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- [00:08]
A
Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll take a look at Senator Bill Cassidy's primary loss in Louisiana, five years after he voted to impeach Donald Trump, and the president's challenge to Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, also a sometime Trump critic. Is Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party as strong as ever? We'll also discuss the US China Summit and its implications for Taiwan and in the long term, for the United States. And finally, not worth your time, Donald Trump's $1.776 billion settlement out of the Department of Justice. I'm joined today by my Dispatch colleagues, Kevin Williamson, Mike Warren, and David Drucker. Let's div. Gentlemen, I want to start with the race in Louisiana over the weekend. Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican incumbent, lost in the Republican primary there to two other Republican candidates. David Drucker, let me start with you. Why did Bill Cassidy lose this primary?
- [01:25]
B
Because he crossed Trump. And there's one thing you cannot do in Republican politics right now, and that is cross Trump. As I reported today in the Dispatch, actually a really good idea from you. Wasn't my idea. We took a look at the primary messages. What are Democratic primary voters hearing? What do they want to hear? What are Republican primary voters hearing? What do they want to hear? And what Republican consultants told me, and it's something they've been telling me for a while, and I just hadn't really featured it in a story, is that there are a number of ways that you can burnish your image with Republican primary voters. And we're, of course, we're in the midst of primary season, but the number one way to do that is to tie yourself to Trump, to hug Trump as tightly as possible. And if you get the Trump endorsement, I mean, it doesn't get any better than that, and it's just not any more complicated than that. Steve.
- [02:13]
A
Yeah, I mean, especially in a very Trump favorable state like Louisiana, you can certainly imagine that. Look, Bill Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump in the aftermath of January 6th. And as we've seen, most of the people who voted in the House to impeach Trump or in the Senate to convict Trump are no longer in Congress. Not all of them, but most of them. But Cassidy, in the meantime, seemed like he was trying to thread the proverbial needle. Mike. He was critical of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Cassidy is a committee chairman for the relevant committees for RFK junior And is a physician himself. He asked some tough questions. He pushed Kennedy. He ultimately voted for him. There was Some sort of behind the scenes deal, I think, to win his support. And then he was occasionally pretty critical of Kennedy as Secretary of Health and Human Services, pushed back on some of the crazier things that Kennedy has said, and I think thought of himself as somebody who was kind of willing to stand up and challenge Trump. At the same time, he did support Kennedy as his. He supported his nomination. He defended him on certain things. He certainly tried to make himself seem friendly to Donald Trump and the administration. Is that just a hopeless cause, as Drucker suggests, it's not possible to do?
- [03:39]
C
I think it was ultimately a problem for Cassidy in a situation where he had a whole host of problems. And, I mean, we can go through some of the sort of more technical problems that he had, which was, first of all, this was the first time for Louisiana in a long time where they had sort of, strictly speaking, you know, party primaries. Before this year, Louisiana had primaries that were open and essentially anybody could vote for any candidate, both political parties. So the primary itself sort of looked like a general election. And then the general election day in November typically looked like a runoff between the top two. So often of either party of either party. So often it was a runoff between members of the same party. Originally it was the Democratic Party when the Democrats were dominant in Louisiana. These days, it's the Republican Party. So this is the first time Louisiana, you know, recent history that there has been this system. So that's a way in which Cassidy was hurt. I think he was also hurt because there was confusion about when the election was going to happen because there was this election on Saturday. But all of the House primary elections were pushed back because of some of the recent decision, the Supreme Court and that Calais decision that we talked about on the Dispatch podcast last week. Anyway, so there's all of that, and you can look in the number. It was something like 400,000 people ended up voting. Pretty low turnout for Cassidy. So caveats for all of those kind of. It was a weird situation anyway. And then you add that kind of, you know, kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place element here that Cassidy was. He was not what Republican primary voters, the base of the base, really want in a senator. Yes, he had voted to convict in 2021 in that Trump impeachment trial. And he had been outspoken about his disagreements with RFK Jr. And yet, as you say, as you point out, Steve, he voted to confirm RFK Jr. As HHS Secretary. So for those who might have been willing to give him some votes from the small but significant you know, anti Trump or Trump skeptical side of the Republican primary electorate. Didn't give them a lot to go with either. So he was sort of squeezed from both ends. And if you just look at, I was looking at the map of the results here. So there are three parishes in which parishes are what Louisiana calls their counties. Three parishes in which Cassidy won, actually won in this three way race. So he won overwhelmingly 64% in Orleans Parish. This is where New Orleans is. And that was. He got 8,000 votes there again, 400,000 votes total. In this race in neighboring Jefferson Parish, which is sort of the suburbs of New Orleans, he got 40%. So he just barely edged out Julia Letlow, who was the leading candidate, the Trump favored candidate in this. He picked up 14,000 votes to Julia Letlo's almost 14,000 votes herself. And then East Baton Rouge Parish, which is where the state capital, Baton Rouge, college town, is pretty much the most liberal place outside of New Orleans. In Louisiana, he got 35.4% to Julia's 34.9%. I mean, he did not run up the vote even in places where he ought to have for where Republicans might be less inclined to support a Trump endorsed more conservative, more right wing candidate. At the end of the day, like, who was there to vote for Bill Cassidy, like, you can see it in the numbers, he has no constituency beyond the, what, roughly 25% of the Republican electorate. In a low turnout election, there's just nowhere for him to win.
- [07:24]
A
Yeah, Kevin, I want to play a clip from Cassidy's concession speech on Saturday night. And then I want to play a clip from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina talking about Cassidy's loss.
- [07:36]
D
You're gonna make me listen to Lindsey Graham on a Monday?
- [07:40]
A
I'm not only gonna make you listen to Lindsey Graham, I'm gonna make you react to Lindsey Graham cruel. I've been able to participate in democracy, and when, and when you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you want it to. But you don't pout, you don't whine, you don't claim the election was stolen. You don't find a reason why. You don't manufacture some excuse. You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you've had that privilege. And that's what I'm doing right now.
- [08:24]
B
Ask you about the news overnight. Senator Bill Cassidy losing his primary in Louisiana. You worked closely with Senator Bill Cassidy on a range of different issues, including a plan to replace Obamacare. He, of course, voted to convict President Trump back in 2021 in the impeachment trial. Now he's lost his seat. Are you glad that Senator Cassidy is no longer going to be your colleague, Senator?
- [08:46]
E
No, I like Bill. I thought he was a great senator. But he made a political decision. He tried to. He voted to impeach President Trump, which would have ruined his political life. He could never run for office again. Massey's in on the ballot Tuesday. He votes against Trump all the time. What's the headline? Trump Strong. Those who try to destroy Trump politically stand in the way of his agenda are going to lose. Bill made a decision. What would LBJ do? Is it natural for a politician to go after people who try to destroy their, their political life? So Bill, Cassie's lost because he tried to destroy Trump. Massie is going to lose because he's trying to destroy the agenda. You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him, you're going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump.
- [09:35]
A
Kevin, your reaction to those comments from currently sitting US Senators.
- [09:40]
D
Contempt is not a strong enough word. Look, there are a lot of people who didn't want to go along with Trump's attempt to nullify the 2020 election, who didn't have Bill Cassidy's position in resources and wealth and all that. Some of those people lost their jobs, some of them had to move, some of them had to have police protection because they were under threat of violence. And Bill Cassidy is one of these guys, one of these Mike Pence types who grew a conscience for 15 minutes at the end of the administration when he thought it was politically safe to do so and then immediately regretted it for the rest of his political career. And he wouldn't even defend own vote in his campaign. And people would ask him about that impeachment vote, he would say, well, that was the past. My opponents want to talk about the past. I want to talk about the present and the future. And there are people out there who are still under the threat of physical violence. And he won't stand up and say the right thing about the thing that he did. That was the one good thing in that period. And if he had any guts or self respect, he would have said, yeah, voted to convict the son of a bitch. I'd do it again. It was the right decision. It was the right vote. No, I'm not going to talk about it. There's no way to call that anything other than cowardice and it's pure cowardice. And then he starts after he's lost the election with, oh, why not? He's trying to steal the vote and making up excuses about stolen elections and that stuff. He didn't say a God word about that stuff during the campaign because he's a coward. Because he was afraid if you're going to lose by one vote or lose by a thousand votes, at least have some self respect and do the thing you had him to do. He can do all sorts of stuff with his life other than be in the Senate and these weaselly, underhanded, you know, just yellow bellied stuff. Just, it's irritating. Makes me sick. I hate agreeing with Lindsey Graham, but I am glad to see him go. Let the Republican Party be what it is. Be a party of petty piss and authoritarian kooks.
- [11:26]
A
How do you feel, Kevin? Really? Don't hold, don't hold back.
- [11:30]
D
I've been on vacation, man.
- [11:31]
C
Can I say though that I agree with what Kevin said about Lindsey Graham. I mean, Lindsey Graham is accurately describing the stakes of crossing Trump, right? And it's not just crossing Trump, it's crossing Trump voters and Republican voters, I should say, like Republicans like and love Donald Trump. And if you tell them that somebody that represents them in the, in Congress or in the Senate that they have to vote for, you know, is standing in the way or trying to destroy Donald Trump, whether or not that's true or whether or not that's like a fully accurate portrait, like Republican voters don't want that. Republican voters are getting the senator, whether it is Julia Letlow or her opponent whose name in this moment escapes me. John Fleming.
- [12:12]
D
Thing one and thing two.
- [12:13]
C
Yeah, they're going to get a United States senator who more accurately represents their desires, which is they want somebody who will not do anything to go against Donald Trump. Like that's what they want. And I agree with Kevin. Lindsey Graham is right.
- [12:30]
A
So let me push back a little bit on that. So I agree. I mean, and I think it's hard to argue that Lindsey Graham is not right about this being the party of Trump as it's currently constituted today. And certainly these results would suggest as much. But if you think about what Graham said at the beginning of his answer to Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, he said that Bill Cassidy had made a political decision. I find that a very curious observation for a couple different reasons. One, at the time he made the decision, it was the opposite of a political decision. The people who made the political decision were the people who I think refused to vote to convict. Because even when Trump was at, you know, what had been his lowest moment There were many Republicans, including And especially Mitch McConnell, who made a political decision that it wasn't worth risking antagonizing Trump voters to keep that president from ever serving in office again and to remove him. So Cassidy, in the moment, I think, actually made a principled decision, not a political decision, but it's very revealing. And we don't need to spend a lot of time psychoanalyzing Lindsey Graham.
- [13:38]
D
Do you really think?
- [13:39]
A
I do think so.
- [13:39]
D
I'm sorry to interrupt, but yeah, he made that principal decision when it looked like it was gonna be the politically beneficial thing to do because it looked like Trump was radioactive, was gonna.
- [13:48]
C
No, I disagree with you, Kevin. I disagree with you.
- [13:49]
D
Had Lindsey Graham, of all people, knee walking sycophant that he is on the same page, essentially saying, oh, Trump's done for.
- [13:56]
A
But he didn't vote that way. It was two weeks in between.
- [13:59]
D
I know he didn't vote that way, but he was ready to jump off the ship in basically rodential fashion and swim squeaking away.
- [14:07]
B
I think Graham, though, was projecting in this way. You know, don't forget, after the. After the insurrection at the Capitol, Graham gives this speech on the Senate floor. I've tried it. I've tried. I've been with him. I'm done. I'm through. Right. And Graham then makes the political decision because of where he is. And the immediate sentiment among Republican voters, where Republican voters live is, Trump was robbed. What are you guys doing to stand up and stand by Trump? That was the overwhelming reaction of grassroots Republican voters. And I can't psychoanalyze, at least not professionally, Senator Cassidy. And I don't know what he was thinking, but I don't know that he was thinking in Louisiana, where my voters love Trump, that I'm making the political decision to convict. It sounds. I would just have to guess he was making, at the time, a principal decision. I think what made that decision loom small in hindsight was that he refused to stand by his principles when he decided he wanted to run for reelection in the face of sure defeat in a primary because of that vote. He votes for RFK Jr to confirm him as HHS secretary, despite, as a medical doctor, his own concerns. He refuses. In an interview, very famously with John McCormick, who everybody's quoted for us to talk about that vote or to acknowledge it and just wish it away. And so he made himself look small. And the thing about Trump is there was probably nothing Cassidy could do because this particular vote really bothered Trump. But as we all know, Trump loves converts. I mean, you can be JD Vance and call him Hitler and end up on the ticket as Vice president. But what you can't do, and what Trump in his way is very aware of is the fact that so many Republicans grovel and talk out of both sides of their mouth in order to keep him from nuking them. And it just never works. Ever.
- [16:14]
C
Yeah. Can I just say real quick, not to put too fine a point on it, but I disagree with you, Kevin, about the political calculation or lack thereof for a vote to convict. Like, but I think it's an interesting, as Drucker said, projection on Lindsey Graham's part. I mean, like, for instance, I was at a, at off record dinner a few years ago with a Republican United States Senator who described what kind of things this senator was hearing from constituents in a nearby state of the senators. And the anger at the idea that this person who did not vote to convict would even consider voting to convict or would even say a word against Donald Trump for What happened on January 6th, like, that was real and that was uppermost in the minds of these Republican senators. But what I think is happening here is there is a lot of psychological projection from the part of Lindsey Graham to make it seem that those who oppose Trump within the Republican Party are doing so for their own political gain. It's absurd because essentially every Republican who has done that has lost. Like, they, none of them gained politically
- [17:20]
A
at all, as Graham went on to point out in the very same statement. I mean, the incoherence of Graham's argument is majestic. You know, he says, on the one hand, Cassidy made this political decision, and then on the other hand, he could not possibly survive this decision because it's Trump's party. I mean, it's.
- [17:39]
C
But it's important for people like Lindsey Graham to make that incoherent point as loud as possible because it is something that is, I think, catnip to primary voters to say, oh, yeah, yeah, Cassidy could not have been acting on Prince. He must have been acting out of his political self interest. And what logic applies to that statement? Well, it doesn't matter because it can't be that anybody is opposing Trump on principle. That's something that cannot compute for the partisan mind.
- [18:07]
A
Yeah, I think that's where we are. In his answer to Kristen Welker, Lindsey Graham referenced Thomas Massie, Republican congressman from Kentucky's 4th district. Drucker, you were there not long ago, wrote up the Massie race. The primary is, we're recording this Monday, midday. The primary is Tuesday. So when people are listening to this, people may well be voting in Kentucky. Massie has been someone who has been willing to challenge Donald Trump, and I would say challenge Donald Trump in a much more confrontational way than many other Republicans. He's challenged Trump in areas both of principle and size and scope of government, but also on conspiracy stuff. Right. I mean, he really pushed on the Epstein stuff. He's embraced conspiracies. If you look at the way that his campaign is ending, there is a strong undercurrent to be as polite as I could possibly be of antisemitism, direct and open antisemitism on behalf of Thomas Massie from a pro Massey super pac. It's very ugly stuff. But he's challenged Trump on the Iran war, he's challenged Trump on foreign policy. Does he have any chance of retaining his seat?
- [19:24]
E
He does.
- [19:25]
B
And you know, it's interesting, Steve, because it's just like the Trump era that some of the Republicans that tend to confront Trump the most consistently and on principle are the sorts of Republicans that, you know, if you're a Reagan era Republican and a traditional conservative, you may find extremely unsavory. Right. I'm thinking of Marjorie Taylor Greenery and of course, Thomas Massie and a few others. What I found fascinating when I was on the ground in Northern Kentucky was just how skeptical Republicans who opposed Massie and were working to defeat him locally were that they would actually succeed. And one of the things they were explaining to me was that that particular district has really nurtured this community of so called liberty Republicans, these sort of libertarian leaning Rand Paul types, Thomas Massie types, if you will. Who? There's about three dozen of them in the state legislature. Now, a lot of them hail from the fourth district, which is northern Kentucky. It abuts Cincinnati and the southwest corner of Ohio to the west, and then it runs far east through lots of rural districts. It only touches a little bit of metro Louisville just a touch. And what they told me was that the people that support Thomas Massie, they will crawl over broken glass to vote in every election no matter what. And there are actually more voters available to defeat Massie. It's just, are they going to show up, particularly in a primary election that is in a non presidential year? Now, by the same token, the Republicans I've spoken to from outside of the district who've looked at a ton of private polling and are heavily involved in this race, tell me they think Massie is done. I interviewed Ed Gallerine, his primary challenger, and you know, he seems like your normal run of the mill Republican with a Very good resume and the perfect dose of Trump support, if you will. Meaning he talks a lot about Trump and how important that endorsement was. So that has just sort of left me believing that Massie could finally lose, but not willing to bet much money on it because I think it's just a very odd district and I think it's a very sort of odd sort of a race. I know from following the race in the past couple days is that Ed Gallerine seems to be playing a prevent defense here where he doesn't want to be seen much, he doesn't want to campaign much. They think they have a lead and all they have to do is protect it. And of course, Massie is all of a sudden all over the place talking to everybody. And so it makes for an interesting final few days in this campaign.
- [21:55]
A
Yeah, I watch a race like this, Kevin, and on the one hand, I have very strong, very strong instincts to support somebody who's willing to speak up on behalf of principal, even if I don't like some of the stuff he's saying. I mean, I disagree with Thomas Massie on a number of national security issues. I have some pretty strong libertarian instincts in other places. I like the fact that he's a guy who talks about debt and deficits, which puts him in a very, very small group of members of Congress in either party. But I do think it's really gross. If you look at the turn that this campaign has taken, the ad pro Massie super PAC ad singling out Paul Singer features a rainbow colored star of David. Not very subtle, really ugly. As far as I know. Massey certainly hasn't condemned it. It is a pro Massey super pac. And yet I sort of look at the Trump candidate and I don't want him to win either because I don't like the message that that sends to people willing to speak out about Donald Trump and to stand up and say the things that they believe. Is this the sort of throwback to the Iran, Iraq war of American politics in Kentucky?
- [23:05]
D
Stalingrad. Yeah. Just praying for casualties.
- [23:08]
A
Stalingrad. Pick your historical analogy.
- [23:11]
D
Yeah. You know, there's a difference between ideas and the people who hold the ideas. And there are good people who hold bad ideas, bad people who hold good ideas. And you can't necessarily discredit ideas based on the people who put them forward. That said, as a libertarian, I do spend some time sleepless at night sometimes wondering why it is that literally every person who holds my ideas who gets elected to office, office is a shmup. And. But none of this stuff is Going to be surprising if you know the history of like Ron Paul, for example.
- [23:41]
A
Right.
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D
And the newsletters and all that stuff that, you know, Jamie wrote about Jamie Kirchick.
- [23:45]
A
Give people a one paragraph overview of those.
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D
Yeah, conspiracy minded, anti Semitic kook stuff.
- [23:53]
C
Some racist stuff thrown in there too.
- [23:54]
D
Yeah, yeah, you're not a monster. He's just ahead of the curve. It's standard Republican stuff now, but you know, at the time it was shocking. We all had to be upset by it, but nothing you wouldn't see from any run of the mill, nobody running for office in the state legislature in Oklahoma or something these days. Yeah, I do kind of pray for casualties, but I'll say about Massey the same thing that I said about the Cassidy race. I'm not going to do the whole lecture again, but I'm really at this point just content to let the Republican Party be what it's decided to be. And you give the voters a few more years of it and let them decide. This is a party full of people that they want to trust with power. You know, Massey is on the side of the angels when it comes to debt and deficit and things like that, as you mentioned. But there are a lot of people who are on the right side of that stuff that I wouldn't support for public office because they're very, very badly on the wrong side of some other things. And you know, there are people out there who saying, well, you know, if we just cut off aid to Israel, then we could balance the budget. Well, that's not true. But they do care about the debt. At least they're willing to talk about it. But what they really care about is blaming things on Jewish people. So no, however many houses there are, there are pox on all of them. A pox on the whole block, a pox on the neighborhood, pox on the whole district. And I like Kentucky, you know, it's a beautiful state in a lot of ways, but damn, their politics are just terrible. And you mentioned this earlier, but I just, I always feel the need to repeat it every time the name comes up. Speaking of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell did a lot of good and useful and honorable and smart and decent things in the course of his career. And they will all be a footnote compared to him sitting on his hands and allowing Donald Trump to be inflicted on the country a second time. One bad decision shouldn't be the sort of thing that derails your reputation for an entire career. But it will, I think, in the way history remembers this guy. And he made a tragically Wrong decision. He made it for bad reasons. And it's gonna be the first line of his obituary.
- [25:44]
A
All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. There's something satisfying about a well made object. Not a gadget that gets replaced every two years, but the kind of thing you could hand down to your kid. Seems like that's getting a lot harder to find. Today's sponsor is one of the exceptions. Vare, that's V A E R is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials and full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. Let me be honest. I've gone many, many years, not really being a watch guy. Decades even. But beginning a few weeks ago, I started wearing a VER watch and I love it. It's smart and sophisticated and this is really important to me. Understated. It's the kind of watch that seems designed to last for decades. Go to VER watches. That's V A E R watches. Running a small business isn't easy. Right now. There's a lot you can't control, but how you run your operations is in your hands. And I've found that automating payroll and HR really helps cut down on admins so you can stay focused on growing your business. That's what working with Gusto allows you to do. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard, and support your team from anywhere. With automatic tax filing, easy direct deposits, and access to benefits, Gusto takes the stress out of payroll, offering flexible pricing, unlimited runs, and no hidden fees. Try gusto today@gusto.com dispatch and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com dispatch one more time. Gusto.com dispatch have you ever noticed how life proves you wrong? You think certain things will never be you. I'll never settle down. I'll never have kids. I'll never drive a minivan. I'll never be the one worrying about bills or planning ahead. And then one day you are. Life changes and suddenly you have people depending on you. And while it's not easy to think about, planning for the inevitable is part of that. So your loved ones are taken care of. That's where ethos comes in. Ethos makes getting life insurance simple and fully online. Get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and potentially get same day coverage with no medical exam, just a few health questions. Online coverage goes up to $3 million with plans starting around $30 a month. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote@ethos.com dispatch. That's E T H O S.com dispatch. Application times may vary and rates may vary. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Well, moving from deeply depressing discussions of Republican politics to more deeply depressing discussions about Republican politics, let's look ahead one more week to the Texas Republican primary. Mike Warren, we have seen sort of a flurry of activity back and forthing between Ken Paxton, John Cornyn. We are eight days out from voting in Texas. Where do things stand right now? Is it your sense that one candidate or another has momentum? What are the dynamics you'll be looking for as you watch this final week?
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C
So early voting has already begun and then, of course, voting day. Just to clarify, this is a runoff. This is a runoff between Paxton and Cornyn being the incumbent. After a primary a couple months ago where neither won 50% of the vote, there was a third candidate, Wesley Hunt, who sort of spoiled things for an actual 50/1% win in the primary. So we have this runoff. It's been a little odd because the whole primary has been odd because John Cornyn is somebody who is a as establishment Republican as it gets. And I don't just mean that sort of in 2016, he was skeptical of Donald Trump and this whole kind of movement. I mean that in 2026, he is about as on point board with Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party and sort of the party as constituted now in 2026 as anybody. And yet there seems to be a view among Republican primary voters like they just don't like the way he looks. You know, there's something about him that seems and yes, there are some of these small votes, you know, after Uvalde, after this terrible school shooting which killed children in his state, that he sort of tried to maybe find a way to use, you know, the tools of federal policy to find a way to maybe prevent something like that from happening, didn't actually, you know, end up achieving anything in terms of actual change to policy. But that very kind of effort to do so makes him suspect. But it's not as if he's he never, he didn't vote to convict Donald Trump on. On either of those impeachments. He's basically been a loyal Republican, for better or for worse. And yet here he is facing this challenge from Ken Paxton, who is, as we have said on this podcast many times, is a thoroughly corrupt individual, like, through and through, everything about the guy. The guy had his entire office quit after he was indicted, and he is corrupt and boys big and small. And yet here he is in a position possibly, I think, more likely the case probably to win the nomination for Senate in Texas. That seems to be where the momentum is. But I think it's interesting. I'd love to hear what Drucker has to say about this, because he's been following the race closely. But I think it's interesting that in all of this, Donald Trump actually hasn't said or done anything. The extent to which Donald Trump has been involved in this primary, either before the primary or now, before the runoff, is to stay out of it. He's essentially said, I might get involved, I might not. Who knows? By the time this actually, this podcast actually posts, maybe he will actually jump in and weigh in one way or the other. But he hasn't endorsed Paxton, who Paxton has sort of hugged him very tightly, and he hasn't endorsed Cornyn and sort of just, you know, gotten rid of this kind of pesky Paxton problem, which I think if Paxton does win the nomination, he puts the seat at risk, more to be won by James Talarico, the Democratic nominee. So it's a really interesting mess. I think Paxton has the advantage. I don't know what Drucker thinks, but I think that's where the advantage is, and Cornyn is just holding on for dear life here.
- [32:58]
A
Tucker, does Cornyn have a Cassidy problem? I mean, isn't part of the problem that John Cornyn is a sane and sensible rational conservative? Mike calls him establishment. I think he was sort of establishment in 2016 when Trump arrived on the scene. Not as conservative as movement conservatives would have probably liked, but he is now establishment in the new Trump establishment. But it doesn't fit. It's not convincing. Like, I read interviews with John Corn. I see him make pro Trump comments, and I think this guy doesn't mean any of it. He doesn't mean it at all. And that's what I had when I would see Bill Cassidy do this.
- [33:33]
B
Yeah, there's a similarity there, Steve. I don't think what's going on is quite the same thing in this regard. Now, I'll explain it this way. When John Cornyn was coming up in Republican politics in the 90s, and he wins the election to become the state Attorney general, and then he wins a seat in the U.S. senate. He perfectly personified the kind of Republican that Republican primary voters liked at that time and wanted to elect. They wanted to elect sort of stylistically and culturally genteel quasi intellectual reformers who believed in legislating and delivering results that we could see in the form of laws and proposals and white papers and things like that. And what the party wants now is completely different. What they want is somebody who's a bona fide, proven fighter, who doesn't care about the rules and who doesn't use the excuse that I needed to govern, use that as an excuse to compromise with Democrats. When I was in Texas earlier this year to report out our story on this, I talked to a Republican activist who told me a grassroots voter showed up at a congressional candidate forum, told me he planned to vote for Ken Paxton. I said, what did John Cornyn do wrong? You know, did he not vote with Trump enough? And what this guy told me is, you know, actually, you know, Cornyn votes with Trump plenty, but when there's a Democrat in office, he doesn't fight hard enough. He then, you know, he votes too much with the Democratic president. In other words, Cornyn legislates, and Cornyn's willing to make compromises, to move the ball incrementally, even if he can't, you know, throw it for 50 yards and score. And that's just something Republican voters are not interested in right now. Now, there's obviously a Trump factor in this regard, and Mike was getting to that, which is if Trump had said, listen, I know some of you don't like Cornyn, but he's the best way we hold the seat. He's been with me the whole time. Yeah, he criticized me once in a while, but he didn't do what Bill Cassidy did. He didn't try and keep me from ever running again. Then there's a good chance this primary might be over. And in my conversations in the past few days, talking to Republicans out of Texas and connected to Texas, I've been actually kind of surprised at the number of them that said they think Cornyn still has a chance to win the May 26 runoff. But I just remain super skeptical. Runoffs usually go against the incumbent figure. When Ted Cruz won his runoff in 2012, he had trailed the lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, by 10 points heading into the runoff. And he ends up winning that runoff contest going away because turnout goes down and it's much more of a base electorate. And I think one of the reasons the President hasn't jumped in here is because he doesn't really know what's gonna happen, and he doesn't wanna lose. And some people have suggested to me that he might endorse Cornyn. And some of the voters in Texas might say, thank you very much, we love you. We're still voting with the guy we think is more with you and more reflects your style of politics, and that is Ken Paxton. And I think Trump also may look at it finally this way. A couple of my guys, Chris lacivita and, I believe, Fabrizio the pollster, are on Team Cornyn, and I want Cornyn to support me in the Senate. By the same token, Ken Paxton has been about as loyal a foot soldier as might possibly humanly exist. And why do I have to make a choice and make people who like me angry? And that's often how Trump comes down on these things. So, as Mike said, who knows while I'm saying this, an endorsement could come out, but I think that's one of the reasons why this thing's still in limbo.
- [37:10]
A
Kevin, Mike referred to Ken Paxton earlier as a sort of an aggressively corrupt individual. I would say he has to be, by any objective measure, one of the most loathsome politicians of the past decade.
- [37:29]
D
While we're calling him corrupt, we should note it as a legal matter that he hasn't been convicted of anything.
- [37:33]
A
Correct. He doesn't need to be convicted of anything to be corrupt. I think the corruption is obvious. But you're right, it's a good cautionary note. Let's just call him loathsome for all of the other reasons that we know he's loathsome. When I was in Texas a couple months ago, I talked to somebody who's very sort of neck deep in Texas Republican politics who said, you know, Ken Paxton doesn't have the enthusiastic support of any more than 15 to 20% of Texas Republicans. And those are people who can just set aside all of the public reporting about what kind of a person he is and the way that he's behaved in office. But enough of the remaining Texas Republicans view Paxton in the way that Drucker describes as somebody who will go with, you know, sort of a hatchet wielded high, running at Democrats and willing to take on a fight in a way that. That John Cornyn is just not. And there is a way, again, going back to the Cassidy race, in which I think the problem comes down to authenticity, people kind of even as Cornyn articulates a much more pro Trump message. I don't think many people buy it. They kind of know the guy saying what he needs to say to have a chance in a Trump dominated Republican Party. And they look at Paxton and say, look, this guy's as flawed can be. I don't like him. I don't like the stuff he does. But I'll take that authentically loathsome over inauthentic and articulating stuff he doesn't actually believe. Do I capture the dynamic there or is that just an oversimplification?
- [39:20]
D
Well, I think there are two varieties of servility at play and they are not compatible. So Cornyn is an old fashioned party loyalist. He's a guy with a big bucket and he'll carry water for whoever he carried water for Arlen Spector back in the day. He carried water for George W. Bush when it was George W. Bush. And now he carries water for Donald Trump when it's Donald Trump and he'll do whatever he thinks the party requires of him. The Trump people are not party loyalists. They often talk in those terms, but they don't want party loyalists, they want Trump loyalists. People who were party loyalists were in many cases critical to or opposed to Trump in 2015, 2016 and some other places. And that is in their book, sort of worse than being a Democrat in lots of ways. And you know, the lesson that Cassidy has learned, I think the lesson that Cornyn's going to learn is that you can never be a big enough sycophant if there's not some, you know, genuine element of whatever depravity it is that makes you a Trump person in there. They can sniff out the falseness of it. I'm really looking forward to J.D. vance learning that lesson, that even J.D. vance isn't a big enough sycophant and he's going to be thrown under the bus at the first opportunity. But yeah, party loyalty and Trump loyalty are not always congruous. They're not always well aligned sets of incentives. And Cornyn's just the wrong kind of politician for that. I would be very surprised if it weren't Paxton. And I think your friend is probably a little low on the percentage. I don't think it's 65% of Texas Republicans are super in love with Paxton. But remember, this is voting against, not voting for. And I think there's probably a strong majority, probably approaching 60% that are just anti Cornyn because he's been there for a long time, because he's boring, because he is this wrong kind of figure because he is an old fashioned sort of party operative kind of guy. And they don't like that. There are questions you want to ask them about Paxton, like. Like how many affairs is too many for a guy to vote for? But I guess, you know, but this is the Trump movement, right? I want to ask my evangelical friends, like, how many porn movies can a guy be in before you don't want to vote for him for president?
- [41:30]
B
Because, like Kevin, I think we have to ask how. How few affairs is too few to.
- [41:36]
D
Yeah, there's that. There's that as well.
- [41:39]
A
Grim.
- [41:39]
D
So, yeah, it's gonna be a hoot. And the good news, I guess, for Texas Democrats anyway, is that if Paxton is elected, he's probably not gonna get very much done because he's not really much of a policy guy. He's probably going to continue to run into various kinds of legal and ethical problems which are going to get a lot worse when Trump goes away, because Trump's not going to be there to protect him from federal investigations and inquiries of various kinds. So, yeah, good luck.
- [42:05]
A
Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the Dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up@thedispatch.com join and if you use the promo code Roundtable, you'll get a month free. Speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion before we move to Not Worth youh Time Today. I do want to go around the horn once and get your reactions to President Trump's trip to China and the summit with Xi Jinping. We spent a good bit of our discussion a week ago talking about what we might expect here in one of the areas. There were a couple of things that we focused on, I think spent a fair amount of time on that we saw copious amounts of in the reporting and in the videos that we got coming out of Beijing. One of them was Trump's obsequious praise of Xi Jinping again and again and again and again. And I think we talked about last week that just being, you know, the function of Trump's respect for authoritarians. I think he's envious of authoritarians and he likes it. And repeatedly throughout the trip, he called Xi Jinping a great leader and even talked about how people are surprised when he calls him a great leader, but he calls him a great leader because he's a great leader. But the more interesting, substantive takeaway from the trip, and I think troubling from the perspective of the United States, were President Trump's comments about Taiwan had certainly China hands, including our Michael Sobolic, who joined us last week, and others raising eyebrows when Donald Trump appeared to talk about Taiwan and US Arms sales to Taiwan as just a bargaining chip for US Policy with respect to Taiwan. Kevin, you've written a number of long and very thoughtful, I think, forward looking, sort of prophetic essays for us about China. You've hosted podcasts with China experts. You, I think you were away from the dispatch last week, so I'm hoping you weren't paying attention to every single moment of the summit. But as you tuned in to what was happening halfway across the world, what were your impressions about what you saw and where does this leave the United States vis a vis Taiwan?
- [44:41]
D
It was almost entertaining to watch Donald Trump try to come up with a way to literally sell the Taiwanese. What can I get for this bargaining chip that I have? Yeah, I mean, not much to say about it. You know, nothing substantive really seems to have come out of it. It was more of a communications kind of trip. What Trump seems to have communicated to Beijing is have at it. You know, the Chinese are, they are not the, you know, 10,000 year strategic thinkers that, you know, some people treat them as though they are, but they do play a longer game than we do in the United States in many ways, where we've got big elections every two years. That said, I'm just consistently surprised that they haven't just done something already with, yeah, because what are we going to do? You know, nothing. It's gnarly. We tied down in Iran and using up weapons and stuff over there. I just don't think the Trump administration is much inclined to do that with his, you know, talk about, hey, they're 53 miles away, we're 9,500 miles away. And that's a nice way of saying not really our problem. And our policy toward China and Taiwan over the years has been, I think, a bad one in a lot of ways. You know, this idea of strategic ambiguity is, you know, what they call it. We kind of think of Taiwan as a country, but not really as a country. And it's, you know, kind of part of China, but not really part of China. And the fact that we've never really had a strong consistent coherently articulated view that spells out what our national security interests are there, besides poking a thumb in the eye of Beijing, and besides our general desire as Americans to support freedom loving, self governing people wherever we find them, which, as we all know, those sort of idealistic things aren't going to really play very well right now. So I think even if we had a different kind of president who really cared about this issue and really was more committed to the independence of Taiwan, or at least the survival of Taiwan as this quasi autonomous republic, I think it would be difficult to make the case to the American people. I think that the American people would have a hard time understanding what our interests are. You know, Trump very much framed Taiwan mainly as an economic competitor to the United States, talked about how they stole our chip industry and that stuff. And that's not just a Trump thing. As I've pointed out some over the years, that Joe Biden was every inch the economic nationalist that Donald Trump is, kept a lot of his terrorists because he has similar kinds of views about international trade. Barack Obama, a little less so. He's read a few more issues of the Economist, but still he takes a very nationalistic kind of view of trade and industrial relations. In particular, very famously gave a speech in which he tried to revive Teddy Roosevelt's new nationalism and all that stuff. So these views are not weird fringe populist tendencies. You find them in both parties. I talked to people at a Bernie Sanders rally back when he was running for president who were just, you know, all in about Germany and the German model. But Germany's problem is there are too many foreigners and too many immigrants and that stuff. And they sounded like Trump voters. So these sorts of things are not limited to Trump and his weird little circle of oddballs. And I don't think that any president could probably really give the American people a good reason to go to war with a China like a country like China over our interest in Taiwan. I think there might be a case to be made, but I suspect that politically that would be a very, very difficult thing to do.
- [47:48]
A
Mike Warren, you were part of that discussion last Monday, and there was some speculation as to whether Trump would kind of reveal his hand. There had been reporting at that point heading into the summit that Trump was more focused on economic issues, as Kevin points out, and that there were a series of sort of soft negotiations in the lead up to the summit about sort of economic deal making. Some of them might have involved tariff reductions or renegotiating tariff deals. Some of them had to do with economic development. Issues. And the one thing that we were, I would say, as a group concerned about, curious about, was this idea that Trump would use Taiwan as a very good negotiating chip. And as it turns out, Donald Trump literally called Taiwan a, quote, very good negotiating chip. Where does that leave us? There's not much that came out of the summit, I would say that sort of were there are action plans now, there weren't deals struck, which is often true of these summits between global leaders. Where are we now? And do the Chinese, given everything that Kevin said, do the Chinese leave this summit thinking that they, in effect, have, if not a green light, a yellow light? Because this is the way that Trump was talking about Taiwan.
- [49:14]
C
That's my fear. It was my fear before Trump went to China that this would, as I think, Kevin, you said something about this is sort of a messaging trip. I think that's totally true. If you look at the outcome, or lack thereof, on the economic negotiations and the supposed trade deals, I mean, it's just words. We don't seem to have anything concrete, and I don't really know why we would expect anything else. But look, this is this. The concern with Trump has always been that it's always been just words and that it was always going to be just words. And the promise of Trump going back to 2016 was that finally there would be a United States president who would be tough on China. Right? That, like, that was actually kind of his message. And what that what tough on China looked like was maybe much murkier. Maybe it would be somebody who would be tough on mainland China vis a vis Taiwan. Of course, that's turned out to not be true at all because Trump doesn't really seem to understand or have any recognition of what the Taiwan issue actually means and actually stands for. And so, in a way, he's been able to just continue what I would consider the kind of State Department blob approach to Taiwan, which is sort of frustrating to those who look to Taiwan as sort of a beacon of hope, democracy and freedom in that region. Ultimately, at the end of the day, there doesn't seem to have been any movement on anything positive from the American point of view. And I'll just end by noting that we talked a little bit about this last week about the idea that Trump might bring up the release of Jimmy Lai, who is a media mogul, former sort of owner of big newspaper in Hong Kong, who has been imprisoned and is old and is sick and is likely dying in prison right now. And there has been a big push here in Washington from members of his family to try to push Trump to negotiate for the release of Jimmy Lai as well as a number of other political prisoners in China. Trump brought Jimmy Lai's name up. He brought a couple of other. There's a pastor in China as well who's been imprisoned. Apparently there's no movement on that either. And Trump has even said as much, has basically said, you know, that's tough. That's tough for Jimmy Lai. It's going to be a really tough one for Xi.
- [51:39]
A
And even before the trip, Trump seemed to blame Jimmy Lai in some ways for his own imprisonment, which was really a betrayal.
- [51:47]
D
He likes the ones who didn't get caught.
- [51:49]
A
Yeah, he likes the ones who didn't get really a profound betrayal. Compared him to, in some ways to James Comey said that sort of, he had created these problems.
- [52:00]
D
China could settle this thing like tomorrow if they really wanted to by essentially having a one way union policy of saying, look, we're going to have free trade with Taiwan. We're going to have free movement of people with Taiwan. Don't have to get the Taiwanese to buy into it. We're just going to do it unilaterally on our side. We'll treat them like a province because we say they're a province. We'll make their taxes deductible and kill them with kindness. And 10 years they would have effectively absorb Taiwan economically and socially and politically, and that would be over. They could do it without firing a shot if they were halfway smart, but they'll end up fighting a war over it and killing a bunch of people.
- [52:32]
A
Yes, Drucker, last word on this to you. President Trump has sort of puffed his chest out on China, as Mike points out, for the better part of a decade. And yet when he has these in person meetings, he kisses the rear of Xi Jinping and comes away with virtually nothing to show for the United States. Does it matter to voters that he's tied tough on China, that there's this gap between the way he portrays himself and the way that he acts?
- [53:01]
B
Nothing matters to voters until it becomes their problem. And they may not even connect the dots because this may become their problem long after Trump has left office. And then they'll be asking all of us, meaning everybody in Washington, what the heck happened, who fell down on the job and why do I have this problem? And the irony of Trump is that he's the one that reframed the US Position toward China. He made it an issue that the US Needs to stand up to China. He wasn't the first or only one to say so. But as a president, he was the first one, after an era ushered in by Richard Nixon of creating a sort of alliance with China because we wanted to heisman the Soviet Union. And so he was the one that reframed our relationship. And yet at every turn he has been highly deferential to the Chinese. And I think, as we've come to learn, and this is a great example, the president doesn't know how to negotiate internationally. He doesn't do complex negotiations. He doesn't do intricate negotiations. He either bullies countries that are less powerful than the United States or he talks tough and then ultimately defers to countries that are either near or near or sort of at our level. I'm thinking of Russia and China here. There aren't that many. But there's such a noticeable difference in how he treats, let's say, our NATO allies, none of whom individually could handle us, and how he deals with the dictators in China and Russia. And the problem with his treatment of Taiwan as a bargaining chip. And like Mike and like the rest of the group, I remained extremely worried about this is not so much Taiwan, even though you could look at chip manufacturing and you could look at what it would say about the US As a global power for China to give us the finger and just go take it. Understanding that Kevin is right, are we really going to go to war over Taiwan? At least not today? Probably not. Most likely not. But here's the problem. When you treat Taiwan as a bargaining chip. We have a bunch of countries in the region, including allies of ours. I'm thinking of Australia and I'm thinking of Japan. I'm thinking of the Philippines. And we want them to be within our sphere of influence. We want them to follow the rules of the road that we set out. We want them to host our military bases and we want them to prioritize trading with our economy above China's economy. And the more we let China do whatever it sees fit in the Asia Pacific, the more, one by one, if this were to continue long term, countries that are not officially allies, but then countries that are allies are going to start taking their cues from Beijing because they're the big dog on the block and we're diminished or we're at least very uninterested. And then this gets back to how vibrant the American economy is, how powerful we are around, around the world, and ultimately back to voters asking what the heck happened and who's responsible. And oftentimes you have to look back in time at things like this that don't come home to roost immediately. So everybody's like, ah, it's fine, and I'm sure everything's fine, but this is how it starts. And later it ends in trouble. And then, and this is the thing that concerns me the most especially, you know, I've got a I've got two boys, one who's 14 and one who's about to be 11. We end up in a war 10 to 12 to 15 years from now because China really thought that they could get away with more than we were going to allow them, but we gave them the impression that it was okay. Then we end up in a hot war that was completely unnecessary, or at least somebody could have tried something different but didn't.
- [56:52]
A
Before we jump to not worth your time, I wanted to get from each of you something that you had read in the Dispatch in recent days that you would recommend to our listeners. And I will start by recommending a piece that David Drucker wrote. We published it a little over a week ago, and it is about the race in Kentucky's 4th congressional district. Will Maga come for Thomas Massie? Maga's certainly coming for Thomas Massie. Will they succeed? That's another question. But having read a lot about the race over the past week and a half since we published this article, I still think it holds up as probably the best framing of the race and what we're likely to see in the next couple days. So I would recommend David's piece to you all. David, do you have a piece to recommend for our listeners?
- [57:40]
B
Yeah. Charles Hillo, who's usually on Capitol Hill for us, was just in Eastern Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley. And I'm reading this directly here. The headline of the piece is Democratic Efforts to Reclaim Blue Collar Voters Get a Test in Pennsylvania. And he talked to some Democrats and people running for office that understand that they have a problem with working class voters, notwithstanding Trump's slide in the polls. And it's indicative of what I think sometimes a lot of people miss when they're looking at Democratic politics, which they have their own set of problems. But there is a real internal debate going on right now inside the Democratic Party about how you write the ship and where do you want to go next. And I think Charles did a good job of capturing that, and he did so on the ground in some real competitive territory. That's going to tell us a lot about whether House Democrats win the majority after all of this redistricting that has gone against them. And if they do how big is that majority?
- [58:36]
A
Yeah, Mike, you led the conversation last week in my absence. I appreciate you not letting anybody ambush me as you did the last time I was away. It was very, very generous of you this time. Really terrific discussion about redistricting, the politics of it, the history of it. If you happen to miss that conversation last week, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it. I listened to it on my cross country drive and learned a lot. Mike, do you have a piece that you would recommend to our listeners?
- [59:08]
C
Yeah, a little off topic from that. Thank you, Steve, for recommending that podcast. Emily Oster has a piece for us this week, the Benefits of a Later School Bell, looking at the idea of starting school later in the day. I'm not necessarily convinced by it, but it's interesting and intriguing to me as the father of three sons, one of whom is he'll be in middle school in just a couple of years and sort of interested in seeing what happens in terms of sleep schedule and performance in school. So I'm always interested and always want to read Emily Oster on these kinds of topics because I always learn something, something.
- [59:43]
A
I'll read her on anything she writes.
- [59:45]
D
Kevin I'll re endorse all three of those choices. I liked them all very much and add to them. I'm not sure if Grace pronounces her name Salvatore or Salvatore, but Grace, that lovely evocative name she has, by the way, on Nebraska, which was just terrific. I've really been enjoying the Where I'm from series. I started one of my own, which unfortunately now is 11,000 words long.
- [60:08]
B
That's as big as Texas.
- [60:09]
D
What did they give you?
- [60:10]
A
They give you a 20,000 word limit?
- [60:13]
D
No. No one's even asked for one. No.
- [60:16]
A
Here's what sucks about this. In all seriousness. You've written 11,000 words so far. If you wrote another five, I would want to read them all. I would not want to have to have it edited. What are we going to do? We're going to have this. Nobody else is going to be able to write this series for the rest of the year. It's just going to be Kevin serialized.
- [60:36]
D
We don't have any paper anymore. We can put as many pixels as we want on the Internet and people can read through.
- [60:43]
A
That is an argument I would have made when I was a writer. Now that I'm an editor, I'm less sympathetic.
- [60:50]
D
I've got a missing week to make up for.
- [60:52]
A
So that's good. So finally today, I had actually given our distinguished panel a heads up that I wanted to end with a discussion about summer camps because it's almost summertime. We're making some preparations in the Hays family to send send a kid away to summer camp. And I want to wanted to get a sense of how our panel thinks about summer camps. And I'm not going to do that. We're going to save that. Maybe it'll be Thursday, maybe it'll be next week. But I want to get an immediate reaction from the panel to something that broke during the course of our conversation here. We don't do a lot of this hot takery quick reaction stuff. It's kind of not how the Dispatch was built. But this has been been something that I think we've anticipated for several weeks. There's been sort of behind the scenes discussions about it. There's been reporting periodically about this potential deal and now it has been announced by the Department of Justice. And I'll just read you the top of the New York Times at this point only has a two paragraph news brief about it. And then I'll get your reaction. The Trump administration announced on Monday the establishment of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department, creating a potential pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to his allies and supporters. The highly unusual plan, slammed by critics as a political slush fund, came after President Trump withdrew his lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion against the internal Revenue Service, an apparent effort to skirt oversight by the judge in the case as he moves toward arranging a fund to funnel taxpayer money to his allies and supporters. This, I have to say this is one of the most absurd things I have seen in the Donald Trump era.
- [62:58]
C
Then just wait till tomorrow, Steve.
- [63:01]
A
I mean, honestly, I'm open to anything that, you know, part of my mantra during the past decade is that we can always go lower. There are always new surprising and shocking things. So I'm open to the possibility. We've got two and a half years left. I expect we'll see more of this kind of stuff. But this is one of the most truly preposterous things I've seen the federal government do in my 30 years of covering politics. And one of the most truly preposterous things I've heard the federal government doing as long as I've been able to read about such matters. I have the actual release by the Office of the Attorney General and it is one of these sort of laugh so you don't cry moments. The settlement agreement in Trump v. IRS has created the anti Weaponization Fund. The settlement agreement directed by the Attorney General to issue an order establishing funding and any other relevant requirements of the fund for the fund within 60 days. This is section C. Within 60 days of the effective date, the United States shall provide the U.S. department of the treasury with all necessary forms and documentation to direct a payment of $1,776,000,000 to an account for the sole use by the Anti Weaponization Fund. It's just like the Times in its very New York Times way, I think tried to give the readers a sense of what this was without making the claim that it actually is what it is.
- [64:38]
C
I mean, this is just a.
- [64:40]
A
A political slush fund. Is there anything more to it? Am I not seeing anything? Do any of you. Have any of you done reading or have an understanding that can help us put this in a less corrupt light? Drucker, I'll start with you.
- [64:56]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll go ask the question, but look, maybe this is how Trump's gonna try and address the affordability crisis. You take some government money and you. You funnel it to people in need.
- [65:10]
A
The government money comes from the taxpayers. I would explain that.
- [65:14]
B
No, no, no. It comes from the oligarchy. Graham Platner says oligarchy, and I'm going with that. The other thought I had is like, this is a great gig where you get to go to work somewhere and then use other people's money to pay friends of yours. And it doesn't work that way where I work. So maybe you and Jonah can talk. Talk about that. All things being, look, kidding aside, although this is how I'm going to deal with this psychologically, is to just kind of make jokes about it, is that I would like to actually ask experts and historians and anybody else, is there anything similar like this in American history that has been directed by a president and there and then produced by the Department of Justice or any other government agency, I would be interested to know. The other thing I will say politically is that, look, if the economy was flying high, inflation had been dealt with, and voters were saying to themselves, look, this is who I thought he was, but I made a bargain. He would be this guy, but deliver me this economy and this quality of life, then it's one of those things where it's just the price of admission with President Trump, but because the economy is where it is as far as voters are concerned, among other things, you know, I think this is just an another political problem for the president and his party. And yes, you know, a la the jokes I was Making this is a sort of, it's a problem for how people look at our government and our institutions and whether they have any faith or trust in them. But, you know, that's a longer conversation than my hot take at the end of the podcast.
- [66:54]
A
Yeah. Kevin among the people that Donald Trump believes have been unfairly targeted by a weaponized Department of Justice are the people responsible for the attacks on January 6th who were summoned to Washington and I think provoked by President Trump's own language, these people who beat police officers and did tremendous damage to the Capitol itself, threatened senators, members of Congress. Mike Pence tried to, actively tried to stop the process of certifying the election. Trump has repeatedly talked about them as victims of the Joe Biden Justice Department. Should we expect that January 6ers, having been pardoned by the president, are now going to be paid by the US government?
- [67:41]
D
1 assume so. You asked me if I'd done any reading to put this into context, and I have. It's all been Kafka and Orwell, but it has been reading that puts it into context. Yeah, he's a criminal, right? I mean, you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, you elect someone like this. This is the stuff he does.
- [67:58]
A
Mike, last word to you. Maybe there's not much more to say about it. We'll do more reporting on it. But this, I guess, again, nothing at this point surprises me and we had heard reporting about this, but this seems to be another new low.
- [68:15]
C
Well, look out of an abundance of sort of fairness or telling the totality of the story, it is worth pointing out that it is a pretty regular occurrence that in Democratic administrations you see settlements, particularly on environmental issues, you know, pollution enforcement settlements and other kinds of things that, you know, sue and settle,
- [68:40]
D
as they call it.
- [68:40]
C
Yes, the sue and settle regimes, even the most generous sort of look at them, it's their payouts to Democratic interest groups. So I want to get that out there and say that like, I agree,
- [68:50]
A
and that's relevant context.
- [68:52]
B
Important.
- [68:52]
C
It's important context that should be acknowledged in this conversation. And that being acknowledged, the stories of so much of the Trump administration and the Trump era approach of Republicans and Trump administration officials is to sort of to take what they believe to be an abuse of power from their political opponents and turn it up to 11 in the most absurd and, and nakedly corrupt ways as possible. And so my reaction to this, and by the way, the 1776, I mean, it makes me laugh. It's cute. It also kind of makes me sick to see sort of such a, you know, it's just a year, it's just a number, but it's an important number for our, in our country's history. And of course, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of that. And here it is being so cheaply used as a PR stunt that also happens to be, you know, corrupt. And it just, it's disgusting, frankly, and I hate to see it.
- [69:55]
A
In fact, Mike, you are right. The attorney general himself, in rationalizing this fund, points to agreements by the Obama administration's Department of Agriculture over the years to justify this new 1776 fund.
- [70:16]
C
And we all know two wrongs make a right. Right? That's what we were taught.
- [70:19]
E
Yeah.
- [70:20]
A
And these may be similar in kind. They're very different in degree. I would argue they're not actually similar in kind. There may be some sort of notional precedent.
- [70:28]
D
We could let these J6ers go to court. You know, if we want to do a sue and settle, let's make them at least sue. Yeah, well, instead of just buying new buffalo pelts for everybody, they still, most
- [70:38]
A
of them should still be in jail. Sorry for the departure and the serious, more serious, not worth your time. I do think it's worth your time. I think it's so worth our time that I imagine we'll be talking about it again on Thursday as we do some reporting and come back to the topic. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks, Kevin, Mike, David. See you next time. Finally, if you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review and subscribe to the channel show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtableispatch.com we read everything, even the ones from listeners who like a good old fashioned slush fund that's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.