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- [00:00]
Steve Hayes
The Dispatch podcast is presented by Pacific Legal foundation, suing the government since 1973. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On this week's roundtable, we'll take a look back at the first year of President Trump's second term. And then. Not worth your time. I offer my response to the ambush or the betrayal of my colleagues in last week's not worth your time.
- [00:28]
Mike Warren
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Jonah Goldberg
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David French
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Mike Warren
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Steve Hayes
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Mike Warren
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Steve Hayes
Tile in between to bring your vision to life.
- [00:54]
Mike Warren
The Home Depot Dream Baths built here.
- [01:14]
Steve Hayes
I'm joined today by Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, and Sarah Isker, my colleagues at the Dispatch, and David French of the New York Times. Let's dive right in. Welcome, everybody. We are here one year to the week after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term. So I have assembled this August all star panel to reflect on the first year of Donald Trump's second term and what lessons we might draw for it and what it might mean for the remaining three years on his term. Joe, I'm going to start with you. Has the first year of Trump's second term unfolded more or less as you expected? Has it been more orderly? Has it been more chaotic? Has there been anything that really surprised you that you've seen over the last year?
- [02:06]
Jonah Goldberg
We use the phrase a lot around here, or some variant of it. Shocking, but not surprising. Right? I think some of his first year has been surprising. Surprising, but not shocking in the sense that, you know, the argument I had made prior to the primaries and all that kind of stuff is that the second term is not going to be like the first term. All my friends who are saying, yeah, well, it's just going to be that the best case scenario is the most likely scenario, and it's just going to be repeat of the first term with some crazy tweets and a few things and blah, blah, blah. I said there's no reason to believe that's true. I agree with you. That would be the best case scenario. But second term, he's going to be emboldened, he's going to surround himself with loyalists, and he's done all of that. So some of that has been shocking in the sense of the brazenness of it, of the shamelessness of it, but not necessarily surprising. The place where I guess I was most wrong was I had thought he could do all sorts of things with executive orders. He would do all sorts of things with executive orders. I didn't think he could actually get control of the border the way he could, way he did without Congress to some extent, and that's a really big deal. I thought that the mass deportation part of his plan was beyond his logistical abilities so far. I think that was. I was wrong about that in the sense that you give the President the credit for the things that happen on his watch. But I think this is mostly a Stephen Miller joint. But nonetheless, he's been more effective on the immigration front than I would have thought. And I think one of his biggest mistakes is that he hasn't bragged about it with some discipline for his first year.
- [03:50]
Steve Hayes
I think we should clip those two instances of Jonah saying he was wrong and give them as an audio file to Jess to have as her ring, her phone ring every time you call.
- [04:02]
David French
I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong.
- [04:06]
Jonah Goldberg
He's heard me say I was wrong so many times.
- [04:10]
Mike Warren
A few more times wouldn't hurt, you know.
- [04:12]
David French
Yeah.
- [04:12]
Steve Hayes
I think this is the first time in my six years of working at the Dispatch with you, David. Has, has Trump's first term been more chaotic than you expected about what you expected and any reaction to what Jonah said?
- [04:27]
David French
As chaotic as I expected, but in unexpected ways, is the way I would think about it. And I agree, complete with Jo, with, with Jonah on the border. You know, look, he was elected to secure the border. That's one of the things that there, there are a few things that he was unequivocally, completely elected to do. You know, you have this little thing on, on social media where various MAGA people say, I voted for this, and they'll be talking about the most extreme and weird thing that Trump does. I think it's pretty safe to say that's not why 77 or 77 million or so people voted for him was not to tariff the heck out of Canada and Mexico, but to secure the border is a big, big, big part of it. And he did that, and he's done that so far. And I think that one of the things, if Republicans are going to look at lost political opportunities is the way in which his interior border enforcement has completely sort of overwhelmed public perception of the, of the progress that he's made on the border. And so I do think that that's been a political own goal. I think another thing that he did, and I'm sort of trying to think of in the category of things that you elect Donald Trump to do as opposed to sort of like somebody with an R by their name. And I do genuinely wonder if a other president would have joined the Israeli campaign against Iran. I do wonder about that. I do also wonder if we over. We sort of overestimate the effectiveness of that single bombing run. But at the same time, I do think it's quite fair to say that him joining with Israel, using the B2S to sort of, you know, administer the coup de grace to a key Iranian nuclear facility is something that I don't think it's hard to see other people doing. Now, that being said, the sheer level of chaos is what I predicted, but it's been unpredictable to me in some ways. I did not see this emerging crisis over Greenland, which seems to have been alleviated late, you know, yesterday to some degree. We don't know all the details. We have an agreed on framework for a future deal, which we all know in contracts is also called not a deal. But, you know, I did not see that. I did not see the immediate aggression towards Canada and Mexico. I did not see the emergence of this sort of Don Row doctrine, a perversion of the Monroe Doctrine. I did not. So there are a lot of things that I did not see and definitely did see all of the sort of berserker rage against his domestic enemies. And, and so I, there were some things I was very much concerned about that have unfolded. And there was this just general vague concern about chaos and disorder that has also unfolded, but in ways I didn't expect. And so I think part of the story of his first term is of a president who squandered some of his greatest accomplishments politically in the sort of haze and fog of his just constant berserker rage and chaos in virtually every other area of his political life.
- [07:37]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, we're likely to see, even if there is the framework of a deal, as you say, not a deal, but the framework of a deal, or what Trump might have called concepts of a plan. We're not done seeing the damage, I think, from everything that we've seen leading up to this point.
- [07:52]
David French
Oh, no question. Yeah, no question about that.
- [07:54]
Steve Hayes
Sarah, David mentioned briefly passing and taking on his. In passing, taking on his political enemies, retribution. You were on Kash Patel's list. Are you surprised that you're not in jail? They haven't come after you, have they? Is there anything you want to disclose to us here, Steve?
- [08:15]
Jonah Goldberg
Are you disappointed that she's not in jail?
- [08:17]
Steve Hayes
Yes, actually. Thanks. For saying that. That's very good point.
- [08:21]
Sarah Isger
After last week's not worth your time takeover, Steve was placing some calls.
- [08:28]
David French
Nothing.
- [08:28]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, she's right here. For whatever reason, Cash Patel did not return my call.
- [08:36]
Sarah Isger
Okay, so I want to focus on two things. One, I guess I don't think I'm naive about this. Each president that has come into office with his party controlling both houses of Congress has had some signature piece of legislation for Barack Obama. It turned out to be Obamacare, although there was even some discussion of some other topics that might have made it past the finish line. In the beginning, Donald Trump did his tax bill, which was a little bit of an odd choice, but there was still that struggle between the old Republican Party and his Republican Party. Joe Biden obviously came in during COVID so everything that he had was Covid related. But there were so many Christmas ornaments on that thing. He's still got quite a few things on his wish list. What has Donald Trump done? Where's the legislation? And I don't mean this actually to be a rant on no matter the rant that I give. Even if you love what Donald Trump has done, he's done it all through executive orders and it'll be gone on day one of a new administration. That has happened through those other administrations as well. But there's at least been one thing that they've said, this is what I will do through statute. And we just haven't seen it like there's been no work with Congress and not even really like forward on judicial nomination. Like nothing with Congress. It feels like they are just not part of the conversation in the administration. So that's been a surprise. The other surprise is the one you mentioned, Steve, but it's like a two sided coin for me. I actually am surprised that he has been so forward facing on his retribution tour because remember, this started with the law firms, it went to universities. We now focus on James Comey or Lisa Cook or Jay Powell. Um, in some ways those are less interesting. I mean, I get, I get it. They're more interesting in a lot of ways. But like, this has been a theme of his first year in office, but at the same time, this is the other side of that coin. We have not seen the chaos that I was expecting. It's funny that David used the same word that it's been so chaotic. Externally it's been chaotic, but internally within the administration, it is nothing compared to the first administration. We're not firing people, we're not doing 6A tweets of someone in his cabinet behind bars. They have a remarkably unified front. Like the one thing I think you can point to is some like one off stories about how Pam Bondi isn't his favorite person. Again, I just don't think that you're gonna have a Donald Trump who's gonna ever like his Attorney General. Cause sort of by definition, they can't both be Attorney General and be a great lawyer and also do the things Donald Trump wants them to do. And I see that as the same side of the retribution coin. When all of the people in his boat are rowing together, you have the chaos. Externally you're able to do the retribution stuff because internally they are actually very cohesive. And you've got to give credit to Susie Wiles for that. And that's something I didn't think anyone predicted, was that Donald Trump would have an incredibly effective, trusted Chief of staff.
- [11:59]
Jonah Goldberg
I go back and forth about this on Susie Wiles. She basically has said, I'm gonna let him do whatever the hell he wants.
- [12:05]
Sarah Isger
Yeah, but that's the job. I mean, this was my.
- [12:07]
David French
Isn't it the job?
- [12:08]
Jonah Goldberg
I mean, I thought in the past the part about chiefs of staff was that they were the person who had to tell the president, no, this is a bad idea for their own good.
- [12:19]
Sarah Isger
I think I've always disagreed with that. I disagreed with it in the John Kelly model especially, I think the Chief of staff is the xo. The president tells you the vision for where he wants to head and you're the one who executes it and she's doing that job. I think we have this like, you know, sort of American president West Wing version of the Chief of staff being the ID or something of the President. But no, I think the Chief of staff is a staff member they execute. Their job is not to say no, not to hide things, not to keep things off the President's desk, not to have little side meetings except for the very obvious like, does this need to rise to the level of the President? Is this something that can be handled at a staff level? But that still to me is executing. You are not supposed to have a separate vision for the country from the President. It's not to say that I don't like John Kelly's vision more than I like Donald Trump's. Of course I did, but it wasn't actually the job of Chief of staff in my view. Nobody elected you.
- [13:17]
Jonah Goldberg
But my point is, I'm not talking about a vision for the country. I'm talking about what is in the best long term interests of the President's. Presidency. Right. And like I remember Len Garment telling these stories about how Nixon, maybe a little deep in his cups, would call in Henry Kissinger into the Oval Office and go, henry, Henry, I want you to bomb Hanoi. I want you to bomb. I'm not kidding, Henry and Kissinger. Yes, Mr. President. Of course, Mr. President. Right.
- [13:49]
David French
And I love the dramatic rendering.
- [13:52]
Mike Warren
This is I want a One Man Jonah show of the Nixon.
- [13:56]
Steve Hayes
There is a One Man Jonah show. It's called the Ruminant. You can tune in there.
- [14:01]
Jonah Goldberg
Anyway, he's like, henry, I'm not kidding. You don't, you don't believe me when I say these things. I want to wake up in the morning and get the New York Times and I want to see that we bombed Hanoi. Of course, Mr. President. It will happen, Mr. President. And it never happened. Right. Because like, there are people around Nixon knew not to let Nixon be full on Nixon and set fire to the Brookings Institution and all these things that he wanted to do. And there are. How many of the things that Trump has done have undermined his own popularity because he can't stay on message. Right?
- [14:33]
David French
Yes.
- [14:34]
Sarah Isger
But I think that's a good thing. This was that thing I wrote in the Washington Post when I left office that the American people need to see what they voted for. And so much of the first Trump administration was hiding that from the American people by those in the administration. They're not the deep state. I called them the shallow state because they said it publicly. They said it to his face like, this wasn't people secretly undermining him. And so it shielded the American people from what Donald Trump wanted for the country, and it led to his second election.
- [15:05]
Steve Hayes
But you bring people in to advise you, to give you their best judgment about the things that they are experts in or the reasons that you hired them. If they're just enablers of Donald Trump at every turn, I mean, maybe it's the case that across the board, all of his advisors, and we're going to get to more specifics about his advisors, agree with him, want to enable him, think the best thing to do is to encourage him in all of his, you know, different policy choices and different behavioral choices, but then they're not really. I mean, if they have these different views and they don't share them, then they're not really doing their jobs, are they?
- [15:43]
Sarah Isger
Their job is to have views on how to execute the thing he wants. Their job is not to simply say, well, let me clarify that. Of course you can say, I'm not going to do that. Your job is to resign.
- [15:55]
Steve Hayes
I mean, so if he wants to invade Greenland, it's not the job of the national security Advisor to say, Mr. President, I think that would be an unwise choice for the. I think that's the first and most fundamental job.
- [16:07]
Sarah Isger
Your job is to say, why do you want to invade Greenland? What are you trying to accomplish? Let me give you my advice on how we get there. But your job is not to say, oh, you want to secure rare earth minerals. No, I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, you're welcome to say that, but it's not your job. Your job is to figure out the best way to execute that. That goal of the president. Not to do the. Kissinger. Not to say, yes, Mr. President, and not do it.
- [16:32]
Steve Hayes
But isn't part of the job to give him advice about what you think is best? I mean, you can't just be there to execute. No. Like if he wants to. What if the president. What if the president said tomorrow, you know, the real thing that we ought to do is imprison everybody whose name starts with J. Is it your job, if you're the Attorney General, to figure out how to do that most effectively for him now? Of course not. Your job is to say, no. That's crazy, Mr. President. You can't do that. Here's what's likely to happen. This would be disastrous for the company. No. Or the country. No.
- [17:02]
Sarah Isger
The company is actually an ironic thing to say, given the grift, but.
- [17:05]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, given the grift. Given the mafiosa thing. But, I mean, I. Anyway, I feel like you have to give that advice.
- [17:11]
David French
I will say I would been surprised by the level of corruption. That's another surprise. Yeah, I agree with the level of corruption.
- [17:17]
Steve Hayes
Yeah.
- [17:17]
Jonah Goldberg
Yeah.
- [17:18]
Steve Hayes
Mike, you want to chime in on this? Anything surprise you in particular, or is this sort of what you expected coming in?
- [17:24]
Mike Warren
What surprised me in particular was the. The way in which particular institutions have remained a check on President Trump. And those institutions are basically market forces. The financial markets, the bond markets, the stock market, but also the political market of public opinion. And I know that doesn't seem that way, but the reaction from the public to Donald Trump's presidency and to his. To the extreme lengths that he's gone from everything from immigration enforcement to the tariffs, to his inability to really do much on what we now call affordability, what was being called, you know, the Biden inflation economy, to really sort of tame a lot of elements that make it feel as if costs have not gone down because they have not gone down in a lot of areas. The public reaction to that has been he's not doing a good job. And for all of the valid concerns that we have expressed here on the podcast and in, in the pages of the Dispatch and other publications about the other institutions kind of falling down, particularly the political institutions like the party or Congress, sort of the inability to kind of keep the president in check, I think those more market based forces have. And you can see that in the reaction to the tariffs in which, you know, I think there was a lot of thought and this is some place where I was wrong. I thought that there were the sort of, the bottom would fall out and Donald Trump would continue marching forward on his, on his desire for some maybe, maybe not full autarky, but some real closing of our sort of trade position. And instead he was, I think, cowed by the reaction, particularly from the bond markets, when, you know, after Liberation Day. And I think Liberation Day, right.
- [19:37]
Steve Hayes
I'm surprised that you keep calling it Liberation Day.
- [19:41]
Mike Warren
I didn't do it on the video, but it was expressed with scare quotes around it. It. But we also should call it what they want it to be called anyway. So it does seem that markets as an institution remain sort of undefeated. And if things continue to go the way 2025 went in 2026, the political reaction will have an effect on Donald Trump's actual position within the government because he's likely now to lose control of the House, possibly even the Senate, and that's going to have some consequences for the rest of his presidency.
- [20:21]
Steve Hayes
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- [22:14]
Sarah Isger
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- [22:43]
Steve Hayes
We'Re back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Sarah, I want to come back to you with the second question, and it's about how permanent some of these changes that we've seen have been. You made the point in your last answer that, you know, really hasn't worked with Congress. The things that he's done, he's done largely by executive order. They can be undone quickly, but going beyond just policy questions to sort of changes in the way the US Government operates, changes in the expectations we have for our president, changes in the way the parties operate. You know, to go back to Mike's point, Mike says we should call it what they want us to call it, changes to the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America. What are the things that Trump has done or what have we seen in this first year of the Trump presidency that you think is most likely to outlive his presidency? It can be a norm breaker, a change in our politics or obviously you don't think it's legislation. What lasts?
- [23:45]
Sarah Isger
Let me tick through some fun things that definitely won't last. Anything that Donald Trump has put his name on. I drove to the Lincoln Memorial on Monday for Martin Luther King Day and.
- [23:58]
Jonah Goldberg
Don't you mean the Trump Lincoln Memorial?
- [23:59]
Sarah Isger
Yeah, exactly.
- [24:00]
Steve Hayes
Don't give him ideas. Jonah, what are you doing?
- [24:03]
Jonah Goldberg
Like he hasn't thought of it already.
- [24:04]
Sarah Isger
The Peace Institute had his name attached to it. The Kennedy center had his name. It was like you were driving and it was like. But they're just like attached, like, it's very obvious. They're additions. They don't look the same as what was there. The Department of War. All of those things are named by statute, and a president cannot change the name of them. His DEI stuff, which is very popular, which I think I'm fully on board with, will not last easy to change. If anything, he has highlighted where the next president should go to swing the pendulum the other way and how best to do that. Things that will last are really hard to point to because I do think that, for instance, even in the foreign policy realm, that a lot of the world is waiting to see what happens next, they believe that they can last for three more years. And there's a big difference for what the next president does. I think that matters a great deal. Similarly, one of the changes that I don't know is the Department of Justice. The next president will have the opportunity to try to restore the previous role of the Department of Justice. Will they choose to do that or will they choose to use these new norm free levers of power to implement their agenda again? In which case I think it will get harder and harder to bring back the Department of Justice and fewer people will remember it. It'll be sort of like Congress. Congress isn't some stagnant thing where we could, like everyone could go back to legislating if they wanted to. We've largely replaced the people who remember how that worked or what Congress was like when we had powerful chairmen or people could bring their own legislation forward before the leadership changes. And when you lose that institutional memory, you're not really talking about bringing it back. You're talking about regrowing it. So let me paint two worlds in one, Gavin Newsom becomes president, in which case I think the Department of Justice largely continues on the path it's on. In number two, Rahm Emanuel becomes president and picks Chris Christie as Attorney General. And then you might see the Department of Justice because it will be a president who's prioritizing, showing what the vision is for a Department of justice that is not furthering the sort of partisan goals. And again, I want to be clear. I think the Department of Justice is supposed to have policy alignment with the president, is not an independent agency. But policy alignment is very different than, I think, what we're seeing right now.
- [26:51]
Steve Hayes
David, what sticks around, what lasts beyond Donald Trump's presidency.
- [26:55]
David French
Yeah. I think with Donald Trump's presidency, you have very impermanent policies, but you have potentially permanent effects. And so what I mean by that is, look, Sarah's completely right. When he walked into office with an array of executive orders as opposed to an array of legislative initiatives, what he did was created kind of the legal version of vaporware. I mean, an executive order is, if you're going to look at sort of the hierarchy of American laws, an executive order is right down there close to, like, signs that say, no shirts, no shoes, no service. They're very impermanent. They're. They can be immediately changed. However, the effects of sort of an autocratic and erratic kind of leadership are going to reverberate for a long time, because I think a lot of American sort of American allies have realized the fact that you now have a Trump second term is very different from the fact that you had a Trump first term. You might say, every democracy gets a mulligan. Sometimes they vote for some crazy person, right? And then they right the ship. No, no, no, no. Like a dog returns to its vomit. America returned to Donald Trump. And scriptural reference for those who are not familiar anyway. And so now they're looking at a fact that, look, millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of Americans may actually want to disrupt NATO. They may actually have designs for Greenland. They may, like the Don Roe Doctrine. And that is a fundamental shift in your strategic planning with the United States. So it's not that much of a consolation that for now, for today, he pulled back on his Greenland threats. The reality is they're looking at, this is take two of the most erratic American president that we've ever seen in our lifetimes. And it is now a exclamation point on American sort of. And you don't even want to call it isolationism anymore. That's just completely inoperative. It's looking more like an almost imperialistic sort of view. And it's also, take two, reaffirmed, doubling down on this intense antipathy towards allies. And so if you are a foreign power and you're rational, there are permanent effects of the fact that we went back to this and reaffirmed it and doubled down on it. There's a. And this is the thing that sort of gets me about. You know, there are those who talk about Trump and they're sort of like another conversation about Trump. He's not going to change. He's not going to change. At this point, the real issue is where are the American people and how Much are they looking at and seeing all of this with Trump and sort of saying, yup, and he still has a very high floor. He really does. He still has a higher floor than say, George W. Bush did. He has a higher floor than any Republican president of my life time, even with all of this corruption, all of this chaos. And so that's when I say this sort of idea that, well, when Trump is gone, you can go, whew, you know, we'll like NATO again. We'll tell that to J.D. vance, right?
- [30:03]
Steve Hayes
Well, yeah. And to our NATO allies, try to convince them of that.
- [30:07]
David French
Well, our NATO allies are looking at J.D. vance, you know, already being anointed as the heir apparent. And so and then when you talk about the use of the doj, I think the one phrase I was thinking of as Sarah was talking about how to describe the doj, was an agency with integrity. Can you have an agency with integrity? And I think also a lot of Republicans are kind of living in this fantasy land where that says that Trump is a guy who acts with his extreme on his impulses, which many of them really, really like, because he hates the same people they hate, et cetera. And they just are not thinking, as Sarah again said, about, okay, what if Gavin Newsom comes in, is he going to be the return to normalcy candidate when of all Democrats he's maybe between him and Jasmine Crockett have been the most embracing of sort of that Trump approach. Right. And so if you think that all the berserker rage is going to be concentrated in maga, because MAGA is uniquely strong and tough and politically ambitious, et cetera, you're just deluding yourself. You know, the Democrats have a fork in the road choice themselves and they may choose to go full Trumpian in their next president. And if we are getting into that seesaw back and forth where it's just which autocrat is elected next, we cannot sustain that. We just simply cannot sustain stakes that existential every four years. And so that's why I say it's not so much the policies that will be permanent, it's the effect of the man and the effect of millions upon millions upon millions of Americans liking the man that will have radiating indefinite effects at home and abroad.
- [31:53]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, I think you just articulated almost exactly my view on this, Mike. What sticks around beyond Donald Trump, similar.
- [32:02]
Mike Warren
To what David just ended with the coarsening of our political discourse, which, yes, I mean, it sort of sounds like something a cosseted D.C. resident, although I live in Virginia, would say. But you are cosseted that is true. You notice I did not disagree with that. And it almost sounds like something that we could have said, you know, eight years ago at this point. But I do think, to David's point, the fact that Democrats seem to be getting wise to this approach to politics suggests that that coarsening has seeped into the broader kind of political realm of accepted behavior. Gosh, that's like a lot of mixed metaphors. But there was a lot of concern in the first term that this would have effects on the Republican Party and how the Republican Party proceeded. You know, it was going to be less conservative movement focused, it was going to be less polite, and that's what Republican voters wanted. And so that's how it was going to affect that one party. I think it's also affected both parties. It's also affected how what Americans are willing to accept. And I mean this in a, in, in a very grounded way, the way in which profanity, you know, is just a part and a casual part of political discourse these days. Look, I'm, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not somebody who uses profanity privately. And, and it's not, I'm not sort of clutching my pearls here about bad words in general. But I do think what's happened in the political realm has followed what's been happening elsewhere in the sort of broader culture. And Donald Trump is a catalyst for that. He's not the only catalyst. He didn't start it, but he's accelerated it. And I think that is bad for the culture, it's bad for political discourse because it begins people in a place of meanness and viewing the other side of the political debate as something not worthy of respect. And maybe that didn't start with Trump. I'm not suggesting it started with Trump, but he's accelerated that idea. And I don't think that's going away anytime soon. And Gavin Newsom is a perfect example of that. I don't even think it's going to happen if somebody like a Josh Shapiro or, well, speaking of vulgarity, Rahm Emanuel is hilarious to think of as somebody who would restore any kind of norms because he's maybe the most vulgar person in Democratic politics, which is saying something. But I don't think that there's a lot of appetite for that anymore. And we'll be living in that world from here on out.
- [35:06]
Steve Hayes
Jonah, what do you think of Mike's bull answer specifically and generally, what lasts beyond Donald Trump?
- [35:16]
Jonah Goldberg
I think people have covered a lot of the points, particularly David about the reshaping of the world order that has come from this. Right. Because our allies and our enemies, serious national security people think about contingencies, and we have just created a whole bunch of plausible contingencies that they now have to plan for, whether they're, whether they're 1% likely or 90% likely. I would say one of the worst things about this period that's going to have a very long legs is that it's going to mean the phrase Overton window is going to have a very long half life. But I got to say so look, I agree entirely, but I can already hear some of our commenters saying, oh, so you're saying the worst legacy of Donald Trump is the lesson Democrats will take from it and Democrats will now do what Donald Trump did. And I actually do think that that's one of the worst legacies of Donald Trump. But there are some other ones that I think are worth acknowledging. First, the endless questioning of whether or not Donald Trump and his biggest supporters are fascists is almost irrelevant. The relevant question is how many Americans want a fascist or fascist like, president.
- [36:30]
David French
Yeah.
- [36:31]
Jonah Goldberg
And the answer is too many. I don't have a percentage. But like. And the, and social media magnifies enormously the demand for these things than I think, the reality. But if you look at the really sad journey that Megyn Kelly is on, where her response to the credible accusation that we committed war crimes by finishing off some people drowning in the water, and her response is, so I really.
- [37:01]
Sarah Isger
Do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little.
- [37:15]
Jonah Goldberg
She's reading a market for that, I don't think.
- [37:17]
Mike Warren
I don't.
- [37:18]
Jonah Goldberg
I honestly, I couldn't give a rat's ass what her actual views are. But she says what she thinks her audience is kind of want to respond to. And the fact that big chunks of the GOP have gone anti anti Nazi is really problematic. But more broadly, look, I've been saying since I wrote Suicide of the west, if not before that, that America needs a conservative party. I don't necessarily mean the Republicans. I mean partying the way Burke meant parties. A faction, a serious intellectual and political constituency that wants continuity of America's traditions, America's norms, America's Constitution. One of the things that Trump has done possibly is make it that we now Basically have two essentially progressive parties, one a right wing party and one a left wing party. But the problem with that is that you cannot drive a car that has two gas pedals and no brake pedal. And the sort of statism that Trump has legitimized on the right has not created a sufficient opening on the left for limited government and classical liberalism and all these kinds of things that this country needs to have significant constituencies for for it to survive as the country that we love. And I wrote an endless sort of longer than the wedding scene from Deer Hunter G file yesterday about Ross Douthit's column on the end of conservatism. And I think he's wrong, but he's not implausible. And Trump has tried to turn, with the aid of the usual suspects, the Republican Party into a European right of center nationalist party. And the question is not whether it sticks, because it's going to stick for a while, it's how long it sticks and whether it takes over and that's going to last a long time. He so deformed what is considered dogmatic conservatism and libertarianism, you know, the traditional Buckleyite, Reaganite right, that we could be spending the rest of our lives just trying to fix the damage, nevermind make progress.
- [39:29]
Sarah Isger
For fear of beating this metaphor into a pulp and because we are now expecting 20 to 25 inches of snow in Washington D.C. which will end life as we know it here. Jonah, two gas pedals and no break is called a toboggan, basically. And I guess what's interesting about it to me is that the terrain matters a lot, right? Like the reason that I'm not still on a toboggan is because the surface flattened out and there was enough snow that the snow acted as a break. And again, like I'm really pounding this metaphor down. And to move to another winter metaphor from the Sweep, my old newsletter, you know, it's like that curling stone. There's this 40 pound stone going down the ice and the politics and all of that is the sweeping. It's not the stone. And there's just going to be certain stone things that are going to have a lot more effect on American politics.
- [40:32]
Jonah Goldberg
I agree with you on that. I agree with you entirely on that.
- [40:35]
Sarah Isger
And it will affect the two political parties that will always try to reach equilibrium.
- [40:38]
Jonah Goldberg
I agree with you. I mean, we can get really in the weeds on this. So I've been arguing for a long time that what the Patrick Deneens and the aging Vermeules don't understand These are the post liberal thinkers, post liberal, anti liberal types is that this is just a liberal country. I don't mean it's like oppressive democratic country. I just mean it's like this is a country that says get off my lawn whenever the state steps on it. Most of the left wing issues, passions are kind of libertarian. Defund the police is really stupid. It's also really libertarian. Right. Also all of this anti ice stuff, all the drug legalization stuff, getting rid of prisons, super stupid, super libertarian. It's just like the right can't see the libertarianness of the left and the left can't see the libertariness of the right. But this country is just super liberal. So you're right that like the problem, the problem for having two gas pedal parties is that this country doesn't want two gas pedal parties. Right. This country is a freedom loving kind of country, but there are fewer freedom lovers than I thought there were. And that's one of the things I think Donald Trump has, has demonstrated. And all of us could hum a lot of bars on Congress sucks. But what is also gonna have a really long shadow, I think is how many of the people running these institutions believe the wrong things about their powers and their institutions. The presidencies are gonna think they have way more power than they have and Congress is gonna think it has way less power. And I wanna congratulate Sarah and David, who didn't need their belts or their shoelaces confiscated. When Mike Johnson said yesterday that the President is simply using all of his Article 2 powers to use tariffs.
- [42:23]
David French
Gosh.
- [42:24]
Jonah Goldberg
For those who don't know, the President has no Article 2 powers to use tariffs. There just like literally are none.
- [42:31]
Mike Warren
But like, but he's using them all anyway.
- [42:33]
Jonah Goldberg
But he's using them all anyway. And so I just think there's a lot of defamation out there. And eventually the country is going to have to impose seriousness on the government because it's not gonna come from the parties or the politicians.
- [42:46]
Sarah Isger
There's this great moment in Valley Forge when von Steuben comes and is trying to train up the Americans. He doesn't speak a word of English, but he eventually learns one curse word and it's the only word of English he knows. So like, no matter the situation, he just has this one curse word that he will yell at everyone. But he says, you know, when I'm in Europe and I tell my soldiers to do this thing, they do it here in America. When I tell the soldiers to do something, they ask why. Yeah, and there is something so fundamentally American about that. And he said, like, in the short term, it's a handicap, but in the long term, it actually makes them far better fighters.
- [43:27]
Jonah Goldberg
Right. Because once you explain it to them, they're like, okay, sure.
- [43:30]
Sarah Isger
Right, right. And then if something goes wrong, they actually know what sort of principle they're trying to execute, et cetera. And it's like this beautiful American sentiment that I actually love way more than anything de Tocqueville ever noticed because von Steuben was such a cranky little guy.
- [43:43]
Mike Warren
Can I just say that, though, that a car with two gas pedals does sound like something a libertarian would love. So for sure.
- [43:51]
David French
So can I raise one other thing? And this is the cultural effect of Trump. And one of the weird cultural effects of Trump is in that word, weird, that he's an odd dude who will believe seemingly almost anything. And we have really elevated. One of the consequences is we've really elevated oddness, weirdness. There's all these subcultures that now exist, have been kind of conglomerated under the MAGA movement. You know, that you've got a lot of, you know, the. The essential oils, using homeschool moms, the, you know, like, I'm obviously part of the community of based looks, maxing giga jads, but I don't wear it on my sleeve. It's not my core identity. And so we've got. We've got all of these various weird.
- [44:38]
Sarah Isger
Steve has no idea.
- [44:39]
Steve Hayes
So lost.
- [44:40]
Jonah Goldberg
If you have to have it explained to you, Steve, you're clearly not one. So lost.
- [44:46]
David French
It's just we've really started to celebrate weirdness, conspiratorial thinking, and it's rupturing a lot of the fabric of our society. And I do wonder if when Trump is sort of lifted out of that and you've now got kind of more normal politicians, how long that will continue to radiate in our culture? But it has radiated out of this moment in a way that I think absolutely did not expect, you know, in January 2017.
- [45:13]
Steve Hayes
I have no idea.
- [45:14]
Sarah Isger
Sweeney, don't pretend you don't know what looks maxing is.
- [45:18]
Steve Hayes
All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast.
- [45:25]
Sarah Isger
Hey, y', all, this is Sarah Isger. And, you know, I've got a book coming out in April. It's a myth busting walk through the Supreme Court showing how it is somehow both the founding fathers third wheel and the only branch of government they would be likely to recognize today. And I've Got a fun bonus offer for y'. All. If you pre order your copy of Last Branch Standing, you can receive a special signed book plate from me to stick in your copy when it comes out in April. This is a limited time offer only available until February 9th. For more information and the form to claim your book plate, go to prh.com/branchbookplate that's P R H.com lastbranchbookplate and if you've already pre ordered, don't worry, that counts. You just go to prh.com lastbranchbookplate and you'll get that signed bookplate from me. Thanks, guys.
- [46:20]
Steve Hayes
Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. So I want to move to foreign policy by circling back to something that David had said before and telling a question, a brief little story from my week this past week. I was asked maybe a week ago to join Danish public television, basically, like the BBC for Denmark, like to appear.
- [46:43]
Jonah Goldberg
On or like to join like you're a new anchor, Copenhagen at 5 to appear on. Okay.
- [46:51]
Steve Hayes
And I was, I was eager to do it because I think in part the job was going back to, to David's point to sort of explain how the American people are looking at this crazy Greenland, Denmark, NATO thing. And it was a, you know, as you would expect, the anchor was extraordinarily well informed about the details of American politics, knew everything. The questions were great. But the last question was sad to me because he ends the interview, and I'm paraphrasing here by saying something like, you know, we in Europe have always had our differences with the United States. We haven't agreed. We may not have wanted to go along with some of the things you did, but we've always thought of the Americans as the good guys. And I don't know if you're the good guys anymore. And he asked me, he said, do you, how do Republicans in Washington feel about that? And do you, you know, you've been a conservative for a long time. Do you think you're the good guys? And I had this moment where I had to say, I don't know if we're the good guys anymore. We're certainly not behaving like it now, whether you're talking about Russia and Ukraine, whether you're talking about Greenland, whether you're talking about some of these other issues. So I'm giving you my answer to this question first and then I'll throw it to you all when we talk about the most significant foreign policy, national security development over the past year. I think in some ways that's it. Other countries, including most of the countries with whom we'd have long and deep and meaningful alliances as we shaped this rules based post World War II international order, no longer assume that we're the bad guys and have begun, as we saw in the speech from Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister this week, have begun making decisions based on the fact that the United States may no longer be a reliable ally, a reliable trading partner. And those are things that will not be undone. I think they're lasting well beyond Trump. And that is my nominee for the most significant foreign policy development of this year.
- [49:05]
David French
Yeah. Military decisions, for example, are made with a 20, 25, 30 year time horizon. So like when you're building a new class of frigate, you're thinking about them for the next 20 to 30 years. When you're building aircraft carriers, when you're, when you're considering, say, Britain and France the size of your nuclear arsenal. All of these things are decisions made based on understandings of what the world will look like now and 25 years from now and sometimes 40 and 50 years from now. And if you're setting in the mind of Europeans that we are not a reliable partner, that we are always one election away from this berserkerness, then it has a 20, 25 year, 30 year planning time horizon. You can already see the adjustments and the distortions rippling in the pond, so to speak, as a result of this. And I think Mark Carney's speech on Tuesday was incredibly significant because he did not say we're in a transition. He said we're in a rupture. That's the word that he used, a rupture. And it was very significant that in the middle of that speech he says, we stand with Denmark on its sovereignty and believe in Article 5. Okay. So that's a not very subtle message to the United States. And so that is not something that then now he's going to go because Trump has truthed out the framework. Beginnings of a possible beginnings of maybe a deal that he's going to then say, my bad.
- [50:34]
Sarah Isger
Like the TikTok deal. We've had the beginnings of a TikTok deal for a year now.
- [50:38]
Mike Warren
Yeah.
- [50:39]
David French
He's not going to say my bad rupture over. No, the rupture has already occurred. And I think we have to just double pin on this. People don't see it just as a rupture caused by one man, Donald Trump. They see it as a rupture caused by 77 million people who put him in office. And that you can remove him and you still have the 77 million and you're crazy. If you're a European defense planner and you think, well, we shouldn't take any larger message from this than other than when Donald Trump is in power, our position is precarious. No, that is not the message that any rational planner is taking from this last year.
- [51:18]
Steve Hayes
I want to go around to get your answers to this question. Then I have two more questions we're going to have to do as sort of lightning rounds so we can leave time for Sarah to vent further on. Not worth your time, Mike. Most significant foreign policy decision or development?
- [51:35]
Mike Warren
I think big picture wise, what you said, Steve, about the question of are we the good guys anymore is not only, I mean, to me it's the central foreign policy, a consequence of the Trump administration and the Trump phenomenon. And I look at people who are smarter and more well versed than me and other national security and defense issues can point to other things. I look at the tariffs as a, as a bleeding edge leading indicator of kind of the breakdown of that American led order. I think for all of the other aspects of our, you know, of our hegemony of the economic one is where I think we derive so much of our power and in all kinds of good and positive ways from the fact that, that when people think of the movies, they think of American movies because of our export of that element of our culture to just the way in which we, as a libertarian country, as a market based country, we love to buy things and sell things and be a part of a global economy. The retreat from that, even if it's sort of, it's been stalled and perhaps it's not at the end of the day going to be as sweeping as many of us feared and as Donald Trump and many of his supporters wanted. I think it was the first and perhaps most significant signal that this was going to happen and that Trump was going to be pushing for this seriously. And I think everything else kind of follows from that willingness to step away from our economic power in ways that are shortsighted and foolish.
- [53:45]
Sarah Isger
SARAH LIGHTNING it really matters what happens next, because if we are still living in the post World War II global order that we've all been part of, that we all like, we all like it for really good reasons. America wins in that global order. We are number one in that global order. If that were still the global order in 15 years, all of this was not only a mistake, it was a catastrophic one. But I think what Donald Trump is reflecting is that he believes that world order already ended. Not that he is changing it, but rather it ended 10 years ago with China. And so you can't continue the world order that you like. You can't continue NATO as you like it. You can't continue America as just, you know, Hollywood exporting our culture. China has its own Hollywood. They're not even watching our movies much anymore. And so if that world order changed, we're going to have to change with it. And we can't just continue being the America, the post World War II America, that literally none of us know anything different. And I think there's no way for me sitting here to predict which one is correct, but I think time's going to be really obvious on which one it was.
- [55:00]
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah, I disagree with Sarah. I don't think Trump has any theory of the global order other than the fact that he thinks the world operates the way he's thought it worked since he was in Queens, and he just extrapolates that vision onto the planet. But there are people around him who I think think exactly the way you're describing. I think this good guy thing is a good point. I think the Denmark part of it, I mean, the Greenland part of it is the most obvious manifestation of it. But, you know, it's funny, at the end of December, a lot of pundits were doing their most important things of the first year of the year pieces, and everyone was saying, like, I remember Matt Continenti very plausibly arguing that the most significant thing, the best thing Trump did, the high watermark of the Trump presidency, was bombing Iran. And I think that was a defensible claim at the time. And two weeks later, three weeks later, it's, oh, he's destroying NATO because he's literally thinking about using force to seize territory from an ally. So I think the bad guy thing is, or we're no longer the good guy thing is a real thing. I think it's just worth pointing out that in large swaths of the globe, people have been talking about how kids are dying because of all the changes to USAID around the world. And that stuff has gotten a lot of coverage that doesn't get coverage here because Americans don't like foreign aid and we don't understand it and all of that. But, like, the America is not the good guy, which was a very common view throughout parts of Asia already. And, I mean, the Indians never really thought we were all that great. I don't mean the American Indians. I mean, the Indians, yeah, could apply to both, but the point stands. But my Point is just like there's a lot of stuff that we've been doing that just hasn't been front and center for us as people in Washington focused on the big stories that matter to Americans and yada, yada, yada. But America seemed really mean and gratuitously mean for most of the year for tens, hundreds of millions of people. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have reformed AID and all that kind of stuff. But the way we did it was more like performative vandalism. And you know all the points that Sarah makes about doj, they also apply to HHS and CDC and nih. How are you going to restore those things with integrity? Has the world going to trust our science? There's just a lot of facets to this are we the good guy still the good guys thing than just Greenland.
- [57:41]
Sarah Isger
Is anyone else just like feeling the are we the baddies skit right now? Like, it's all I can see in my head. Wait, are we the baddies every day?
- [57:50]
David French
Oh, every day, yeah. Anytime you imbue anyone with awesome or any institution with awesome power, that institution has always got to ask itself, are we the good guys? And it has to put in implement, it has to put in systems of training and instruction to remind people who they are supposed to be. The answer to the question are we the good guys? Has to be something that is drilled and drilled into powerful people because there is always the impulse to use the power purely for self interest. And so if you're going to go to my what's the most significant kind of early decision for me was when he lands in office, immediately starts tariffing or wants to tariff Canada and Mexico just right out of the bat. And what to the reason why I think that's so significant and we've kind of forgotten about it. It feels like issue number 937 on the list. Right. But what that said was that are we the good guys? Question was now fully open. Fully open. And if you look at the way we have tried to bully people for our national self interest, just pure what Trump perceives to be our national self interest isn't just raising that question once again, are we the good guys? It's also adding in another one, are we even the smart guys? Because, you know, going back to Jonah's point about the changing world order and Sarah's point about the changing world order, one of the ways that it has changed quite concretely is rising Chinese power. So China is far more powerful. And there's a number that sticks in my mind and that number is 39. 39. 39 is the percentage of the total defensive liberal democracy's defense burden borne by the US if you're going to look at the total defense burden of our allied, of allied liberal democracies, we carry 39% of it. That is the largest single chunk. This is according to a Rand Corporation study. But we are still a minority. And so what does that mean? It means that our national defense is a cooperative, collective exercise, and crucially, it always has been. We are very much stronger when you add in the defense industrial bases, even if they are diminished, of France, of Britain, of Germany, of South Korea, of Japan, of Australia, of, you name it. And you see the kind of shock of recognition of this in that Trump has said, okay, now I want the defense budget to be $1.5 trillion, a $600 billion increase over current numbers, deficit busting, you name it. But it reflects, like, if you want to do, go full Don row where we don't need to be the good guys, you got to absolutely, massively beef up, which is a shocking thing for a lot of Americans to hear. And so I think that if I'm going to go with the key decision, it was that immediate turn towards Mexico and Canada which really raised that very question that we've been talking about the whole time. What is the nature and character of the American democracy right now?
- [61:00]
Steve Hayes
I think we need to make a stylistic change here on the podcast, where we allow people to say bull, but we bleep people who say Don Rowe. Because that grates on me so much. And I'm not criticizing you, David, but like in print, in our textual work, we have to put air quotes around Don Rowe. And it's like, you know, it's like Gulf of America, it's Department of War, and now Don Rowe, they're using Don Rowe. So we are going to skip a question because we're the worst lightning round panel ever assembled. So we're skipping one. But I will get their answers and we will put them in the show notes. So if you're curious to this group's answers about who has been most influential or effective advisor in the first year, we will give them. And you can check the webpage for the show notes. The real final question, and this still does need to be somewhat lightning, please. When does Donald Trump meaningfully become a lame duck? Erik Erickson has argued, in a sense, we're already there. So traditional thinking would have it come after the midterm, particularly if it's an unfavorable midterm. For Republicans, some people might put it at the 2028 Republican primary really gets going. Some people say January 20, 2029. He's never going to be a lame duck until he's actually out of office. I might guess the end of his third term. When do you think, Jonah, Donald Trump will meaningfully be a lame duck?
- [62:36]
Jonah Goldberg
So I'm looking right really quickly through the list of primary dates by state. I think once the bulk of those dates passed and Trump can no longer endorse primary care opponents of members of the Republican House and Senate caucuses, that's when he becomes a lame duck. Right now he has real control over these people. Just ask Senator Cassidy. But once he can't kill them in a primary, you're going to see a bunch of people from purplish districts and states starting to run on their own agendas, not the president's.
- [63:11]
David French
David, what Jonah said.
- [63:12]
Jonah Goldberg
Sarah, she knows I'm right, but she can't say what Jonah said.
- [63:15]
Steve Hayes
No, she could say what David said.
- [63:19]
Sarah Isger
I think one of the ways in which Trump is most effective is keeping people in line. And as long as he can keep Vance scared that if people start talking about Vance too much, that Trump will punish Vance. Vance has every incentive to keep his head down. And the closer we get to lame duck status, the more you'll see Vance keep his head down. And so the question will sort of be, be when the crest of the wave crashes over Vance's head so that there's not much choice.
- [63:51]
Jonah Goldberg
Sort of like a Groundhog Day thing. When does Vance see his shadow?
- [63:56]
Steve Hayes
Mike?
- [63:56]
Mike Warren
The day that Donald Trump dies.
- [63:58]
Jonah Goldberg
Wow. Ooh.
- [64:00]
Steve Hayes
Deep, profound. Wow. Dark.
- [64:03]
Jonah Goldberg
I mean, dead ducks are quite lame.
- [64:04]
Steve Hayes
So thank you for those answers, all except for Jonah and the attempted dad joke. So we have to, before we go today, we have to revisit what can only really be described as an ambush from last week, where three of my closest colleagues, I would have probably described them as friends before that event, turned on me, knifed me in the back, then knifed me in the front. Mike was the Brutus, he wondered out loud on the podcast. Am I the Brutus? Yeah, you are the Brutus. Mike, if you have, you were the guest host. You were the guest host and you allowed Sarah to hijack. Not worth your time. Jonah, my co founder, long time friend. I mean, I've been. I was first writing for Jonah back in the National Review days in the late 90s. That's how long our relationship goes. And he. I don't even think he really agreed with Sarah, but he Just agreed with Sarah because he feels like he needs to agree with Sarah and Sarah. You know, our relationship doesn't go back quite as far. And, you know, I think there are times when I feel very close to you. There are times when I don't. This would be one of those. But the full attack on the changes to not worth your time, which, to answer your question, to begin to answer your question, have been done with forethought. This is a plan. It's a deliberate change. So to orient people who may have missed last week's podcast or turned it off when these attacks started happening, I don't blame you. But we're gonna play that clip of Sarah's rant again. Not because it needs more airtime, but you just have to understand what it was like. So, Max, can we play that for the group?
- [66:06]
Sarah Isger
I hate it so much. And if I had known that stepping away from hosting duties would mean look, I would have actually been fine if y' all had just said, like, we're not doing not worth youh time anymore. We're doing dumb stuff with Steve Hayes. Call it that. Fine. What I object to is continuing to use my trademarked name, but completely eviscerating it of all meaning and purpose and joy and intelligence and etc. Like, did you think this whole time that my not worth your time was like, me talking about mustard versus ketchup? No, it was something that, like, you know, the kids were all talking about or the Twitter was all worked up about and then deciding whether, in fact, that was something that, like, we as a society should be talking about or not. Like, chicken wings, guys. Like, nobody cares.
- [67:01]
David French
What? Nobody cares about chicken wings.
- [67:04]
Steve Hayes
Yes, exactly. In addition to that being incredibly wrong, I do want to point out, Sarah, that you did a not worth your time that was entirely about chicken wings. Do you remember that? Have you just forgotten that you did. You did another one that was entirely about snack food and Pringles and. Max, we can play this next one.
- [67:27]
Jonah Goldberg
Hayes brings the receipts, which is this.
- [67:30]
Steve Hayes
Next one, which was from early 2024. Max, can you play this one for me, please?
- [67:37]
Sarah Isger
Okay. Not worth your time. So I did the brought off Scott and I here for the packers game. It obviously was good luck, Steve, so you're welcome. And for those who have been writing in about the results of the brought off, you're going to be surprised. First of all, we had four groups. The control group was just brats on the grill. Then we had beer, only beer with raw onions and beer with caramelized onions. And first Thing I will tell you is absolutely each.
- [68:05]
Mike Warren
Oh, it goes on and on.
- [68:07]
Sarah Isger
Every single element of the flavor. You could just taste it entirely. Which is really cool and makes us want to experiment more with different test subjects now. Different brats, different beers, different onions. Who knows? Because unlike turned out the winner of the brought off was the control group. It was. It was just the brat on the grill. But then taking the caramelized onions that had been simmering in the beer and putting those on top. So basically, beer caramelized onions on a plain grilled brat with the mustard of your choice. And we did have three different mustards as well.
- [68:46]
Steve Hayes
Oh wait, did we not only have an extended Sarah food monologue, we had must mustard references. Hey, Max, can you play. Can you play this butted clip for us?
- [68:58]
Sarah Isger
Like, did you think this whole time that my not worth your time was like me talking about mustard versus ketchup?
- [69:04]
David French
No.
- [69:05]
Sarah Isger
Plain grilled brat with the mustard of your choice. And you did have three different mustards. Wow.
- [69:13]
Steve Hayes
Okay, so Sarah, I need to give.
- [69:16]
David French
I just.
- [69:16]
Steve Hayes
I'm confused by this because if you. It feels a lot less like you really object to doing things that aren't in the news or aren't even news adjacent or the thing. What did you say? That thing that kids are talking about on Twitter? Were there tweet streams about your brought off that I missed somehow?
- [69:36]
David French
I guess the question is craze a TikTok dance craze. Steve, you wouldn't have seen it. You wouldn't have seen it.
- [69:43]
Steve Hayes
Is this more about you're not really objecting to the changes, you're just objecting to the fact that they're my changes.
- [69:53]
Sarah Isger
Steve, there has never been a more effective takedown. The amount of time.
- [70:04]
Mike Warren
You couldn't get.
- [70:05]
Jonah Goldberg
The Afghanistan Taliban piece done, but you could do this.
- [70:12]
Steve Hayes
The worst thing was I discovered the Pringles one this morning. I woke up at my three hours of sleep and I'm scrolling through the old transcripts and there was the Pringles one. And I'm like, oh, I can't ask Matt to cut that too. I can't ask Max to cut that.
- [70:26]
Jonah Goldberg
I love the image of Steve up at 3 in the morning, chain smoking cigarettes, going through old dispatch transcripts looking for control.
- [70:34]
David French
F mustard control F ketchup.
- [70:36]
Jonah Goldberg
The bleeping isger. I'm going to get her now.
- [70:44]
David French
That has to be clipped. Put on YouTube under steve hayes. Destroy.
- [70:48]
Jonah Goldberg
Sarah.
- [70:53]
Sarah Isger
While I stand by my love of the theory of not worth your time, perhaps it would be wise of me to retract the vitriol to about 97% down from my original tone and presentation.
- [71:15]
David French
Mistakes were made. Mistakes were made.
- [71:17]
Steve Hayes
Well, I think you'll be happy with the outcome as it happens. This has been a long running discussion behind the scenes here because you're a very good host, Sarah. You've done this job well. It's not easy to replace you. And we have had lots of conversations about what we should do with not worth your time. I am, as you know, much less inclined to do stuff like the conspiracy theories about the Royal Family. It's just not my thing. Don't really care. And I do like the idea of moving away from the news. I think part of the. I love not worth your time the way that you did it. Even the Buffalo wings. Especially the Buffalo wings. But I didn't like to have to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene because other people were talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene. So we'd made a conscious decision. I actually sent this in a memo about a month ago to Declan and Marguerite, who's our new sort of audio video honcho, and suggested that we alternate. So we do basically the Sarah version of Not Worth youh Time on Mondays, which is likelier to be. We're going to, you know, Monday Dispod is going to feature a dispatch writer, dispatch contributors talking in many cases about the pieces that we've published. Going a little bit deeper on that, probably a little bit more of a news focus. And the late Week Dispatch podcast is going to be more discursive. We'll. We'll talk about sort of big picture news. Check in. So for that second one, I want to go off the news. I want to do the stuff that you don't like in part because there are a lot more news avoiders in the world today, in the country today. And I got to be honest, sometimes I'm one of them. I just don't want to. I'd much rather talk about your brats or condiments.
- [73:10]
Jonah Goldberg
I'm just going to offer one really annoying, nitpicky semantic correction to you. You said what Sarah, Mike and I did was there's no other word for it but an ambush. Now, David is the most expert here on military tactics. I don't think there's any such thing as an ambush in absentia. You were not here. You call it a betrayal. That work?
- [73:38]
Mike Warren
But that's fair.
- [73:39]
Jonah Goldberg
A show trial, if you.
- [73:41]
Steve Hayes
If you prefer betrayal, I'll give you that, that's fine. Unplanned attack.
- [73:48]
Jonah Goldberg
All right. So, David, you're the only one who wasn't here for the other one. But you are one of the OG Dispatch podcasts.
- [73:53]
David French
Yes.
- [73:54]
Jonah Goldberg
Where do you what is your ruling on this?
- [73:56]
David French
About the fundamental nature of not worth your time.
- [73:58]
Sarah Isger
Yes.
- [73:59]
Steve Hayes
Or any of it.
- [74:00]
David French
Oh, well, first, Steve Hayes just destroyed Sarah Isner. That is definitely, definitely one take. But I think my understanding of not worth your time was it's about things everyone's talking about that we shouldn't be talking about. That was my take on. But then the problem.
- [74:19]
Steve Hayes
Certainly that was the original. Yes.
- [74:21]
David French
But then the problem is that there's not always something like that. Every week there's something like that. Some weeks. But I actually have to be completely stumped as to why we're spending so much time on the not worth your time feature, which actually is kind of a manifestation of one of the most annoying things about podcasts, which is endless podcast banter. That is so it can be fun. Like my decisive victory over y' all in the do you back in your truck conversation, in which you know that that's valuable to people. But it's hard to do that every week. It's hard. And so it is.
- [75:01]
Steve Hayes
I agree with you on that.
- [75:03]
David French
That means that sometimes you're going to go with brats, sometimes you're going to go with mustard and ketchup just because the original, originalist vision of not worth your time is impossible to fulfill in any given week.
- [75:15]
Jonah Goldberg
But endless podcast banter is a great name for a band.
- [75:19]
Steve Hayes
Podcast banter be a good name for a podcast. Actually.
- [75:23]
David French
It's almost getting to the point of some of our early conversations about Spanish wine, which almost killed this whole podcast before it could even start.
- [75:31]
Steve Hayes
Why do you think we built audience the way that we do? I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, so one thing that I should point out is I do. When I send topics around, I do invite nominations for not worth your time. Usually I don't get responses to that. So I will implore you and the others who join this August podcast to give me suggestions. And we are opening this up to the audience. If you have suggestions either for Monday news or news adjacent old school, we'll call them Sarah Isger not worth your time. Questions, topics, segments, please send them to us. And also if there are other things that you would like us to talk about in the late week podcast, we're happy to have suggestions there. You can leave them in the comments. We read all the comments. Or you can send them to roundtabledispatch.com and with that, thanks all for joining one year into the Trump presidency. Three years to go, we'll have the same conversation a year from now in adjacent sells. If you like what we're doing here, there are a few really, really easy ways to support us. You can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. It really works. And speaking of support, here's a shout out to a few folks who recently joined as Premium members. Briar Palmer, Bill Hodes and Sarah Hepburn and Britt Bishop. Very glad to have you aboard. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us at roundtable the dispatch.com we read everything, even the ones from people who prefer Sarah's not worth your time. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. A big thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Victoria Holmes and Noah Hickey. And a special thanks to Max Miller, who cut up the Sarah sound for us. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.