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A
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B
It's Tuesday, October 28, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca and today, quite shockingly, is a not even mad day. Why? Because we decided it would be such and there are so many things happening in the world that we had to get two very learned men together who, I was surprised didn't know each other. Steve Hayes of the Dispatch and Damon Linker, the They've both been on the show before. Damon Linker teaches at UPENN and writes notes from the Middle Ground. If you listen to the Sam Harris podcast, he was on it. He's a very, very smart guy, really talks about the dangers of democracy slipping away. Guess what? That comes up obliquely and then directly in our talk. So of the things, this just tells you where we are. We have to get to the important, huge overriding issues of the day. We don't discuss the shutdown. This is not a dereliction of duty. There is some stuff to say about the shutdown. But the shutdown, though unbelievably important and is, if there's not a hurricane, one or two in every newscast so important, is maybe not as fundamental as, say, blowing up boats in the Caribbean, which we also don't get to, not really. And the insurgency act and much about ICE agents on the streets of various cities. Chicago is the one that's bothering me most of all. And yet the stuff we do get to is also pressing, is also important in this time of not being able to get to all the things. Do you know? I just know somewhere hud, the director of hud, is doing something and no one even knows, right? No one even knows what Scott Timmons is up to. It could be anything. In fact, his name's not Scott Timmons, it's Scott Turner. If we only knew. And where's that $50,000 in cash that Homan accepted? We've moved on, but I haven't. Thanks for joining us. It's a good show. Also, I have to always do this plug. We have a direct feed for not even Mad. We have bonus content there. I think I talked to. I know I talked to Damon about what he tells his students at UPENN when they're worried about democracy. Steve also gives a really good answer. I don't want to spoil the exact content, but it's not hey guys, you got nothing to worry about. All right, here we go. Damon Linker, Steve Hayes they are not even mad I'm going to quote the National Institutes of Health. I defer to the experts. As many as 30 million men in the US have experienced ED. It's more common than a bad night's sleep. I don't know that the National Institutes of Health has all the statistics on a bad night's sleep, but I'll also say that ED probably correlates to a bad night's sleep. We have good news about all of this, and it's not about NIH funding. It's about himss. HIMSS makes getting access to treatment for ED simple so you can feel like yourself again without stress, without awkwardness. Confidence is really important. 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Prescription requires the website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. Hey life, it's been crazy, right? You know what you need to do? You need to eat something delicious that maybe helps you unwind. CBD Gummies from Cornbread and Hemp Cornbread is the name of the company. It's not the flavor of the hemp. They've got excellent, delicious flavors and then the flavor of peace washing over you will be the most delicious of all. Again, the flavor isn't cornbread. They have great flavors like Blueberry Breeze and Blood Orange Bliss. Yeah, I know the blood and the Bliss. But it is so blissful. And the blood orange is just deliciousness. Cherry lime chill gummies. Not going to spend all my time listing the flavors or what they do for you. Stress, relaxation, sleep. Sleep for sure. It's just a big favorite in my house. I can say their gummies are made to help you feel better, whether it's stress or discomfort. Slightly different though correlated to stress or just, you know, I need a little reaction. I like to think of the word cornbread to think of the feeling of cornbread but not the actual taste of cornbread. As I said, their actual gummies come in much different flavors and that are more appropriate for eating than cornbread right now. Just listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com the Gist and use code the Gist at checkout that's cornbread hemp.com the Gist and use Code the Gist hello and welcome to Not Even Mad, the show that loses fewer arguments than the Chester A. Nimitz loses aircraft. Today we speak of the East Wing, our neighbor to the north, Congress going south, and apparently the US Declaring war on all of the Western hemisphere. And we do so as we uphold our reputation for refutation, while at the same time vowing to be not even mad. So I say we. This raises the obvious question, though not begs the question if you want to be grammatically correct, who are we in this case? We are Damon Linker, senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania. He writes the excellent substack notes from the Middle Ground. Hello, Damon. Has anyone told you that your name could be a very good character name in a Douglas Copeland sci fi type novel?
- [07:26]
C
No, no one has done that yet. But there's a first for everything and I'm happy to hear it for the first time today.
- [07:33]
B
You know, because of the mailer Damon thing and the linker with the links. I just think that it's both a connection, unconnection, simul, simultaneous conundrum.
- [07:43]
C
Well, we'll see if I can turn this into anything for a little bit of a profit on the side here.
- [07:49]
B
That's right. You take that. And we're also joined by Steve Hayes, CEO and editor of the Dispatch. Hello, Steve. And I think I should say congratulations to your packers who vanquished a team led by Aaron Rodgers. Now, you're from Wisconsin. I. I have that correct, don't I?
- [08:06]
D
I am. You're right.
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B
And I think that people from Wisconsin are the most likely to be a fan of their hometown team. Out of anyone in the United States except maybe people from Buffalo. Do you share in that opinion?
- [08:21]
D
Yeah, I would put the grouping at Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Green Bay, what have you. Yeah, definitely.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. Teams. People from Tampa Bay, perhaps the least. And sure. People from Cleveland like the Browns. It's usually, I think it has something to do with cold weather cities, something I don't know.
- [08:41]
D
Minnesota. No, Minnesota fans are fair weather fans and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. And they don't know typically much about their teams. Talk to a Vikings fan and ask him or her to name any player.
- [08:56]
B
Unlikely cold weather cities where they play outside in the cold.
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D
There you go.
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B
Look at that. Yeah, even Lions fans are also more like Minnesota fans. All right. What a theory. We've got a couple of theories going today. And today the theme of the show will be mixed feelings because I have to tell you, my listeners, Steve and Damon maybe aren't miles apart. If this was to be a left right fight, that's maybe not what today's show is going to be. But today's political environment is not always or exactly a left right fight in any way. What is the right. It's more like working through some mixed feelings. For instance, here are some mixed feelings I have. Shut down. Not good shutdown. Not unimportant, but shut down. Not pressing enough to talk about, maybe unless you guys want to. Or hole in the White House. A hole in the heart, but also some holes in the story. So let's take that one. I'm going to start by quoting Anne Applebaum, who is writing about autocratic leaders who seek to defeat their opponents through lies and slander. She writes of the hole in the White House in truth, the administration's unannounced destruction of the east wing of the White House reflects a similar kind of disdain and belongs to a similar tradition. Ignoring the National Capital Planning Commission, eschewing the deference that presidents have usually shown to public opinion and precedent. Trump sent in the bulldozers before anyone was able to stop him. And my, my problem, among my problems, Damon, you tell me if you have any problems, is that the public doesn't like it. And in so many instances the public has spoken. And what they're saying is that we don't like it, but we're not going to actually punish this man for any of these things. Do you look at it similarly?
- [10:37]
C
Well, I have to say I wrote a post just late last week, sort of, because last week seemed like a kind of blizzard of kind of medium sized Stories, none of them huge, some bad, some not so bad. I definitely put the whole East Wing thing as completely like overstated by the anti Trump factions of our politics. I just don't see the huge cause for outrage here. I mean, sure, Trump is imperious. He does these big sweeping things. I think a lot of times he does it just to prove, you know, what it's some, it's possible to just do stuff. And he sort of wants to make the point that a lot of times we get all tripped up in our regulations and norms and things. And a lot of times I think those norms and regulations are good and important. And did he violate some of those for this, knocking down the East Wing so he could build a giant ballroom? Yeah, probably, but they seem pretty trivial to me. And I mean, it appears we sort of do need a big event space attached to the White House. It shouldn't be necessary that the president hold state dinners under tents outside. Seems kind ridiculous. And I sort of feel sometimes like if you look at the stuff Trump does, almost anything he does with the right squint and tilt of the head, it can look like the leading edge of authoritarianism. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it's just not that big of a deal. And I sort of wish my friends on the anti Trump center left and center right would sort of get a little perspective, clear their heads and pick their battles a little bit more reasonably, rather than sounding like all he has to do is breathe in order to, you know, provoke the fourth outraged, you know, outraged response of the week. It becomes too much after a while.
- [12:47]
B
So here's where I'm sympathetic to the position of your friends on the center left. Maybe I'm one, maybe after this we can assess. But he violated rules, he lied about it. And there's an argument that by getting private donations, he set up another kleptocratic situation. Those are all bad things. Has he boiled the frog so much that the responsible thing for us to do is say, okay, but that's only bad thing number 12? We really should be responding to bad things number one, two or three. But what if bad thing number two is he's going to fire members of the civil servant service or the executive branch that he doesn't have permission to, then the public doesn't care about that. So isn't attempting to, to reach for the literal visual hole in the White House that maybe the public will respond to better? Steve?
- [13:37]
D
No, I don't, I don't think it is. I'm actually with Damon on this largely Look, I think it's a problem. I think it's not good for the reasons, primarily for the reasons that you suggest. I mean, I have this. This thing about just blatant lying, and nobody does it like Donald Trump. I mean, if you look back at the kinds of things that he said over the summer, he was very clear, unqualified. It won't interfere with the current building. It won't be. It'll be near it, but not touching it. It pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of.
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C
That's what he said.
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D
And then just last week, he said, everything out there is coming down. We're replacing it with one of the most beautiful ballrooms you've ever seen. You know, it's just an obvious, clear, blatant lie. Donald Trump does this all the time. He ought not do it. We're bad. We're in a bad place in our country if the President of the United States can lie like that with impunity and with nobody calling him on it. So call him on it. I think certainly there are procedural problems with this, and I assume that what's going to come out of this is going to be a hideous, Saddam Hussein like, gilded space that will be an embarrassment to almost everybody in the country. So I'm not in favor of this. Even if I take. I think Damon's point about having somewhere for the president to hold big events is probably a good thing. I think that the biggest problem here is the inability to make distinctions. And I mean this with a lot of people I agree with on a lot of things who are critical of Trump, between the stuff that rates, you know, three out of 10 on a scale of one to 10, and the stuff that rates 11 out of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. And if it's the case that every time there's a 3 out of 10, and I would say this is a 3 out of 10 in my view, you treat it like it's an 11 out of 10, like we've now erased American history. Nobody's ever going to learn anything. Nobody's going to be able to go to the White House. It's going to be an embarrassment. Nobody can ever have fun at the White House anymore. First ladies are going to be sobbing like it's not. That's not what this is. It's bad. He wished that he wouldn't do it, but it is not, you know, killing people without providing evidence that they've committed a crime. It's not. It's not any of Those things. It's not yanking the licenses potentially of the networks. It's not cutting off free speech. It's not going after your political opponents and announcing that you're doing it in broad daylight. It's none of those things.
- [16:04]
C
It's also, if I may, also not the President of the United States requesting or maybe demanding his own Justice Department to pay him a $230 million penalty for bringing charges against him under the Biden administration. That happened last week, too. And I consider that to be more like a 9 out of 10.
- [16:31]
B
And what about the Binance pardon? Where is that?
- [16:34]
C
What, which one was that?
- [16:36]
B
The Binance pardon. The head of Binance who is.
- [16:40]
C
Yeah, sure. And that happened late in the week. So like I didn't even my. In my post where I tried to sort of rank all of bad medium stories. Yeah, probably. Although that came in too late to even make my list because there's so many of them. And that is significant that we are in the position of having to constantly make these kinds of judgment calls. And frankly, I think, Mike, you were correct when you referred to the visual aspect of the ballroom. I do think a lot of the people on the anti Trump centered left are former Republican campaign consultants and they think like campaign consultants and that means they go visuals. Giant wrecking ball smashing building next to the White House. That's an amazing visual run with that. We'll do some damage with this. And that's not the way I look at these things. I mean, I'm a writer, I'm an intellectual and I believe in making these judgment calls with a different kind of perspective of like how bad is this really? Not can we hurt the guy more with this because we have a picture. So that's, that's I guess sort of what I in my hoity toity academic way get irritated about in some of this is. So yeah, go ahead.
- [18:01]
B
Is your point and I am agreeing with you on the relative of harms that he's done with these things. Our rankings are not with. Not outside a point or two of each other. But is your point in general? That and an excellent point, that all these guys from the Lincoln Project are campaign people, right? Not necessarily. Or the prominent ones, not necessarily policy people. Is your point that visuals aren't the way to make the case, the effective case against him with the public or. Because there are plenty of contradictions, Right. Abu Ghraib doesn't happen without visuals. The Summer Floyd doesn't happen without a video. So is that your case, that there's something about visuals that don't go far enough or without an election in a month. Visuals. A visual. A stunning. A visual. Stunning visual isn't going to obtain to the next point where we have a chance to vote. Because I just got to say right now there's a race in New Jersey and Mikey Sherrill is leading by a little, the Democrat. And it's really funny because the there are some good arguments against her like she was essentially one of these people in the House of Representatives who engaged in insider trading. But there's no tape on that. But so the tape they do play is some stupidly out of context comment about environmentalism. So I'm just thinking does is it that we should make the best arguments because the best arguments work or is it that we should it would be only okay to make arguments that would sway the public if we had elections in a few weeks.
- [19:41]
C
Well, in my view it is important, especially in the context of how to respond to the person of Donald Trump that we make the case very strong on substance and only back it up with visuals. If there are visuals. If there are visuals. And the cases in that so strong you don't go with that anyway because you have the visuals. That's the way a campaign consultant thinks. And my problem with that is that the case against Trump always tends to be and needs to be a sort of high minded thing that like this isn't who we are, we should be better than this as Americans president should be more dignified. They should abide by the rule of law. There's always a kind of throat clearing. Stiffen the spine and get patriotic and show that he's less than we should be. That's always been the way that people have approached criticizing Trump. Now maybe that's not the way to go. But the problem is that most of the time those are the cases being made and you can't combine that with then throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. And if it has a visual then that's what we run with because that's just not the same criter that's, that's now we just want to make the guy look bad no matter what and not really think through really how bad is this and what are we prioritizing here? Like is he just a schmuck or is he actually like a would be authoritarian dictator? And what I heard last week was a lot of him knocking down this building means he is an autocratic authoritarian right now when actually I don't think on substance it sticks that landing. So even if the visual of the guy knocking down the building next to the White House says authoritarian dictator. The substance of it undermines that. And that makes it sound cynical. It makes it sound like this is all being pushed by campaign consultants who just want to make the guy look bad and get a hit. And that's, I think, a confusion of priorities in mind.
- [21:56]
D
There's a boy who cried wolf problem here. I mean, remember at the beginning of the Trump administration, you had this moment where Elon Musk was. He'd just spent $290 million getting Donald Trump elected. He was obviously going to play a major role in Doge. He was going to be a big factor in the administration. And he does this weird thing around Inauguration day that some likened to a Nazi salute. I didn't know what he was doing then. I still don't have any idea what he was doing. Some people thought it really looked like a Nazi salute, but you saw sort of resistance go all in on Elon and Trump are Nazis. And there was a, you know, a four day news cycle about Elon and Trump are not. Meanwhile, all of these other things are actually happening that are, you know, changing the substance of what we're doing in those early days in the administration. So you have on the one hand this big discussion of something that I think is almost purely symbolic that doesn't necessarily have anything that will follow from it. And meanwhile, all of these changes, these pretty dramatic changes in those very early days are taking place. It just seems to me misplaced priorities. Treat the 3 as a 3 and treat the 10 as a 10.
- [23:11]
B
Yeah, I agree. I really do. And that's how I conduct my show. But then I think about the pieces of evidence that run counter to that. So, for instance, you both remember that during the campaign, this campaign, he was at a rally and he said that if he lost the election, it was because he has superior economic policies to Kamala Harris. It's going to be a bloodbath for the US Auto industry. And this is what he meant. It will be bad news for carmakers. NBC headline, Trump says there will be a bloodbath if he loses the election. And I do think that this is an example of taking unfairly taking a quote out of context to try to hang it with them. And it's really not what he meant. And in fact, the ultimate upshot of that was it gave some momentum and sucker to Trump's supporters because they were right, because the news was being unfair. However, the thing that may be most worked as a piece of rhetoric that he said that was used against him was the Charlottesville speech. And good people on both sides. And I. Well, maybe you. I don't know if you agree or disagree, but I've looked at that pretty closely. I've parsed that. And I really do think in his flawed syntax, he meant something like the protesters against the statue were good and Virginians or people who want the statues are good. And he really wasn't saying neo Nazis were good, although there was ambiguity. So this is why I say that, like, sometimes the media can get it wrong and it's egg on their face and they cried wolf, and sometimes the media can more or less get it wrong. And Joe Biden says that's why I ran for president.
- [24:49]
D
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's. The good people on both sides is an interesting, interesting counterexample because there's a. You know, it's an article of faith now that he was badly misrepresented by the mainstream media on that. So I actually did some reporting on that. I don't do as much reporting as I used to do, but I did a fair amount of reporting on that at the time. And I talked to some of. I was not down in Charlottesville at the time, but I talked to a couple of the people with local papers, local media outlets who were down there at the time. And the problem with what Trump said then is there really weren't good, good people on both sides. It was basically just neo Nazis and then counter protesters. There weren't sort of, you know, you weren't out there carrying signs saying, you know, we need representative history. This is. It was basically like bad guys against non bad guys.
- [25:36]
C
I mean, in general, I think that that example has never felt very compelling to me. I see the people on the maga, right, who love to bring that up as an example of. Of bad faith, and I just don't see it. I do think it was extremely ambiguous, and Trump just doesn't speak with great precision, and so he can get into trouble like that. He also has shown on multiple occasions that he's extremely hesitant to sort of police any kind of boundary on his right. If people support him, he wants their support. He doesn't care if. If they're like, neo Nazi types, really, these sort of like, yeah, well, you know, David Duke likes me. All right, whatever. That's cool. Whatever. So. So he. He's going to get into trouble about that, if anybody cares anymore about such distinctions. I think a more interesting example, frankly, is going all the way back to the 2016 campaign when there was A some kind of a press avail where Trump made his. Had his line about how, oh yeah, I hope Putin, you know, bugs my phone and like, you know, or bu. This like basically asking the Russians to steal stuff on his behalf, which if you have no sense of humor at all, sounds like he's asking for the Russians to interfere with the election and help him win. It is, I thought at the time and have ever since thought he was clearly just being, being a joker. He was just being stupid and silly and trying to make a joke out of the thing that Democrats were extremely on edge about because you have the WikiLeaks stealing of DNC documents and things that were hurting them. And that of course then played into the whole kind of Russian thing after the election was over. And so, you know, maybe if Trump could go back, he would, he would prefer not to have made that joke. But that was an example, in my opinion of, I mean, clearly if you just look at the transcript, it looks like he's asking Russia to help him. But if you listen to it in real time, he's being a joker. He's doing Trump and trying to like make a joke that makes light of the sufferings of his opponents and saying things that he knows will get them all triggered and angry at him so that they'll react and then his side can laugh at their overreaction. That's kind of the way he plays this game. And it's worked for him now for 10 years. But it wasn't really an example of him admitting that he was kind of colluding with Russia to get help.
- [28:24]
B
Yeah, and another example would be the stand back and standby reference to the Proud boys, which at the time I just thought it was not a call to arms or potential arms. I thought it was just Trump, the guy who says Thailand instead of Thailand, talking how he talks. But then you see January 6th, you're.
- [28:46]
C
Like, maybe, yeah, cuz that, that, that one actually like, again, it all comes down to the junk judgment call. But like at the time, I remember him saying that in the debate and thinking like, this is just another example of him not wanting to say, actually I don't want the Proud Boys to have anything to do with me or my campaign or my administration. But instead he turns it into a kind of like, well, you know, hey, it's happy to have them around supporting me. He like, if you attack Trump or criticize him, you're like excommunicated to outer darkness. And if you show that you support him and like him, he will never dismiss you or cut you out, no matter who you are. That's just sort of the way he does it.
- [29:36]
B
Yeah. So I wanna go back to one aspect of the Anne Applebaum quote about the East Wing and the whole, and the visual. And her premise was that Donald Trump does not care about public opinion. He has a disdain for public opinion. This is just the latest example, and she talked about a couple more. I say that premise is true. However, it's a little bit of a Mobius strip. Right. She says that her point is to criticize Trump because he doesn't care about public opinion. So you would say in a democracy that's not right. The President should care about public opinion because the public, and in its opinion or the expression of their opinion, has the power to unseat him. Is there some sort of argument that not that the President is right, not that Trump is right to ignore public opinion, but that just as a matter of pure political calculus, the public has not shown sufficient ire to scare him? Because there have been examples where he has backtracked after getting on the wrong side of the public, like Kimmel, or maybe this wasn't the public, but bond markets. Every once in a while he senses things and there is political gravity. So what about. What care should he have in his own self interest for public opinion stake, Steve?
- [31:02]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, I think Ann is a very astute observer of sort of Trump's creeping authoritarianism and certainly is somebody that I look to. To read about this in historical context. I think that she doesn't quite get this one right. It's not that Trump doesn't care about public opinion. It is that he has supreme confidence that he can manipulate public opinion. And he has seen, I mean, we have seen again and again and again, Trump's ability to take something that is not just a stretch, but totally preposterous, evidence free, and build a case around it and bring, you know, certainly not everybody, but enough of his own people around to some proposition that it works for him. I mean, January 6th, I would say, would be among the best examples. The election itself, the 2020 election itself. I mean, Trump was just this weekend tweeting about how the election was stolen. Wants the DOJ to look into it. He's hiring all these election deniers from 2020, putting them in places of influence in his administration or at least in his team of advisors and. Yeah, I think.
- [32:14]
B
And place of influence in Virginia and New Jersey where they are actually having elections.
- [32:19]
D
Yeah. Most people look at his claims.
- [32:25]
C
About.
- [32:25]
D
The 2020 election, evaluate the Evidence that we've seen look back at the court cases and conclude he's off his rocker. There's no evidence to support that the election was stolen, that there was a coordinated conspiracy and the individual arguments that he made one by one by one were knocked over, were destroyed, debunked. And yet if you look at public polling on the 2020 election, he still has a majority of Republicans who think that the 2020 election election was, if not stolen, partially fraudulent, that he might have won it, that Joe Biden wasn't rightfully elected. I mean, this is his ability to sort of turn that on its head. And I think we've seen him do the same with January 6th in certain respects. I mean, we watched what, 40,000 hours of video of what happened on January 6th. There's not a lot of ambiguity. We have the video, we have the context. We saw what he said. We know what they were saying for weeks in advance. We know what the President said before the election itself. He told us, in effect he wasn't going to accept any other outcome but that he won and that he was going to cause problems if he didn't win. But he has now convinced people that this was it. I mean, the arguments are sort of self canceling. This was antifa, this was the FBI. This was an overreaction. This wasn't. His basic argument is this was everything other than what it was. And he has convinced, you know, manipulated public opinion, at least on the right side, in such a way that he's not only sort of survived it, but he's sown sort of our broader public discussions into further chaos. People don't know what to believe.
- [34:14]
B
Yeah. So, Damon, often when we hear about public opinion, let's take ice and mask wearing, very aggressive tactics sometimes, if not often against people who are either in this country legally and certainly weren't the people that he said he'd be prioritizing in terms of deportation. So you do a poll and the poll says the public is against that. I'm glad. I'd like to know where the public is. That's level one of understanding. The poll, level two or three used to be. And therefore the presidency, the administration, the people behind this unpopular action will not necessarily stop it, but at least compose their, their tactics accordingly. But that second part seems not to happen. And so then you'd say, oh, so then this will be a liability if we vote in elections and the public doesn't like this, and this is a signature program, this is going to be a huge electoral liability for his party. Or may even him in 2028. And that part seems short circuited or is the word seems doing a lot in my analysis?
- [35:24]
C
Well, I mean, my view, I'm extremely skeptical of issue polling. I think most Americans do not follow politics, do not know about policy, don't think about it, don't particularly care about stuff. And what happens is a pollster calls up random American and says this is happening, describes it and then says, do you approve or not approve of this? And in the context of that past like 30 second description, they say, oh, good, bad, whatever. That gets recorded in a poll and it gets put out public turns on ice, roundups of immigrants. Okay, but the problem is the person on the phone forgot about that question 30 seconds after the phone gets hung up. And that person doesn't really maintain that awareness or framing of it by the pollster beyond.
- [36:21]
B
Or I'll add, sorry to interrupt. I'll add another thing. All these issue pollings just are a proxy for do you like Trump? Don't you like Trump?
- [36:28]
C
Well, but that's the thing is I do give a lot more credence to straight up public opinion polling of approval of the president. And in that, Trump is doing just fine. This is the thing I keep hitting this to, to the, the people, the, the people I describe as the Hopium pushers on the center left, people like Simon Rosenberg and, and some other pollsters. I, I frankly, I mean, he's not great. I mean, more than, it's always more people disapprove of Trump than approve. That's always the case except for like the first, like 10, 10 days of his two administrations. Then he gets a little blump for a honeymoon and goodwill. But then he sinks and goes underwater and he stays there pretty far underwater. But compared to the first administration, he's hovering between like say 43, 45% approval. And it is, is pretty fricking consistent. You know, like during, during the, the worst of the tariff rollout in April, he went down a point or two into like the 42, 43 range. But then he came back and then the kind of backlash to all the, the Kimmel stuff, which where it sounded like he was trying to censor a media figure, he went down a point or two. But then, then he sort of came back and he just remains there despite the ice roundups, despite the chaos, despite the $230 million demand of damages from his own Justice Department, despite the kind of ups and downs of the foreign policy stuff, bombing Venezuelan boats with no real justification and so forth. But then also Ending, at least for now, the Israel Gaza war. So, like, that might help him, but he doesn't really go up that that much. He's just sort of hovering in the mid to slightly lower 40s, which isn't great, but it's about where, if not slightly above where Biden was by this point. And that is kind of probably the way things are going to remain for the near future, where we have such polarization of our presidency. So my attitude about Trump and public opinion is that, as Steve said, and this I think, is quite right, he has a way of governing that likes to defy where public opinion is and move it in his own direction. And that is what feedbacks over to the left and convinces the left that, hey, we shouldn't try to be popularist, we shouldn't look at the opinion polls and try to move to where public opinion is. We should elect Mondame and make him or someone like, like him president and just do what we want. And we can move everyone over to the left because Trump's been able to do it with all of his issues. Why can't we do that? And it's a bizarre paradox because I'm with people like Matt Iglesias and others on the center left who kind of want to moderate the Democratic Party so that they can win more elections and Senate seats. And yet we're constantly looking at Trump kind of doing his own thing, doing these wildly egregious acts that seem to violate every norm and law you can imagine. And he, he doesn't sink below 43% approval. Like, how does he do it? I. It's a bizarre, bizarre thing.
- [40:08]
B
Does that. Steve, do you think that only applies to Trump? I mean, is the phenomenon that Damon is laying out like it's all vibes or our opinions of politicians are not an agglomeration of their issue stances? Is that a Trump specific thing and not a potential Democratic nominee specific thing?
- [40:29]
D
I say I think it is largely a Trump specific thing. But I don't say that with great conviction because, you know, there's been much talk about whether we're living in a post truth era. I think that's true to a certain extent, but Trump is true now, I'm.
- [40:47]
B
Post that, but go ahead.
- [40:49]
D
Post, post. Trump is sort of the, the avatar of, of this look. I mean, you know, as Damon suggests this, we've been for wrestling with this since he first emerged on this scene in, in politics. You know, the old, the old saw about taking Trump literally or seriously, there was some truth, truth to that. Back then. And I think part of the challenge is most people don't know what the right answer is. My inclination as a reporter is to do both. Take him literally and take him seriously and attribute meaning to the things that the guy says. But, you know, he often finds a way to say, I mean, we were just talking about this moments ago with the Russia thing. Well, it sort of felt like a joke.
- [41:35]
C
Joke.
- [41:35]
D
He's not actually. He's not literally inviting Putin like in public at a press conference to do this, is he? And, and I think the answer is probably no. But like, it also corresponded directly with what we KNEW Donald Trump Jr. Was doing at Trump Tower a couple months earlier. So maybe we should have been taking that serious. And I think this is part of the problem. Trump is able, because he's such an absurdist character in, in this unfolding play, he, he can have it both ways in a way that I think other politicians can't. I mean, you know, if you think just one sort of case study on this was the, the Springfield eating the pets question, you know, JD Vance makes this case and makes these arguments and is immediately fact checking checked to death on this and you can't come up with anybody who knows that this is happening. You have sort of MAGA bloggers race to Springfield to try to find somebody, anybody who's ever eaten a pet.
- [42:38]
B
Yes. And trying to support JD Pond once that went missing. Who knows, it could have been part of a dish. Yeah.
- [42:45]
D
So you have all these people trying to, to sort of validate what JD Vance is saying and it doesn't work. It fails. Right. And J.D. vance himself eventually says in public. Public, sort of.
- [42:58]
C
Yeah.
- [42:59]
D
If I have to create stories in order to get people to pay attention, then I'm going to create stories. Basically admits it. Trump, on the other hand, in the debate says, you know, they're eating the patch, they're eating the. And you know, I don't think he was damaged by this happening. At least if we're judging from sort of opinion polls, approval polls, election results. Yeah, it's sort of like he said.
- [43:22]
C
It in such an ability.
- [43:23]
D
How high way that people didn't. Yeah. Like you're going to fact check that. Like, come on.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. So we'll be back in a minute and we'll talk about some other things that if they are what you say they are, I don't love it. Including the Next Big joke. TRUMP 2028 Big joke.
- [43:42]
D
Right.
- [43:43]
B
Back in a minute with more of not even mad Morning.
- [43:52]
D
Zoe got donuts. Jeff Bridges. Why Are you still living above our garage? Well I dig the mattress and I.
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C
Want to be in a T mobile commercial like you.
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D
Teach me.
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C
So Dana oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get.
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D
The new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate program camera system. Wow, impressive.
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Let me try.
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D
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B
Get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
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C
Nice.
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D
Jeffrey, you heard them. T Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
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So what are we having for lunch?
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D
Dude, my work here is done.
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B
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D
Beyond for well qualified customers plus tax.
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B
And 35 device connection charge credits and debt balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance agreement.
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D
IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs $1099.99 and new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required Best mobile network in the.
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B
US based on analysis by Oakload Speed.
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D
Test Intelligence data 1H 2025 visit t.
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A
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- [45:25]
B
We'Re back with Not Even Mad. I'm joined by Steve Hayes of the Dispatch and Damon Linker of Notes from the Middle Ground. He's also from up, but I think Notes from the Middle Ground is the more more prestigious organization. And before the break I teased this idea that Trump is teasing that Steve Bannon is getting out there. Well, maybe I will run again in 2028. And the I think the history has been it's always a joke, but it's also possibly not a joke and we'll see how the crowd reacts. Now I have to say my analysis is if you compare this to some of the other ideas he's had and floated, the legality of it is actually less stark than a few of the firings, birthright citizenship, a couple of items that the Supreme Court might allow him to do. How worried should we be about Trump really? If he gets the right signals and if he sees the opening running in 2028? Again, Steve, I mean I think worried.
- [46:25]
D
Like I take him seriously. I take him at his word. I think he wants to do it. It. Part of this is, you know, again, Trump being sort of musing aloud, being funny, knowing that resistance types will hear this or, and, or people like me will hear this and think, geez, that's really bad that we shouldn't be able to do that. Here are all the reasons. Let me make a logical case. Let me point to precedent. And he loves to sort of jit up that kind of reaction. But I think he would like to remain as president. We know that he wanted to remain as president after 2020. I see no indication that, that he's not serious about it now. And, you know, some of this is self reinforcing in a way among Republicans because Trump will float something like this that might seem sort of preposterous on its face or at least a stretch. And then there's this. There's got to be a. We should be able to come up with a clever phrase for this where you have Republicans, each of whom is trying to outdo the other in order to win his approval to get noticed by Trump. So in this case, I think Lindsey Graham has been somebody who's been kind of leading this charge, wearing Trump 2028 hats, arguing affirmatively in public that Trump should run again. And whether or not Lindsey Graham actually believes that that would be a good outcome or doesn't understand, I think the legal precedent, he sees it as a clever vehicle to show Trump, I'm more loyal than others. I'm Will.
- [48:01]
B
This.
- [48:01]
D
This seems like an absurd argument you're making, Mr. President, but I'm so loyal to you that I'm gonna embrace it. I'm gonna embrace it publicly. I'm gonna make the argument on your behalf and hope that, you know, I think he hopes that Trump will notice that and reward him.
- [48:18]
B
Yeah, it's a permission structure, a wink, wink permission structure. It's a bit of paralypsis, which the Greek word for I'm not saying, I'm just saying. So he is saying and not saying at the same time and keeping his options open. And like a lot of jokes, it's a joke until it stops being a joke. So Damon, right now on Kelsey, the prediction market, they have Trump at 9 cents for $100 payoff. Are you buying or selling on 9 for Trump to be the 2028 Republican nominee?
- [48:48]
C
I'm selling on anything because I just don't see that happening. And I think Trump knows it too. This is something, I mean, would he like to stay president? I Guess. Sure. Especially this term, first term, I think he was pretty miserable, a lot of it. But this time he's packed every job with his lackeys. They butter him up and kiss his ass and do everything he wants every single day. And so I think he's. Now he feels like he's king of the world and he's having a ball, so why not do that job till he drops over dead? It's a. Some point. I would put the odds that the Supreme Court would rule nine to zero he cannot run again, as 100%, I am as bullish as you could be on the system stopping him from this, because we have a constitutional amendment that clearly states with no ambiguity, that you cannot not do what he would want to do. Now, on the other hand, I have to say this also doesn't keep me awake at night like some other Trump stuff, simply because FDR ran four and won four terms of office. So, like, even if he could do it, he would be an ancient guy who would probably be in danger of keeling over at any second. And it's not like this is. I mean, we would get past him eventually. So I don't see it. It as the worst possible thing going on of all the bad things happening and possibly happening, but I just don't see it happening. I think Trump, again, he would love it, but I think more than even that, he loves that it drives people like Steve and me sometimes and a lot of his resistance enemies absolutely around the bend. And he loves doing that because it's fun for him and because he feels like it's very good for him politically because it makes his opponents look like they have no sense of humor, like they got a stick up their ass, like they're lunatics who. Who can't control themselves and are kind of deranged in their hatred of him. And he. He loves that and he thinks it's good for the party. And so he. And he might be right. Yeah. I mean, at least from the outcome of everything over the last 10 years, except for, I guess, the. The November 2020 election. But in his narrative, he won that too. So it's just working for him in every direction.
- [51:29]
B
So I'll tell you, I am buying. I literally bought today 50 bucks. But this is how the prediction markets work. You don't have to. It doesn't have to happen to pay you off. It could just double in price. So I think at some point, 18% of America or the people betting on these markets are gonna say, yeah, this is more plausible than that. That than not. And that thing you just said about fdr, that'll be one of his talking points, as always, is you Democrats are such hypocrites. You had your president for four terms. What I can't even run for three. And another point is he will say, I could run for the Republican nomination. The Republicans are allowed to nominate who they wish for president. And then he could even do a thing where he's like, all right, I'm not going to be on the ballot, but two people who will vow to abdicate power once elected will be on the ballot and they'll name me speaker of the House, which I can be, and then I get to become president. And by the way, that is constitutional anyway. It's all crazy, but craziness obtains in the Trump administration. I want to talk about one more thing. And we didn't talk about the Toronto Tariffs or the Insurrection Act. And Damon, you wrote some excellent stuff about that. And it falls into the category of this seems so blatantly illegal. But, but what can anyone do about it? Tell me your concern for what Mike Johnson is doing. One of the not even the brakes on power. Even if Mike Johnson wants Trump to do everything he's doing, there's something about the role of Congress as enumerated in the Constitution, that is supposed to be a co equal branch. And tell me if you read it any differently than I do, that in the person of Johnson. He seems extremely intent on frittering away that power. And I wonder and worry it's not just in this term and for the short term, it could have longer term consequences which weakens the entire idea of balance and checks, imbalances and balance of power. Steve, do you worry about that? How do you look at what Johnson is doing by, you know, I'm not even criticizing his stance in the shutdown. I'm talking about his intent on abdicating, slash abrogating power.
- [53:40]
D
Yeah, I don't think he cares. I think he's, he gets up every morning and wants to know how he can ingratiate himself with Trump and eliminate any problems that Trump will cause him. And if that means basically doing everything he can to make sure that what Donald Trump wants, Donald Trump gets, I think he's going to do it. We've seen this. Look, this is sort of who Mike Johnson is and was, if you think back to Mike Johnson before he was chosen as speaker, you know, this was somebody who was regarded as a constitutionalist, who was sort of an intellectual conservative, who was a lawyer, who sort of understood these complicated legal issues, and then in the service of Donald Trump, wrote, supported the case in Trump's argument about the stolen election with briefs and making arguments to his colleagues that Trump was, in effect, right on some of the things he was arguing. And I don't think Mike Johnson believed that when he made those arguments. He told colleagues that I spoke to that he didn't believe what he was doing, but that he thought Trump deserved a good attorney. And so he made arguments that he didn't believe to please Donald Trump and to make sort of a theoretical case. Well, I think he saw pretty quickly that that brought him closer into Donald Trump's circle, ingratiated him with Trump, and from his perspective, gave him a winning strategy to accumulate more power. And that's what we're see playing out here. I would make the distinction between Johnson, who I think is doing this sort of gleefully, and John Thune, who I think is not providing kind of the ins, proving to be the institutional bulwark that maybe some of us thought he would have been, but is much more institutionally minded than Mike Johnson is and is doing to a certain extent what he's doing when he does Trump's bidding reluctantly and because he's managing a, you know, a fractious Republican Senate conference, but still sort of understands, you know, I don't want to do what Johnson's doing. It leads to, I think, unfortunately, similar places, but I think the way that they're approaching it is. Is different in. In degree.
- [56:04]
B
John Thune more than just the lisp world version of Johnson. Damon, what. What do you think? Are you very worried, or do you look at this and more or less agree with Steve, but say, okay, that's a good explanation for this individual, but doesn't have much implication for 10 years from now?
- [56:27]
C
Well, I do think that if we, if this, this episode in American political history ends with the American system becoming something that people recognize in the future as a more authoritarian kind of that. The big factor that historians of the future will point to is the breakdown of the separation of powers in this period and the ceding of power to the executive branch by the legislative branch, and Johnson's instinct to capitulate to Trump on tariffs, on lots of other things, on kind of. Of shutting down the House so that they didn't have to hold a vote over Epstein files being released. These kinds of things, they add up and the. The added result. I mean, Trump is simultaneously pushing the envelope on executive power in all kinds of ways that are usurping legislative prerogatives. And the House is simply not pushing back back. They are therefore by default allowing it to happen. And as that happens, more and more, what you end up with is a system where the executive kind of becomes larger and stronger and takes over the powers of the other branches. And I actually blame the Congress far more than I do the courts. I know a lot of my friends on the center left left love to get angry at the Supreme Court and certain pro Trump federal judges on this, but I actually think that misunderstands the way separation of powers works. I think the Supreme Court would be much more inclined to side with Congress against Trump if Congress would actually stand up for itself and make a case for why no, Trump, you cannot set tariff policy. It's right there in the Constitution. This is our prerogative. If they did that, I think the Supreme Court would rise to Congress's defense against the president. But in the absence of that, the Supreme Court has no enforcement mechanism. It cannot solely stand up and say, you know what, but Congress doesn't want to take these powers and assert them, but we're going to do it. Right?
- [59:05]
B
Right. That is intellectually consistent with at least this court, not to do for Congress something Congress doesn't want to do. So since the show thus far has been pretty happy and optimistic, let's dwell a little bit on the things that annoy us. These are the things that get our goats or grind our gears. These are our goat grinders. Steve, you want to go first?
- [59:27]
D
Yeah. I love this. And the problem for me is there are so many things these days. I try as I've gotten older, I've learned that I have less very strong opinions about things. A lot of stuff just doesn't matter to me the way that it did when I knew everything in my 20s. But there are a few things that really stick in my craw, and one of them that has been there since my 20s. And I'm going to end our conversation sort of the way that you introduced it, by talking about football and focusing on linguistic precision with your beg to differ comment. And that is the abuse of the word literally, which now in its common usage has come to mean for most people precisely the opposite of what literally means. I mean, most people use it and they mean figuratively. And this has been on my mind. I wrote a piece about this for the weekly standard probably 20 years ago. We used to have a chunk of the magazine called the Casual. It was a column and this. I just was pissed about this. And at the time when I wrote about it, this was Sort of a slightly nagging concern. And you'd hear it occasionally. Now it is. Almost every single time somebody says this, they misuse the word. And I was listening to a fantasy football podcast last night about your beloved jets, and the. The person was talking about Woody Johnson, the owner of the jets, taking a shot, a public shot, at Justin Fields, the quarterback. Johnson said something to the effect of, with a quarterback who performs like this or has a rating like this, you know, how could you expect to win? Or something. Something that wasn't exactly a vote of confidence in the quarterback. And this person says Woody Johnson literally threw Justin Fields under the bus. You think he actually did not at all literally throw Justin. I mean, we really grind, like, awful if he had. But that's not at all what he did. He made a comment he probably shouldn't have made, maybe regrets, I don't know.
- [61:34]
B
Maybe he literally putting on fire under Justin Fields, who went out and won.
- [61:37]
D
There's all. I mean, when you. When you take this stuff, when you think about it and you apply sort of a little literal interpretation to people who don't actually mean for you to imply a literal interpretation, it can be humorous. And that's where I was 20 years ago. But I've gotten to the point where I just get so annoyed by it because almost everybody gets it wrong. Literally everybody gets it wrong now in.
- [62:02]
B
That category of words that have come to mean their opposite. And some words just have always meant their opposite, like sanction and sanction. And I was thinking of sanguine and sanguinary, but nonplussed, which means taken aback or confused, of course, now just means totally unfazed. Except when the British use it, they usually get it right. That's an extra category of annoyance.
- [62:22]
D
Didn't nonplussed in its original meaning mean sort of speechless? Like without words, you can't. You can't respond. Yeah, yeah.
- [62:34]
B
And now it's just, oh, he was just nonplussed and went along with his day. Mine is, I think, word related to. I was reading in the LA Times and this was written on the gist list. Do I do the thing where I say, Text Mike to 33777 to subscribe? I shan't do that here. That's far too commercial. They were talking about the big initiative to put a fence around MacArthur Park. Very, very agnostic on if offense will solve MacArthur Park. But they quote Ellum July, her harm reduction director with the social services group. Whatever. We in the harm reduction community know that the more isolated people are, the higher Risk there is of overdose deaths because they're less likely to seek services. I don't know if offense will help or hurt that. What is the harm reduction community? No, I meant. I didn't know. At least with literally, you know, they mean figuratively. I looked it up. I thought, okay, they must mean. I think it means what we used to call drug counselors or something having to do with addiction. But maybe it has something to do with the homeless or. Oh, God forbid it's interdisciplinary. ChatGPT tells me it's mostly epidemiology. It's a little bit addiction. But the thing is, when. Whenever I see harm reduction community, you would think the best thing would be. I would say, oh, that's good. I have now some hope, because harm reducers are on the scene. That's not what occurs to me. You would think the neutral thing would be, oh, maybe some harm could be reduced. Nope. When I see the harm reduction community, all I say is, here we go. Harm reduction. And have they just given up the fight? Like, no one thinks you could actually, I don't know, get somebody to rehab or solve Ebola or whatever harm it is you're trying to reduce. Another one of those phrases that obscures more than it illuminates. Damon, do you have a goat grinder?
- [64:26]
C
Yes. Although I suspect mine may be a little more political than these tend to be. But in some ways, it overlaps with.
- [64:33]
B
Yours, Mike Michael Cohen did. I'm. I'm annoyed that Letitia James got indicted. So you go ahead, be political.
- [64:40]
C
Oh, okay. All right. It's a little different than that, but, you know, my wife and I lived for about 20 years out in the Philadelphia suburbs, and she commuted into Penn. And I did various things. But last summer, we moved into Philadelphia, the city, into center City. Our kids have both flown the coop for college. So our way of living with and enjoying our empty nesting is to be urbanites again. And we're loving it so far. Been here for five months, and it's great, a great adventure. I'm very happy with it, except for one thing that is getting my goat. And that is, yes, the homelessness problem. You know, I, obviously, I would come into the city when we lived in the suburbs and I would see homeless people around, but when you actually live here, you experience it in a more visceral way. And I have to say, I'm a liberal. I live now in a city. And I just have to say I don't understand why liberal city dwellers tolerate living like this. Like, why do they think it Is okay, that there are dozens and dozens of people who just sort of live in the center of Philadelphia, a world class city of great beauty and historical places, and just a wonderful place, great restaurants, theaters and so forth. And yet there are, there's this community of people who live on the street, eat on the street, defecate on the street, splay themselves in the middle of public sidewalks that people sort of delicately walk around as if it's just normal. I just, there is, I mean, again, I speak as a liberal who would like to reform my fellow liberal political culture that there is sometimes for liberals, I think, often out of the goodness of their heart, a hesitancy to use political power to improve the quality of the common good for fear of infinite conflicting limitations on personal freedom for some people. And if there is any case where I think the balance needs to be tilted in the other direction, it is in this, that if you live in a city, you should not have to tolerate this. And I don't even feel, I don't even apply that statement to the crime problem in the same way, because the crime problem, yeah, it goes up and down. Things, historically speaking, aren't as bad as they were in the 90s. And I think, you know, we're trying sort of haplessly to kind of improve that. So, like, I see evidence of the police and the city trying to combat crime when it flares up and it becomes a problem. But the homelessness thing, I just get the feeling like everyone involved sort of wants to stick their fingers in the, their ears and just not deal with it because they know that it would require saying to these people, you're not allowed to just eat, sleep and defecate on the sidewalk here. We're going to bring you to this shelter. And the shelter should be better and there should be lots of mental health available to them and programs to get them in low, you know, affordable housing and so forth. And, and I'm not an expert in all of that. I'm sure there would be conflicts and sometimes the homeless people would not want to do it and that would be, that would lead to some ugly scenes. But it doesn't change the fact that it needs to happen and it should.
- [68:20]
B
Yes, my, my heart too goes out to that. And if I had one wish, it is that that particular harm be reduced. Let me also say that you mentioned your wife. That'd be Beth Linker, past guest of the Gist, who is the author of Slouch Posture Panic in Modern America. So I didn't know we were doing book plugs, but what a good book. You never thought of it before. It's the best book ever on posture panic. So I wanted to plug your wife. Well, thanks for mentioning and if we're plugging everyone and identifying anyone, that was Damon Linker. He's a senior lecturer at the Political Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania and he writes the Notes from the Middle Ground substack. And Steve Hayes is the CEO and Editor of the Dispatch. Check out all of the Dispatch works and podcasts and the Dispatch, where on Friday they get together and talk amongst themselves. Steve recently did an Agriculture only episode. It was excellent. Steve, thank you very much. Damon, thank you very much.
- [69:16]
C
Thank you.
- [69:17]
B
Mike.
- [69:17]
C
Thanks.
- [69:18]
B
And until next time, we're not saying we're right. We're not saying you're right. But we're definitely saying we're not even mad. That's it for today's show. Corey Warr is the producer of the Jazz. Jeff Craig runs our Social Kathleen Sykes helps me on the gist list very much. And Michelle Pesca helps us all so very much. See the error of our ways and the wisdom of our future. And thanks for listening.
- [70:04]
A
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes. Stakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R I K dot com.