David French (2:56)

Well, the timing on, I have to say, just you know, not only is it a reflection of the good work that, that you all have done on, on ao, which I think probably some people listening to this podcast maybe listen to on occasion, three of us do. I have listened to advisory opinions.

Sarah Isgur (3:13)

Nobody believes you.

Steve Hayes (3:14)

You do? Yeah. Don't even pretend, Steve.

David French (3:16)

I've heard some of your interviews with judges.

Sarah Isgur (3:20)

Name a judge.

David French (3:21)

Name John.

Sarah Isgur (3:26)

We.

Steve Hayes (3:26)

We could be beating Rogan in the ratings and you would still not listen.

David French (3:30)

Steve, here's the thing, and pains me to say this, I think advisory Opinions and SCOTUS blog and all of the work that you all are doing and we're doing is about to become even more important as Congress sort of gives up its congressional births, constitutional prerogatives, and the executive branch is sort of aggressively hoovering up as much power as it can. The judiciary is where the action is likely to be. And we're seeing that. I mean, we've seen that here in the first three months, and I think we'll see that even more. So I might have to start listening to advisory opinions more consistently.

Sarah Isgur (4:11)

Well, before David and I break out into an episode of Advisory Opinions, we're going to do something that I rarely want to do on this podcast, which is start with foreign policy. But, Steve, it must be your birthday. Or maybe I've had too much Spanish wine. So here we are, and I want to talk about this headline. Rubio and Witkoff bail on crucial Ukraine talks amid Crimea split. So this is Secretary of State Marco Rubio and United States Special Envoy to the Middle East. Oddly Witkoff, and I'll read you a couple quotes. The Trump administration wants to focus on the president's peace deal plan presented to Ukraine as take it or leave it option. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zielinski said Tuesday that Ukraine had yet to receive any official proposals from the US and would never recognize Crimea or any other territories as Russian because such a move would go against the Ukrainian constitution. Quote, there is nothing to talk about. This violates our constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine. United states Vice President J.D. vance responded that the U.S. had issued a very explicit proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict and threatened to walk away if progress is not forthcoming. Well, Steve, was it always going to end this way? I mean, I don't. I guess I don't understand what we've been doing these last few months and why the United States thought they could wave a magic wand and end a conflict that Russia started for territorial advancement when the other side doesn't want said territorial concessions.

David French (5:57)

I should just point out that President Trump responded to the quotes that you read from Volodymyr Zelinsky in a rather intemperate post on Truth Social on Wednesday. Sort of once again blaming Zelinsky for being the obstacle to peace here. Blaming the, the victim of the aggression for being the obstacle to peace here. Look, I think the, the frustration for Donald Trump is that he wants this war to end. He promised he would do it on day one and he's failed. But he's failed because he's on Russia's side and Russia wants more from the Trump administration. What we've seen since the beginning of the Trump administration is preemptive capitulation, preemptive concession after preemptive concession. And if you're Vladimir Putin, you look at what the United States is doing on his behalf and you say, why would we stop this non negotiation negotiation when we are getting everything we want? And at this point, I think Putin would be crazy to enter any serious peace talks. And Putin apparently thinks it would be crazy to enter any serious peace talks. If you look at what he did just over this past weekend, he announced a 30 hour ceasefire over Easter and promptly violated it. Didn't really wait at all, didn't really pretend that there was a ceasefire. This is not anything new. Vladimir Putin's been doing this for years. He announces a ceasefire and then violates it right away. Gets I think sort of a press hit over the announcement of a ceasefire. It's harder and harder to report on the details of the violations of the ceasefires. But go back to March 11th. Go back to what the Ukrainians agreed to in early March, which was an unconditional ceasefire that the Trump administration had proposed to create space for additional negotiation. Vladimir Putin didn't agree to that and continued not only to maintain his attacks, he has escalated his attacks, Russia has escalated its attacks, particularly on civilian populations. He's making a mockery of Donald Trump and the United States. And I find it, you know, if it weren't so serious, it would be amusing that the Trump administration and Marco Rubio and others are in such high dudgeon about claims that they are effectively doing the Russians bidding. There was a Politico story yesterday about the possibility that the United States was going to lift sanctions on Russia. And Marco Rubio took to, to Twitter and said this is fake news, this is outrageous political should retract this, etc. Etc. As if it were outrageous to believe that the United States might be open to lifting sanctions on, on Russia related to Nord Stream and, and Other things, it's worth remembering that at the beginning of March when the United States first held negotiations with Russia and Saudi Arabia, not the Ukrainians excluded UK Ukraine from these negotiations. Marco Rubio went out and gave a press conference in which he discussed the quote, unquote, incredible opportunities for U. S Russia economic cooperation and historic things to come if the the war would end because the United States would then have an open relationship. They talked about normalizing diplomatic relations. It's not at all ridiculous to think that the United States is offering Russia lifting of the sanctions. They've effectively said that in it should be said that we're recording this Thursday morning. Donald Trump did put out a tweet or a truth social this morning. After the deadliest attack on Kiev since last summer by the Russians, killing nine people and injuring more than 60, Donald Trump put out a truth social saying, I am not happy with the Russian strikes on Kyiv. Not necessary and very bad timing. Vladimir, stop. 5,000 soldiers a week are dying. Let's get the peace deal done. I think that's the harshest thing Donald Trump may have ever said to Vladimir Putin. And it's not very harsh given the, the context and the history that I just related.

Sarah Isgur (10:19)

David, it seems to me from a domestic policy standpoint that the win for Donald Trump is that he just wants it to be over and he doesn't really care how that happens. What is the path then for a Trump victory in all of this? Because I guess I was told once we sort of stopped helping Ukraine, they would have to fold. And that would be that because of the overwhelming force and depth of the Russian military. I mean, is, is Europe stepping in to fill the gap here? Why, why hasn't Ukraine folded like we were told?

Steve Hayes (10:58)

Well, several reasons. One, the most principal reason being Ukraine does not want to fold. Ukraine wants to continue fighting. Number two, Ukraine has far more capacity to fight right now than it had two years ago, for example. It has far more capacity to continue the fight. It has built an indigenous drone industry. That's pretty remarkable the way that they've created it. That is just pouring drones into the front line to the point where large majority now of Russian casualties aren't due to the American manufactured weapons that are being sent over or the European manufactured weapons. But a large majority of the casualties are related to drones and mainly the Ukrainian drones. Also. Ukraine hasn't folded in part because in important ways, Russia is weakened. Now, Russia has dramatically increased the size of its military. It has hundreds of thousands of troops at the border, much more than existed at you know, at the start of the war, the both the militaries are much larger than they were at the start of the war, but Russia just has less capacity to engineer a breakthrough through the lines. I mean, tens of thousands of armored, well, thousands of armored vehicles have been destroyed, for example. So there's just the reality on the ground that Ukraine has more indigenous capacity. Europe has continued to step up. It still has some remaining weapons and American weapons and musicians and munitions. And Russia's quick strike combined arms offensive capabilities have really been weakened a great deal. And so what we're reduced to and what the front is reduced to is this just grinding war of attrition. It's not exactly like World War I because you don't see the same kind of deep, dense trench line stretching for the same hundreds of miles, but you do have, you've kind of created through drones a de facto version of this. And so two things have happened here at once. One, Ukraine is more self sufficient. Ukraine has binded itself with its, your, our European allies or its European allies very tightly. They understand the stakes very, very, very clearly and they continue to step up. And then number two, Russia is different. Russia, Russia is utterly committed to this fight. And I was talking to some observers of the war beforehand and they said one of the things that I asked was about Trump's capacity to bring this war to a close. And they said Trump doesn't realize how much Vladimir Putin is a different Vladimir Putin than the person that he interacted with in his first term. And the person that he interacted with in his first term had not lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, had not been deeply enmeshed in a brutal war for several years. And that Putin has hardened. Putin has less interest in making deals. He has committed himself to winning this war. And so it's just a, it's a situation that is not as amenable to America just walking in, bigfooting the whole situation and working its will. And especially especially when Ukraine now accurately perceives it is essentially on the other side. And so this is not a. US Is not seen as a good faith broker here. It's not seen as a neutral arbiter or even a Ukrainian ally. It's now being perceived as a Russian ally imposing Russian demands on a nation that has spilled an enormous amount of blood to prevent those demands from taking, from being enacted and trying to impose them on a continent that still possesses considerable industrial and military power, that also doesn't want to yield to Russia. And so he doesn't have the capacity to make Everybody surrender. The parties are not committed to surrender. And so he walked into this way, way out of his depth compared to the rhetoric that he brought into it.

Sarah Isgur (15:00)

Jonah, when this war started in America, it was perceived and described as almost a metaphor or a historical analog for Hitler, but also just this, like, warning for Europe. You know, Ukraine's first, but then it's Poland and yada, yada, yada, Russia owns England or something like that. And so that was, you know, the American interest was stop him in Ukraine because it's in our interest to not have to deal with this when it's a NATO country or to not deal with this when it's all of Europe, etc. Not surprisingly, that message emanating from the administration has stopped. I wonder if that's still how it's viewed in Europe, though, because it does feel like there's been an overall shift in the vibes, if you will. This is feeling more like a unique situation between Russia and Ukraine, not one that maybe the Europeans see necessarily as that grander moment in history.

Jonah Goldberg (16:02)

Yes, I promise I will answer that question. I just want to make one quick point about Trump's negotiating stuff that Steve and Dave David referenced. Trump said that Zelensky is much more difficult to deal with than Putin. And of course, Zelensky is much more difficult to deal with. Right. Let's say I'm gonna have this deal. Sarah, you get a million dollars and a house on the cliff in the Caribbean with access to the beach. Steve, you get root canal and a colonoscopy with no anesthesia. Now, weirdly, Steve is much more difficult to deal with in the negotiations. Like, Trump is giving Putin pretty much everything he wants. He's rewarding what he's doing. And Zelensky is like, hold your roll. You're trying to dismember my country and just basically postpone future aggression against me by Russia. So he's the difficult guy, right, because he's guy getting screwed in these negotiations. I think your point about how it seemed, how the conversation has changed is a good one. It's. I think it's accurate to the extent that it's sort of like, I'll put it in sort of AO terms. Recall how you guys used to talk all the time about how, how much easier it was for Republicans to take a hardcore pro life position so long as Roe v. Wade was preventing them to have any accountability to do anything about abortion. When the, When Western Europe, when Western Europe was pretty confident that America was going to take the lead on all of this, it Got their backs to sort of be much more principled and right in a lot of ways, particularly the further west you got when all of a sudden it looks like much more of their blood and treasure in the game or at stake. It introduces a dose of realism. That said, you talk to the people in the Baltics, right? You talk to the people in Poland who have living memory of Russian aggression against them. They still talk the way we talked. A lot of us talked about it immediately after the invasion. And for good reason. I think this stuff because of crazy domestic politics in Germany. It's very difficult to figure out where Germany is on any of this stuff at any given moment. I generally think that when you listen to the EU types, when you listen to the Brits, they still see this as a, as a pretty, not existential, but a high stakes contest of high principle and also of real stakes for them. And one way to think about it is, look, I mean, in the Iran context, everyone's like, what's the big deal? Iran's going to get a nuclear bomb. It's not like it's going to nuke all its neighbors or even Israel, probably because it would get nuked back, right? So why do people freak out about it? They freak out about it in part. At least the smart people do, because Iran's goal is to be the regional hegemon, to call the shots about how the whole region works and, you know, eventually to push Israel into the sea and all that kind of stuff. But a nuke would let it do that. Russia on the border with NATO, on Poland, you know, on Poland, Poland's border and all that kind of stuff, after having crushed Ukraine, would be able to flex further and further west into Europe. And the Europeans understand that. And so it's not so much that Putin is going to have a triumph in Paris, it's that Putin, both with his energy resources and his military, would be able to dictate the foreign policy course for the rest of Europe in ways that Europeans don't think is awesome and that people like J.D. vance don't give a rat's ass about.

Host/Announcer (19:49)

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David French (20:17)

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Sarah Isgur (20:53)

Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo.

Jonah Goldberg (20:55)

There's no Milo here who picked up.

Sarah Isgur (20:57)

My son from school.

Steve Hayes (20:58)

Stream only on Pico.

David French (21:03)

I'm gonna need the name of everyone.

Jonah Goldberg (21:04)

That could have a connection.

Steve Hayes (21:06)

You don't understand.

Jonah Goldberg (21:06)

It was just the five of us. So this was all planned.

Sarah Isgur (21:09)

What are you gonna do? I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

David French (21:14)

I honestly didn't see this coming.

Jonah Goldberg (21:15)

These nice people killing each other.

Steve Hayes (21:18)

All her fault.

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Sarah Isgur (22:08)

Speaking of that, I want to stay with you for a second and expand out into what is Trump's foreign policy? And what have we learned about Trump's foreign policy that we didn't know, you know, from the campaign or from his first term is sort of brought to mind of the news swirling around Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There was another signal chat where he's talking to his wife, brother and lawyer about attacks on Yemen. There was, of course, his aide who wrote an op ed saying that Hegseth would not be long for the administration. There were articles to that effect as well. I'm not interested in, you know, will they, won't they rom com status of anonymous sources around Pete Hegseth. But I am interested in what Pete Hegseth stands for in the administration and what it says about Trump's foreign policy. When Pete Hegseth gets confirmed, when Pete Hegseth stays, despite distractions. So back to my original question. What have you learned about Trump's foreign policy?

Jonah Goldberg (23:13)

Yeah, so I think I never really liked the phrase isolationist. I've written a lot about this, that isolationism was a wildly misunderstood thing. It's not inherently right wing. There have been lots of left wing isolationists in American history, but we never really came up with a really good term for what Trump is. It's not isolationism. And then there's this argument that I'm pretty persuaded by, that he's what a very obscure group of people call a sovereigntist. And sovereignty, as in sovereignty is basically the idea that nobody is the boss of us, that we shouldn't have. It's not that we should have. You know, the classic expression of what isolationism is is fortress America. No entangling alliances, bring everybody home, hide behind the oceans, that kind of stuff. The sovereignties position is we just get to do whatever the damn hell we want. And that was part of the argument. The original sovereigntists were a hardcore group of irreconcilable. They call them the irreconcilables. In the arguments over the Treaty of Versailles. They weren't isolationists per se. I mean, some were, but the key thing there was that they didn't want alliances with our friends. They didn't want to be beholden to any kind of pact that said we had to fight if we didn't want to or that we couldn't fight if we didn't want to. They basically just wanted to be completely unencumbered. And Donald Trump came in even before he was sworn in, when he was just President Elect, started talking about taking about the Panama Canal, wouldn't rule out forest for Greenland, started saying all sorts of things about the border with Canada, which he's revisited in the last week. And then short time later, the whole maragaza idea of basically turning over the Gaza Strip into a resort community, that's not isolationism. That's just Trump getting to do what he wants, where he wants, which is why the sovereignties, which is a terrible label, no one's gonna start using it regularly. But it's why the sovereignties thing, I think, applies best to his foreign policy. And the way that gets translated into the Bureaucracy or into the foreign policy establishment is, first of all, you can't do anything that Donald Trump doesn't want to do. And therefore we have to do everything that Donald Trump does want to do. And you have to praise his strength and his vigor and strong like bull leadership and all that kind of stuff. That plays into Pete Hegseth, because Pete Hegseth is basically there to be a recruitment video and to do push ups and to talk about being warriors and manly, what were warriors for? And when, I think, is a secondary consideration for that crowd. And the problem is, is that he's hired a bunch he had, and then we can hand it off to Steve or Dave, but he hired a bunch of people around him who actually do have ideology and don't like American leadership in the world, even sovereignties leadership. And they don't like the idea of taking Israel's side in a contest with Iran. And this is one of the things that's gotten them into a lot of hot water. Because the most dangerous thing you can do is in the Trump administration is have a strong commitment to any principle, right or wrong. Like it is worse for you to be committed to a wrong principle than to have no principles at all. Because that's gonna get you crosswise with Trump, who basically just doesn't wanna be constrained by any intellectual constructs whatsoever. Which is why this sovereignties thing, I think, is the most apt way to describe his foreign policy.

Sarah Isgur (26:47)

David, what have you learned about Trump's foreign policy today that you didn't know, you know, in December?

Steve Hayes (26:55)

Yeah, I, I think that's really easy to answer for me. It really is what you would say. I like that sovereignty's label, but it's manifesting itself in a particular kind of foreign policy that's very old. It's in the term that's often used as spheres of influence. So one of the ways you can make sense of Trump's approach to Russia and Ukraine and his approach to the United States and Canada is to realize that he sees Ukraine as in Russia's sphere of influence, and he sees Canada as within our sphere of influence, and similarly Greenland, et cetera. And so the big boys, the big guys get to do what they want to do in their sphere of influence. And so this is one of the reasons why he's consistently poking at Zelensky for having some role here in this war breaking out. Because remember, he thinks the obligation of you, of Ukraine, much like the obligation of Canada to just sort of yield to our demands, the obligation to Ukraine is to yield to the demands of Russia, the, The superpower in its core sphere of influence. This is one of the reasons why, you know, you see this kind of mockery, this idea in parts of the maga, right, that why would we ever, you know, lose a single life to defend the Baltic states? Or you're even starting to see in some parts of the right. While a lot of the Trump right really is trying to pivot to the Pacific and stand against the Chinese threat, very concerned about Taiwan's fate, another part of the maga, right, really doesn't give a rip about Taiwan one way or the other. That's in China's sphere of influence. And so this is a, this is one way that you can make sense of this really hard heel turn that America has made, is that this is now. It has gone from a internationalist foreign policy that seeks a cooperative alliance with partners, not subordinates, even though we were in many ways first among equals, given our raw economic and military strength, into something that is a lot more like Putin's Russia, which is a powerful nation seeking to control its near abroad while leaving other powerful, powerful nations to control their near abroad. And so this is seen as maybe creating a more stable international environment, but it is not. It is not a more stable international environment. And we have actual history as to how that spheres of influence approach works, because nobody actually ends up agreeing on where one sphere ends and the other sphere begins. And every large power gets insecure on the edges of its sphere of influence when they brush up against others. And so this creates this inherent constant tension as the different spheres overlap and bump into each other. And that's what he is creating. I mean, this is how you make sense of their. That make sort of holistic sense of this approach. It's another reason why he's so reluctant to be so forward deployed, say, in Korea. He raises Japan and why are we obligated to do anything with Japan? All of this stuff is outside of our sphere of influence. And in his view, inside the sphere of influence of his true peers, in his mind, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. And so this is when you, when you, when you understand that concept, so much of Trump's foreign policy starts to make sense. He really does sort of view himself as having maybe two peers in the world, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Everyone else is either subordinate to him in our sphere or subordinate to them in their spheres. And when you get that, what is happening starts to make a lot more sense.

Jonah Goldberg (30:49)

Yeah, so I agree with all of that. I read a bunch of it. I Just want to add one point, I think, one way to think about it that really is illuminating because I think it's. It, it reflects both the way he looks at domestic politics and the way he looks at foreign policy, we all call it, because we, we read eggheadery stuff, spheres of influence and all that kind of stuff. It's really just Don Corleone style. Right? Where in. In your mob family, in your fiat, there are three families in your family, if your earners don't kick up enough and show you respect, you can kick the crap out of them. Go get your shine box. Right. But. But the head of another family, he deserves respect. And the whole trick is to bend everybody else to your knee and demand respect for them. And I think that explains a lot of his approach to the law firms. I think that explains a lot of his approach. It's why he's always been meaner to the Republican Party, to Republicans, than he is to the opponents, in part because he wants the subservience from them.

David French (31:48)

Yeah, I think that's right. That's where I was gonna go with this. I mean, I think that the sovereignties. Framing smart. And I think David's right, generally speaking about the spheres of influence, I would ascribe those views more to his top aides than to Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump sits at the resolution desk and thinks about spheres of influence, of course.

Jonah Goldberg (32:09)

Or sovereignty. Yeah, I agree with you.

David French (32:11)

Or sovereignty.

Steve Hayes (32:12)

No, he's read multiple papers on it, Jonah. Right.

David French (32:16)

This is much less geostrategic and geopolitical and much more psychological. And I think Jonah's. This last point is the most important one. He, he wants people who pay obeisance to Trump and he wants people who allow him to look powerful. I mean, he said this. He's not particularly shy about talking about it in these terms. I mean, when Kim Jong Un is saying nice things to him. Donald Trump talks about writing love letters to Kim Jong Un. And he, when, when other leaders.

Steve Hayes (32:49)

Praise.

David French (32:50)

Him in the way that we've all grown accustomed to, he looks at them in a different kind of way. And it's why you see, whether it's the. The head of NATO sitting in the Oval Office or Putin or, you know, even to a lesser extent, but even, even the Iranians to, to a certain extent, not challenging Trump rhetorically and often praising him when you know that they don't mean the praise, because Trump wants this and Trump needs this. I don't think Trump has a particular worldview. I think so much of it is Just psychological and it's, and it's ad hoc. But I do think it really is the case that many of the people who work for him not only have strong worldviews, but have strong sort of deep ideological views that they are, you know, that many of them have spent their careers working on behalf of and, and they are using those to try to direct his decision making. I would say J. Vance is, is certainly one of those, but that's one of the things that's led to this, you know, quiet, I would say, simmering, but really intense fight sort of behind the scenes between whatever we want to call them, the actual sovereignties, the non interventionists. I do think there are some real sort of old school isolationists there. And the people who I would just describe as having more conventional sort of Reaganites foreign policy views, by almost everything that we can see that emerges in public, the we'll just call them non interventionists for simplicity's sake, are winning those battles behind the scenes, both in terms of personnel, in terms of policy decisions, and I think in terms of their access and influence on Donald Trump.

Sarah Isgur (34:38)

So, Steve, just to follow up on, you know, sort of where we started this, I felt like during the first Trump administration, for almost any question facing Donald Trump, there were two schools within his administration, if not more. And that that was the battle we always saw playing out. That's what caused the leaks, that's what caused the constant personnel turnover, was those tectonic plates bumping up against each other as the Republican Party realigned away from Ronald Reagan and towards Donald Trump. And I guess what's interesting to me, you said there's still, still two schools in there. I guess I don't necessarily feel that way. It feels like that tectonic plate bumping has like worked itself out. And clearly one school, one. To the extent that there are individuals, let's say, in the Department of Defense apparatus who are from that older school of foreign policy. Fair enough. But do you think there are actually senior members of this administration that still hold opposition views, or is that the main difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2? We're done with the fighting. One side.

Steve Hayes (35:54)

One, it's.

David French (35:55)

You don't mean it as a trick question. It's almost a trick question. What do I think Marco Rubio actually believes? I think Marco Rubio is a Reaganite. I think he's a Reaganite, but every day he goes out in public and makes these arguments that I genuinely don't think he believes in some cases that directly contradict things that he was doing as a senator, you know, months ago.

Host/Announcer (36:17)

Right.

David French (36:18)

I mean, you look at what he was, was doing on, on Russia legislation that he introduced, things that he inserted into the National Defense Authorization act that would have held Russia accountable for the invasion of, of Ukraine, that would have prevented us from lifting sanctions. That's what Marco Rubio believes. That's the way he has, he operated as a senator. Those are the things that he said in his public speeches. And he's going out every day and saying things I just think he genuinely doesn't believe. I think the same thing is true with Mike Waltz. I mean, I've covered Marco Rubio for a long time. I think I have a pretty good sense of what he believes. Mike Waltz is the same way. I knew Mike Waltz a little bit. He was a sort of omnipresent at Fox News back in the day. I think it's one of the reasons he was chosen for this job. He made himself available to Fox News. He was on Fox News on a near daily basis, sometimes more than some Fox News anchors, it seemed, and presented himself to Donald Trump that way. But was, he was a privately a never Trumper until shortly before the 2020 election when he endorsed Trump publicly, but harbored real reservations about Trump and what Trump believed in particular in the national security and foreign policy. And I think Waltz has attempted to bring in some people, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to the National Security Council staff who have views and have advocated policies that are much more in line with the old school Reaganite foreign policy. Some of those people have been purged. You remember just three weeks ago there was, you know, three staffers were fired in the aftermath of Laura Loomer making a surprise visit to the White House.

Sarah Isgur (38:00)

Steve, we all know that was three years ago, not three weeks ago. That's not possible.

David French (38:06)

But Trump is getting, you know, he's getting that pressure from the, you know, again, non interventionist for simplicity's sake, from people like Laura Loomer, from the hardcore mega crowd, from Tucker Carlson, who has tremendous influence on J.D. vance, from internally, from J.D. vance and others in the administration. That's why I think you're right to say, and just as a factual matter, we don't have somebody like Mike Pompeo, we don't have somebody like Mike Pence, we don't have somebody like Jim Mattis who were making those arguments internally and I think, you know, ended up doing a tremendous amount of good keeping President Trump from following his instincts on some of these things, including meeting with the Taliban on September 11, as he proposed in his first term. And we don't have those people making those arguments now. And to the extent, you know, we don't know what Marco Rubio is, everything Marco Rubio's arguing behind the scenes. There have reports that he's, you know, resisted immediately lifting sanctions on Russia, but nothing he says in public suggests that he holds the views he held 12 months ago. And in that sense, I think you are right. In that sense, I think the fight is virtually over. It's just a matter of how long somebody like Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio can survive. And one last postscript on this. You know, one of the questions we talk about a lot on this podcast and elsewhere is why Republicans, senators who disagree with these policies aren't more outspoken spoken. And I think one of the reasons they're not or weren't more critical of Mike Waltz in the context of Signal Gate, and one of the reasons is because they're worried if they criticize Waltz or criticize what the National Security Council is doing or pick public fights with Marco Rubio, they diminish the power of each of those individuals inside the administration and could lead to a hastier exit than these Republican members of Congress would like.

Jonah Goldberg (40:03)

Yeah, just quick add on that. When I gave my original answer, the point I made was that having strong convictions about anything gets you in more trouble than not. Another way of putting that is that the reason why it seems like these debates have been settled is that that everyone's been institutionalized. To put it in Shawshank terms, they're just cowards now, and it doesn't really matter what they believe. Belief's got nothing to do with it. It's like, what are you willing to fight for? And the answer is not much. Scott Besant, who I'm not a huge fan of, but he is the smartest, most serious person on that financial team, has to wait until after we lose trillions of dollars of value to say, see, I was kind of right. Right. He doesn't have the ability to persuade Trump not to do things until reality backs up his position. And he doesn't have the willingness to fight for these things at a high enough level to prevent bad things from happening. The story from the first term, I mean, if you there were so many people, Paul Ryan was chief among them, they would talk about, you guys don't understand the number of things that we prevented from happening. Those people don't exist in this administration for the most part. I mean, I'm sure we'll get stories about some things being prevented from happening that will make your hair stand on end. But the reality is that these people were picked. I mean, all those loyalty tests, who were the Real Patriots on January 6, all that kind of stuff that's been reported for a long time. There's a reason for that. You guys been covering it on the prosecutor's side. Going back to the Eric Adams thing. This administration is picking people that it doesn't. The first priority isn't what they believe. It's how supine they're willing to be and deferential to Donald Trump's authority and how much they're willing to sublimate any of their own convictions to whatever Donald Trump says. And so, so by that standard, you get a lot of people with some crazy ass ideas, but the crazy ass ideas are still secondary to the just abject loyalty to Trump. And that's the real difference between 1.0 and 2.0.

Steve Hayes (42:22)

Wait, can I jump in on that real fast? I think one of the things about Trump, he's ignorant of many things, but he's a very politically shrewd person. I mean, you can't look at winning two presidential elections, you can't look at his comebacks from, you know, political, you know, from political ruin time and time again and not say the guy doesn't have some shrewd political instincts. And here's one of them that he has, I think he hacked early on that very few people will actually, actually truly bear any risk for their political convictions at all. And so they will posture online, they will say this and that and talk about like, you know, how the barrack soldier, while he's going, heading to the front is like, I can't wait to get to the enemy. And then when he's at the front, it's like, how can I dig a deeper hole to hide from the enemy? This is. He realized that very few people will engage, will bear any risk. This include, and we've seen this with Republican members of Congress and Republican senators for years.

Jonah Goldberg (43:26)

We're starting to see media personalities just.

Steve Hayes (43:28)

And media personalities, and we're starting to see it with more institutions. So one of the things about the Paul Weiss letter and the immediate Paul Weiss capitulation, there were two big lessons there. One was you had this giant, very wealthy institution predominantly on the left. Trump came at them frontally. And I can imagine that if one day before Trump came at them frontally almost to a person, they would say, we're strong, we're brave, we're strong, we're brave. Then he comes at them, they prove not to Be as strong or brave. And then you have the other part of this is the community around Paul Weiss doesn't rally to help Paul Weiss. According to the Paul Weiss chair, some of them start trying to poach Paul Weiss's liars. Some of them start trying to poach Paul Weiss's clients. And so what you see is Trump understands a couple of things. People are not as brave as they imagine that they'll be. And then when stuff hits the fan, a lot of people will start looking for their angle for themselves rather than defending higher principles. When you combine those two things, then you realize how Trump has exerting such remarkable power over the American body politic right now. Is he realized people are not as brave as they think they are?

David French (44:43)

Can I, can I add one important point? I think it's an important point to what David is saying.

Host/Announcer (44:47)

It's that.

David French (44:47)

But I would also say Trump also recognizes, I think because he sees this, he knows this about himself, that it's not just that people won't stand up for the beliefs that they have articulated or that they seem to hold. It's that a lot of people in politics don't believe anything like they don't actually really care about. Right. I mean, it's a means to an end. They articulate conservative views to win in red states, but they don't really care. They want to be in politics, to be famous or to be on television or to cast votes or because they think it's prestigious. I mean, this is, again, one of the things that I think has been, been sort of a rude awakening for me over the past decade is all of these people whom I'd gotten to know, you know, over the, my 25 years in the conservative movement who, you know, would, would thunder, make, make loud and aggressive arguments about free trade and, and tariffs, and then just capitulate at a moment's notice. Some of, some of them, I think it's true, they just won't defend it when there's pressure that, you know, they worry about, about not being close to power. They worry about saying the wrong thing. But I think for some of them, they never really believed it that much. And I think Trump, as somebody who I don't think has deeply held views, recognizes that in a lot of the people he works with.

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Sarah Isgur (48:08)

Speaking along these lines a bit, I wanted to also compare the first Trump administration to the second Trump administration. Looking through the lens of the Vice President and Mike Pence and JD Vance, can you imagine for a moment that January 6th didn't happen? So take that just totally out of consideration for a moment. What would you think about Mike Pence being replaced by JD Vance? What the biggest differences were, et cetera, et cetera.

Steve Hayes (48:34)

You take January 6th out of it and I would say, okay, replacing Mike Pence with JD Vance is a signal of an ideological shift or a signal of that Trump. I mean, because if we've talked about Trump doesn't have much of an ideology, although I, I think we sometimes exaggerate how little ideology he had. There are some things he's been pretty consistent on over the years. Tariffs, immigration, etc. So you would look at it and you'd say, wait, is this meaning that this really is the next turn of the ideological evolution of the Republican Party? The last vestiges of Reagan Republicanism are being tossed aside in favor of this, of JD Vince. But the more accurate read would probably be he just doesn't like Mike Pence. Mike Pence frustrated him too much and now he wants somebody who will frustrate him less and is more aligned, more, more prone to just do whatever he wants. And I, I think that when we talk about influence about the president, who has more influence over the president, I think, you know, we're going on a very partial record. But it seems to me that Pence had more influence and Vance is, may say things, but ultimately Vance was the, is the enabler. You know, Pence was somebody who was selected as a kind of concession to Trump's perceptions of the old Republican Party. Look, look, evangelicals, I have an evangelical vice president, look, conservatives, I have a traditional conservative vice president. He doesn't need any of that anymore. None of that. And what. One of the things we know is that there was influence that, that Reagan side had on Trump. Often kind of throw, by throwing their body in front of him, but there was influence there. What influence does J.D. vance have? One of the insights from the signal chat was basically, hey, he raises his hand. Not sure about this. They do it anyway, all right, I'm gonna go support this. I mean, you know, so here you had the first big military action of the Trump presidency from, you know, thanks to the ridiculous OPSEC of the Trump administration, we now have some insight into the dynamics. And it looked like Stephen Miller just waltzed into that chat and big footed the heck out of J.D. vance. And so I, I think J.D. vance is in the inner circle, but being in the inner circle is not the same thing as influence.

Sarah Isgur (51:09)

Jonah, is J.D. vance the heir to the new Republican Party?

Jonah Goldberg (51:16)

No, I, look, I, look, I, I think there are two ways to talk about this. And, and I know a lot of people who just simply assert that Vance is, you know, next in line, going to be the, not only is going to, is he going to be the candidate in 2028, but he'll obviously win. And I think there are, those are bootstrapping assumptions, one after the other that are very difficult to logically defend of the field. I think Vance has the best chances of being the nominee because we don't know who the field is. And so you can't ascribe probabilities to anybody else really. But I Think if I had to, if you gave me a bet where I got to bet on Vance or bet on the field, bet on everybody else, I'd bet on everybody else. Like, I think he's got like a 25%, 30% chance of being the nominee, which is better than anybody else you can name right now because we're so far out. But it's not like a lock by any stretch of the imagination. And I find the wish casting on the Vance crowds part really kind of remarkable where they just sort of think that Trump's cult of personality gets passed along as his inheritance and it just doesn't work like that. It used to be. It reminds me a lot of the people who thought that because Bill Clinton was a really, really good politician, that it became community property and therefore Hillary was a really, really good politician. Right. It's like, if my wife knows how to play the piano, that doesn't mean I know how to play the piano. Just because Bill was good doesn't mean Hillary was good. And there was a lot of projection that way. There are a lot of people in Vance world who want to believe that because he is the most appealing guy to a small slice of the MAGA coalition, that therefore he will get the entirety of the MAGA coalition. Do we really think that like, first of all, Ron DeSantis is going to be like, oh, oh well, J.D. vance was Trump's vice president, so I have to defer to him out of respect. I shall therefore not seek nor accept the nomination of my party for president. Like, you know, Tom Cotton, that guy, you know, with the thousand yard stare is gonna like say, yeah, no, I'm scared of dealing with J.D. vance. It's just not gonna happen. And so there's gonna be a contest. I do think he has captured a certain. He has won the hearts and minds of the sort of the neo isolationist sovereignties, non interventionist, whatever that crowd is, he's won them over. He's their guy to a certain extent. And he's probably got an advantage to some extent with the people who just want to reward MAGA loyalty to Trump. But other than that, I don't think he, I never thought he was that particularly good a politician of the, what was it, the six senators that ran that were the super Trumpy backed by Trump and Peter Thiel and those guys in the 2022 cycle, five of them lost and J.D. vance barely won by like six points when Normie Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, won by like 28 points, which means a whole Bunch of people who wanted to vote for a Republican didn't want to vote for Vance because they didn't like him. I don't think Vance has gotten more likable or expanded his appeal since he's been Trump's vice president. So I'm very skeptical of all of this. Vance talk, Talk.

Sarah Isgur (54:35)

Steve, did J.D. vance kill the Pope? No. I'm kidding.

Jonah Goldberg (54:41)

He did not. Can you prove that he did not?

David French (54:45)

I think that the, the big difference between Pence and, and Vance, I mean, there are a number of them, but I think the, the biggest one is that Mike Pence was a check on Trump's authoritarian instincts, and to the extent that he has them, Trump's ideological views.

Sarah Isgur (55:01)

Did you, though, before January 6th, did you think Mike Pence was a check on Trump?

Arch Manning (55:07)

I did.

David French (55:08)

I did. Okay, Well, I think you could see from some of the, I mean, just having reported on some of the internal policy fights, I mean, I think that Trump's instincts would have had him impose many, many more tariffs across a much wider number of countries than he did had J.D. vance not been in his ear. I think his instincts on pulling out of Afghanistan was something that Pence weighed in strongly against. There's this moment Pence describes in his book where he meets Vladimir Putin and effectively says, you know, shakes his hand and effectively says, hey, don't mess with our elections anymore. JD Vance would never say or do anything like that. So I, I think Pence was a pretty effective. I don't think, I think it's become clearer in retrospect and, and starker in contrast to J.D. vance. But I think Pence was influential and I think it, it was, you could see it, you could trace it if you were to folks in the administration. There isn't anybody doing that. And not only is J.D. vance not serving as that check, but he affirms Trump's authoritarian instincts and pulls him further in his own ideological direction. I think that's the main difference between the two. And, you know, when, When Trump picked J.D. vance, there was, I think, the general sense, the conventional wisdom as it gelled, was he picked J.D. vance because J.D. vance was sort of in line with, with MAGA thinking. So he was, you know, he was MAGA like Trump. I guess my own view was at the time and continues to be Vance is something more like maga. Plus he's, he's pulling Trump further along those lines. If you think about some of the things that Vance has said publicly about, you know, our, this post liberal moment and the things that, that, that he wants to do. He's just unapologetic about it. He gave these interviews or he said in a, in a podcast, fire every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. He has talked openly about being in this, quote, late Republican period. And he said if we're going to push back against it, we have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with. He said that before he was in the administration. This is back in, in 2021. So JD Vance has shown sort of a comfort with sort of broader authoritarian impulses. And I think now when Donald Trump has those impulses, he's not only not hearing that he shouldn't do these things, he's having somebody who's egging him on.

Sarah Isgur (57:54)

Okay, not worth your time. There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there, but one of the oldest oldies is back and that's that we didn't land on the moon. And this seems to be picking up some traction with the maga, right, at least, or I don't know that that's fair. I think maga, right, can often be tagged for Trump voters here. I think we mean the pundit, maga, influencer, right, the like very online maga, right. If that makes sense. Not just like random Trump voters, I think suddenly don't believe we landed on the moon. But Candace Owen, for instance, said that NASA is fake and gay. I don't know how fake things can also be gay, but sure. Okay, so there's some questions about this. One, is it ever worth our time to talk about this stuff? But maybe two, why are conspiracy theories so popular right now? Is it actually some sort of MAGA thing or is it just that overall conspiracy theories become more popular in an era of social media? And this is just, you know, it's inevitable on the right and the left. The left has all sorts of conspiracy theories. They believe in why the moon landing, why has that been an obsession for so long? And there was one theory that I read that I was kind of like, like, oh, well, that wouldn't be great. That part of it is actually the Russian influence of trying to diminish American accomplishments. And so the reason that you make the conspiracy theory about the moon landing is because it's one of the premier American accomplishments against the Soviet Union and within that Cold War context. So if they can diminish that, make the American right might question whether that even happened. It's harder to believe in American exceptionalism, I guess. So, David, do you believe we landed on the moon?

Steve Hayes (59:51)

Do I believe we. Yeah, of course. You know, I'm glad you raised the latter point, which is I, I saw somebody the other day saying Twitter accept only American accounts. In other words, what would. Could we. If you had a social media platform and we could techno, we could ensure that only American users used it or only people residing in America used it. I think you would actually be surprised at how different Twitter was.

Sarah Isgur (60:24)

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Thousand times. Yes, yes.

Steve Hayes (60:27)

So a lot of what sort of the MAGA riot white calls engagement or views as engagement is often bot farming. It is often based in Russia.

Sarah Isgur (60:37)

Yes, yes, yes.

Jonah Goldberg (60:39)

Also in India and some other places. But yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Steve Hayes (60:41)

It's, it's scattered around the country. Macedonia, some of it. I mean you, you can go through a, various A list. So yeah, I mean it is, it is actually the case that there are a lot of Americans who are so distrustful of institutions and authority now that they are eager.

Jonah Goldberg (60:57)

Sure.

Steve Hayes (60:57)

It's not that they are open to the idea that they have been lied to. They're eager for confirmation that they've been lied to, that they're, they've become so anti. Institutional or so opposed to anything that smacks of the old sort of cold war, post war regime that they're just ready for it. They're, they're ready, willing and able. That population does exist. But what's fascinating to me is I can encounter lots of aspects of MAGA in the real world. Lots of aspects of MAGA that I see on Twitter I encounter in the real world. But this super extreme, the moon landing, et cetera, that I don't see as much, I just don't encounter that as much. And I do often wonder how much of this is really being ginned up and amplified and amplified by the particular dynamics, particularly on X. So I think about that a lot. But at the same time, we can't ignore the fact that we do have a population of Americans who are so alienated from American political and cultural life that they're open to believing almost anything negative about the other, about them, about they. And so that is destabilizing. And, and you know, I, I don't exaggerate that. I don't think we should exaggerate about how much more it is now than it used to be. I, I've encountered conspiracy theorists all growing up, but when I was encountering conspiracy theorists growing up, often what I was encountering was an otherwise healthy, normal, functioning person who had these sort of conspiracies as like a side quirk. Oh, Jim, he's an awesome dude, but don't get him going on Kennedy assassination, like that kind of thing. But now you're seeing much more where the conspiracy becomes the identity. It's not the hobby, it's the identity. It's not the quirk, it's the essence. And that is, I think, one of the changes that we've seen. Hard to say how prevalent it is because of that very issue you identify. Sarah, but it is real.

Sarah Isgur (63:03)

Steve, it seems to me that if I were trying to have a grand maga strategy, I would want the main conspiracy theory to be 911 truth or ness, because that discredits the part of the right that you're trying to cut off from. Now, the Republican Party brand, the moon landing doesn't do a lot for me. We can sort of handle Russia now. Most of the people voting today weren't alive then. They don't remember the Soviet Union. And lo and behold, we did have a US Senator from Wisconsin like publicly say that he questions the acceptable narrative on 911 and that maybe it was the, you know, the demolition of Building 7 in New York versus that it, you know, fell due to structural damage. So, yeah, more conspiracy theories. What do you think?

David French (63:58)

It's not so much top down as it is bottom up. So I don't think this is like MAGA strategists saying, hey, here's how we can discredit the, you know, neocon, right? Let' 911 rather than moon landing. It's just, I think it's much more organic than that. But I think that, you know, what, what David describes about Jim and his quirky conspiracies, it was the case, you know, back before the Internet, that people who had these quirky views were, I think, a bit more reluctant to share them. And if they did, they did so almost sheepishly or apologetically, half jokingly. Yeah, in, in, in a conversation with you would maybe float it to see how you react. You looked at them like they were crazy because the they were saying was crazy. Then they would stop saying that crazy stuff. Now with the, you know, the ability to go online and find support for sort of anything and everything, people are much more inclined to be public about these views. And when you have somebody like Tucker Carlson who, you know, at this point seemingly embraces any conspiracy theory at all just to embrace the. It's almost like it's more about embracing the conspiracy theory than it is about the stuff that he actually believes. But, you know, we could, we can actually Trace this statement from Senator Ron Johnson. You know, as it was a pretty conventional businessman from Wisconsin, knew him reasonably well, used to see him a lot on Capitol Hill. Elected sort of in the Tea Party era as a small government anti Obamacare guy, I would say had some quirky views, was, was a, not a typical politician in some ways. I think one of the reasons he was elected was because he didn't present as a normal politician and he wanted to come and be kind of a disruptor, but maybe not a crazy person, but the stuff he's saying is crazy now. And I think the reason that he was asked about that, the reason he said what he said was because Tucker Carlson had on a former representative named Kurt Weldon, who has long been a conspiracy theorist about 9 11, long been discredited. You know, talk to anybody who served in Congress with him and you know, the conversations you'll have is wow, what happened to Kurt Weldon? And Tucker has him on Weldon. I mean when you watch the interview, Weldon is sort of, you know, spittle flecked assertions about 911 and Building 7 and, and suggesting this, this massive conspiracy that the US government may have been involved or behind or certainly covered up what actually happened on 9 11. And I think the, you know, part of the reason that these things take off the way that they do is because of the, the speed of the Internet and the sort of velocity of information these days. But it's also because as, as David suggests, you know, a lot of the big things that people were told over the years have turned out not to be true. Right? I mean when, when you have, when you can point to something like the, you know, Dan Rather attempt to discredit George W. Bush on 60 Minutes based on forged documents. And people say like, well, gosh, if people I trusted were doing that, why should I believe him on this other stuff? And you could, you know, people will, will point to mass weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, things that they were told before the financial collapse. I mean all of these things where, you know, you can point to, certainly point to Covid and some of the things that, that people were told during COVID and people say like, I don't believe any of these authoritative figures anymore. I'm going to believe what I want to believe.

Sarah Isgur (67:44)

I think part of this is also the fall of the generalist. When everyone, when we lived in a world where being a generalist was what everyone was and was enough to get you a job and career and provide for your family, it's much harder to have A conspiracy theory when now everyone is a specialist. So someone on the other end of the circle of specialization doesn't know anything about that specialization. It's really hard to understand how MMR vaccines work, for instance. Or it's really hard to understand why you can't see stars in the black sky on the moon. Although that one's really not that hard to understand. But you know what I mean? Like, it's. People notice problems in media. I've noticed when it's in their specialty, they're like, oh my gosh, that's just not true. Like, I actually know a lot about this. But then when that same media source covers something they don't know about, they just assume whatever bad thing they're being told about that institution, like the institution I'm in, good. Everyone else's institution, definitely bad and corrupt and evil, because I'm not a specialist in that. Jonah, I feel like if anyone on this podcast believes in conspiracy theories, it's definitely you.

Jonah Goldberg (69:01)

Absolutely not.

Sarah Isgur (69:02)

He's making a shocked face.

Jonah Goldberg (69:04)

I am not a conspiracy theory guy. In part because part of my whole argument for years is like, when I try to tell people, when you get asked the question, what's one thing about Washington that normal people don't realize? And the answer, my answer, which is the same as Yuval Levin's answer, we've been talking about this for years, is nobody in Washington runs anything. This idea that somehow really smart people can plan 25 moves ahead and account for all the variables that are gonna come into play. And once they roll out their preced.

Sarah Isgur (69:43)

Reporter to their signal chat, like, so.

Jonah Goldberg (69:46)

Like the whole idea, everyone always thinks that there's some group behind some red rope that really is calling the shots. Which gets me to my sort of answer on all this. So first of all, you said one of the oldest conspiracy theories, the moon landing stuff, is one of the younger conspiracy theories. I mean, protocols are the elders of Zion. Now that's an old conspiracy theory. And that's so hot right now. Now too. And I think in some ways for the same reason, I agree with everything David, and with what all you guys said. The only thing I would add on that part is that conspiracy theories are only fun and psychically rewarding if you're poking at something that has societal esteem and status. A conspiracy theory about how, like, Lake Erie got polluted, no one cares about, right? But like, toppling, you know, people's admiration for the moon landing, that has some social, that has some, some, like, cultural status to it, it's turning over a big turtle. Same thing with going after Jews. You get a reaction out of it. And you can tell why so many of the conspiracy theories are bad faith, because they're always about things that people have strong feelings about and never about things that people don't have strong feelings about, because the whole point is to poke at people's strong feelings. And so I will just close on that note by saying, Sarah, you said in your setup how you don't possibly can't understand how something can be both fake and gay. Well, let me tell you a story. My mom and a bunch of her gay friends were in Las Vegas once and they were having a grand time, as you can imagine, probably a pretty boozy lunch. And then after lunch, they went to the Liberace Museum, where a sort of Jim J. Bullock, kind of very gay docent of the Liberace Museum brought them to see the holy of holies at the Liberace Museum, the world's largest rhinestone. And when they unveiled it, my mom and all of her friends burst out laughing and got ejected from the Liberace Museum. And I put it to you that Liberace's largest rhinestone, which is a fake gem, is both fake and gay. And so there you go. Something can be fake and gay.

Sarah Isgur (72:13)

Wow. I didn't see how you could possibly get there. I went into the story very skeptical. Okay. Well, with that, congratulations again on the SCOTUS blog acquisition. This was the Dispatch podcast. I think next week we do it. Similar thing about the left, about the goings on of the tectonic plates in the Democratic Party. Thanks for joining. Bye.

Jonah Goldberg (72:54)

Sam.