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- [00:08]
Steve Hayes
Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll discuss Donald Trump's disturbing interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. And we'll debate the question, is Donald Trump in decline, or is it the same guy who ran for president in 2016? Then we'll take a look at the strained relationship between the US And Israel, with the president telling reporters that Israel should not respond to Iranian missile strikes and that he wants to resume negotiations over an end to the war. Finally, we're not worth your time tipping. What's with the constant invitations to tip everywhere, all the time? And is there a boomerang effect where tipping fatigue leads to lower tips for the people who do the kind of work that really does deserve tips? I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Kevin Williamson. Let's dive in. Okay, gentlemen, I want to start with an interview that Donald Trump gave to Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on Sunday morning. It was, I would say, a disturbing interview, much discussed in the immediate aftermath of its airing. And while we're not going to play the whole thing, I do want to play a chunk of it to remind you what we have seen and to give our listeners a sense of how the interview unfolded. I will say before this clip that we're going to play, Kristen Welker asked the president about the $1.776 billion slush fund that was to pay people who were allegedly wronged by the US Government that was thought to have been killed last week. Then it was potentially resurrected. Then it was killed again by the Department of Justice itself. Kristen asked the president about that. He said he loved the slush fund. Not everybody loved the slush fund, but he really did love it. And then there was this exchange.
- [02:18]
Kristen Welker
Do you think anyone who attacked police officers on January 6 should get taxpayer money?
- [02:25]
Donald Trump
I wouldn't be inclined to say so, but I have to see it. I can tell you this. 97% of those people, you look at them, the FBI or whoever it was, because you had a lot of crooked cops. You had dirty cops. Comey was a dirty cop. A guy like Bolton was a dirty cop.
- [02:40]
Kristen Welker
There's no evidence.
- [02:41]
Donald Trump
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh, you think Comey was a straight
- [02:43]
Kristen Welker
cop who pleaded guilty to assaulting police?
- [02:45]
Donald Trump
Comey was a dirty cop. No, no. They had FBI. Listen to me. They had FBI agents ushering them into the building. They had FBI go into the building. Those people walking around, they're looking always in this night. They weren't they were ushered into the building.
- [03:01]
Kristen Welker
There's no evidence.
- [03:02]
Donald Trump
You had a bunch of dirty cops. And frankly, what they did was weaponization of our government.
- [03:07]
Kristen Welker
Sir, there's. There's no evidence of that. More than a thousand.
- [03:10]
Donald Trump
No one yet. No, there's none. You know what to do. Try looking at the tapes one time.
- [03:14]
Kristen Welker
Would you take it?
- [03:15]
Donald Trump
Look at the tapes one time.
- [03:17]
Kristen Welker
But 172 people did plead guilty to assaulting police officers.
- [03:20]
Donald Trump
You know why they pled guilty? Because they told them we're going to jail for 15 years if they didn't. Should they pled guilty because they were frightened? They went down. They were ushered into a building. Many of them were arrested without even going into the building.
- [03:34]
Kristen Welker
Are you okay with them receiving taxpayer dollars?
- [03:38]
Donald Trump
The people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated. Now, with that being said, the. As I understand it, the weaponization fund was going to set up a group of people, people that could be picked by anybody. Fair people, smart people, and they will go on an individual case basis.
- [04:02]
Kristen Welker
Okay?
- [04:02]
Donald Trump
Now, I don't know what's going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he's not smart enough to know what's going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute desk in the Oval Office. What they did to the lives of people. They destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.
- [04:31]
Kristen Welker
Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying. But there's a lot of. Todd Blanche master.
- [04:36]
Donald Trump
Listen to me, Listen to me.
- [04:38]
Kristen Welker
Let's talk about this.
- [04:38]
Donald Trump
There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. Presented that is happening right now in California. Right now it's looking. Look at what's happening in California. That it's more days doing well in California. It's. No, they're not. They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you, it's four days and they aren't even close to coming up.
- [05:06]
Kristen Welker
That's how they count.
- [05:07]
Donald Trump
You know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election.
- [05:09]
Kristen Welker
There's what, do you have evidence to support?
- [05:11]
Donald Trump
All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look, listen and I listen to people and let's see what happens.
- [05:18]
Kristen Welker
Sir, that's not evidence. You think it's appropriate that's how they count the votes.
- [05:21]
Donald Trump
You think it's appropriate that they have an election and five days later they're
- [05:26]
Kristen Welker
nowhere close to picking local officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging.
- [05:30]
Donald Trump
No, they're crooked.
- [05:31]
Kristen Welker
They're urging the votes to be counted. That's how. They're crooked.
- [05:34]
Donald Trump
Just like you're crooked. Your press is crooked and Meet the Press is crooked.
- [05:38]
Kristen Welker
To be fair, I'm not crooked.
- [05:39]
Donald Trump
But let's really. Well, you play right into their hands.
- [05:42]
Kristen Welker
Let's continue.
- [05:42]
Donald Trump
You're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with this guy. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide And I got 94 bad press. But Mr. President, you know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.
- [06:02]
Kristen Welker
But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about. I want to talk about topics.
- [06:06]
Donald Trump
You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk your elections in this country. We're like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Meet the Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS and cnn, you one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.
- [06:29]
Kristen Welker
Mr. President, let's please. I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've seen travel all I know. I travel all the way for an
- [06:36]
Donald Trump
hour on and off in the rain. And I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be graced with a dishonest.
- [06:46]
Kristen Welker
Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview.
- [06:51]
Steve Hayes
Well, Jonah, your reaction.
- [06:55]
Kevin Williamson
Gold.
- [06:57]
Jonah Goldberg
Well, first of all, let's be clear. I think the funniest part of all of it, the rest of it's not that funny. It's kind of sad and pathetic. But the funniest part of it is the way she just kept saying, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin, like that's Timbuktu. But no, look, I'm not the biggest fan of Kristen Welker, but I think she did as good a job as you're gonna get out of someone in that situation. It's funny, there was a lot of sort of anti, anti Trump criticism of Welker by basically saying, well, why is she bringing this up? Why do we have to talk about the 2020 stolen election stuff? And the thing is, he's bringing it up, right? He's the One who thinks it's a live issue. He's the one who just appointed the head of the Director of National Intelligence where he said the only thing he wanted to do while there was to look into the stolen election stuff and get to the bottom of all of that. He is setting policy based on this lie. That's what the point of the 1776 slush fund was predicated on, this lie. And I think, just as a matter of calm stuff, it's kind of fascinating and quite a tell. And I think it's actually a failure of Welker, but also a lot of other journalists because we've been down this road a bunch of times with Trump. He keeps saying people's lives were destroyed. Give us a name. Who, who is your poster boy who is like the signature victim of the Justice Department of the justice system, which by the way, was his Justice Department at the time. Right. And he talks about this like how the FBI staged all of this. If that were remotely true, that means that he went all four years as president with the FBI desperate to set him up with 14 days left to his presidency, which is, you know, is, I mean, it's a very minor point, but it just adds to the stupidity of the conspiracy theory point. But you know, these guys, they're great at coming up with all these meat props at the State of the Union address, so and so, you know, stubbed their toe on a woke textbook, you know, that kind of stuff. They're great at doing this, you know, doordasher just happens to be getting through all of security, coming by the White House to deliver lunch, to talk about no tax on tips. But they can't name one person who is their absolute like horse, vessel, martyr, innocent here. Frankly, my own opinion is I actually don't think this fund was ever really about the January 6th people. It was about him having another unaccountable source of political power. And it wouldn't shock me given the way he talks about it and how badly treated he was. It wouldn't shock me if he had actually gotten the 1776 fund that the hand picked board that was gonna figure this out, the Kennedy senator board, decide, you know, who the biggest victim was, Donald Trump, and give him a huge slice of cash. So, I mean, it shows you how deranged the guy still is. It shows you how much this drives his thinking about domestic policy and how to run the government and people should be disturbed by it.
- [10:05]
Steve Hayes
So, Kevin, I'm an NBC News political analyst. I appear on Meet the Press. I like Kristen, I do think she handled herself very well there. I don't think that was a shot at my beloved native Wisconsin. But I think if the job of a show like Meet the Press and the moderator of the show, the person interviewing in this case the president, is to show people sort of what he's thinking and how his mind works in many ways, this was a very successful interview because I think we all saw to the core of what Donald Trump is today. Kevin, there's been sort of a long running debate in Washington, in the country, certainly among Trump skeptics, and it roughly falls like this. I was involved in a debate like this just a few weeks ago with some people who cover the White House. Is what we're seeing from Donald Trump in this interview and at other times sign of his decline, his deterioration? Is he getting worse, or is this the Donald Trump that we have always seen? And it's just another example of the kinds of things that we saw as early as his 2015, 2016 presidential campaign. Do you have a view on that?
- [11:23]
Kevin Williamson
Well, my longstanding, oft repeated view of the easiest explanation for this stuff when it comes to Donald Trump is he's not real smart. And what we are seeing, I think, is the race to the bottom between his moral decline and his intellectual decline. And right now, the intellectual decline's kind of taking a lead because the moral decline was so far ahead that it got kind of lazy, I guess, and thought no one could catch up to it. But intellectual decline is working its way closer in the race. But this doesn't seem that different to me. This is the guy he's been, as you say, in 2015, 2016. This is the guy he was in the 1990s and even the late 1980s. This kind of, you know, blustering, superficial, can I bully my way through the conversation, guy on a bar stool, except for the fact that he doesn't drink, kind of character that he's always been. You know, something I wrote last week that I think maybe is appropriate here is that Donald Trump has made the presidency worse, and he's made American political life worse. But the presidency's also made him worse, and American political life has also made him worse. It's brought out tendencies that he already had to be that sort of, you know, bullying, hectoring, kind of superficial sort of person. And now he's surrounded by people day and night telling him he's the most important person in the universe, and he is one of the most important men in the world, weirdly enough. And that has made his vanity and his venality and his susceptibility to flattery and that kind of thing. Just a million times worse than it was when he was just a businessman who. Or a guy who had a reality television show and that stuff. So he's been declining in both of those senses, I think. You know, he really reminds me of, though, is. I mean, he's going to be 80, what, in a couple of weeks, his birthday coming up. It's in the summer, isn't it?
- [12:55]
Steve Hayes
Flag Day, Six days.
- [12:57]
Kevin Williamson
Oh, dear Lord. I mean, we've all had relatives like this, right? You know, and I remember having conversations a million years ago with a guy who was old and wasn't very bright, and he was under the impression that Judaism was a branch of Christianity and was talking about this thing. And I said, you have to understand that's. I mean, that's the basic differences between the two religions. It's like their position about Jesus. One of them believes that he was the, you know, messiah and one of them doesn't. That's like, the whole difference. And he got, like, fighting mad, like, I had insulted this thing that everybody knew and everybody understand. And I was like, if you could read, you could go home and look it up in your encyclopedia, because this was a long time ago, back when people still had encyclopedias at homes. But you do meet people like this who are just so unused to being challenged on preposterous kinds of ideas that when someone does push back on them, and if you're sitting down with Meet the Press, you are going to get some questions. He fakes so much in life, but his sense of grievance and offense at these sorts of things is legitimate. He's not acting. Acting on that stuff. He really is genuinely, I think, offended that people question him and really aggrieved by this, which doesn't, of course, speak very well of him. But, yeah, I mean, he was a dangerous, delusional dimwit before he was elected. And we knew it the last time around, we knew it this time around. And he's not going to stop being that. He's not going to get better. I mean, most people don't get much better in their lives after 50. Most people sure as hell don't get better after 75 or 78. He's not going to suddenly, you know, turn into Cicero on the eve of his 80th birthday after being, you know, the pro wrestling and pornography guy.
- [14:28]
Steve Hayes
Mike, Kevin just basically summarized what my view has been on Donald Trump for more than a decade, that he is who he is he's sort of the same guy. And what we see when we see these outbursts, which have these moments where there are these controversies, where he cooks up a new conspiracy, is basically just Donald Trump being Donald Trump. Nothing new, nothing worse, I have to say. And as I said, I had this discussion, this debate with people who cover the White House on the regular. This is like less than a month ago. And that was the view I articulated in that conversation. And some of those people were saying, nah, I think this is different. I think this is new, and I think it's worse. I have to say, after watching that interview and watching in particular, the level of his anger and frustration, you know, he sometimes does treat these things as if they're all a joke. You know, the people who are so critical of him in their reporting, he comes in and gives him a pat on the back and puts his arm around them, and he sort of. He treats it like it's, you know, professional wrestling.
- [15:31]
Mike Warren
Right.
- [15:32]
Steve Hayes
And this is all part of the act. That didn't seem like an act to me. He seemed very angry, and you can sort of see it in his face. For people who are watching the interview on NBC or who saw it when we just played it on. On YouTube. And if you put that sort of. As the last of several other examples from just this past week, he had this outburst against CNN's Kaitlan Collins in the Oval Office, where, again, not the first time the president's been nasty to a female journalist, but really seemed sort of angry about it. And then, of course, there was the widely reported fight that he had with Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime close ally of the president, who praises Donald Trump in public every time he can. Trump was reported to have laced Netanyahu with this angry, expletive laden tirade about screwing up the potential for peace and on and on. Trump people initially denied that the president himself confirmed that he did go after Netanyahu this way. It does, to me, feel like this is a guy who's increasingly just losing his grip.
- [16:37]
Mike Warren
Yeah, I watched the entire interview, which is pretty long, and obviously what we just played, four and a half minutes of it, is the final section of it. So, I mean, there's a risk of overanalyzing NFL tape, like, too much of this, but I had a lot of thoughts after watching what seemed like roughly 40 minutes of, for the Trump era, kind of almost a normal Meet the Press interview with the President of the United States. There was, you know, taking things that the President had said and putting it up against his record. Or putting it up against the things that are happening now in his administration. And there was pushback. There was back and forth. It was, you know, Donald Trump saying, I never promised no wars. Of course he did. I mean, he did it sort of implicitly and explicitly during his 2024 campaign. And so Kristen Welker pushed back on him on that, asked him questions about this Iran war. But it had this almost. This had the cadence of a normal interview. And if what you played showed this moment where, to use a word that we used a lot in the woke era, there was like, a triggering moment for Donald Trump when she started to ask about. Right. You know, there were people who could have received money from this fund who, you know, assaulted police officers. And at that moment, there was like a switch that you could see go off in the president's head where he began to kind of associate, okay, cops. On January 6th, we're talking about dirty cops. These weren't legitimate cops. They're dirty cops. And, you know, who's the dirtiest was James Comey. Right. Like, all of a sudden, he brings James Comey into the conversation. And I, Yeah, he was the, at that point, former FBI director on January
- [18:28]
Steve Hayes
6th, James Comey was fired in May of 2017.
- [18:33]
Donald Trump
No, this is.
- [18:34]
Steve Hayes
I mean, this is exactly my point. I don't mean. I don't mean to interrupt you, but, like, this is almost four years hence. If Joe Biden had said that and invoked James Comey's name, called him a dirty cop and used him to talk about the dirty cops that were there on January 6th, we all would have had this moment where we said, joe Biden's losing it. And I'm thinking about this because I went back and I reread some of the things that Joe Biden had said in the interview that he gave to Robert her, who was the special prosecutor.
- [19:04]
Mike Warren
Right.
- [19:04]
Steve Hayes
And he mixed up all these dates, and he didn't know when he was vice president. And it was. It's exactly the same as what we saw from Donald Trump that he's bringing up James Comey to talk about dirty cops on January 6. It makes no sense.
- [19:17]
Mike Warren
But I will leave it to the psychologists to determine what sort of cognitive problems the President may or may not be having. But in terms of what substance kind of triggers these moments, I mean, it all comes back to January 6th and the weaponization of government against Trump. That's how he sees. He sees James Comey, the dirty cops on January 6th. The way that the Biden administration went after his guys. It's all the same to him, and it all makes him mad. And so just, again, just if you listen to those four and a half minutes that you played at the top of the show here, it is a sort of deterioration of his own kind of composure. And he's getting angrier and angrier. And you're right, I think Jonah pointed out that it was Trump who brought up the 2020 election. And they're stealing it again because it's all rigged. It's all rigged against me and my people. There's like a word association thing happening here and he can't be stopped once he's on that kind of tear, once he's kind of, you know, playing all the hits. And I think it's instructive not just to hear those four and a half minutes in context, but to hear it in the context of that entire interview. You can kind of see where the grip on reality, the ability for even someone who's, like, angry about perceived attacks on him, he's sort of unable to hold himself back and direct the interview in a way that helps him or gets it back on his message in the way he did earlier in the interview. I think that four and a half minutes tells you kind of everything you need to know, whether or not it's a cognitive problem or it's just he's an obsessive person on this issue. It tells you everything you need to know about how he is approaching the job at the moment. And yes, it's telling us stuff we already knew, but it's good for people to be reminded because unlike us, people forget these kinds of things. And it's good to have it in front of them and be sort of confronted with that.
- [21:25]
Steve Hayes
Jonah, he mentioned the president, mentioned the California vote counting, which has been a story over the past several days. On election night, Republicans in both the LA mayor's race and in the California governor's race looked like they were doing pretty well, sort of overperformed expectations there was likelihood that they would be in these runoffs. California, the way they do their elections, has sort of a jungle primary and then narrows down to two candidates for the general election. Word came last night that Spencer Pratt, this reality TV star who had done very well in the first round of voting and was thought to be likely headed to the recount or to the general, had been overtaken by another member, a progressive Democrat. And this has given rise to all sorts of conspiracies on the right, that they are tanking Spencer Pratt's candidacy and elevating this progressive because California's corrupt. That's what the President gave voice to yesterday. Is he right?
- [22:32]
Jonah Goldberg
Well, California's got some corruption problems, but I don't think that's what's going on here. Just for level setting, people understand, like Spencer Pratt wildly overperformed for a Republican and ran an interesting race on issues that I credit him for and all that. But LA City is bluer than LA county and LA county is bluer than the rest of California, with maybe exceptions, some pockets in the Bay Area or something like that. Right. So the registered Republicans are something around 2 in 10 people in LA. So he would have to have, you know, 3, 3 out of 5 of his voters would have to be people crossing the partisan line for him. And that's just really a steep climb. And so we shouldn't be shocked that the Republican guy did not win a runoff in la, even if we liked his social media advertising. That said, the way California counts its ballots is outrageous. It is one of these things. It's sort of like for decades there were stories about how Jaguars broke down. In fact, it became one of these things that like Jaguar owners thought it was kind of like a kind of conspicuous consumption. How much have you spent on your brand new car for repairs this year? You know, that kind of thing. And they never fixed it. And it was just bizarre to me. And that's like California with its vote counts. You know, I had a friend actually who, when he was out of college, he had a painting company in the Bay Area and their jokey motto was, we may be slow, but we're expensive. And that seems to be sort of the motto of almost the entire public sector of California, whether it's high speed rail or anything else. And so in that context, when you are already believing long election periods, which I think are problematic. Right. I like election days or election weeks kind of thing. I think deadlines focus the mind. There are all sorts of problems with these rolling mail, in battling all these kinds of things. But the problem with them isn't that they are sources of stolen elections. The problem with them is that they're bad for civic virtue, they're bad for certainty. They're bad because they create people wasting their votes by voting too early before events change. There are all sorts of problems with it. But you have to add in another one, which is in an era where you have, led by the President of the United States, tens of millions of people who believe in conspiracy theories about elections and election fraud and election theft and all that kind of stuff. If you're going to Take a week, two weeks to count votes. You are going to invite this kind of stuff from the President of the United States. And, you know, there is a very quaint argument that this is un statesmanlike from Trump. There is an obligation among elected leaders to maintain confidence in the system and not to speak irresponsibly. But those days are long, long gone. And so I'm not shocked at all. California should be ashamed of itself that it can't do this better. I think Gavin Newsom saying, why do people have a problem with counting every vote? Is such intellectually dishonest garbage. Like, Florida cares about counting every vote. They just count them really quickly. California doesn't do it. Again, I don't think it's because they're stealing votes. I think it's because they suck. But they kind of deserve some of this. Knowing what this climate is like and doesn't mean it's good for anybody. It doesn't mean anyone's a hero here. But, man, it's annoying.
- [26:11]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, it's frustrating. And I think it does, as you say, creates fertile ground for these kinds of conspiracies. It should be said that, as you pointed out, nobody's surprised that the Democrats would have done better in the post Election Day count. And there were trends pointing to greater participation by Democrats as the voting went on. That said, it does create an environment where people who are, you know, usually more responsible than Donald Trump are leaning into questions about this. Ron DeSantis, Florida governor. As you say, Jonah, they count their votes pretty quickly and pretty efficiently in Florida. Ron DeSantis tweeted on June 3, California keeps dumping votes. Odds are shifting because the vote dumps always seem to go one way, count until you get the result you want. You know, this is Ron DeSantis. Now, maybe it's just DeSantis deciding that Donald Trump has done well as a conspiracy theorist. He might as well join, too. But you get more and more people saying things like this, and you begin to have a real crisis in the confidence in our elections.
- [27:20]
Kevin Williamson
You know, it's probably worth noting for context that there are European countries in which they will announce that they're going to have an election, have the campaign count the votes, and have the election over in a month. And California says it needs a month to count the votes after the campaign. That's bananas. Malta is not a huge country, but they just had an election. There's 33 days that passed between announcing the snap elections and the results being in. And, you know, California, which I hear has a lot of Tech businesses and they like to do things that involve information management. You would think that state could figure out a way to tabulate some records for a system that has been in place since like the 18th century. You know, a process of voting. I'm not in California, but you know, in general, this kind of go to the ballot box, make your preference known, tally em up, decide who won. It's not like we're breaking new ground here with some kind of, you know, theoretical mathematics that has to be done. It's just arithmetic. You think they'd be able to do that? California, I think Joan is right that they take their underperformance as a kind of badge of courage. It's sort of look how exceptional we are. We're special, we're California, we can do things whatever way we want to. And yeah, they're on their way to being a very large Rhode island, which, which is not where you want to be.
- [28:40]
Steve Hayes
Kevin, how concerned should we be given what the President is saying here, Given sort of rising concerns expressed by sitting Republicans, Republican rank and file voters about election integrity, election security, given the fact that the President once again claimed in his interview with Kristen Welker that he won 2020 in a landslide, that it was stolen? You know, he has, as we have pointed out here before, dispatched the federal law enforcement to Arizona, to Georgia and elsewhere to seize ballots. Looking backwards, sort of MAGA world has systematically and methodically moved across the country, focusing particularly on swing states working to get its own adherents into positions of power in running state and local elections. We saw the lead up to in the Aftermath of the 2020 elections, Donald Trump claiming it was rigged, trying to, you know, making the argument the election was stolen from him, doing everything he could to mess with the certification of the votes. How concerned should we be about election security and election integrity in 2026? He's made it very clear he doesn't want to lose the midterms.
- [29:51]
Kevin Williamson
Yeah, about defcon too. I think, you know, there's a very, very high probability that they will do something to try to nullify the results of the the election or to monkey with them going in one way or the other. No, this is going to be a problem. It's going to be a problem in the midterms, it's going to be a problem next presidential election. I still think there's a 50, 50 chance the guy doesn't voluntarily leave office and you know, he claims something about, well, there's an emergency or this, that or the other, or it's not fair that my first term got so, you know, interfered with. So I'm going to take a mulligan and give myself another one. Yeah, we're going to have to fight this stuff. It's going to be a real mess. And it's going to. Ultimately, it's not just going to lead to a perception that our elections are less trustworthy. It's actually going to make them less trustworthy by making the procedure and the institutions less worthy of trust because of how they're managing the people who are in charge of them. So never mind the perceptions and the confidence, the actual underlying facts are going to get worse as well. And I don't see an easy way to fix that. And if anyone's got any real good ideas, I would love to hear them.
- [30:54]
Jonah Goldberg
So one of the things you do hear, I have no solutions. That's not why I'm here. But one of the things you do hear is that this is all preparatory to Trump being able to say the Democrats illegitimately took Congress back and therefore I don't have to abide by what Congress wants me to do and he'll just have a sort of Napoleon III kind of presidency for his last couple years or whatever. I'm not saying I buy that, but that's one of the arguments that you're starting to hear, people.
- [31:27]
Steve Hayes
It is far from implausible.
- [31:29]
Jonah Goldberg
I would say it's definitely not zero likelihood. And it doesn't have to go all that way. Right. It can just simply be rhetorical flourish that kind of got set in so that when you do defy Congress or you do refuse to go along with something that Congress says or refuse to cooperate with an impeachment inquiry, your supporters have that talking point. Well, this isn't actually a legitimate Congress in the first place, so why should they actually send people for these hearings, which are fake anyway? You could see that even if it's not a full blown constitutional crisis, you could see it politically being the narrative that justifies letting the administration do whatever the hell it wants.
- [32:12]
Kevin Williamson
By the way, Isaiah, dedicated listener to all Dispatch oriented and branded podcasts. I love how Jonah has been telescoping that he's going to make his next Woodrow Wilson Napoleon iii.
- [32:26]
Jonah Goldberg
You're paying very close attention.
- [32:28]
Kevin Williamson
I've heard more about Napoleon III in the last couple of months on Dispatch podcast.
- [32:33]
Jonah Goldberg
Well, so part of. I'll tell you why, right? It's like, I know why.
- [32:37]
Kevin Williamson
All right, Because I listen to your podcast. But no, tell everyone else, please.
- [32:40]
Jonah Goldberg
All right, so the phrase Caesarism, which I spent, you know, from My first book, onward. For 20 years, I've been reading stuff about accusations of Caesarism in American politics. And I always, for completely legitimate, I think, understandable reasons, assumed people were talking about Julius Caesar. And they kind of. They are to a certain extent, right, or Augustus or whatever, but like one of the Caesars. But it turns out that word did not exist. Caesarism as a term did not exist until Napoleon iii, because what Napoleon III did was he practiced illiberal democracy. He's basically the archetype for it, where he would do these referenda and plebiscites to get the nominal support of the people as a way to then unilaterally rule without any checks and balances of any kind. And it was called. And sort of like with Caesar going to the, you know, going to the plebs, this is where the term Caesarism enters political discourse. It really didn't exist because why would you talk about Caesarism in the age of the divine right of kings, where everybody thinks they're a Caesar? You know, it's only you start having democracy and liberalism that people see it as a throwback. And I think that this is sort of Trump's. It's the populist approach to everything. I speak for the people. I don't need these formal institutions and processes like elections to be the authentic leader of the people, for I have a deeper organic connection with the people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to the extent that that's papered over with bs, sort of indicia of Democratic support, that's called Caesarism, and it enters the discourse with Napoleon Third, I think that's really interesting. So. But points for paying attention.
- [34:20]
Kevin Williamson
Vox populi, vox dei.
- [34:22]
Jonah Goldberg
That's right.
- [34:23]
Mike Warren
Can I say as a word of caution about assuming that there's a plan here. Look, maybe there are people within the Trump political operation who are thinking about these things ahead of time, but a lot of this is attributable to the irritable gestures of Donald Trump and the kind of the gut of Trump. He doesn't trust elections in which Republicans don't win. And so he then therefore kind of constructs an explanation for that that I think is fed by existing, and I would say long existing, even preexisting Trump kind of populist conservative ideas about what's really happening in elections in California or in elections where the sort of the red mirage phenomenon where you have, in states with mail in ballots, you have this magic dumping of a bunch of blue ballots, because Democrats in many states, not all states, prefer to vote by mail, as opposed to Republicans, who generally are sort of more inclined to vote on Election Day. And so their votes end up getting counted earlier. Like, he is, in many ways, feeding off of that and reacting to it and sort of building kind of a view on this that may well be used for tasks that you guys have been discussing about sort of casting the 2026 midterms as illegitimate. And I see what Ron DeSantis is doing is in many ways, it's just. It's an echo of. Yeah, the Facebook comment on this stuff. Right. Like that. Like, that's reactive and that's sort of reflective of what the people on social media that they are sort of getting their. Taking their points, you know, taking signs and signals from. That is what Trump has sort of done with populism on these kind of election issues is just listening to what the people. His people are saying. And Ron DeSantis is doing the same thing and projecting that out, not talking back to them and saying, no, it's. We have problems, you know, trying to add nuance. There ain't no room for nuance on these sorts of things. And that's a problem.
- [36:32]
Kevin Williamson
When people talk about Trump and grand plans, I always picture in my head, you know, Heath Ledger wearing joker makeup in a traditional nurse's outfit saying, do I look like a guy with a plan?
- [36:44]
Jonah Goldberg
No. But I think DeSantis has been a pretty effective governor. It's outrageous for him to do this because he actually knows how all this stuff works.
- [36:51]
Mike Warren
Yes, right.
- [36:52]
Jonah Goldberg
And second, the most telling, per your sort of. This is just a Facebook it's comment at scale kind of thing. The most telling, revealing line from Trump's thing with Welker is when she says, what evidence do you have? And he says, all I have to do is look at it.
- [37:10]
Kevin Williamson
Just look.
- [37:11]
Jonah Goldberg
Right.
- [37:11]
Mike Warren
That's right.
- [37:11]
Jonah Goldberg
And there's this old rule of thumb that if you don't know how something works, it's very easy to believe there's a conspiracy. And Trump, first of all, doesn't know how a lot of things work. I'm sorry, he still doesn't. And second, he relies on the people who think he knows how things really work, who have that same sort of gut impression, and he feeds into that.
- [37:36]
Kevin Williamson
But we talk about Desantis like he's the morally culpable one. And by implication, Trump is this guy who's had some sort of head injury or something. We talk about the president. We talk about the President of the United States as though he's not a morally culpable person because he's like, just not up to it because he's so useless and essentially, you know, disabled.
- [37:56]
Jonah Goldberg
No, I, I agree. I, I hate falling into that. It's like the old Dan Dresner thing about the toddler in chief. People cut him slack that they wouldn't cut for their next door neighbor, you know?
- [38:06]
Kevin Williamson
Yeah.
- [38:07]
Steve Hayes
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- [41:25]
Kevin Williamson
Before we do that, we should close out real quick on this conversation just by reminding the audience listening to this that everyone on this panel is a seasoned journalist who has at one point in his career traveled all the way to Wisconsin.
- [41:38]
Steve Hayes
I like to travel to Wisconsin. There was other news just Sunday. It's interesting we talked amongst ourselves before we decided on topics for this panel. And I was attempting to do a panel that was going to largely avoid talking about Donald Trump. This is a balance that we try to strike. This is the most sort of on the news product along with the Morning Dispatch puts out.
- [42:02]
Kevin Williamson
But then you decided we couldn't do the hellofresh thing.
- [42:05]
Steve Hayes
Well, we couldn't. We couldn't. There was, there were a lot of things that I think were in contention. And then the president gave this interview yesterday. And there was also actual news on Iran, again driven by Donald Trump. And I think it's worth spending a moment on that. We saw yesterday that Iran launched missile strikes against Israel within a short period of time after those strikes were initially reported. The president United States was on the phone with several journalists. By my count, he spoke to four. Maybe he spoke to more of them, but gave comment about those missile strikes and what he was going to tell Benjamin Netanyahu before. Apparently he told this to Benjamin Netanyahu and What he was going to tell Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel should not strike back, he told Fox News. Trey Yings, the terrific Middle east reporter for Fox News, spoke to the President. The president said everybody should sit back. There was going to be a deal, you know, early this week, he was all ready to sign it, and this is going to screw things up. He told Barack Ravid of Axios that he was going to call Benjamin Netanyahu and tell him not to retaliate, which is a pretty incredible thing to tell a journalist and I think really boxed Israel in or had the potential to really box Israel in, and at the very least had potentially some effect on what Israel was likely to do in terms of future deterrence. Kevin, I'll start with you on this. Is this something we've seen before where a president is talking to journalists in the middle of these events unfolding and telling them what he's going to do before having these consultations, apparently with his own national security advisors and certainly with the allies? It strikes me as very new, maybe unprecedented, as overused as that word is. But you follow this stuff closely. Have we seen this before?
- [44:06]
Kevin Williamson
I think that the theme for Trump for the last couple of weeks has been that things seem to be slipping beyond his control. You know, gasoline prices are beyond his control. Israeli reactions are beyond his control. The Iran war is beyond his control. Even a few slippery congressional Republicans have not gone along with things. And remember, Trump's style of management as president has always been just to state his preferences, typically on social media, and then end it with, you know, thank you for your attention to this matter. He may as well have tweeted it. Netanyahu. And, you know, thank you for your attention to this matter. Bibi. You know, Trump, for all of his talk of, you know, being the grand negotiator and all that stuff, has never actually been very good at this sort of thing. And he likes to talk to journalists, which is great for the few journalists that he likes to talk to, but he doesn't do much of the rest of the job. And, you know, if the guy really were the kind of, you know, master negotiator, behind the scenes guy, get stuff done, implement US Policy and US Preferences at all costs by any means necessary, he would have been privately on the phone with the Israelis saying, look, I know what you guys want to do, and I got to buy you off somehow to keep you from doing it. So what do you want in exchange for keeping this stuff quiet for a little while? And I know it's going to Be a high price because you're getting hit with missiles. And if we got hit with missiles, there would be nobody who could come and tell us not to retaliate. But he's just not that guy. He's a guy who, like, he often seems and acts like a bystander to his own presidency. So he's calling the media and talking in the press like he's a pundit, like he's a commentator, talking about, you know, current events as though he were not the person who was kind of at the middle of them. And, you know, the whole Iran war, he increasingly talks about as though it were just like a storm that happened, as though it weren't like a thing that he did. And now it's just this situation we're in by some unknown means, how we got here. No one can quite remember where all this started or what decisions were made to get us into this. So it doesn't surprise me that he's trying to essentially manage the war by making press statements, because that's how he's done things as president in both of his terms pretty consistently.
- [46:10]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, Jonah, I mean, Trump has done this before, right? He shrugged off a missile attack from Iran on Kuwait less than a week ago. His knee jerk response now seems to be, Iran strikes or takes aggressive military action and Trump calls for a return to talks. That seems to me a very dangerous precedent to set. And, you know, for the guy who is supposedly the master negotiator, as Kevin says, the art of the deal, he's making it abundantly clear he wants a deal, he doesn't want to escalate, he doesn't want to keep this going. Basically, they can do almost anything they want, and he wants the deal, which pretty dramatically changes the US Negotiating position on this stuff.
- [46:52]
Jonah Goldberg
Yeah, I mean, and I'm not the first person to make this point, but the thing that I find baffling is his position vis a vis Israel, is Israel needs to stop attacking Beirut or Hezbollah in Lebanon because that makes Iran mad and Iran wants them to stop. And so in effect, he's using Iran's involvement in willingness to participate in a deal as leverage against Israel to make Israel stop, rather than using Israel as leverage against Iran. Like, let Israel be the bad cop, let Israel be the rogue agent here. And Trump was like, look, I'll try to stop them from destroying all of Hezbollah, but you got to give me something. Instead he's going to Israel saying, you got to stop because I need to give Iran something. It's a very weird approach.
- [47:46]
Kevin Williamson
And it's bad.
- [47:47]
Jonah Goldberg
And like, let me just say up front, it is really bad for Israel when Trump just tells the world, bibi has to do whatever I want. It's bad for America, too, to say, Bibi has to do whatever I want because I'm the one who calls the shots. He doesn't call the shots. Right. There are a lot of people in the world, I think, wrongly, but there are a lot of people in the world who think that Israel is this genocidal monster country that eats babies and does all sorts of terrible things. I think a vast amount of it is propaganda meeting antisemitism in the, you know, in the meaty part of a whole bunch of different historical trends, from what the KGB started doing in the 1960s to what China and Turkey are up to. So, I mean, it's a whole other podcast to get into why all that works. My only point is it's effective. In fact, it's effective in America. Like, this is one of the few things where a lot of MAGA people have split off from Trump because they're seen as helping Israel. And here's Trump saying, actually, I'm the one telling Israel what it can do and what it can't do.
- [48:50]
Steve Hayes
Yeah.
- [48:50]
Jonah Goldberg
And that's a bad look for us on the global stage. It's a bad look for if he wants to get Bibi reelected. It's a bad look for him. He has to defy that a little bit, because if Israel just takes it one on the chin from Iran, then they have to worry about the deterrence, and Israel wants to outlast the Trump administration. And so this is where we're seeing the two countries, national interests diverge and all sorts, or strategic interests at least diverge pretty noticeably. And, you know, I still think Trump has done a lot for Israel. And if he had stopped at Midnight Hammer, he would probably have done more for Israel than any American president since at least Truman. But now, like, we're hitting. Not only are we hitting the point of diminishing returns, it's entirely possible that he's hurting Israel in all of this. And I think he's hurting America in the process as well.
- [49:39]
Steve Hayes
You know, Mike, Donald Trump said to the Financial Times, one of the at least four outlets he spoke to yesterday, as this was happening, I mean, as there was this back and forth, the Iranian strikes had taken place. Israel had put out word early that it would retaliate. Trump had said to Fox and to Axios and to others, don't retaliate. And then he said to the Financial Times, Israel, quote, won't have any choice, unquote, but to accept whatever the deal is that the US Comes up with with Iran and said of Netanyahu, I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn't call the shots. And then yesterday evening, in fact, Israel did respond. Israel did retaliate. Can you help us make sense of that?
- [50:27]
Mike Warren
I mean, Donald Trump does not call all the shots. I mean, that's the explanation. I do think that to bolster Kevin's point, I think that is something that Trump is not dealing with very well. That. And I think you can see these calls to the journalists as a reaction to and a coping mechanism for the fact that actually he cannot simply make these foreign countries that have divergent national or strategic interests from the United States and from him. He cannot make them do what he wants. I think Jonah makes a great point that he's got everything backward in terms of how to sort of use what has happened over the weekend to the United States advantage. And I think it's because he's pursuing a deal with Iran sort of myopically. You know, like the deal itself is what's important, and everything else is getting in the way of achieving a deal. Whatever that deal looks like, you know, it's the deal that's important, and that's something that we know about Trump's kind of motivations in general. I just. I agree with you, Steve, about the calling of the journalists as being, you know, while this is happening, while this
- [51:41]
Steve Hayes
is live, and I think some of these are inbound calls. Right. All these journalists have his cell phone.
- [51:46]
Mike Warren
Yes.
- [51:47]
Steve Hayes
And we're at this weird point, I think it goes both ways, but we're at this weird point, I think, where some big event happens. And the, you know, by my own count, in my head, it seems to me, you know, at least 12, 15 journalists have his direct cell phone, which raises all sorts of additional questions.
- [52:04]
Mike Warren
Yes.
- [52:05]
Steve Hayes
But something in the world happens, and they all just call the President, and then he talks to a bunch.
- [52:10]
Mike Warren
Yeah. And then the President answers, you know, calls it back. I think that's. I wonder. I'm trying to put myself in that situation. You know, I've had the numbers of important people, not the President of the United States, but important people. And when an event happened, I would call that person, and sometimes that person would be in the middle of that event or in the middle of that circumstance, just, you know, so I've done. I've been in that situation, and, you know, as a journalist, you want to call them and get their reaction or get their, you know, get their side of the story or tell me what's happening. And that's, I think that's legitimate. I wonder though, like, it's a, I struggle with this because I do look at some of the way in which these journalists then kind of regurgitate what the president says. They have to report on what the president says in these phone conversations. I don't know. We don't have the transcripts of these phone calls and know exactly how. You know much these journalists are pressing them. But I think there is a risk that you don't get the president to pick up the phone next time if you're pushing back aggressively like say Kristen Welker did in her interview. And so what are we really getting from these interviews, from these phone calls with the president? You know, are these journalists serving unwittingly as tools for whatever Trump's goal is with this? I think it's something that they've got to grapple with. And I don't want to be unfair and say they aren't struggling with it. But you look at the way some of the, you know, some of particularly stuff about the deal, you know, and certain, you know, reporters are sort of there's a new deal afoot here. And then of course, that deal either falls apart or, you know, crumbles under some, any level of scrutiny or the deal wasn't really in existence. It was just the concept of a deal, the suggestion of a deal that somehow got the stock market to calm down or whatever. I think these journalists need to just be thinking about that constantly when they have this amount of power.
- [54:15]
Jonah Goldberg
So I don't want to get Steve in trouble with NBC or Kristen Welker. But I did think it was really interesting if you watch, I watched it all in real time when it aired. They recorded that on Friday there was virtually no promotion around that interview tied to Trump walking out. All of the way she prefaced it was about the rain being a problem and having some weather related problems. That's how she talked about on social media beforehand. She reassured viewers afterwards that she's since talked to President Trump and he's agreed to come back on it. Kind of had this vibe. Even though he's calling her corrupt and either stupid or corrupt and attacking her network, her profession. She just sort of took it all in stride and said, I really hope you'll come back. And I get it, she's got interests beyond the personal. But at the same time, it did quite feel acute, like it's what you're talking about, Mike, that you want to maintain the access and the good relationship, even if it comes at the expense of sort of the integrity of the institution that you're running.
- [55:23]
Mike Warren
And I should say it is not an easy call, I would say. Right. Like, I'm not dry. Yeah, yeah.
- [55:30]
Kevin Williamson
I think part of me is a little like. It's like being a boxer.
- [55:32]
Steve Hayes
Right.
- [55:33]
Kevin Williamson
You know, boxer goes to work and doesn't complain that someone hit him in the face. Yeah. Because what else, what else is she going to do in this situation? She wants another interview. Right. So she's gonna, you know, I don't think I would have handled it nearly as well, but then again, if I had the President's phone number, I'd send him, like, funny stuff at 2:00'. Clock. No, the morning.
- [55:48]
Steve Hayes
Well, let me, Let me put my NBC hat on, because I, I think she certainly does want another interview. Of course NBC wants another interview. I think she's right to want another interview. And I think if you look at the substance of that exchange, I would say throughout the whole interview, as Mike said, I mean, it was more cordial for the first three quarters of it. But then in particular, in those exchanges that we played here, she was very aggressive in getting him to answer for his stuff and repeatedly said, Mr. President, there's no evidence for what you're saying. There's no evidence for what you're saying. I think she pushed back aggressively. I thought, I thought it was, as I said earlier, valuable in that we got to see what he's thinking and how his brain is working. And to me, it was a very disturbing thing. But, you know, if somebody had handled that in a different way, I don't think we necessarily would have gotten the same glimpse into the mind of Donald Trump.
- [56:49]
Jonah Goldberg
No, that's all fair. Yeah.
- [56:50]
Mike Warren
I guess what I would like to see for these, you know, reporters who sort of say, I just got off the phone with Donald Trump, you know, and this is what he told me. I think it would be better for everyone if they simply published a recording of that phone conversation. If we could see more. I mean, there's a risk in showing too much of how the sausage is made. But I think with Donald Trump, it is always more valuable to, to show your work as a journalist, because 99 times out of 100, it will reflect well on you as a journalist if you're doing your job right, and it will reflect reality when it comes to Trump.
- [57:26]
Steve Hayes
So, Mike, I think the answer is to get you the phone number.
- [57:29]
Mike Warren
Yeah, just drop it in my you
- [57:31]
Steve Hayes
need to make those calls. Anybody listening to this who has to
- [57:34]
Mike Warren
President's cell phone, just send it to
- [57:35]
Steve Hayes
me, please send it to us roundtable@the dispatch.com and then Mike can put out these transcripts for for you.
- [57:42]
Kevin Williamson
Don't ask Captain Kweig about the strawberries. You know,
- [57:48]
Steve Hayes
before we take an ad break, we're recording a special live episode of the Dispatch podcast on Tuesday, June 23rd in New York City, and you don't want to miss it. We're bringing the roundtable together to discuss what's left of the right. Jonah and I will be joined by Dispatch contributors Megan McArdle and Chris Stirewalt in Manhattan to discuss the biggest news stories of the day and the evolving identity of conservatism in the Trump era and beyond. What does the war in Iran mean for Trump's coalition ahead of the midterm elections? Is MAGA still a conservative movement? Was MAGA ever a conservative movement? And who is the future of the Republican Party? The show starts at 7pm on June 23rd in New York City. Head to the events page at 92N, that's 92NY.org and purchase your tickets today if you're going to be in Manhattan. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. Finally today, and not worth your time, I need to ask the panel for some help. I need to know how to think about tipping in the United States in 2026, because on the one hand, I think of myself as a good tipper. My sort of general rule for tipping, if I go to a restaurant where I'm waited on, is 20% for decent service, average service, I would say that's where I start. If I get great service, I go up from there. I almost never go down below 20%, although I'm thinking that I should for reasons that we can get to. So I think of myself as a pretty good tipper. The frustration I have is being asked to tip everywhere, all the time, including at Starbucks and fast food places where the poor, or maybe less poor than they used to be, barista or fast food worker. They never say, now you're going to be asked about a tip. They say, oh, now you're going to have to answer a question. It's like, okay, well just ask me the question. What's the question?
- [59:52]
Jonah Goldberg
But then, what's the annual rainfall in Brazil?
- [59:57]
Steve Hayes
But then it automatically prompts me, you know, depending on the institution. Some places start at 20% for somebody who walked to go and get my cup of black coffee starts at 20% and goes up to 25%. I've seen places that go up to 28% as sort of the auto, you know, one of your three, three options. And I just find this outrageous. Part of it is, I have to be honest, kids who are of age, where they're waiting tables, some of my kids are actually waiting tables. I'm such a sucker. I have a really hard time declining this very nice offer they're making for me to tip and give them more of my money to get my coffee. But it's frustrating for me. Should I, Mike, be frustrated, or am I just now, like, officially with frustrations like this entering my old man curmudgeon stage or both?
- [60:47]
Mike Warren
I was saying they're not mutually exclusive. You could be entering that stage, possibly. Who could say? But I think your frustration is legitimate. This has become, I would call it a problem throughout the service industry where, you know, I think taking advantage of a couple of factors, one of which is the kind of the way that the minimum wage conversation has kind of gotten more into the ether. We're talking a lot more about service, particularly food service workers not getting enough pay. And I think that has permeated a little bit of the conversation a little bit more. Also. The COVID era. Hey, everybody's just doing their best. And if you're in a position where you can tip your pizza delivery guy who has to come to your house and drop your pizza off there, and he's just struggling to keep a job, you know, if you tip him 30% because you're trying to be a good person in this difficult time that has kind of allowed for, I would say, tip creep to come in in all sorts of ways. And then tip creep.
- [61:53]
Steve Hayes
Is that what you said?
- [61:54]
Mike Warren
I like tip creep. Tip creep.
- [61:55]
Steve Hayes
I like it.
- [61:56]
Mike Warren
And then you add the sort of technological ways in which it's been easier, right? The infamous, like, flip of the iPad at the coffee shop where, like, you know, they have just been typing in your order. You know, you've pressed your credit card to the little square box thing to pay for it, and then they can flip the iPad around for that question, right? It's very easy for you. And you have to do it in their presence, right? Like they're seeing that you are making a choice. And are you going to be the one who says zero percent? Well, guess what? A lot of times that is me. I will do that. And I make the judgment, by the way, based on whether any kind of special skill was involved in the service, as you say, turning around, filling from the urn, a coffee cup and then turning it back around and handing it to me. I'm sorry, that doesn't get a tip. That's the service that you're paying for with the upcharge on the coffee. On the other hand, I could just say just literally, just yesterday I took my 8 year old son to the Cold Stone Creamery ice cream shop where they make the ice cream. And there's a kid behind there who does a little extra work, right? He like, he's like taking the little mix ins and putting it into the ice cream and doing a little extra work. When it came time when the iPad was flipped around, I gave him 10%. I mean it's a, it was a small amount. We didn't pay that much for the ice cream. It was like another, I don't know, like a $150 on top of what we paid for it. You know, it's a judgment call, but that's my judgment. That's how I view it.
- [63:31]
Steve Hayes
But at least he's going through the motions of doing something extra. Even though I think cold, I think it's all for show. Goldstone is sort of silly.
- [63:37]
Mike Warren
It's all for show, of course, of course.
- [63:38]
Steve Hayes
Look, I will tip on takeout. If somebody has to like assemble a meal for my entire family, we'll do this like Uncle Julio's takeout meal. I'm happy to tip 10, 15% on something like that for the assembly, but I think it's the cup of coffee and then the fast food stuff. Kevin, do you tip on takeout if you were to order a takeout meal for your hoard this afternoon? My hoard? Do you go and tip on that or you just grab it and go?
- [64:07]
Kevin Williamson
You know, I was just thinking the opposite of a tip. Creep is the creep tip, which is when you're putting strippers through nursing school $20 at a time. Wow. No, but on that front, no, I'm a, I'm a make it rain guy when it comes to tips. I've got a lot of things in life that I care about and that offend me and that bother me. Throwing an extra buck down at Starbucks where I work basically and live at a table, you know, is well within the means. So I don't worry about that too much. Yeah, I think we should just go along with it. I mean, it is kind of. You do wish they would just raise prices and pay people more a little bit because it takes the discretionary element out of It. And the little moral blackmail of the. They're going to ask you a question now, although I like some of the ones you're just honest about. They're like, it's going to ask you about a tip and I'll fill it in for you. It's 40%, but no tip. Tip, tip, tip.
- [64:55]
Steve Hayes
Yeah. I think the people who are honest about that, those are the people I'm going to be certain to tip.
- [64:59]
Kevin Williamson
Yeah.
- [64:59]
Steve Hayes
If they. Rather than the passive aggressive. You're going to get a question.
- [65:03]
Kevin Williamson
We were at a Mexican restaurant in Dallas with my son when he was about one and a half years old, and he made such an unholy mess of just rice and beans and stuff that I think our bill.
- [65:15]
Steve Hayes
I love that he blames it on his son.
- [65:19]
Kevin Williamson
I don't eat rice. Come on. And I think our bill came to like $42 or something like that. And we tipped them. I think we tipped him 100 bucks just because it was just. They were just going to have to bring, like a career of people to clean it up and. No, I think just do it. Just take care of them. These people are in jobs that none of us want, and it's good just to spread the wealth around a little bit and to be generous and happy about it. I am a tip on the high side. I think everyone probably should, and at least people who have the means. You know, I was thinking about it the other day. My two largest expenses in life are taxes and childcare. And, you know, I don't. It's not mortgage payment. It's not a car payment. It's not anything like that. And that means that I can afford to pay someone an extra buck when I get a cup of coffee. And by the way, who's getting a $3 order at Starbucks? Mine's like 11 bucks or something.
- [66:09]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, that's because you're fancy. I get the grande dark roast. No room for cream, no sugar. It's now, I think 355 or something. So I do that. Am I just a. Am I just a Scrooge? Kevin's making it sound like I'm just a total scrooge here.
- [66:25]
Kevin Williamson
You Midwestern Protestant?
- [66:26]
Jonah Goldberg
No, I'm more with you. Like, I think like a lot of Europeans, a lot of Asians think the way America does it is madness. You know, like, in big chunks of Europe, a tip is like whatever the loose change that's left. It's not like 30%, 25%, 20%. And I think that this, I mean, American tipping culture had been Suffering from inflation or tipping creep for a while. But what really drove it over was the back to back of COVID and inflation. And a lot of businesses call it price partitioning, right? They can basically afford to pay their staff less with the expectation that a big chunk of their compensation is going to come through tips. This is why no tax on tips. It became such a salient issue in some ways and in part because the tipping is now visible because of these pads and kiosk things. And I think it's sort of problematic. I kind of would like it if it was more of a tipping culture in a certain way where, like, literally I'm, you know, like, I'm always looking for a universe where I can walk into an inn or pub and just throw a little leather satchel full of gold coins to the innkeeper and then I get whatever I want. Right. And, like, the way we do it
- [67:55]
Kevin Williamson
now is places like that just outside Las Vegas.
- [67:59]
Jonah Goldberg
I understand, but that's not what I'm talking about.
- [68:01]
Steve Hayes
So many ways that this, you know, bring.
- [68:04]
Kevin Williamson
They'll send a lover for you, breed
- [68:07]
Jonah Goldberg
mead and haunches for all of my men, that kind of thing, right? And, oh, and water my horses. And, you know, and the way it's done now, haunches, huh? Is they are pushing it off on. I think it builds a lot of resentment in the culture. Like, the customers are resentful for it, and I think staff are resentful for it. Because if really, if 20% to 30% of their income is now dependent upon the kindness of strangers, they get angry when they don't get tipped in a way that's sort of understandable, particularly when their bosses are saying, we have to keep your wages low, but you're gonna make it up in tips. And I don't know how you get out of this, but that's where we are. And I think it's gotten out of hand in places. And there are places where, like, I think there should be more tipping, and there are places where I think there should be less tipping. I don't think there should be tipping in fast food, in McDonald's or anything like that. That's not the deal. But, like, we had these moving guys come recently and, you know, like, I was so impressed by the work and the service of these guys that I tipped wildly. Like, there are places where people put their heart and soul, three bucks each, into hard work a lot more, because hemorrhaging that kind of cash is a rounding error in my fiscal insolvency these days.
- [69:19]
Kevin Williamson
And Moving sucks.
- [69:21]
Jonah Goldberg
It really does. And so I'm, I'm with you, Stephen. I just, I think it's been introduced in too many places. It's too legible now. It's too expected. It's not considered generosity the way it's supposed to be. I've become a really over tipper when it comes to hotel rooms and that kind of stuff because those ladies work hard and I'm not trying to gender it, but it's just in actual experience, they are, they are ladies. But I think somewhere we made a mistake getting on this path. I just don't think it's reversible at this point.
- [69:50]
Steve Hayes
So here's my theory. It goes along with what you're saying. Jonah. I think that there's a boomerang effect on tipping. Now, my. I've got 2. My two older kids have been waiters, waitresses now for the past several years. My, my oldest is waiting at a pretty good restaurant. Really good food, good restaurant. You know, they have stakes that are in the $50 range. So nice. You'd expect she might get some big tips. And while she does get some, and there are some customers who I think treat well and I think she does a pretty good job waiting tables. There are others. I'm sort of shocked at the frequency of this, you know, who will rack up 180, $200 tab and tip 8 bucks or 10 bucks or 12 bucks or something. And I just can't fathom doing that to a waiter. Unless the service has truly been awful and the waiter waitress has an attitude and is nasty, then I guess I can understand it. But I wonder if. Because it's hard to do anything these days without being asked to give a tip, if people are becoming more stingy in those places where you have discretion to leave a big tip. And I think people ought to leave a big tip. If you can leave a big tip. Not all of us, you know, can take the Kevin Williamson approach and tip, even the baristas. But I think there's a boomerang effect and it could be here to stay.
- [71:16]
Kevin Williamson
Do you tip at the drive thru?
- [71:17]
Steve Hayes
I don't tip at the drive thru.
- [71:18]
Kevin Williamson
Okay.
- [71:19]
Steve Hayes
You know, I will say you say work in Starbucks. Sometimes I do the same. I'll take my laptop and if I'm going to be sitting there for a while, I will gladly tip. It's just if I'm going to take it to go or if I'm driving through, there's no real reason to tip. All right, well, let us know what you think. Roundtabledispatch.com thank you all for joining us for this discussion of Meet the Press, Iran and Tipping. Finally, if you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And as always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtabledispatch.com we read everything, even the word ones from people who are scrooge like in their tipping habits. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.
- [72:30]
Jonah Goldberg
Sa.