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- [00:08]
A
Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll discuss the renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran, the failure of the Memorandum of Understanding, the misunderstanding of the Iranian leadership, and where we go from here. Then we'll look at the changing momentum in the war between Russia and Ukraine and the changing tone from Donald Trump. We'll also spend a few minutes remembering Senator Lindsey Graham, who passed away unexpectedly over the weekend. And finally, for not worth your time, I asked the panel about their inner curmudgeon. I'm joined today by my Dispatch co founder Jonah Goldberg, Dispatch politics editor Mike Warren, and Mike Nelson, former Special Forces officer, ex COO of the Institute for the Study of War, and also a Dispatch contributor. Let's dive in. Mike Nelson, when we look at what's happening in the Persian Gulf right now, it looks pretty close to a return to war. What's happened in the time since both parties signed the Memorandum of Understanding and Donald Trump declared in a celebratory way that this was the path to peace?
- [01:29]
B
Well, this current return to kinetic activity, or what looked like combat operations between both parties. The Iranians initiating strikes on commercial shipping and the United States striking targets within Iran. This seems to largely be predicated around each party's interpretation of 0.5 on the MoU, which was free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz. I believe it was Saturday. The Iranians initiated strikes against three commercial ships that were transiting the strait that had taken this new southern slash western route that basically hugged the Omani coast as closely as possible.
- [02:04]
A
Just to clarify, Mike, this was a week ago Saturday, right?
- [02:07]
B
Yeah. Right, Right.
- [02:08]
A
We're recording on Monday, nine days ago.
- [02:10]
B
Yep. Right. So this in the Iranians interpretation fell outside of what they believed to be agreed upon control. And again, I think they are nefarious actors and duplicitous, not, not representing this as a legitimate grievance. But what they are claiming or the justification for why they conducted these strikes, that this route that would have fallen primarily in Omani territorial waters and therefore outside Iranian ones or even outside those extended range that they asserted they could control, was not within the spirit of the mou, not within what they wanted to establish as permanent control over the strait. So they conducted strikes against these ships. This was obviously a clear violation. This was obviously something that the United States could not ignore. So we conducted some initial strikes, a series of strikes of reinitiated combat against key targets that either the actual infrastructure that allowed them to conduct these attacks or the command and control nodes that ordered them, including potentially it's been reported that we successfully killed the new commander of the irgc, Ahmad Wahidi, who is, you know, I think the fourth one or the third one, I guess, since we initiated combat operations. So right now we have initiated strikes in response to these Iranian threats against commercial shipping. What has not happened, or at least to my mind has not happened, is that the United States has said the Iranian regime is in breach. The MOU is not valid anymore. There is no longer a ceasefire. We are returning to full scale combat operations. A state of war exists between the United States and Iran because the state of peace we negotiated is no longer valid. We heard the President say that to some extent in Ankara, but then also say, but I'm gonna let negotiations continue. So in centcom's messaging about these strikes, they've said, we've conducted these strikes and now we're pausing. And then they reinitiated and they said, these were ordered by the commander in chief. And now we're potentially waiting to see what the Iranians are doing. So I think while we put additional pressure on the Iranians, until we maintain that pressure, it's not gonna have any real effect.
- [04:09]
A
Jonah, how ironic is it that Mike could sort of drop in passing this notion that Donald Trump said that the ceasefire was over, that we were returning to combat operations, and yet everybody understand that's not. He doesn't speak for his own government in this case.
- [04:25]
C
Yeah, I don't have access to the German vocabulary that is required to explain the depths of irony in the Trump era. But, yeah, I mean, look, I think I got some stuff I don't want to say completely wrong in my Iran war punditry of the last two months, but I think I didn't follow through on my own conclusions properly on a couple things. And the first one is I thought the MOU stunk. I literally don't know an independent minded, smart person who's informed, who didn't think it was garbage to one extent or another as text. Right. As an actual agreement of some kind. But what I didn't fully appreciate was in all my criticism, I thought, well, the Iranians are never going to adhere to this in a way that is useful. What I didn't fully appreciate is that we were never going to adhere to it in a way that was completely useful either. It was purely fig leaf stuff so Trump could get, you know, people to stop talking about how he screwed up the war and move things to, you know, onto other topics and get the Strait of Hormuz open. And so I think essentially it is going to be simply a state of chaos. Right? I mean, I think our own Nick Katoggio was the first to call the first Seafire Schrodinger's ceasefire. I think it's Schrodinger's war at this point. It never stopped being a war. It never really started being a war. It's been this weird, gray thing. And Trump is just gonna keep making stuff up as he goes along until we get some sort of resolution here in some way. The other point I think I undervalued was, you know, I remember when Putin was about to launch the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I wrote a column saying what Putin's forgetting is the rule of be careful what you wish for, which is just another way of saying the law of unintended consequences and the enemy has a vote and all these other cliches. We focus because we're Americans and we follow politics. We follow the way Trump misreads the enemy and miscalculates. I think we discount the degree to which Iranians misread the enemy and miscalculate. And Trump was right to relaunch these hostilities. Iran was in the wrong. Iran was doing things that they cannot be allowed to do. And I think Iran is feeling its oats in ways that are causing them to do some stupid things by their likes for their interests. And so I think we discount here the possibility that this thing could still ultimately end in success on American terms. The Iranian regime could still collapse. It is still under enormous pressure. Its military assets and its ability to project power are diminished and continue to be diminished. The fact that the Supreme Leader couldn't even show up at his own father's funeral tells us something about what's going on in there. And the thing that I keep thinking about, I think I'm gonna write about it today, is that the one thing we do know is there's no plan, right? There is no grand strategy. Trump got us into this because he thought it was gonna be another Venezuela type thing. Once that fell apart, he's just been iterating as he goes, making stuff up, kicking the can like he's done with his creditors and with people demanding a healthcare plan and people demanding he releases tax returns. Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, just counting on the news cycle to ignore it. And so the thing I worry about to some extent is whether it's a success or a failure, is partisans are going to want to ascribe the failure or the success to some grand theory of international Diplomacy and foreign policy and national security, and you can't. It's like it's just having a scatter painting of dots, and everyone gets to draw the picture out of the dots that they want because there is no grand strategy here of any kind.
- [08:28]
A
So let me follow up with you on that, Jonah. I mean, I think we have to leave open the possibility that the United States can stumble its way to a victory or something that looks like a victory or can be spun as a victory. How does it happen? What's the best case scenario for something like that? And who is the president going to be listening to? Or is it just the case that, you know, the United States, because of our military superiority, can have a series of sort of tactical victories that add up to a victory? I mean, the Strait of Hormuz problem, which we talked about in the show immediately after the Memorandum of Understanding and identified as one of the many areas of the MOU that was problematic because of the vague language that was used, that, it seems to me, is the fundamental problem right now. There are many others, but that is sort of the most immediate problem. So much so that you had Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, saying in remarks just over the past couple days that really the goal of what we're doing now is to return to the status quo ante, where the Strait of Hormuz was usable in the way that it had been used for decades before this. How does one fashion a victory out of anything like that?
- [09:46]
C
Well, first of all, I have no idea. But second of all, look, one of the. I would say it's one of the best parts of war and peace, but really, I have to be a little more honest and say it's one of the best parts of war and peace. I remember where General Kutuzov has this whole riff about time and patience, right? Like, there are laws of entropy out there. There are things that just run out on their own accord. A more recent reference or metaphor I can use is from the Guns of Navarone, where they have to blow up a dam and everyone expects it to be this giant explosion, but all it does is really the explosives just crack it, and then over time, the water pressure forces the dam to come over. There are a lot of internal problems in Iran. You know, they're not having huge success feeding their people. Their currency is still a mess, all these kinds of things. If Trump had the strategic patience to just continue to apply pressure, I think the naval blockade was the only really sort of smart strategy they had since they gave up on Venezuela 2.0. So I don't think getting the Strait of Hormuz reopen and free for international traffic is the kind of victory I have in mind. The only victory that I think could be seen as an actual strategic victory is essentially the implosion of the regime. And regimes can implode without it being part of some other country's regime change plan. Right, but like the fact that we're putting pressure on them, the fact that their inability to manipulate the region in the Middle east, the fact that they really haven't gotten all those Gulf states on their side or anything like that, I mean, there's a lot of lip service going on.
- [11:31]
A
And are now attacking them again.
- [11:32]
C
Yeah, and are now attacking them. And also, look, I mean, I'm not saying it's likely, but Europe could get to a point where they're like, crap, you know, we just need this stuff to get out of the Strait of Hormuz. They come up with a face saving way to spin it, and they start sending in, you know, minehunters and sweepers and all that stuff to help us out. And that puts even more pressure on Iran. And so we always like these cliches about how Iran never wins wars but always wins negotiations. If they keep pressing what they think are their advantages and screwing up the MOU kind of terms, then Trump could just start bombing again, which is what he's done. And that puts pressure on them. And so, again, I'm not saying it's gonna end in a happy story. I just think that what I think a lot of us got wrong at the margins, because I still think we were right about, like, it was a mistake, this was not well done. Execution really matters, all of that kind of stuff. What we got wrong at the margins is Iran is an irrational actor too. And that if freelancing and iterating and making it up as you go along continues, that means that hostilities will restart from time to time. And that's more to the disadvantage of Iran than is the United States. So long as we can keep oil prices relatively low.
- [13:02]
A
Mike Warren so long as we can keep oil prices relatively low. In the time since combat operations have increased, oil prices are once again on the rise. There was this moment, we talked about it again when we, the four of us talked after the signing of the MOU and President Trump's, you know, flourish and the European leaders applauding him in the room. And as the cameras panned away from the President, he said, and what I think was the most telling thing that he said in that entire impromptu ceremony, he said oil prices down, stocks up with the hand gestures. There was a time when Republicans in the Washington, as frustrated as they were about the outcome of these combat operations, about the kinetic activity and the fighting with Iran notwithstanding the destruction of the Navy and some tactical gains, where Republicans were as frustrated as they were with that, happy that there seemed to be a path out and the President was once again in their short term interests, focusing on the economy and thinking perhaps about midterm elections four or five months out that appears to be reversing. What are Republicans saying now? I mean, we've been sort of whipsawed by the President's own rhetoric on this, right? I mean, at one point he was asked whether he thinks about the economy, whether he cares about prices. And he says, I don't care about prices, I just care about ending their nuclear program. And then later he says oil down, stocks up. He, he's kind of been all over the place on this. Where are the rest of Republicans on this right now?
- [14:43]
D
I mean, they're sticking their heads in the sand, putting their fingers in their ears and hoping that it all, you know, ends in some way that's as least painful as possible. I don't know. I mean, I think they have made the same mistake that we made and certainly I'll just say I made when we discussed after the MoU came out the idea that Trump wouldn't go back and use military force in any way in or around IRAN after this MoU, I certainly made the mistake that I think Republicans who hoped that he would, that Trump would reorient himself toward the economy and domestic concerns in the election made, which is to assume, as Jodah pointed out, that there is any plan, that there is any sort of grand strategy. I mean, we should know better by now that everything is ad hoc with Donald Trump. And we can go back to the way he has been described in his business activities going back to the 80s, which is to just try to get to the next point, right? To just try to get through whatever problem, whatever issue, if he's got to declare bankruptcy, if he's got to stiff his vendors in order to just kind of make it to that next point. If he's got to do the opposite thing that he said he was doing even just moments before in order to get to that point, he's going to do that. And I think we are seeing that play out. And so the results may be as what kind of Jonah described as letting things happen. And a best case scenario, the regime falls under its own weight, helped by the fact that the United States has helped destabilize things within the regime as well. But, you know, the other side of that, of course, is that you can't control your enemy. You can't control how your allies. And if you look at the Gulf states, they're getting hit hours before we are speaking here by Iran. All of these events are sort of spiraling in ways that, you know, Donald Trump is going to pivot. He's going to change his approach on, on this, okay, the war is over. No, the war is not over anymore. Now the war is back over again. Whatever he's going to have to do or say or proclaim in any given moment to get him to where he wants to be. And so right now, where he wants to be is he wants to be, you know, smacking Iran back for being in violation without declaring, you know, that the MoU is moot, that it's all over and we're back to war because he doesn't want to have an all out war. The war is over. But we've got to, you know, we've got to do what we need to do to make sure that the war remains over. And that means engaging in some more military activity. So I think our mistake, and I think Republicans mistake, and anybody in Washington who's sort of watching this and trying to make sense of it is trying to make sense of it, and I think we can only at the end of the day, sort of evaluate what's happening right now and how he, how Iran, how these other actors are going to react in the moment and kind of don't make the mistake of trying to game out where things go too far, I would say in advance.
- [17:54]
A
So let me interrupt this orgy of self flagellation because I think the, the post MoU podcast that we did holds up very, very well, by and large. Yes, I think it was the case that there was some general skepticism toward a return to hostilities because, as you say, Mike, of the assumption that Donald Trump was once again putting his short term interests ahead of potentially the country's long term interest, that's a pretty good bet to make. So I think we can be forgiven for that. But I think part of what we're seeing with the confusion over the Strait of Hormuz was because this is what we said you get when you send a real estate executive like Steve Witkoff, who's demonstrated publicly that he's hopelessly gullible, incredibly naive, literally offering bon mots in support of Vladimir Putin in his interview with Tucker Carlson to do your negotiating on your behalf. The Iranians had been focused on the precision of this language, literally for decades. And we send this guy who basically is coming up with broad strokes that even we don't understand. They couldn't even explain it in the aftermath. So I think our analysis of the MoU, by and large, holds up very, very well. Mike Nelson, feel free to respond to what Mike Warren had said there. But I want to ask you about this rhetoric that we've seen from the administration, because I find this kind of alarming, regardless of what the explanation for it is. We had seen, and you have a terrific piece up on our website about this. Know your enemy. And you could get into sort of the fundamental misunderstanding that the Trump administration and its spokesman have either made or articulated in public about the Iranian regime. And we, we saw the president, going back several weeks, talk about the new Iranian leadership as if it were different in a fundamental way from what we have come to know of the old Iranian leadership. Mike, just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump said the regime was now made up of, quote, very rational people, and they were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people. I actually think they're smarter than the first and second group. They're not radicalized, and they're, you know, looking to help their country. Now he's saying they're the scum of the earth. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. They're vicious, violent people. And when Tyler Pager of the New York Times confronted President Trump about this in a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, last week, Tyler pointed out, Mr. President, just a couple weeks ago, you said these were the new Iranians, that we could do business with them. And now you're saying that they're crazy and irrational. How do you explain this? And President Trump said, I got to know them. Setting aside the problem with having a president who doesn't read history books or hasn't been paying attention for 47 years, how do you understand our misunderstanding of sort of the nature of the regime and what that leads to next?
- [21:05]
B
Well, we saw, you know, with the president's extrapolation of his success in Venezuela and thinking that could apply to all things, that he thought it was a similar case, that the removal of one nefarious actor in the case of Maduro made Venezuela compliant. We saw reporting over the weekend that they're basically a, a vassal state of Marco Rubio, personally. So the idea, I think, was if we kill off this top tranche of leaders or as he describes it, the first tranche and the second tranche, there are these moderates waiting in the wings, or if not moderates, at least pragmatists who just want the pain to stop and that they will rise to the top and be willing to negotiate with us. We saw this a little bit in Afghanistan, where we got so good at killing off the mid level commanders of the Taliban and the Haqqani network, that what rose to the top to replace them were the younger, more radical, more violent people looking to prove their place. And so it kind of worked against us when we killed off some of these people and allowed it to be shaped into a more violent and more extreme version of some of these cells. In the case of the irgc, who enjoy a very prominent position at the table, not just as a military wing, but as a key decision maker in the strategic direction of Iran. I think a lot of these people are committed adherence to the Islamic Revolution and are still. You know, we heard some of the attribution for these strikes, claiming that it was radical factions within the IRGC that wanted to tank the deal themselves. I don't think that's entirely true, but we do know that there are people who do not want peace with the United States. Now, whether this was a rational act on the part of the Iranians to restart hostilities, I think is to be seen. They are playing the man across the table from them. They're playing President Trump and Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner to a lesser extent. And they have seen that each time they've pushed the boundaries, what is being negotiated has shifted to kind of meet the Overton window has shifted over. So if their goal here was we will trade lives for a new establishment of what is permissible within the strait, that is a rational act on their part. And we've seen they've been willing to trade their lives for concessions throughout this conflict. Now, one of the things that I think they may have misplayed their hand is I don't think it's just the reinitiation of strikes against the shipping, commercial shipping, that has gotten an American response, but also these reports of a specific assassination attempt against President Trump. Now, he's been under threat under a fatwa for his assassination from the Iranian regime since the killing of Soleimani. So that is not anything new. But this was a specific threat that the Israelis reported to us. And it's not just that they targeted him personally, which I'm sure he took took to heart, but it's also that that story caused him personal embarrassment, as we saw with the New York Times reporters receiving. You know, we've diverted the FBI director from his primary responsibility of attending country music festivals to target journalists now to find out who embarrassed the president. So this is something that I think it strikes close to home for him.
- [24:04]
A
Mike, can you just give us a little background on that, because it's important. There was reporting that President Trump was being personally targeted. We got that from the Israelis, although I think there may have been other intelligence services that corroborated those reports, if I'm not mistaken. And this led to the president having to fly back from the NATO summit, not on the new Air Force One that was given to him as a gift by the Qataris, because as people predicted at the time of the. The announcement that this gift was being given, it would not be able to be retrofitted with the kind of security precautions and protocols that would be needed to protect the president. So he flew back on the old Air Force One, as it were. And this was reported by the New York Times that the FBI is now investigating the New York Times reporters. The Times has put out a statement saying they won't be intimidated. It's led to this entire sort of kerfuffle about freedom of the press and what have you. But the president was embarrassed by this.
- [25:08]
B
Yeah. And the COVID story for this was this entirely implausible idea that everyone was so impressed by the new Air Force One, and it was this great image of American patriotism and glory that he wanted to let the Air Force service members who were stationed in the UK see it. So they flew it back early so that people could go visit the new Air Force One and that he would join it en route from Turkey on the old Air Force One. Now, what specifically we, or at least what has been reported, is that among the capabilities that have not been properly fitted on the new Qatari version are some of the air defense countermeasures that would exist on the old one. The FBI's theory, or at least, you know, Kash Patel, in targeting these. These journalists, is that someone leaked to them, and they want to find out who leaked to them. There are several reporters who have gone and done stories about what was visible on the outside fuselage of the old Air Force One and that you could see this was not visible on the new one. Therefore, you could just use deductive reasoning to determine they didn't have the same countermeasures. So whether there was a source or not is not entirely clear. But additionally, it just caused embarrassment for the President. As one of his pet projects, like the reflecting pool, like the architecture, like this, this new Air Force One, something that he saw as a statement for his own personal status was being criticized as something that wasn't as glorious as he claimed it to be.
- [26:33]
A
And we should also point out that it was. I mean, this should be embarrassing for the country, too, because the White House's initial response to these reports from the New York Times quickly followed by others was, this is fake news. This is all made up. There's nothing to this. And then hours later, the FBI launches an investigation to see who were the sources for this reporting that they have declared fake. So there wouldn't be need for there to be sources behind news that was made up fake news. But this is the consistency of the White House. Jonah, you pointed to something that Donald Trump said. We're recording this Monday morning that Donald Trump said on Fox and Friends about suggesting a path forward on the Strait of Horror. Moose, can you share that and react to it?
- [27:21]
C
Yeah. So just very quickly, this is the Reuters write up on it because you don't want to trust the tweet versions of it. He said, we're going to keep the straight. We'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the Guardian angel of the Strait and we should be reimbursed for that. He said in a phone interview, we're going to guard it. We're going to get paid for guarding it. A lot of money. We're going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy. They're on our side, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing. He said. Now, I just bring it up for two reasons. One, he said versions of this before, back when he thought he won and toppled the regime, he had said that maybe we'll partner with Iran to toll the strait because he thought that would be cool. This is.
- [28:07]
A
That's when they were good guys.
- [28:09]
C
Yeah. Or this is when he thought he was gonna be able to dictate who the next leader was. But I'm not saying this is what's gonna happen. I think it goes to my point about the constant making it up as you go along thing, the changing of rationales thing. It also, I just think it's important to point out, illustrates the degree to which Trump, not only there are only two possibilities. Either he doesn't understand America's historic role as the guardian of free trade and open sea lanes and all that kind of stuff, or he just simply Rejects it. Right. And I go back and forth trying to figure out which. But this is, you know, this is like the golden shares from companies. This is like we're going to take the oil and sell it. Right. Which is what we're doing in Venezuela.
- [28:58]
B
He.
- [28:58]
C
He kind of violates Bastiat's rule about the seen and the unseen.
- [29:02]
A
And if he can't see every day. Yes.
- [29:06]
C
If he can't see deposits going into a checking account, he doesn't see any net benefit for the United States. So he wants dues, he wants commissions, he wants cuts, he wants a piece of the action on things. Otherwise, he thinks we're being played for suckers. But there's a real cost in terms of public diplomacy and public reputation whether he's serious about this or whether this will ever happen. If you're saying that we're going to defeat the Iranians and then do what we're attacking them for doing, right. Like we're saying they cannot toll the Strait of Hormuz, they cannot block international traffic, but we can, that kind of thing. The rest of the world has a hypersensitive radar for American hypocrisy. And this kind of thing does not. Will not play well, and nor should it. Right. Because it's a bad policy goal. And I think it makes it more unlikely that the Europeans help us, all that kind of thing. But I just wanted to throw it into the mix about what's going on in the news.
- [30:13]
A
Well, there's a lot more to say about that, but I do think that the end of his comments there, that we will get paid and we'll get paid a lot of money suggests, shall we say, misplaced focus. Or it's not. Why we went into this, some of
- [30:26]
C
it was also, like, a lot of that kind of stuff is for domestic consumption. He thinks if he tells Americans, oh, we're gonna take all that money from whatever and give it to the farmers or give it. You know, he talks like that all the time. And so you don't. First of all, you don't know if he has any intent on following through on this. You have no idea whether the government can't. But that's how he sells foreign policy.
- [30:48]
A
It gives his people something to say. Yeah, right. I mean, I think that's part of it. There's, as we've pointed out for the last half hour, there's very little to be said in defense of this undertaking so far. This, I guess, gives them some talking point, but of course, that's not at all why we, we went into this and if he is, in fact, if this goes beyond just public rhetoric or public justification, this suggests real problems. If this is the way that he's going to conduct this going forward. I want to spend just a moment, go around Thorn wants on Ukraine and Russia before we close with a discussion of Lindsey Graham and get to not worth your time. There seems to be, Mike Nelson, some pretty significant changes that are going kind of under reported, under discussed in what's happening in Ukraine and Russia and the dynamics of that conflict in a number of different ways. There was a report over the weekend by Reuters about an intelligence report coming out of Europe suggesting that the Russian economy was potentially on the brink of collapse. Real problems with the Russian economy sort of brittle in a number of different ways, whether you're talking about personal loans, whether you're talking about the state of the government's finances, real challenges that if they were to persist, could create significant additional problems for Vladimir Putin beyond what he's seeing with the war. But we've also seen, and this is chronicled in Monday's Morning Dispatch, a change in strategy from Ukraine that seems to have been, seems to have produced real results. So much so that Ukraine's momentum might be understood for the change in tone from President Donald Trump in a meeting last week with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, probably his friendliest meeting with Zelenskyy so far, nice things to say about Zelenskyy that marks a contrast from the way the president has generally spoken about the UKRA Ukrainian leader. And I wonder, Mike, is this Donald Trump just because he likes to be on the side of a winner, realizing what's happening and sort of switching sides? How should we understand what we've seen over the past several weeks?
- [33:01]
B
Well, I think if you had like, you know, like in elections, the New York Times indicator era of which way something's going on election night? I think if you had a kind of indicator arrow for how the war is going, you could generally gauge President Trump's statements about it because he wants to be on the side of the winner. And he has shifted several times. Right now he seems to be very pro Ukraine. And we've seen some of the president's supporters, influencers and coterie. Laura Loomer has had this sudden shift and is very pro Ukraine, although I think some of that might just be cuz she wants to be on the opposite side of Tucker Carlson from all things. But this is an indicator. The president is seeing a shift and he wants to be on the side of the winner. And he likes Zelensky now standing up, whereas before he thought that was resistant and hard headed. He still is suggesting some misunderstanding of the conflict. I know we're gonna talk about Lindsey Graham, but in his statements about Lindsey Graham he said, well, Lindsey seemed to have wanted to keep the war going. Misunderstanding of the idea that those who are for Ukrainian success don't wanna keep the war going for the sake of war, but wanna keep it going until there is Ukrainian victory. So he still doesn't have a firm, if not grasp at least the way he's talking about the conflict. But he has seen this shift. You are right that the Ukrainians have shifted to a more efficient way, both at the tactical and the strategic level, including most recently and joked about by Zelensky about the presence. Moscow is a dangerous place because of Ukrainian drones. We've seen a lot more of the deep strikes that have gone to bringing the war home to Russia, including the economic toll. And now we are seeing. The New York Times did extensive reporting about the life expectancy of Russian soldiers. So the war is coming home to Russia. I don't think, to paraphrase Churchill, that this is the beginning of the end, but it might be the end of the beginning. Putin has not yet started to truly crack down on his domestic population. If there is opposition to the war, he hasn't really needed to in that he's been able to kind of hide the nature of the war from them. If that changes, I think what you'll see is primarily a more of a dictatorial crackdown domestically. I don't think he's getting ready to abandon the fight. But one of the other key indicators that the United States has performed. We recently announced that we are going to allow the Ukrainians to manufacture the Patriot missiles that they've been so desperate to have in Ukrainian territory. That's not an immediate fix. That's not going to be rolling out onto the battlefield within the next, even within the next year. But what it demonstrates is the United States recognizes this might be a longer conflict. And the United States is committed to that two year benchmark of continuing to provide assistance. That's where the President is right now. If we can maintain that, that's fantastic. But as of yet, the President seems to be reading the tea leaves the way the rest of us are, that Ukraine is much more successful than they were originally given credit for and they're continuing to build on that success.
- [35:50]
A
All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from The Dispatch Podcast the most annoying thing about being an entrepreneur is the endless paperwork drudgery that comes with the building a new business. You wait hopefully until the day that it all goes away and it just doesn't. In fact, as your business grows and you add employees, the HR work of just keeping track of everything can become nearly all consuming. That's why Gusto feels like such a practical tool. It helps make payroll more organized and less stressful without anyone needing to be a payroll expert. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses and it's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. Gusto helps simplify payroll with automatic tax filing and unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price without hidden fees or surprises. 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 and we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Mike Warren, we have seen in the past couple of weeks, to Mike's point, you have seen some people speak out in Russia and raise real questions about the economy, about the way the war is going. You haven't seen kind of a mass uprising. There's not an anti war movement in Russia to be sure, but you're starting to see more cracks. Is this something that Vladimir Putin has to be worried about given the fact that he's lost momentum on the battlefield? Is this something that could play a role in hastening an end to the conflict itself?
- [37:41]
D
I hope so. I don't know. I think Russia is not Iran, but it is closer on the big scale of stability when it comes to nations around the world, to Iran, than certainly to any of the Western countries. And so there is this sense that a what are we now, four and a half year long war, which is really more like a 14 year long war or more 16 year long war. If you go all the way back to 2014, that does have a toll. And all of what Mike Nelson just pointed out, the hiding of what's really been going on in the war effort, there is only so much that a strong man like Putin can do, so perhaps it could collapse. I don't think that is what Trump is sensing. I don't know, maybe he's here, he's getting that sense from Marco Rubio, getting a picture that Russia has not just been weaker on the battlefield than it has been, but that it's more weak internally. And so perhaps that is having some influence. But if you look at just the words that Trump has said, this is from this appearance last week at the NATO summit in Ankara. He said, you know, in response to this idea of getting Ukraine to make more Patriot missiles and helping them to do that, and he was asked about this, is this an escalation? And Trump said, it is an escalation, but it's also an escalation that can help lead to an end. And I just think that sums up the way Trump views these things. It's like. And maybe even could sum up the way that Trump views his re. Escalation in the Persian Gulf as well, which is, yeah, we're doing a little more here so that we can get to the end. That, that seems to be his goal. And, and I'll associate myself with the remarks of, of my colleague Mr. Nelson and just say that that's how. That that's how Trump is viewing it right now. And things could always change and most likely will change at some point in the future with regard to Trump's view of who's winning and who's losing and whose side he wants to be on.
- [39:42]
A
Yeah. Jonah, every time I read one of these stories about Ukraine's tactical victory here, building alliances there, you know, seeming to seize the upper hand, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that Vladimir Putin is on the other side. And anybody who knows Vladimir Putin or studied him even in passing understands that he's not going to just walk away. I mean, this isn't going to be something where he says, ah, we gave it our best and, you know, Ukraine, here's the territory that we took, everything's going to be fine. It seems far more likely that this makes Putin more dangerous in some respects. A Putin with nuclear weapons, a Putin with a ton of pride who's being in some ways humiliated right now. Is this actually leading us into. With a Ukrainian advantage on the battlefield, potential Russian economic challenges growing? Does this make Vladimir Putin more dangerous?
- [40:42]
C
Yes. You also leave it out. I had a foreign policy guru on the Remnant episode hasn't aired yet, who made this point pretty forcefully. China, I don't think knew in advance, didn't want Putin to do this in Ukraine, but now that Putin has done it, I think China very much wants Putin not to be humiliated and defeated. And what that means is anybody's guess. Right. I mean, I don't think you're going to have. It's not going to be the Korean War with, you know, 300,000 Chinese crossing the Urals to go fight or anything. But. And I think you're entirely right that Putin understands.
- [41:23]
A
Look, this is.
- [41:23]
C
This is one of the only. Like any kids going in to take their Russian history final next year, just remember, all political changes in Russia come after they get humiliated in a war. And the Economist just this week has this big profile. I mean, they're betting, they're investing a lot on the journalist, on the significance of this. This Russian oligarch. Andrey Malachenko has started to say things. He doesn't call out Putin by name, but he's starting to talk about what a disaster this war is, how he's no democrat. Right. But how Russia could be a more serious country with a different way of approaching things, which is, you know, this is the kind of thing that gets you to accidentally fall out your window in Russia. And so I think that points to sort of. It's sort of the point I was making about the Iranian regime. We just don't have a lot of visibility about what's going on inside, you know, Russia at the top. And not only do I think you're right, Steve, that this will make Putin more dangerous, as it looks like increasingly like he's losing. There is no guarantee that whoever replaces Putin is better if he actually does go. But I do think there are real obvious signs of distress. The deep strike strategy of taking out the energy infrastructure in Russia is having real effects. Putin spent the first, I don't know, 75% of this war, three years making sure that St. Petersburg and Moscow, where all the elites live, weren't really affected by this war. And now when you have massive gas lines and they're lowering the quality of the gas at the same time, so it's destroying people's cars. People are freaking out. I'm kind of addicted to the social media on this. And. And then there's the fact that if farmers cannot afford diesel, come, you know, time to bring in crops, you could start getting or afford the fertilizer that goes into the, you know, these crops, which are petroleum products, too. You could start seeing real food shortages also. Just, you know, most. Most. I mean, we're not gonna get famine, but most famines are not because we run out of food. It's because they can't distribute the food for political reasons to certain areas or. Well, if you have such an energy crisis that you can't afford to deliver the food by truck in a lot of places, that puts real stress on the regime. And Crimea is just a hot mess now. He's basically de facto lost Crimea, just that Ukraine hasn't won it. It is, you know, it's in the dark, it's running out of fuel. And when the Russian military bloggers start talking about the humiliation and how they're losing, that's not a great sign for Putin that this is going to get turned around on him anytime soon.
- [44:11]
A
Well, as encouraged as I was by Donald Trump's rhetorical turn towards Zelensky this past week, I fear we are just one phone call from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump before things change yet again. I want to spend the last couple minutes today talking about somebody who had a pretty profound influence, I think, on Donald Trump's policymaking in both of the areas that we've discussed, both Iran and the war in Ukraine and Russia. Were it not for Lindsey Graham, I mean, Donald Trump might not have taken the steps that he took in Iran to confront the Iranian regime. And were it not for Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump might have followed his instincts, I think, and been even more openly pro Putin than he has been, which is somewhat hard to be. He certainly would have, I think, been more tempted to cut off US Intelligence support to Ukraine were it not for Lindsey Graham. Mike Warren, you had a sort of look of at Lindsey Graham and his influence in the Republican Party and the way that he conducted himself over the past couple decades in Washington. I want to just read your very, very well crafted lead. In my opinion, you're right. Lindsey Graham was born in 1955 in the foothills of the Appalachians in South Carolina's Upstate in a tiny town called Central, which seems like the polite Southern way of saying Graham was from the middle of nowhere. But by the end of his life, the veteran Republican statesman was in the middle of everything. He sure was. What's your recollection of Lindsey Graham and how do you assess his influence on Donald Trump but also his longer tenure in American politics?
- [45:52]
D
So much of the commentary on Lindsey Graham has been about and included in the piece that you just read from Steve. I touch on this transformation or the change that Lindsey Graham has undergone since Trump has become the dominant force within the Republican Party and the way that he changed his approach to Trump specifically, but also was sort of willing to let certain things about his own worldview about trade and the economy, about some of these other things about federal judges change if it meant that he could have more influence on Donald Trump on the foreign policy and national security issues on which he clearly cares the most about. So I don't want to deny that that change has happened or suggest that Lindsey Graham has been entirely consistent over his career, because I think it was clear he was not and he was willing to change. But I will say that I've been reflecting on this since I heard that he had died suddenly and unexpectedly. That there is a line of consistency in Lindsey Graham, which is that he always wants to be in the middle of things. He always wanted to be sort of to steal the line from Hamilton in the room where it's happening and to be influential. I had written something for the Weekly Standard about, gosh, I guess it was now 12 years ago, when he was supposedly at his most vulnerable for reelection. Not in a general election, but in a primary election. There were a bunch of people, including a little known state lawmaker named Nancy Mace, who were challenging Lindsey Graham in the primary for the U.S. senate, the Republican primary. And so this was after the Gang of eight immigration bill that Marco Rubio was also a part of. This was after years of conservative talk radio referring to him as Lindsey grahamnesty, he's a moderate, he's a squishy. He's just like John McCain, but with a southern accent, which is just. Was just about the worst thing in 2014 a conservative could say about a Republican senator. And I was intrigued by how for all of this, you know, sort of anger at Lindsey Graham from the kind of conservative movement or the activist base of the party, how he and nobody else really seemed to be that nervous about his ability to win the primary, which he did. He won it. You know, in South Carolina they have the you got to get 50% or you got to go to a runoff rule. And he cleared 50% in a primary. He was helped by having a lot of people run against him. It turns out having a bunch of people hate you can help you in, in that way. But I was intrigued by that kind of confidence that he had and the takeaway that I had. I went down to South Carolina and rode around with him for a couple of days. He actually said this. It was the headline of the piece was the go to Senator. He just said it out loud. He goes, that's how I view myself. I'm the go to senator. If you want something done, whether it's a bipartisan thing, whether it's how to get something through in the House that can pass the Senate. He liked to think of himself as the go to guy. He liked to think of himself as the go to guy for anybody in South Carolina, any businesses, any corporations that needed help understanding, you know, regulations are a lot of, particularly in his time in his tenure in South Carolina, in the part of the state that he's from, the upstate, you know, which was sort of devastated economically by the decline of textiles, you know, now being manufactured overseas, that was a big part of that part of the state's economy. He was a big part of overseeing a huge influx of foreign investment in that part of the state. The BMW plant, every BMW you see in America is made in South Carolina. A whole bunch of other industries. You know, he wanted to be the go to guy for those, for, for those foreign nations and, and that sort of thing. And so I think that is a part of his legacy. It is a part of explaining how he came to have that transformation that, that people like us sort of shake our heads at and, and look and say, can you believe he did this? Can you believe he was willing to call Donald Trump a jackass? And then a year later he's playing golf with him and saying how he's the greatest president ever and all these things that sort of make us pull our hair out. But he viewed, I think, not entirely incorrectly, as a way to continue being influential, continue to be in the mix and continue to shape policy. That's all I think Lindsey Graham wanted to do, was be in the middle of things. And for better and for worse, that is his legacy.
- [50:33]
A
And some of it, I mean, I think it's very interesting some of that. I think you can say he's cared about these issues for so long. He's made a point to build a career around these issues, in particular foreign policy and national security issues. And therefore he did what he did to further sort of his views on these important issues. But it also is the case that this is somebody who didn't have much of a life outside of the Senate, whose identity was entirely wrapped up in his being a senator and without being in the room or being less relevant in the debates that are taking place in Washington and around the country. You know, if, if he's not showing up on Hannity, he would be sort of lost on a personal level, I think. And I think the people who, who know him well would say exactly that, that same thing. Mike Nelson. When I think of Graham and his influence, I got to know him pretty well when I was covering John McCain's presidential campaign. I actually got to know him before that when I was covering the sort of global war on terrorism and the Iraq war, then covered him through John McCain's presidential campaign. On the one hand, he was as consistent a voice force, whatever the hawkish position of the day was Lindsey Graham was that. And I think, you know, as I said earlier on, when you look at the way that Donald Trump has conducted his policymaking on Ukraine and Iran, it is easy to see some influence from Lindsey Graham. Having said that, he was often, at least to me, seemed like a caricature of the hawkish position. You know, when Rand Paul would go after the neocons or the hawks and say their first instinct is always war, it's always military action. That was a bad mischaracterization of the way that most hawks feel about, you know, the US and projecting its power. I'm not sure it was that unfair of a characterization of Lindsey Graham, who often did seem to make those arguments and make them in public. Am I misreading that?
- [52:44]
B
Well, going back to 2007, 2008, I am personally grateful for the role that Graham, McCain and Lieberman and others played in bolstering support for. While Harry Reid was saying the war in Iraq was lost, they bolstered support for the plan that became known as the surge in the United States, the salwa in Iraq that led to stability for an effort that I had personally invested in.
- [53:09]
A
He even took on his own party. Remember, Mitch McConnell was talking about the need to get out of Iraq at that time, and Lindsey Graham stood up and said, no, no, Republicans, we can't do this. He does deserve, I think, great credit for that, right?
- [53:21]
D
Yes.
- [53:22]
B
And his consistent instincts, as both you and Mike said, he has been an advocate for the forces of protecting the liberal world order for, for individual liberty and freedom and American strength abroad and against the forces of kind of repression and encroachment into the dark spaces of the world. And that's particularly valuable at a time when there is this rise of post liberalism within the United States that either endorses some of these oppressive regimes or this agnosticism towards what happens outside our borders that just tacitly accepts them. So I think there was value in him constantly being a voice for, for these good causes. Now, the application of how America applies power. I think you're correct that he may have, while I am an advocate for the use of American power, doesn't always need to be hard power. Sometimes it's soft power, sometimes it's the demonstration of hard power without its application. But he did tend to potentially think that hard power was more applicable or should be used more frequently than others might have. And I do think that it's likely he was one of the voices who may have convinced the President that Iran would have been much easier than it's turned out to be. So, you know, in whole, I'm glad that he was someone who stood up to the isolationist or restrainer views within the administration or that are rising in the United States. I do think you're correct that Rand Paul and others were a little unfair in their characterization, but he did provide them a good foil that they could point to as someone who they thought was. Was cartoonishly hawkish, as he said.
- [54:54]
A
Jonah, he definitely was a politician of this moment. Right? I mean, as Mike Warren pointed out, he saw it very quickly after Donald Trump became president. To ingratiate himself with the president, he would do the kinds of maximalist things, rhetorically, that he knew Donald Trump would like. I mean, Lindsey Graham has been leading the charge on this Trump 2028 thing. The idea that Donald Trump would run for a third term or that he would stay in office beyond. It's grossly irresponsible thing to say. Horribly, I think, something that could likely have horrible consequences if Donald Trump takes him seriously and reads into that broader support for something like that, particularly after what we saw in 2020. And yet Lindsey Graham did it, I think, because he knew that that's what Donald Trump would hear above everything else. And if you were going to ingratiate yourself with Donald Trump, you better do it in the maximalist way. And that's what Lindsey Graham sort of did all the time. But then you think back to the moment after January 6th where Lindsey Graham basically says in public what we have all witnessed. You know, he kissed Trump's ass. He did everything he could to support the guy, to advance his presidency. But January 6, summoning this crowd to attack the Capitol to try to block the peaceful transition of power was too much even for a sycophant like Lindsey Graham. And he said this, and then a month later, he was back in.
- [56:27]
C
All in. Yeah. So I got. I got a couple points about Lindsey Graham on that. Get to this one. I remember a senator, former senator, telling me stories about Lindsey Graham, where Lindsey sort of was like that college buddy who just can't be alone with himself. And so he would call. He would call blind call senators he was friends with, like, on a Wednesday night and be like, hey, anything going on? Want to head out? Want to go do something? You know, like that kind of stuff that, like, we did when we were in our 20s and, you know, just didn't want to sit at home.
- [57:03]
D
Like, he.
- [57:04]
C
That was him. He always had to be doing something. He always had to be in the mix. And I mean that not in the way that Michael's talking about with as being in the room where it happens, where the big decisions are going on. I just mean that he was a bachelor who had no kids, right? He had no basic home life, and he was restless, and he always had to just sort of be in the mix. And, you know, the fact that he was gonna be on Meet the press for the 64th time, I mean, there are people, I think there have been hosts of Meet the Press who haven't been on 64 times.
- [57:40]
D
David Gregory.
- [57:41]
B
Yeah.
- [57:42]
C
No, I'm serious. There are only 52 appearances in a year, right? And so, like, he's one of these guys who had to be on tv. He had to be in the mix. He had to be invited to the things. And I just think that that personality type fed his political philosophy in ways that are very alien to us. And I want to give him credit. He did a lot of good things, and he tried to do some good things in terms of legislation, in terms of policy. There were moments where I thought he was maybe not heroic, but close to heroic and all the rest. And he was also a weasel about ingratiating himself to Trump. And part of this is the problem of the Trump era, right, where Trump does not respond at all to criticism. Normally, the way senators get presidents to do what they want is when the president does something they don't like, they go on TV and say they don't like it. And when they. When he does something they like, they go on TV and they say they like it. But it's like a car that has no brakes and can only take right turns, right? So, like, everything has to be couched in praise. Everything has to be said in praise. And the part of the problem with this is that people see the person doing the praising as just either a, you know, if you're all in on maga, you take them at their word, which is sort of gets to your point about the dangers of that, right? Because there's no way, no way Lindsey Graham believed everything he said about Donald Trump. There's no way he lost every single time he played golf with Donald Trump. Right? But he does those things to ingratiate himself. And so the problem is that some people will take you seriously that you believe that stuff, and then other people will take you seriously that you're a cynical liar, that you're sucking up to this man in power, and that is bad for you. That is bad, too. That is bad to think about leaders, right? But it could. There are probably plenty of times where he was Eating crap for the greater good of the country, at least in his mind, and not just for his own desire to be in the mix. And so, which gets me to my sort of fundamental point. I don't think that history. I think the problem that Lindsey Graham is gonna have as a historical matter is that his entire historical legacy is going to be shaped by how Donald Trump is remembered. And because he, like a Remmer, he attached himself to this much larger organism. And his fate now, in terms of his historical memory really depends on how Trump's historical memory is shaped. And I think we have rough ideas of how Trump's historical legacy is going to be, but it could get much worse or it could get a little better. And because Lindsey was seen largely as an enabler of Trump, that's going to color how he's remembered. It doesn't mean that every single thing he did will be cast into bad light. But when you put your reputation into somebody else's hands, this is the risk that you take. And I think it's kind of tragic. Then again, he knew what he was doing. He was not a dumb man, and he was okay with it. And so he made that bargain. And, you know, I could come up with compliments about the guy, and I can come up with criticisms beyond that, but I think that's sort of my big takeaway on it.
- [61:12]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think that point is a really important one. He knew what he was doing. This was intentional. There was no. There was very little guile involved in Lindsey Graham. You know, as I said, I got to know him covering the global war on terror and covering Iraq, covering the McCain campaign in particular. I traveled with the McCain campaign quite a bit. He was there all the time. And he was. And you've heard this in other remembrances of him. He was fun to be around. He was very funny, irreverent.
- [61:42]
D
Good hang.
- [61:42]
A
Yeah. Surprising. He would take a very serious moment and drop a joke in that you weren't expecting. And very quick witted, self deprecating in a way that I thought was appealing. We got to know each other well enough that in those years after the McCain campaign, he asked me to come to South Carolina and basically campaign for him, give speeches on his behalf, which fundamentally misunderstood sort of my role and the role of journalists. So I turned him down. Our relationship continued. We were still friendly. We still talked regularly. And this included the period up to and through the 2016 election. I would talk to him. I would talk to him about Trump, talk to him about the state of the Republican Party. Talk to him about foreign policy, national security issues. And as he sought to ingratiate himself more and more publicly with Donald Trump, he distanced himself more and more from me, in particular, as I was pretty critical of Donald Trump. And Joan, I mean, we've talked about this some. We're probably limited in how much we can talk about it, but there is this pattern, right? I mean, you see this with people who sort of know that what they're doing is either wrong or they justify it in exactly the way that we've described here. He wanted to be in the room. He wanted to be influential. He knew that he had to do these things to stay in the room to be with Donald Trump. But he took them to such an extreme that I think he was personally a little embarrassed about it. And just in the 24 hours or 36 hours since he's passed away, I've read a number of reflections on Lindsey Graham, particularly from people who disagreed with him on foreign policy and national security, that said, he was always willing to have the debate. He was gracious about disagreements. He sought us out. He knew that I'd been critical of him on X, Y and Z, and he wanted to have the discussion.
- [63:40]
B
He to.
- [63:41]
A
Wanted, wanted to have the debate anyway. And I find those very interesting, because on this stuff on Donald Trump, he didn't want to have the discussion, at least not with me. I reached out to him a little over two years ago, I believe, and asked to sit down with him on whatever basis he was most comfortable. I would have loved to have done it as an interview, but I would have been happy to do it off the record. And I offered off the record and said, I just want you to walk me through your journey. Like, tell me what's happened. Tell me what you're doing. And as you know, in conversations like that, I've had many of these conversations over the Trump era, and in some cases, you'll sit down with somebody and they will try to walk you through this transformation in such a way that they're rationalizing and justifying it, and they don't understand why you haven't done the same thing. But in most cases, they basically wink at you and say, like, hey, look, I know what I'm doing here. You don't have to love it. I understand why you haven't done it. But here's what I'm up to. And yes, of course, I don't like the tweets. And yes, of course, he's, you know, Donald Trump is this, you know, huge embarrassment for the country. But I felt like I needed to do what I needed to do. And I just found it interesting that Graham, despite multiple invitations to him directly to his team, would not sit down and do that with me, which I think suggests he knew that what he was doing was likely to leave him with the kind of legacy, Jonah, that you mentioned, where he will be inextricably linked to Donald Trump and whatever history members of Donald Trump. 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. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you could 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. I want to end today with a we did something a little bit different for not worth your time just to take people behind the curtain a little bit. Usually when we do these not worth your time segments, I don't give the panelists even a heads up about what's coming. We sort of spring it on them, make them react in the moment and then, and then hopefully have a, a bit of a chuckle about it. Well, this one, I so liked the the topic and I so wanted to do this that I sent it to him 24 hours in advance and I said think about this for a little bit. And I did that with the expectation that I would do the same thing. I would have 24 hours to think about it and then an answer would come to me. I didn't have an answer, but I liked the question. I'm happy to report, having checked in with each of the panelists, that they all came up with an answer in the 24 hour period and I did not.
- [66:49]
C
We did all say we didn't think we had very good ones, but that's fine, right?
- [66:53]
A
That's fair. It's good to qualify that I couldn't come up with anything, even though I think this sort of defines me and shapes me in a number of different ways. So the question I sent was this picture. If any of you have watched the World cup, and I do regret that Kevin isn't here to have yet another conversation about the World Cup. If any of you have watched the World cup, you've seen the Norwegian fans, the now dispatched Norwegian team having lost to the Brits. You've seen the Norwegian fans do this rowing thing in support of their team. They all get together, you know, hundreds, probably thousands of Norwegians rowing. The team did it on the field after their, I think it was their quarterfinal victory. And it's become this huge tradition. People love it, people think it's very funny. And there is this picture of one guy in the middle of the crowd stubbornly refusing to row. And he is reported to have said that he refuses to row because that's not what the Norwegians did back in the day. I'm sorry, I need to find the actual quote, the quote attributed to him as he's standing there arms crossed while everybody else is rowing around him. He's sitting there refusing to participate. And the quote attributed to him is, it's factually wrong. They didn't row, they sailed over the Atlantic. And he is sticking to that no matter what, no matter what it means he misses out on no matter how much of a curmudgeon it makes him appear. And my question to the panelists was, is there something in your life where you are this guy, everybody else is rowing along and you're not rowing because it's not accurate or what have you. So, Mike Warren, having the opportunity to give us at least a little thought, what did you come up with?
- [68:48]
D
Is there something, I mean, that is the. So let me preface this by saying before you sent this, like a couple days before you sent this as a potential not worth your time topic, my high school friends have a text chain and one of my friends sent this, sent this tweet and picture and tagged me and said, hey, Mike, is this guy related to you?
- [69:11]
C
So, like, so good.
- [69:14]
D
And frankly, I mean, by the way, I also brought this up to my wife and said, do you have any suggestions or ideas? And she was like, I've got like 50 of them. So she was like, I just have to think about it. So I mean, and I think based on who we all are and what our kind of professional, where our professional lives are at this moment, like it's likely just that like this self selection thing, we are all probably clearly this kind of person at some point in our lives. So it isn't not surprising that, that we all came up with something. You know, there's a lot of different things where I just sort of cross my arms and say, you know, I don't like that the National League has a designated hitter now. And so I, while I don't do anything differently in my life, I Do point out, every time I'm watching a game, particularly with my kids, you know, when the DH comes up, I say, you know, it used to be the pitchers would have to hit, and sometimes you could see pitchers hit home runs, and I'd seen pitchers hit home runs, and it was awesome. And this sucks now. So I grumble about that.
- [70:11]
A
That's good.
- [70:11]
D
I grumble about adaptations of novels that I like that get things wrong. But I would say that the action that I take this is like, a little weird, but my wife and I both thought of it independently. And so when I asked her to think of one, she thought of this. And I said, that's the exact same thing I thought of.
- [70:27]
B
So.
- [70:27]
D
We grew up in the south outside of Atlanta, and we are both. My wife and I are both cradle Catholics, and we grew up in the church that was not only sort of, you know, influenced by the majority evangelical kind of churches around us. That was just the way things were done, but also the kind of post Vatican II guitar, Catholic Mass kind of, you know, kind of milieu. And there was a point in the Catholic Mass every Sunday, every. Every day really, where the. Where the. The. The congregation has to say the Lord's Prayer. And the way that we grew up was that everybody in the. In the church grabbed hands with each other. So it was sort of the entire body of Christ is holding on to each other as they say this prayer. Well, as we've grown up and sort of, we've moved out of the south and. And done these sort of things, we found that that's not really the case in all parts of the country, that. That not everybody does that. And. And in fact, you know, if you read various things of the church, it says that you actually should. Instead of grabbing other hands, you should hold your hands in prayer like this when you say the Our Father. And so we've taken to doing that. Our kids do that. That's how we do it.
- [71:40]
B
Most.
- [71:40]
D
Most people in our parish do that as well. But whenever we go back home or somewhere in the south, as we have been recently, the trend of holding hands is much more prevalent. And so not just me, but my entire family, we stand there like this, looking like sticks in the mud. We're unwilling to touch the unwashed masses at Catholic Mass for this very important prayer, but instead we hold our hands like this. And so that's the way we do it, because that's the way it's supposed to be done.
- [72:10]
A
Apparently, for those of you who aren't watching this on video, Mike has His hands in sort of the prayer emoji. Sorry, I thought you were going the other direction on this. I thought you were going to say that you're such a stick in the mud that everywhere you go you just start reaching out and grabbing people's hands when it gets to this moment in a way that.
- [72:28]
B
That people might find.
- [72:30]
A
Find alarming.
- [72:32]
D
No, no, no, no.
- [72:32]
A
Though that's a good one. I, you know, I'm trying to think of these answers that I could give since I don't have an answer. And I am, I am still a debts debtor guy in a trespasser's trespassing
- [72:44]
D
world as a commitment to interesting the
- [72:47]
A
Our Father Mike Nelson.
- [72:49]
B
Well, real quick to respond to some of the things that Mike Warren said. I am resistant to for those who are Catholic or familiar with Catholicism. It used to the priest used to say peace be with you. And you would respond, and also with you. And now you're supposed to say, and also with your spirit. I reject that.
- [73:05]
D
And with your spirit.
- [73:06]
B
Yeah, I am. And also with you. I don't care. I'll say it loudly.
- [73:10]
D
Mike. Take it up at the Vatican.
- [73:11]
B
Right? Exactly. Nope. Nope. So this is where I side with J.D. vance. The Pope's wrong. That's the only place where I saw J.D. vance on that kind of stuff. The other thing, it's funny you mentioned the National League and pitchers batting because I was at game five of the World Series in 2019 here in D.C. against the Astros and 2020 is when they were going to roll out the National League dh. So I believed I was witnessing for the last time in history pitchers batting because they were going to go to Houston for the last two games and play by American League rules. Now, you know, with the greatest baseball player of all time being a pitcher and a world class batter with Shohei Ohtani, we never need to worry about what the rules are. We are watching a pitcher bat as a DH oftentimes.
- [73:52]
D
That's right.
- [73:52]
B
So when this story first came up about the Norwegian non rower, I saw the clickbait headline, you know this guy refuses to row. And I initially assumed this was some woke rejection of Viking pillaging, that he doesn't want to glorify what the Vikings did. And then I was relieved to see that it was actually no. I just want historical accuracy in their pillaging. They were much more efficient in their pillaging. They were more advanced when they went and raided villages. So I was glad to see that mine is not a factual objection, but it is something that I will proclaim Loudly. And it will often put me in the vast minority. A matter of fact, our common friend to many of us, Charles Murray, has criticized me for this opinion. I believe the Beatles are highly overrated and not worth any of the praise they get. They're an okay band at best, but they are nowhere within the top pantheon of bands.
- [74:45]
D
I can't believe this.
- [74:46]
C
I mean, they're no Motley Crue.
- [74:48]
B
Specifically, Charles was upset that I said ABBA was better than. Than the Beatles.
- [74:53]
A
Oh, okay. That's really bad. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Can we cut his mic, please? That's absolutely outra. So I don't agree with you on the Beatles, but I have several of those. Most especially Neil Young was the. The worst. He out of tune. You can't sing. He's horrible.
- [75:09]
D
What do you mean, Steve?
- [75:11]
A
Oh, God, just annoying. Final, final word to you.
- [75:18]
C
So before we get to that, I have to offer a correction. I said Guns of Navarone earlier. I meant Force 10 from Navarone. These are important distinctions for anybody who reads my email box. So, like, there are two ways of looking at this, right? There's. One is the emotional thing of refusing to get in on the thing, right? I am very sympathetic to that. Like, if I'm at a. I don't go to concerts in part because I don't like the vibe of everybody being in on the thing. And. But when I do, for whatever reason, and everyone gets to their feet, the only reason I'm inclined to stand up then is so I can see over the person who stood up in front of me. But beyond that, I just. I don't feel the vibe. I'm not that guy. I think Mike Warren's point is very well taken about how at this point, 11 years into the Trump era, there's a lot of self filtering going on, self selection going on. Like much of the world that we grew up in, we're all, like, to mix a metaphor, rowing the Trump train, right? Like, they all went that way. And the people who didn't, like, clearly there's a lack of susceptibility to groupthink, peer pressure, team spirit. At least when it comes to politics, that has a lot of us in common. I mean, there's a reason why my podcast is called the Remnant, right? So there's that emotional side of things. But then I have deep and abiding cause. This guy reminds me of my dad, right? Of like, just refusing to let go of receipts about history and factual points. I mean, like, I've mentioned it before, but my dad could work himself up to a lather about how the New York Times would refer to Fidel Castro as Dr. Castro because he had a law degree and it would drive him crazy. And if you ever referred to him as Dr. Castro in front of him, he would stop you and just be like, what's he a doctor of?
- [77:28]
B
Not like EDDs who need to be called doctors. Like Dr. Joe Biden.
- [77:32]
A
Jill Biden.
- [77:33]
C
That's right.
- [77:33]
D
Dr. Jill Biden. That's right.
- [77:35]
C
Well, that's another one I like. I think The Jill Biden, Dr. Joe Biden thing was garbage. And it's one of my biggest regrets in the history of the Dispatch is that I didn't fight Sarah and David more strongly in defending Joseph Epstein's attack on Jill Biden and the doctor thing. But that's a story for another time. So my stuff is like, we live in a world where words matter a lot. And so I can't let go of the difference between less and fewer. And whenever I hear people say less when they should use fewer. It's not like I run up and I hit them with a broken bottle or anything, but it just. It bothers me. Point it out.
- [78:20]
D
But the thought crosses your mind.
- [78:21]
C
Yeah. Oh, it definitely crosses my mind. Yeah. And I will say fewer. Right. I've tried really, really hard to let go of the correct meaning of decimate, but it's hard. For those who don't know, shame on you. Learn to Google. No, for those who don't know, decimate means to kill one out of every 10. And it was a specific thing from Roman times, but also taken after my dad is. I am very reluctant to sign up for updatings of words. Now. Some of it is, like, I would get into huge fights with my editors at the LA Times when I first started because they would pick up the AP style book, and so all of a sudden, I wasn't allowed to say illegal immigrant. That kind of stuff drives me batty because in part, I think there's a. It's a conspiracy of certain elites to sort of manipulate people in an Orwellian way, and I really, really resent it. The best example that by far that I can think of in this moment is when Amy Coney Barrett was testifying for confirmation hearings, and they had Hirono articles from her where she was saying, what was it? Sexual preference is a term. And one of the online dictionaries changed the definition in real time during the hearing to make it into a negative connotation. And that kind of thing. Like, that kind of thing. I Just I hate. But where I still stand my ground is it's frigging Burma. Right? I got no problem calling, you know, like, and I'm sorry. Like,
- [80:00]
B
I don't.
- [80:02]
C
It's sort of like people's pronouns thing. I'm torn between not wanting to offend people and having good manners and referring to them the way they want to be referred, which I think is a sign of respect and civility in society and my commitment to truth. But, like, Bombay is Bombay, and I really will never go along with this effort, which we're trying to steal from Turkey now, about, like, forcing people to use the indigenous spelling and pronunciation of, like, their capitals. I hate that we've given in on Beijing. Like, what's wrong with us? Have, like, our word for Germany isn't frigging Deutschland. Like, what's wrong with us having a name for the capital of China being Peking? Like, it's fine by me. Like, if you want to call Washington something else, be my guest. But our word for it is Washington, D.C. and, like, that kind of stuff just drives me crazy. And I can be really annoying about it. Like, I am on this podcast right now.
- [81:01]
A
No, those are good. The uninterested, disinterested thing drives me nuts, basically. If you've ever read. If you used to read William Sapphire's On Language column or I've ever read any of the collections, this stuff happens all the day. So, Jonah, this really begs the question of.
- [81:23]
B
Well, it's funny, Jonah, because one of.
- [81:26]
D
We're all triggered by that.
- [81:27]
B
One of my. One of my favorite pieces of yours that you ever wrote was called Big Effing Joker, all about Joe Biden's absolute abuse of the English language. So.
- [81:36]
C
Oh, yeah, literally. Literally. Where he would use literally the way, like, he would literally say he was using literally literally while using it figuratively.
- [81:52]
B
Yes.
- [81:52]
C
And I found all these quotes where you say, you in Africa, you literally are the keystone. And I'm saying literally, not figuratively. You're literally the keystone. It's like, so you're inanimate architectural titles.
- [82:10]
B
I'm like, what? There was a time you reference him referring to fallen soldiers as fallen angels. Like, completely misunderstanding the context of what a fallen angel was and how that's not a good thing, right?
- [82:24]
C
Oh, so these American heroes are the devil.
- [82:33]
A
Oh, so good. Okay, well, I'm glad we did this. Even though I didn't have an answer, a number of them came up during this conversation. Thank you all for joining us, panelists and listeners. Until next time. Finally, if you like, what we're doing here. You can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And as always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us@roundtabledispatch.com we read everything, even the ones from people who prefer ABBA to the Beatles. 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.