills, or whether it is striking down some of Bush policies regarding detainees and the war on terror. But note, neither one of those dealt with the court interfering with actual kinetic military operations. So the reality is, by the constitutional standards, the statutory standards, the UN Charter, international law standards, illegal, illegal, illegal, illegal. But there's just nothing to enforce it. There's just no entity in the international or domestic legal system that can enforce this.

C (11:06)

I have two very brief things I'd like to add for, for David there. One is that the Russians went to the trouble recently of indicting Vladimir, Vladimir Zinsky, which I think is, is, is kind of comical. So that's their case for the war now too. But also that Marine who was killed in Panama was off duty in a private vehicle and he was fleeing a government roadblock. And apparently we're allowed to shoot people who flee. Government vehicle stops now.

B (11:32)

Right? We'll get to that. We'll get to that one.

A (11:35)

Yeah. In Panama, it was also the case that our troops, which were on the ground there, who were on the ground there, had been subject to verbal and physical harassment for months at, at that point, this was part of a long pattern. And as David pointed out, Panama had declared war on the United States. Not, not minor detail.

B (11:59)

A bit foolish, A bit foolish to do that, I would say.

A (12:02)

Of course, of course I'm, I'm going.

C (12:04)

To play poker with those guys and call that bluff, you know.

B (12:09)

David, I.

A (12:10)

Would also add that if this were a mere law enforcement undertaking, as the administration would have us believe, it seems odd to me that they had Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Marco Rubio brief when they described what was happening. It wasn't a Pam Bondi led brief, the Attorney General, it was all of the others, for obvious reasons, I think. So, Jonah, if my question to Kevin was is it the oil? And my question to David was is it legal? My question to you is, is it wise?

D (12:42)

Is it wise taking Maduro?

A (12:44)

Yes.

D (12:45)

Well, I actually have no problem taking Maduro.

C (12:48)

Right.

D (12:49)

I mean, I shouldn't say no problem. It's the broader context I have. I have a problem taking Maduro under false pretenses. I have problem taking Maduro in furtherance of a sort of 19th century colonial idea of seizing resources. I agree entirely with David that it almost doesn't matter whether this is legal or not because it's not justiceable. And the founders envisioned that this kind of thing would be tempered by Congress. And when Congress has decided to geld itself, there's just really not a lot good answers. But when Mike Johnson says, oh, I think I was sufficiently notified two hours after the launch of the operation, it kind of like shows you what a farce this whole thing is. Right? Because if they'd had, they hadn't had classified briefings, public briefings, they had, you know, press conferences saying that this was all about drug interdiction and the drug war. Right. That's why this massive armada is down there. And every now and then, Trump would like, have a verbal slip up and say, maduro's gotta go. But, like, all of the official explanations for what was going on, it was about basically the drug war stuff. And, and then it turns out that that was just more pretext, that was more lying and that this whole thing. And then, you know, Rubio, too, you know, you got to hand it to him, he really tried hard to make the case that this was a law enforcement operation. But Trump can't contain himself. He wants to say we're taking the oil. Right. And to vindicate himself for arguments that he made about Iraq, you know, from the first Iraq War to the second Iraq war, to prove that he's right in much the same way. His stuff about tariffs is a way to prove he was right. In his stuff about Japan in the 1980s, he is.

A (14:54)

And his arguments about Iraq, review those. Because he didn't oppose either of those wars. But he did argue that the United States should have taken the oil. Is that what you mean by vindication?

D (15:05)

Right. He, he, that was his big thing. You know, he's. There's a running joke about how sometimes a lot of his stuff on social media, if you just put in, hi, this is Donnie from Queens at the front of it, because he sounds like he's calling into a drive time talk radio show, makes a lot more sense. He had this idea that was very sort of New York Post kind of friendly talk radio friendly about like, oh, these guys are idiots, we should just take the oil. As if you can get a. To go bag for billions of barrels of subterranean oil deposits. And it caused a lot of controversy. He liked the controversy. He liked in whatever you say he's wrong about something, he digs in twice as hard. And so I think psychologically that's the biggest explanation here. And I think what, what's happened is Rubio has used the oil argument to get what he wants out of this in terms of a foreign policy which is ultimately, you know, cutting off the supply to Cuba because Venezuela provides a lot of oil to Cuba. Stephen Miller has gotten out of it, what, he's probably sold the oil thing to Trump to get what he wants out of it in terms of displays of strength and various immigration sort of box checking. And in Trump's mind, he was like, okay, I'm gonna do this oil thing. And now they're in this situation where they did something that I think is utterly defensible. Maduro is a very bad dude. And, you know, arresting him, maybe not at the expense that they did, is perfectly fine, but is it defensible?

A (16:45)

Can I push you on this one thing? David just made a compelling case, in my view, that this was illegal. And you're saying, in effect, yeah, I'm okay with it, it's defensible. Do you agree or disagree with David on. Do you disagree with David on the question of legality? And if so, how do you get from that disagreement to defensible?

D (17:05)

So if we're going to argue about what laws we're violating, I'm going to defer to David to some extent. But, yeah, I don't actually care that much about arresting a guy who stole an election, who sells drugs, who tortures people, who is not democratically elected, who violated our laws, who gave blank passports to Hezbollah and Hamas. I understand that there might be negative consequences and moral hazards to this kind of practice, but I am willing to say snatching Nicolas Maduro, if it was done as more of an analog to the Panama thing, I'd be fine with it. But that's just not what the.

A (17:49)

And on that basis, it would be stretching the arguments of what's legal. You're okay if they want to stretch that case or be aggressive with it.

D (17:58)

I don't want to trigger David and get into a whole sort of extended cinematic universe.

A (18:04)

You understand? What I'm trying to do is to get you to trigger David.

D (18:07)

Like, that's the whole point. I am much more on Team Sarah on the whole does international law exist? Question than I am on Team David about this, which doesn't mean I don't think it exists. I don't think it's non existent. But I think Sarah's more right than David on this question.

C (18:25)

And why not just put a rocket through his bedroom window instead of pretending it's a drug case?

D (18:30)

That's a perfectly fair point. Like, again, I do not want to defend a hypothetical seizure of Nicolas Maduro against the reality of how this administration has behaved, because I think the way this administration behaved has been largely indefensible.

B (18:48)

But do you think Venezuela now has rights, if it could ever do it, to just go ahead and arrest Donald Trump?

D (18:52)

What do rights mean?

B (18:54)

I mean, in other words, like, if. If it's. If it's fine and prudent and wise for a sovereign nation to unilaterally arrest the leader of another sovereign nation on the grounds that it's violated the domestic law of our country. I'm just curious. I would imagine Venezuela could swing an indictment of Trump in half a second. And if they had to. So is it all just might makes. It's all about Mike in the international realm.

D (19:26)

And I don't want to sound like Stephen Miller because it might lead me to have to sleep hanging upside down by my hooves or something, but I think that in the international arena, our national security interests trump most of the kind of considerations that you were talking about as a prudential matter. Right. And there's a moral hazard to violating international law, which is why I would rather not violate international law. But when Kevin points out that Panama declared war on us, those countries are free to do that. And then you pull on Superman's cape, you're gonna deal with the consequences. My only point is that, look, I've been very consistent about this. I have always been a defender of regime change. If it passes a cost benefit test, if we could get rid of the government of North Korea at the expense of $38.50 and one sprained ankle of American servicemen, I think we'd be idiots not to do it immediately. But at the expense of losing a city in a nuclear exchange or something. Not worth it. Right. It's a cost benefit thing to me. Similarly with China, entirely in favor of regime change in China. I just don't think we can do it cost free. And so one of my many criticism of the Maduro operation is that it wasn't frigging regime change. Like, all we did was take out one mafia don and said, we'll work with your underboss. And it makes us moral hypocrites as well as hypocrites about the rule of law and all of these other things. But in theory, if it's truly in America's national interest, as I define our national interest, let's say, then, yeah, I'm okay with going after dictators who do sell loads of drugs to us and do terrible things. I would have been fine with taking out Saddam Hussein. I think the moral argument for having. For assassinating Hassam Hussein is very. Rather than sending all those troops in was very strong. I think the prudential argument is much grayer.

C (21:39)

That's all fair points. But you have to understand that everyone else gets to think by the same set of rules. Right. And so Donald Trump is a much greater threat to the legitimate national security concerns of Denmark than Maduro was to the legitimate national security concerns of the United States.

D (21:54)

That's a fair point. Look, and I factor into my cost benefit analysis. The PR problem, right, the PR problem of our moral credibility, of our leadership position in the world, about the knock on effects that losing those international norms and laws which I do think are to our benefit. Those would go into my considerations about the cost benefit analysis. But at the end of the day, it's our cost benefit analysis.

C (22:21)

Well, when those tall, handsome Danish commandos show up and snatch him, I for one am not going to lift a finger to get in their way. I hear you.

B (22:30)

I mean, I think a bit like short term, long term. The problem that you have is that if you take a very short term view, I think that getting rid of Maduro and one of the things I've said again and again since this operation, nobody under any circumstances should whitewash this guy. He was horrific. Got a situation where under your rule about a quarter of your population has left. That's bad. I mean, that's really bad. But I think of it as a short term, long term. There's almost always a short term. Yes. For things like, well, removing Maduro, look at all the things that he's done. I, but I also think of it as a very decisive long term. No, because the problem that you have is when you go back to this sort of notion, which is this clause vitian notion of war is extension of policy by other means, which is kind of the way sovereign states have looked at war for a very long time, that starts to put you in a collision course with other sovereign states. It is the might makes right analysis. And what we did after the horrific world wars at the class of people who by the time they were running the, you know, running the Allies after World War II, had been through two World Wars. At that point, Eisenhower had been through two World Wars, Truman had been through two World Wars. They said, nope, nope, how do we, how do we create a system that doesn't permit this? And the way they did it was trying to turn back from the Clausewitzian view and try to create a world in which you had a rooted around just war theory. And the problem that I see with the Trump world is, look, I'm not naive. Of the five permanent members of Security Council, two of them, Russia and China, do not ablide by. They don't care who Thomas Aquinas is, they don't care about just war, whatever. But if three of the five, including the most powerful, maintain and do what they can to maintain a world order governed by much more this just war concept, it is for the almost incalculable long term benefit of us and the rest of the world that we do this. And that's going to mean restraining our power sometimes when in the short term analysis it would work to our benefit. But I think the long term effect of the Stephen Miller Imperial Project, spheres of influence, re embracing Clausewitz, turning our back on Aquinas is going to be. And we don't have to. You know, I know that history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes. And past performance is no predictor of future results. But we got just a lot of experience with Mike Makes. Right. We got a lot of experience with it and it's not, it's. And not much of it is good.

A (25:24)

Yeah. I would also argue that we have, we have a lot of experience with Mike makes Right. We have a lot of experience with Donald Trump. But I guess that to me is my main objection to what we've seen. I buy, David, your analysis on legal grounds, although I'm certainly not sophisticated enough. I've looked at the other arguments and I find your argument more persuasive than the others. But I guess I have two concerns. One is prudential and the other is precedential. And for prudential, I guess I don't understand why. And this particularly applies to people on the right who are embracing this or enthusiastic about this. They can look at this, I think momentous change, huge decision in some ways an attempt to, if you take the administration at its word on what it's trying to do, an attempt at least to reorder the Western hemisphere and reassert dominance there. But I think in some ways, whether they mean it or not, a reordering of the world. And you have in charge of that project somebody like Donald Trump who spent the better part of January 6th, not the better part, whose White House, you know, was busy peddling bogus conspiracy theories about his election having been stolen five years ago and the kinds of things that he says in public on a daily basis that are just crazy. I mean, just crazy. And I think, you know, do we want to, you know, even if we thought that this was a wise or defensible move in the abstract, if conducted by a true statesman, do we want this kind of delicate diplomacy and risky undertaking led by somebody who has the character in the judgment of Donald Trump? And my answer to that is a definitive and very clear no. The presidential argument, and I'll use this to expand our discussion a little bit into the rest of the world. Donald Trump is seeing at least enthusiasm from folks on the right about this. He's seeing, you know, very high poll Numbers from Central and South America about the undertaking here. And we know that he loves attention, we know that he loves adulation. If he gets that from something like this, doesn't that encourage him to do this elsewhere? And if so, what, what should we think of Donald Trump's foreign policy? Should we brace for more, more steps like this? Because he likes what's happened here. He controls the oil, he got the oil. He's strong and tough. He's getting enthusiasm generally from his base. He's getting plaudits from folks in the region. Why wouldn't he decide? Yeah, I kind of like doing this, Kevin.

C (28:26)

Yeah, seems plausible. Just to expand a little on what you were saying earlier. I mean, it's the fundamental problem with having an administration that is this obviously morally corrupt is that they can't even do notionally good things well because they pollute everything they touch. If Donald Trump helps an old lady across the street, there is some corrupt purpose being served, you can be sure of it. If he helps her carry in her groceries, there's some other corrupt purpose being served there. And the corrupt purposes in Venezuela, of course, are fairly straightforward. It's about, you know, just old fashioned economic imperialism. We're going to steal this stuff and treat it as though it were ours. I think Donald Trump meant to say indefinitely, but what he said was infinitely.

D (29:11)

Which is.

C (29:15)

Maybe, maybe he misspoke, maybe he didn't. It's hard to say with a guy like Donald Trump who speaks like he's already had a couple of strokes and is maybe on his way to another one. So, yeah, I mean, certainly the Colombians are paying attention to, to that line of thought, although they don't. He probably doesn't have to take his radical step there or in Mexico to get what he wants out of those, out of those administrations.

A (29:40)

But when, Kevin, when he was asked about this, when he was asked about the possibility of regime change in Colombia, because he doesn't like the Colombian leader either, he said, sounds good to me.

C (29:48)

Right. And that's, and that's the thing about this kind of, this kind of action. Partly it's about, you know, setting an example. Right? I mean, that's the whole idea of how we're going to get regime change without changing the regime in Venezuela, right, Is by just terrorizing them into doing what we want. And, and if you can terrorize them into doing what you want, then you can terrorize Colombia and Mexico and whoever else and Denmark and the other NATO countries and whoever else we have to deal with into doing what we want. And that is, you know, essentially a lawless, thuggish kind of way of doing things. It is a curious time in the world to to work on a revival of Might makes Right. You know, as David was pointing to earlier, we gave that line of thinking up right after World War II, when the United States was at the apex of its geopolitical power. There was not a close competitor on the world stage jobs back then. Now there is. We are not at the apex of our geopolitical power and we are reviving this doctrine at a time when it is most likely to do us great harm to our long term national interests.

A (30:51)

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B (35:25)

Oh, I think that Trump deserves credit for striking the Iranian nuclear facilities. But I think the absolute lion's share, vast bulk of the credit to the pressure put on the, on the Iranian regime right now is the idf. You know, we take a, yeah, a very America centric view of the Middle east, but this has been an Israeli military opera after the, after the collapse of intelligence that led to October 7th, which I think is even worse failure than right before the Yom Kippur war. In many ways, the IDF has executed its military operations about as brilliantly, especially against Hezbollah and Iran. I have issues in Gaza, but especially against Hezbollah and Iran, about as brilliantly as you can. And one of the things that really hurts autocratic regimes is losing a war. Yeah, losing a war can puncture your myth of invincibility. It can animate and energize opposition figures. And make no mistake, the credit for beating Iran in that war goes to Israel. And we both the Biden and Trump administration supported Israel. And by the way, the Biden administration twice used American military forces to help defend Israel against missile and drone barrages, which was very key, very key in making Iran lose, was that support. And so I do think that Trump deserves credit unreservedly for bombing the nuclear facilities. But I think that if you're going to look at how has the Middle east been remade to the extent that it has, it's an IDF military victory. And it's a very helpful reminder that military strength does, in fact, transform politics. And that's one of the reasons why the might makes right formulation is so alluring. It's so tempting, because might can make a massive difference, and that's what's happened in the Middle East.

A (37:19)

I agree with you entirely. I mean, certainly Israel deserves the lion's share, the credit for those changes and for the weakening of the Iranian regime. Having said that, the tightening of the sanctions, the presidential rhetoric that Trump has used in making clear to the Iranian regime that there is not going to be a return to the Iran nuclear deal, that this is all about maximum pressure. And the fact, I mean, I don't think you can just mark it down as an asterisk that after the Israelis struck 10 days later, the United States struck and did what we did because the Israelis couldn't do it. And I do think that that really matters because it took the conflict that was, and certainly the Iranian regime would like to have imagined it as Israel versus Iran and its proxies and broadened it in a way that I think had real implications in terms of what happens on the battlefield, but also sent the unmistakable message that the United States was engaged. And so in that sense, I think I had the same misgivings then that I have now for similar reasons to overlapping reasons, but somewhat different on the specifics about Donald Trump having done that. I thought it was the right policy in that case. But maybe I'm maybe people who are concerned about Trump doing these things or setting precedents maybe were just hand wringers or bedwetters or.

B (38:52)

But let me, let's talk about precedence for a second. The Trump administration's actions in Iran are just different. They're so different from Venezuela, it's even hard to think about them in the same breath. I mean, from a law of war standpoint, from an international law standpoint, here you have an act, here you have an ally under ballistic missile attack on a daily, nightly basis. You have an ongoing and accelerating nuclear program. So you've got a shooting war ongoing under collective self defense principles. We absolutely had the ability to respond to that. And so it's just so night and day. And I think the results are going to ultimately end up being night and day. I think that you're going to see that there is something that is more concrete and substantial and again, for which the Trump administration deserves credit, where you did it the right way against the right enemy. And I think over time you're going to see better positive knock on effects from that versus doing it the wrong way. And I'm not going to say against the wrong enemy with Maduro, but it's weird because they took out Maduro, but they didn't take out the regime. It's still, it's, it's still the same regime. It's still the same street militia because.

C (40:14)

They like those kinds of regimes. That's the character of the regime they like. You know, Steve, I was thinking that these things have a way of, of not working out the way you expect them to. And I was reading an interview earlier with, I can never say his name correctly, the Crown Prince, the son of the former Shah of Iran, who would.

A (40:28)

Like to raise a Bobby.

C (40:30)

Yeah. Who would like to come back and be in power. And I always noticed him in the news just because weirdly enough, he's a former neighbor of mine in Lubbock, Texas, where he was living when the Iranian revolution happened. And weird historical trivia. But if I were him, you know, and I wanted to come back to power, I don't think he'll be the one that comes in. But if I were, I would say, what do I do first? You know, open up the economy, obviously, get some foreign investment in there, see to the liberation of women and religious minorities, exile the ayatollahs, all that stuff. And then so help me God, I finish up the nuclear weapons program because we're living in a might makes right world now. And if you've got nuclear weapons, you can do whatever the Hell you want, apparently. And that's, you know, that's the only reason Russia gets really any deference in the world. The reason they get to play around the way they do and the reason Venezuela doesn't. And we are creating a set of incentives that are going to make the world much more dangerous in general, but also much more dangerous in a way that specifically diminishes the relative power and advantages of the United States and its military apparatus.

D (41:32)

Maybe it's because I just finished recording a podcast with Ken Burns that this analogy is in my head. You know, the. We all know these quotes from John Adams and all these people about how the Constitution work only works because on the assumption that we have a virtuous people or it only works because George Washington, everyone thought was going to be the first president and, and he modeled the kind of behavior that we wanted on a president and yada, yada, yada, all that stuff. The liberal international order was held up in many respects by a might make right principle. But we were a good and decent nation holding it up. Right. And so we actually had a higher moral understanding of foreign affairs than the state of nature. And we kept that system going, backed up by our might. So much so that NATO eventually just basically became us with some service providing nations around us. Right. Which is a huge problem because NATO lost its buy in and therefore its say in a lot of these kinds of questions. And so Trump was directionally right in criticizing NATO, not a new argument from an American president, by the way. Right. The problem that we have is it's sort of, you know, coming on the heels of my point about regime change in taking Maduro is I want to live in a system domestically, internationally, whatever, where arguments matter, where the person who marshals the better argument tends to win the policy debate. We don't live in that world because Donald Trump is not George Washington. And his vision of how the international realm should work is one in which if we can get away with it and it makes his ego feel good, we should do it and no one knows how to do it. So, like it is entirely, if you have, if you flip a coin and if it's heads a good thing happens and tails it's a bad thing happens, you don't really give the coin flipper the credit. Donald Trump is essentially a coin flip thing, right? Like sometimes, like a monkey running around with a pair of scissors, he'll cut the right thing and sometimes he'll cut the wrong thing. Sometimes the Chinatown tic tac toe chicken makes the right move. The Idea that we are imbuing with him, some sort of grand wisdom of seeing things in a better and more serious way, is just crap. It's that everybody knows how to play him, and it's like musical chairs or roulette. When the ball stops spinning, that's the number it lands on. And sometimes it's a good number and sometimes it's a bad number. So, yeah, it was good that he bombed Iran because the right people won an argument, and the last people he listened to said the right things to him to get him to bomb Iran. But, like, the idea that this is just no way to run an international order, nevermind a country. And that's the thing I am so disgusted by about this whole thing. It's not the taking of Maduro. It's not that it's illegal. I mean, those are perfectly legitimate things to complain about. It's that it was all built on lies. Like, the entire thing was just a frigging series of lies, deliberate lies. And everyone is talking about, oh, it's such a good. Like, the defenders of this move are basically just saying, I don't care that I was lied to. And I'm not saying I owe. I'm owed full operational details in advance of something. But when you move the largest armada in South American history into the Caribbean in the name of interdicting drugs, and then the second you capture, kidnap, in Trump's words, kidnap the head of state of another country and say, okay, it's great, we're gonna keep the evil, torturous regime in place, but we're gonna take all of their oil. Forget the policy arguments for a second. We just were lied to. And to forgive, that is just. That's the real moral hazard. That Congress doesn't give a rat's ass about being lied to. And that's the real moral hazard for the American. Right. Because it says, oh, this is so manly. And it just. It's disgusting.

C (45:38)

It is kind of tedious that we. That we have to take the time to debunk their arguments, which kind of gives them a kind of courtesy of taking them more seriously than they deserve to be?

D (45:48)

Yeah, that's what I find so exhausting about this time.

C (45:50)

Yeah.

A (45:51)

Isn't it also the case that while it's been sort of understood that might makes right in the United States, being the mightiest could arguably do what we wanted, in most cases, we exercised restraint, I mean, to David's point, in post World War II. But I think you can go through, I mean, the big arguments that the French and others who opposed the 2003 Iraq war. The big arguments you heard from people on the left here in the United States was that this was going to be a war for oil, and it wasn't a war for oil. I mean, we didn't, we didn't do the things that they said that we were going to do. Which is ironic when I hear now people saying this is just Trump doing the same thing that Bush and Dick Cheney did in 2003. No, in fact, he's doing the opposite of what bush. We had 20 plus years to take the oil in Iraq. We didn't take the oil. Trump criticizes them for it, but it was that restraint in the sense that even if might makes right, we were, I mean, I'll use the word benevolent. Our critics, our opponents, our adversaries wouldn't, certainly wouldn't use that characterization. But now we're sort of just owning and, and it's might makes right. So therefore we're going to do X, Y and Z. And that is my primary concern on the precedent question, I think that, I.

C (47:05)

Think that period was a lot less might makes right than right makes might. Particularly in the immediate post war years, the United States became an enormously wealthy and dynamic and powerful country because we had the right principles, the right kind of economic ideas, the right sort of national values. It wasn't that we were just this enormous power because the rest of the world had wrecked itself in World War II. That was the case, certainly, but it was much more a case, I think, of right makes might than Mike makes right. That's just maybe a little side note there, but I think that's a better understanding of it.

B (47:38)

I love that, Kevin, especially when you look at the state of play on in May of 1945 or August of 1945, V E Day, VJ Day, you had America was the world power, but there was a Soviet Union that was immensely powerful in, in late 1945. I mean, just the sheer numbers of Red army troops on that, on that eastern flank of what came to be NATO was staggering. And they had just carried the, they had just defeated Wehrmacht, the German army, inflicting far more casual. I mean, the lion's share of credit for the defeat of the German army goes to the Soviet Union, just in sheer numbers, the sheer scale of the warfare. So you had two competing systems right there, both immensely powerful in the moment. Now, the Soviets didn't have the, the atom bomb until a few years later. But then, as you were saying, in many ways, the reason why we were able to eclipse the Soviet Union over the long course of the Cold War was our virtue. It was what made people want to be a part of our system versus be a part of their system, what made people thrive and flourish in our versus their system. And the idea that we can, you know, it's that old statement, I don't want to go cliched. America is great because it's good. If we think that we can become greater by becoming worse, we're going to not just sort of betray the American promise, we're going to betray the reality of American prosperity and we become a.

C (49:10)

Very large, slightly paler Venezuela.

A (49:14)

Okay, we're going to take a break, but we'll be back shortly. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. We don't have a ton of time left, but I want to spend at least a few minutes on this horrendous shooting in Minneapolis that took place, we're recording midday on January 8th. It took place roughly 24 hours ago. We're still learning a lot about the circumstances and what actually happened. But undoubtedly people have seen the video from various angles of this shooting. And there has been, of course, as happens in these things, a tremendously polarized debate about what people are seeing in the video and what the video means. David, let me start with you. What's your reaction to what you saw in the video? And yeah, where does this lead?

B (50:14)

So there's a couple of things. One is, you know, as soon as the incident happens, you see that the woman is accused of domestic terrorism. When you watch Accused by the, by.

A (50:24)

The administration, by the White House. By the administration, by the spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

B (50:29)

Yes. And I believe Kristi Noem also said very similar words, very similar things. And you watch the video and you immediately could tell that that's laughable. The idea that this was domestic terrorism is laughable. So right out of the gate, there's this 37 year old woman. She's dead. She's, I don't even know if her body's been removed from the vehicle yet. And she's been called a domestic terrorist by administration officials. Incredibly inflammatory language, incredibly slanderous language. So that is, let's put that in one, one sort of bucket here and the other bucket is, okay, well what about the shooting itself? Like, let, let's, let's, she's not a domestic terrorist. At the same time, she took off in front of some agents. And so there's a lot of analysis at the shooting and people Reaching definitive conclusions about the legality of the shooting way in advance of the evidence. And here's a quick way to tell if somebody is speaking legally intelligently or not. If they are making the totality of the inquiry the second or two of the shooting itself. That's not the way it's to be done. The Supreme Court said in a case called Felix vs Barnes last term. Sarah and I talked about it on advisory opinions at length. It's a totality of the circumstances analysis. And so should he have been there? What was his perception in the moment at all of these things? It's a totality of the circumstances argument. And so that's. It's very premature to decide the actual legality of the shooting. However, I do not think it's necessarily premature to litigate the morality of the shooting, because one of the things that is very distressing to me is this talking point that you're getting that says, well, you gotta comply with everything that officers tell you right away in the moment perfectly, or you just might die. Or you just. You could just die. Wow, that's a scary standard in a free society, I gotta say. And it's something that has been an issue in a lot of police shootings. And I've looked at police shooting issues with. I've paid a lot of attention to a lot of these incidents over the years. And there is a consistent pattern in a lot of the very controversial shootings. And that is the police are not giving clear commands in a circumstance where somebody is not used to being in encounters with the police. And when that occurs, this idea that unless you in a tense situation are able to respond exactly in a way that is intended by any given officer in any given moment or face, deadly force is actually a reason for hundreds of police shootings. Hundreds. The Times did a really interesting analysis of this. And it's one of the reasons why police forces around the country are saying, don't shoot at moving vehicles. Is that part of the reason is that a lot of this confusion has led to a lot of death. And it's a very scary thing to say. You live in a country that's a free country. You have a ton of constitutional rights. You're a walking bundle of constitutional rights. But if you encounter an armed agent of the state, you need to snap to instantly or you just might die is a very scary thing. And I remember not long ago, do you remember the Scotty Scheffler incident? Here you have a golfer who kind of drives through a police road block, makes contact with an Officer, it's not as clearly on video as it was. I'm thinking, could they have just killed Scotty Schlffler in that moment? Is he just lucky to be alive right now because he didn't respond exactly correctly in a roadblock? And so I have major problems with the administration's response. I have major problems with the fact of the shooting. But it's very premature, I think, to make a definitive opinion about the legality of the shooting.

D (54:33)

Yeah, look, I'm with David on this. I think, first of all, the degree to which people have convinced themselves that watching a video tells you everything that you need to know is really astounding to me. And like you would think after.

C (54:50)

The.

D (54:51)

Rodney King video where everyone thought, oh, this is clear. And then turns out you watch the previous five minutes, and it gives you a different sense of things. I'm not saying the first sense was right, but it certainly didn't feel as right once you watched the bigger video. And moreover, like, stuff on video doesn't always reflect from a distance what it's like up front in the situation. I think it is entirely possible that what this cop did was legal. I can even say that what the cop did. I can imagine that what he did was justifiable. I'm not sure it was, but I can imagine being in that position and making a bad decision. And making a bad decision does not necessarily mean making an evil, you know, premeditated, murderous decision. I look at this as. I think you don't have to make a case that he showed very poor judgment. He had cops on the other side of the car in his line of fire. Like, he could have just stepped back. You know, I mean, like, there are all sorts of things that I can. I can play Monday morning quarterback on, but I'm perfectly willing to withhold judgment until we no more and all of that. I do think that people who are outraged by it have a plausible set of impressions from it that justifies their outrage. But I would pull it back. We were saying in this group text that we're on. To me, the whole thing feels like an example of that. Sort of an analog to that scene in Hunt for Red October where Fred Thompson's on the top of the ship and things are going crazy, and he says this will get out of hand and people will die when the administration pumps so much almost eliminationist rhetoric about immigrants, about this sort of Manichean world of these evil people. And everybody who has any problem with anything is a domestic terrorist or a traitor or whatever. And that they're poisoning the blood and they're hiring ICE agents at a clip where I just don't have a lot of faith that they're training them correctly. And you have the left wanting to cosplay all sorts of resistance kind of stuff all over the place. The lack of prudential, mature leadership from the administration is. And the way passions are being stoked, whatever the actual correct interpretation of these events, events like this are inevitable under these sorts of circumstances. And when you're arresting moms picking up their kid from daycare, right? When you are scaring the crap out of people who just, look, have committed the sin of looking Hispanic.

C (57:41)

You are.

D (57:41)

Gonna put people on edge. You are gonna have unintended. Like, I wish the right has been great about talking about dynamic scoring when it comes to budgeting, right? This idea that you get. You don't understand the exponential growth that you'll get if you have these free market positive. I wish we could have a little more dynamic scoring about rhetoric and domestic policy in the way that we talk about things, like we talked before in foreign policy about moral hazard and possible bad precedents and that the way this administration talks, going back to all the nonsense about sending the National Guard into the cities is they want domestic unrest best. And you're gonna get it if you talk like you want it. And so I don't know about this specific case, but that's how I feel about this is like, I think this is prelude to a lot more ugliness.

A (58:29)

Kevin.

C (58:30)

I think it's a mistake to think of it as a police action at all. It was a road rage incident is what it was. You've got these idiots rolling around out there in their tactical gear, but they can't handle a Midwestern city in winter. And they keep getting their car stuck in the snow and they're being blocked in and hooted at and hollered at and mocked by these protesters. And they lose their temper. And you got these two guys running at the car. One of them is yelling at her to clear the intersection. The other one's yelling at her, get the out of the car. Which is not what I normally think of. It's like a lawful police command. That's not like a high level of police professionalism. You got a masked guy reaching for the door, and the other guy's yelling, clear the intersection. She starts trying to clear the intersection. He gets off three shots. One through the front, two through the open side window, gets a headshot on a moving target. That's not a police action. That is a road rage incident. ICE agents are not authorized to make traffic stops. They're authorized to make immigration stops. They can stop a vehicle if they have, quote, reasonable grounds to believe that there's an illegal immigrant inside, not that someone is breaking the traffic law. If someone's blocking the intersection, what you can do, you can call the police and have them towed off or arrested or ticketed or otherwise. It's not like they can't take pictures and get the driver in the, and the driver's license in the, in the license plate and all that stuff. Trump came out and immediately lied about it and said that the woman had run the guy over, which did not happen. I've actually been hit by a car before. I know what it's like. It's not, it's not something you skip away from the way that guy did. And the problem is, of course, now it's going to be a federal investigation. The FBI is going to be in charge of this. So great. Cash Patel. That's going to work out well. And if there is a federal charge, Trump's just gonna, you know, pardon the guy. So you really need to get the state and local authorities involved in this because it needs to be a local investigation and a local prosecution if you ever want to actually get any justice in this.

A (60:18)

Yeah, I think part of the concern I have is that you could have dual investigations, competing investigations with competing conclusions. And I think the idea that the FBI is going to conduct a serious investigation after the President has already told us what happened happen and guilty and what the outcome is, even if you.

C (60:36)

Do think you're in danger of someone who's trying to ram you with a vehicle, the way to defend yourself from that is not to shoot someone in the head from three feet away, it's to move away.

B (60:44)

That doesn't stop the vehicle. As we saw, as you may have.

C (60:48)

Noticed, the car kept going. Yeah. This is just absolute nonsense and it's going to end badly.

A (60:54)

Well, we are going to move as far away from the day to day news as possible for not worth your time today. And I'm going to ask the group here a question that picks up on a discussion that we were having before we started recording. In that conversation, Jonah and I'll. I'll come to you first. If you were to move back to a city that you once lived in, what city or town or village or hamlet that you lived in before, do you miss the most today and would you be most likely to return to.

D (61:30)

See, it's funny, I've been Thinking about this, I really only lived for any meaningful period of time in three real cities. New York City, Baltimore and Washington D.C. and then I would throw in Prague because I was there for a little while. I like DC the least and that's the place I've stayed for 30 something years. I've never liked this city as a city. I just think it is a subpar city. Compare like Baltimore has really. It's reason they call it Charm City. It's seen better days, but it's got character to it. Prague is one of the best cities in the world. I love Prague. I could walk aimlessly in Prague for days on end. And I love New York even though, you know, I'm worried about the warmth of collectivism. So really I would love to like, if, if I had the financial wherewithal and the life circumstances, I'd like to live maybe in any of them instead of Washington D.C. and I'd throw in places like London as well. But I guess the place where I would be most comfortable to live, I could see myself very easily living in New York again if I had the right residents. But because I like cities, I like, I'm a city guy, I'm a flaneur, as Kevin and I might say.

C (63:03)

Jonah's view of Washington, by the way, is one of his few unambiguously correct opinions. I have no notes.

A (63:14)

Kevin, would your answer be Lubbock or something else?

C (63:19)

You know, I like Lubbock, I like my hometown. I don't think my, my wife would enjoy it very much. You know, if I could do like sort of further out in West Texas like Brewster county or something like that, I'd be pretty happy about that. I think, I think we got on this because I was just in New York and I lived in New York for a long time and I really like New York. It's. There are kind of three American cities that really work for me as cities and those are New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Like, you know, Chicago is like all the pain in the ass stuff about New York and none of the cool stuff. I don't know why no one would ever live there. David French but. And if I didn't have four kids, Delhi would actually be on the list. I think I really liked Delhi and I think it'd be an interesting place to live now. I mean the air quality and stuff is horrible and there's all sorts of, you know, challenges of living there and obviously raising four kids there would be, would not be a thing to do. But places I've lived You know, it's as cliched as it is because it's like everyone's favorite flavor of whatever. Austin's pretty nice. Although as I've often said, I often, I used to really think I liked Austin. I think what I really liked was being 20.

A (64:24)

But Austin is still pretty nice.

D (64:27)

But Austin is still pretty nice.

A (64:29)

That, that matters. That matters a lot.

C (64:31)

I think being 20 was, was pretty fun.

A (64:34)

Well, or just generally your family and life circumstances. Yeah, I've got, I've got related thoughts on that. But David, I'll go to you next. Where would you, where would you live?

B (64:44)

Okay, so this, some listeners are going to think I've lost my mind, but let, let just sort of say so. Here are the I'm currently, I'm recording from Chicago, so looking at past metropolitan areas where I've lived New York, Nashville, Lexington, Kentucky for almost a year, Greater Balad Ruse, Iraq, not on the list for places I'm really eager to go back to. So Philly and of all of these city, these big metropolitan areas, Philly, I mean, this is good choice.

C (65:22)

It's a solid choice.

B (65:23)

And, and here's why I say it. I love the old, the city center colonial part of Philly. It's charming, it's beautiful, it's historic. And so like if you could map it out, I would say one of these center city streets, these cobblestone colonial area streets with the, you know, the townhouse right near Independence Hall. I mean it's like my happy place, you know, the Museum of the American Revolution. So, you know, and then Philly's got its own unique city of brotherly shove. Character. So I like where I am, but I'm going to say Philly of those.

C (66:00)

Places, I used to work right off Rittenhouse Square and it's a great neighborhood. I agree. Philly was great to me. I liked it there a lot.

A (66:07)

You know, David, somebody sent me a, a house listing yesterday, as it happens, for a, a home, an Elfrith's Alley. So really nice. I'll forward that on to you. Yeah, it was, you know, something like $4 million. So not, not terribly realistic there in.

B (66:25)

That play part of the.

A (66:26)

But, but it was cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was pretty cool. That's interesting. I wouldn't have expected that. Charming and beautiful. At first I thought you were describing Philadelphia sports fans when you were using those words. So I'm glad you were describing instead the, the old town. My answer, I mean, I would love to, to throw people a curveball or come up with something unexpected I've lived in lots of, I think, really great places. I grew up in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Love it. I don't think I could live there because the weather is. I can't do the cold any longer. I went to school in Greencastle, Indiana. I also loved Greencastle. Tiny town, but fun and actually charming as well. One year in New York City, I enjoyed it, but I was very, very happy to move on. I am not someone who thinks that Central park is enough green.

B (67:21)

It was, right.

A (67:22)

I drove over the George Washington Bridge on my way out with a buddy from Minnesota in our huge U haul and I remember this feeling of relief just washing over me. Glad to have spent a year there. Don't think I could ever live there permanently. But my, my choice, and it's obvious, I, I apologize for playing the cliche, would be Madrid. I absolutely loved Madrid. I think it's a spectacular city. You know, to a certain extent I think it's hard and not necessarily accurate to describe, you know, 8 million residents of a city using general terms. But having said that, I think Madrid is one of the warmest cities and most welcoming cities you can ever imagine. I mean, when, when me and my family would try to speak our broken or beginner Spanish, you know, they were patient, they encouraged us, they welcomed it, they loved. Was just a wonderful experience. I do think, Kevin, to your point, you know, you liked being 20 in Austin as much as just being in Austin. I think the fact that I had that year with my family all in one place doing a tons of sort of family focused activities. I mean, we had, we built a, you know, a little social group and we had some really good friends there. But it was mostly my family doing family stuff for that year. And for that reason it was, it was really one of the best, best years ever. But I love Madrid. It's a wonderful, it is a great city. It really. It's underrated. I know everybody loves Barcelona and I too like Barcelona. I love Seville. There are a lot of great Spanish cities and towns, but sort of pound for pound, I think Madrid is, is as great as any place. So I would return there and maybe, maybe I'll retire there one day. Thanks all for the time. Thanks for talking through what are some. These are some, some tough issues. These are some challenging times. It feels like a lot is changing and it's good to be able to talk about this with people as thoughtful as the three of you. So thanks and we'll talk to you again next week 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. You've been meaning to sign up as a member for months now. Take the time to do it today and if ads aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free annual memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and more. Shout out to a few folks who recently recently joined as premium members. Andrew Christensen, Mike Preston and Tom Self. We're glad to have you aboard. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtabledispatch.com we read everything, even the ones from people who choose to live in Chicago. 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 and Noah Hickey. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.