Ross Douthat Leaves NYT for Bari Weiss. Here Were Some of His Worst Columns.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:10 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is Vapid Response number 40. We're the show that breaks down the law in the news, but today we're doing something a little different. We need to don our funeral attire because it's the end of an era. It's the dude hat era. It's the end of a dude hat era. Ross Douthat, as Lydia apparently thought is how it was pronounced, and now is, is how it's pronounced, uh, is, uh is no longer going to be at the New York times. We've got to talk about it. He's had so many great takes throughout the years. We're covered him several times on here, uh but deserves extra coverage, but I'm Thomas that over there is real life immigration attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing Matt?

0:00:53 Matt: Hey, guys, just biding my time until Bari Weiss picks me up for CBS. So don't mind me.

0:00:58 Thomas: Oh, okay. So you're doing a turn to conservatism that we don't know about all right yeah you can't she's not what would she what what use would she have for a liberal who deals in facts that's not it's not her shtick

0:01:03 Lydia: Selling out yeah

0:01:11 Matt: That's true. That is true. I got to make some money somewhere sometime. We'll figure it out.

0:01:13 Lydia: Get on that grift train yeah

0:01:16 Matt: Mean, if they're going to pick up Ross Douthat, they can pick me up too. Why not? Come on.

0:01:19 Thomas: Yeah I could be as wrong for the left as he is for the right like I could do I could I could deal with that we're gonna yeah that's true god who knows how much money that guy makes especially especially there and producer Lydia how you doing oh

0:01:24 Matt: I'll be wrong for less. I can charge less. Yeah?

0:01:31 Lydia: I'm doing okay I I expected doot hat to go over there like that makes sense to me but then I saw gianna taboni is going over there too and like that was a little like rough for my heart but you know I'm still supportive of hers we'll see we'll see how things go yeah

0:01:47 Thomas: I I think people should just not like I get that's probably a huge opportunity that's the thing it's hard because capitalism and not just capitalism also just you know careerism and and totally normal like the aspirations and and and all that that people are going to have there's going going to be people who are like legitimate, but haven't gotten like enough attention or money or notoriety or whatever, who are right in that prime range for CBS, the new bullshit CBS to grab for 60 minutes. And man, Gianna Taboni is right there. That's exactly... I really liked her work back when Vice was watchable, that show. But yeah, I don't know.

0:02:25 Lydia: Like a real thing actually yeah yeah

0:02:26 Thomas: I'm not sure on that one. Did it come back around or is it still terrible I'm not I don't know it's I can't keep track anymore I still I still out of habit will click on the atlantic and then be like wait what what am I doing there's no atlactic anymore I thought it used to be like it usedと be like oh they have one bad person or whatever and then it was like yeah it's like half and half now I don' t I don'T know that any of it's good anymore on the Atlantic am I am I crazy I just like doesn't work anymore more.

0:02:31 Lydia: I don't know that gavin guy's not affiliated with them anymore I don'T think

0:02:32 Matt: Haven't kept up?

0:02:52 Lydia: Yeah yeah I think the proportion has changed over the years that's for sure

0:02:55 Thomas: All right. Have a lot of doot hat to do. We got to do doot hat to toot our toot our horns. We're going to do our hats.

0:02:59 Lydia: Everyone grab your dute hats like literally pick up a hat

0:03:04 Thomas: Exactly. We should have come up with doot hats.

0:03:06 Lydia: And it just says dute on it okay I'm making that

0:03:11 Thomas: The most pointless, unrelated to us merch. And also there's there's no market for it. Like there's no market for do that fan like there's not no but I love it dude hats he's

0:03:22 Lydia: Listeners listeners sound off I know you guys want this let me know just

0:03:27 Matt: I don't even know what the market is for the man himself. So we'll talk about that too, yeah.

0:03:28 Lydia: Says all

0:03:28 Thomas: That's what I'm saying like there'S not even a legitimate dude hat merch market he'S not it'S not even an ironic dude hat merge but he'S

0:03:37 Matt: A secondary market.

0:03:37 Lydia: I'll make one hat I'll take one and it'll be for me

0:03:41 Thomas: he'S NOT he'S Not like jimothy levels of weird you know he'S like right he'S in that bad just middle nothing level which maybe makes it funny enough to justify a dude hat.

0:03:43 Lydia: That's true that's true uh yeah dude right

0:03:52 Thomas: Uh, all right. Well, Lydia's gone for the episode. Good thing. Good. I think we've got a real lawyer to bring us back in.

0:03:55 Lydia: I'm making it I'm gonna pull out like my embroidery machine like right now just start working on it oh boy who

0:04:02 Thomas: So funny. Stealth it. Right. But it's fine. It's too hot.

0:04:05 Matt: Technically.

0:04:06 Thomas: Yeah. Nobody. Yeah, nobody knows. They still don't know. Um, all Right. We've got, we've Got a lot of dudes to hat or hats to do. Uh we We got so many, it's amazing how many, I don't know that I'm going to say he's always completely full of shit or anything, but like just looking at the headlines or whatever, the titles of the opinion pieces, which I know they don't always choose or almost never choose maybe, but looking at them tells a pretty funny story when you look at them in the right combinations and we're going to do

0:04:06 Lydia: Knows nobody knows yeah yeah yeah lots of

0:04:38 Thomas: Some of that. A dute hat retrospective. All right. Well, we'll do what we always do here, which is take our first break. But I want to thank our Hall of Fame patrons. These are the folks that pledge at that $5 level and above at patreon.com/law for at least a month. They make the show happen and they get a special shout out on every vapid response, starting with, thank you to Dylan Love, Rebecca, Bewitched, Beclowned, Bewildered, My House is a Mess but I Read a Lot of Books, Griff the Tired One L, Matthew Cutler, Autistic Streamer, twitch.tv/MTC_streams Gary the seagull In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

0:04:38 Lydia: Eye rolling oh

0:05:15 Thomas: Igni I

0:05:19 Matt: Making you do Latin now.

0:05:21 Thomas: I I actually thought it like it it's partially a palindrome but not or is it a maybe the whole thing's a palindrom I don't know if they started with like a legitimate thing and then like just reversed it in the middle because I don't know anyway UnreMerkable Aminah Donna Treadaway, Mother of Harridans Mike Lapinsky A butt tuba that's a good one always count on that patron for the quick and to the point a butt tuba how why have I never heard that

0:05:23 Lydia: Is it I have no idea

0:05:27 Matt: A Latin palindrome?

0:05:54 Lydia: Yeah

0:05:54 Thomas: Palindrome that's better than you know race cars anything like that a butt tuba Sionitus not yet 40 I'll rub it in rub it in why don't you oh god this is the youngins gray Grey Pouponderance of the Evidence Last Train to Skanksville jar is prune dance that's not a palindrome but jar is prune danse I'm just having a stroke yeah apprentice of Apprentice of Adventure and Charlie Kelly Attorney at Bird Law thank you so much top patrons we'll take that quick break avoid the ads patreon.com/law a lot of movies uh probably coming up not super soon but you still have the last one

0:06:00 Lydia: I'm also not 40 so these old guys eyes.

0:06:16 Lydia: They're just trying to make you say insane things now. Yeah. Yeah,

0:06:34 Thomas: To listen to

0:06:34 Lydia: We're about to record on that one, though. So, yep.

0:06:35 Thomas: Oh man we're doing that we're going to do that every month it's so fun those are so funny uh and at the book club so many good reasons all right let's take a break and then get into all the dudes that are hat uh with Ross Douthat all I lied we have a quick amuse douche I forgot why we got so excited about dude hat I forgot the amuse douches and uh this video has no full screen format that we can find so apologies oh

0:06:59 Lydia: Multiple amuse douches within this little clip, it seems. Names.

0:07:02 Matt: This is an historic moment and they appear to only have cell phone captures from bad angles. That's all I could find in YouTube shorts.

0:07:04 Thomas: I love how lincoln is just looking down just like oh god you can kind of see that well

0:07:11 Matt: And Washington too, yeah. Right beneath Washington.

0:07:12 Lydia: Washington can't even look at it. He's like, yeah,

0:07:14 Thomas: The the sculpture of lincoln like is literally like his head is bowed just just like what is jesus christ what are you guys doing I fought a war over all this like we're letting them back in it's

0:07:18 Matt: I didn't even see that. That was funny. Yeah. So this is, of course, a double douche with Emile Beauvais swearing in Todd Blanche. And I probably still did not pronounce that name right.

0:07:31 Lydia: Two of Trump's personal lawyers, one swearing in the other.

0:07:37 Matt: Two people we had a lot of fun with on Gabble Gabble for like a year. Two that we never thought we'd have to talk about again, And now we have a Third Circuit judge and the new Attorney General of the United States. Thanks to the moves that we talked about on Friday that he pulled with Cornyn and Senate Judiciary to just put out a lot of nothing to make them think that the slush fund wasn't coming back. Actually, within hours of the swearing in, he put out an article that said, which we'll talk about on Saturday's opening arguments. But let's take a look at this, just because this is a moment of history. It's not good history, but it's history.

0:07:40 Lydia: What a world.

0:07:52 Thomas: Unbelievable I like the little modesty curtain on the what is that it's not the declaration it doesn't look like it okay zoom in zooms out that's a cool thing about today's technology I can't get any closer because of that when

0:08:12 Matt: I think it's a declaration, maybe? Yeah, it might be. I mean,

0:08:16 Lydia: Do they? Yeah. Do they close it when the sun gets in or something like the

0:08:24 Matt: He just doesn't want to have to look at it.

0:08:25 Thomas: The sun gets in yeah it's when he's he's going to do something extra legal. He's like, Oh, it's like the old sitcom thing where you take the picture and like, put it down. Like when you're, you know, and they're like going to have sex or something.

0:08:28 Lydia: Founding fathers can't see this yeah yeah exactly you're having an affair yeah

0:08:36 Thomas: Yeah. It's like hold on. Don't look constitution or whatever. I think it's probably the constant dirt. Oh no. The signatures. Yeah, no, maybe it is the declaration.

0:08:37 Lydia: Or yeah yeah that looks like the declaration

0:08:45 Thomas: Okay. Yeah and so then a little curtain, there's a little current in front of that you can open and close just like give it some sun

0:08:45 Lydia: Why is there a curtain it's like a puppet show weird

0:08:52 Matt: They probably should have closed it for this one. For a document that doesn't have a king, here are two people that would love to have a King and are working to give us one.

0:08:54 Thomas: That's so weird oh man anyway we all right let's let's

0:09:02 Matt: Let's give a quick look here.

0:08:55 Lydia: Seriously yeah oh

0:09:02 Thomas: Listen to these assholes yeah

0:09:06 Clip: So help me God. So help me God, congratulations.

0:09:11 Matt: And we got a hug. They're huggers. Blanche and Bouvier. And he starts speaking, and they cut it off.

0:09:21 Thomas: He's about to talk and she's like ah and you said there's like no other oh

0:09:27 Matt: I couldn't find his remarks. Yeah, they're not out there. Yeah. And this is a cell phone video. It doesn't seem like it's even like there was press lead in. I think there's somebody who's taking out a cell phones. So that's about the level of historic achievement and recording that it deserves, I guess.

0:09:29 Lydia: That's weird freaking

0:09:35 Thomas: Who cares oh boy god

0:09:42 Matt: Yeah. So, Blanche and Bouvier. Make it to the top.

0:09:41 Lydia: Losers yep

0:09:46 Thomas: That is criminals swearing in criminals to the top anti-criminal position in the country awesome cool yeah man what a world what a world all right well we better uh close the curtain on that declaration it's so weird I'm sure that existed pre-Trump but if it didn't that's even funnier but I don't like what little curtain yeah it's just like I'd like I get like it looks nice but why would would you need is it

0:09:54 Lydia: To protect chief criminal yeah and like and but why but why does it look nice I don't think I don't think so you

0:10:17 Thomas: Is it that is it like the that's not like the origin is the original like it's so sensitive they're like oh we gotta they can't get too much light

0:10:23 Matt: That's in the National Archives. I've seen the original. That's when Nicolas Cage steals.

0:10:25 Thomas: Then what does that do okay yeah

0:10:25 Lydia: Have yeah oh I've seen that I do know that history yes

0:10:29 Thomas: So when whenever nick cage comes to visit like hide it he'll just think it's a window I just got the curtains down because it's little sunny today I didn't want to get all right let's uh let's get to our dude hat we're gonna go back to the almost the very beginning this is this is first column it's gotta be close oh

0:10:35 Lydia: That's what the curtain is for exactly oh

0:10:50 Matt: It's up there. He began at the New York Times 17 years ago in 2009. I didn't realize Why is it we want that back that far? Young, fresh-faced Ross Douthat. He's actually my age. He's 46 years old and he's from Connecticut. He is going to talk about how he lives in a hellish blue state in one of these columns. That's Connecticut. That is what he is talking about. But he is a contrarian Republican from a family of Democrats. He was one of those Michael P. Keaton type. What is his name? The Michael J. Fox guy. Alex P. Alex B.

0:11:07 Lydia: Alex

0:11:18 Matt: Keaton. There we go. He's that guy.

0:11:14 Thomas: Sorry

0:11:18 Lydia: Key yeah yeah well you're aging better than he is is

0:11:21 Thomas: What the michael j fox guy al peak I

0:11:25 Matt: Alex B Keaton from... What's the name of that? I'm sure listeners are screaming it right now, but the name, the show.

0:11:28 Lydia: All in the family

0:11:29 Thomas: Sorry I don't have any idea what you're talking about I'm so confused right now it's

0:11:30 Lydia: Not all in the family it's uh I don't remember the name of the show either off the top of my head yeah yeah

0:11:35 Thomas: A show okay

0:11:35 Matt: It was a show where it was Michael J.

0:11:36 Thomas: Sorry it's just something I don'T know then sorry oh

0:11:39 Matt: Fox's breakthrough where he's playing like a young conservative kid in a liberal family. Yeah. I never really saw it. So anyway, he was arrested that went to Harvard. He has always been a serious Catholic and he's always enjoyed being a contrarian. And for those who haven't had the pleasure. You're going to get a taste today. Just kind of a sampling, ready some drive -by readings of some of his worst work. Now, again, you can't be a columnist for 17 years and not have some stinkers, obviously. There are a lot more I could have picked from. I just kind of picked a swath of some OF my favorites that I remembered. I looked up and kind of went by topic and tried to find some other things as well.

0:12:16 Matt: But his entire deal throughout his entire career has been, you know, I'm just trying to be the reasonable guy here. I'm trying to to be in the middle. I'm not defending Trump, but maybe I'm kind of defending Trump and maybe things aren't that bad. Maybe you guys are overdoing it over and over and ever again.

0:12:31 Thomas: That's a good that just made me realize more of his career has been during trump era than not wow I mean I mean that's true of all now all of us really because it just never ends just never fucking ends ever

0:12:37 Matt: Yeah. Quite a lot of it. Yeah. Eight out of 17 years. Or not eight, but a lot of them. Yeah, yeah.

0:12:44 Thomas: We're like 10 now yeah

0:12:45 Matt: Well, yeah, sure. We've had to deal with Trump for 10 years. He's been writing about Trump for ten years, certainly. And also, I wanted to note, we mentioned, of course, up top that the reason we're doing this is because he's just retiring. We're going to read at the very end his New York Times farewell column. He's moving on to CBS News. And I just saw that he might be one of the top 25 richest writers in the country after this CBS hire. So yeah, this is not a meritocracy that we live in.

0:12:47 Lydia: Math yeah oh

0:13:09 Thomas: My god yeah

0:13:06 Lydia: Wow wow well the ellison's have so much money so of course yeah ew

0:13:13 Matt: And he's a big name. Also, I thought it was pretty funny that Barry Weiss had said before this hire that she was looking for the most photogenic men she could find on camera uh yeah so no comment we'll move on from that comment um but yeah so I

0:13:21 Thomas: Way uh

0:13:22 Lydia: I don'T need to move on from that we can take if we can can take a quick minute.

0:13:28 Thomas: Why

0:13:29 Matt: Don't want to comment too much on licks but

0:13:30 Thomas: Is why is oh my God what a stupid Stupid. What a stupid thing.

0:13:33 Lydia: That's so dumb.

0:13:35 Thomas: It's like you can't. Again, I think it's more of why he's even here to begin with. They decided they needed more conservative columnists. They hire Ross Douthat when he's really young, pretty young. And he represents an area of like conceptual space that no one else is in.

0:13:35 Matt: 29 it's pretty young for new york times yeah yeah

0:13:56 Thomas: Like it's it's like an intellectual right -wing goodness like I I'm I believe that he believes most of what he says maybe but it'slike it nobody else does like no it's so when barry weiss is probably looking around trying to find like who's the who'sthe right wing 60 minutes correspondent that you're gonna find that isn't like fucking joe rogan you know what I mean like you can't so it's once again you're like okay well I guess I have to find who's like the most most conservative person who could still like do the job like be like be a functional journalist of some kind and that's why once again yeah

0:14:21 Lydia: Completely insane. Yeah form sentences. Yeah yeah right.

0:14:35 Matt: And not go full maga you can't go full manga well

0:14:38 Thomas: It's because you can't it wouldn't work you can't do like the the way that manga journalism survives is not actually doing anything like talking to sources or interviewing like stuff that 60 minutes still is going to do even if it's going going to be skewed and all that like they're still going to do the bones of journalism I think unless at least for a while we'll see but that's that's why once again russ doubt that someone that nobody listens to anyway so weird uh what do we want to read from this one I don't know what a minaret moment is sorry I don'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS oh

0:14:55 Lydia: They still want to be taken seriously. Mm -hmm a

0:15:14 Matt: I this is probably one he'd prefer you forget about but this is uh some of his early work here from 2009 when he started the paper uh so he was uh talking, there's some straight up Islamophobia about European migrants way before it was cool to do this. He also had another column called, yeah, that's

0:15:30 Thomas: About when it was cool to do it to be be honest with you. We had 9-11 and it was all Islamophobia for all of then until like five minutes ago.

0:15:37 Lydia: While.

0:15:39 Thomas: And still now.

0:15:38 Matt: He had another one called slouching toward Eurabia, which I was tempted to also include, but yeah, yeah.

0:15:43 Thomas: My God. Really? He wrote one with that title?

0:15:48 Matt: Slouching toward Eubabia.

0:15:49 Thomas: Holy crap.

0:15:49 Matt: Same idea. We don't need to read a bunch of Islamophobia into the record, but uh yeah well that was actually like a column about his column he had like a blog going about his column so not really the same thing but we're trying to feature his new york times work here his long pedigree of new yorg times work uh take a look at uh yeah just just to get let's get a taste of this let's pick it up at millions of muslims always a good place to start a sentence

0:15:52 Thomas: We should have done that one. Jeez. Okay.

0:16:03 Lydia: Interesting past Millions of Muslims have accepted European norms but millions have not. This means polygamy in Sweden, radical mosques in Britain's fading industrial cities, riots over affronts to the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark, and religiously inspired murder in the Netherlands. It means terrorism and the threat of terrorism from London to Madrid. And it means a rising backlash in which European voters support extreme measures and extremist parties because their politicians don't seem to have anything to say about the problem.

0:16:44 Thomas: Well, I guess he's right about that.

0:16:46 Matt: Always one of my favorite arguments though is that letting migrants in is going to cause more fascism because I agree with the fascists the people that I agree with um yeah

0:16:51 Thomas: Yeah, if you let them in, I'm going to do really bad things, and that's not my fault. Somehow that's your fault.

0:17:01 Lydia: One but even

0:17:02 Matt: It's some other people will do it but I'll agree with them it'll be fine um yeah we go down to uh even a decadent west where

0:17:10 Lydia: A decadent west is probably stronger than this the most likely scenario for europe isn't dimitude it's a long period of tension punctuated by spasms of violence that makes the continent a more unpleasant place without fundamentally transforming it this is cold comfort though if you have to live under the shadow of violence just ask the swiss who spent last week worrying about the possibility that the minaret vote might make them a target for islamist terrorism.

0:17:34 Thomas: What is a minaret vote? I don't, I

0:17:36 Lydia: It's from the beginning of the article. It seems like they were voting whether or not to ban the building of minarets. And they're basically like towers. They're just, you know, really based in.

0:17:45 Matt: They do the call for prayer yeah um yeah that's

0:17:48 Thomas: Just didn't know that term.

0:17:48 Lydia: I know that it was actually incorporated in my alma mater, my college's campus. I don't remember why.

0:17:54 Thomas: Lydia's a radical Muslim. I forgot if if we've said that before.

0:17:56 Lydia: University of Tampa. Yeah everybody from Tampa as radical Muslim.

0:17:56 Matt: Right known hotbed of radicalism

0:18:00 Thomas: Into Sharia law. We practice Sharia here.

0:18:04 Lydia: They're beautiful though. Bam.

0:18:03 Matt: But like the swiss have never been particularly liberal they kind of get a pass on all this stuff for some reason but they only gave their women the right to vote in the 70s. They were one of the last countries on earth to give women the rights to vote.

0:18:19 Matt: It was a closer vote than you might think too. But yeah, so here's just a little taste of just straight up, Europe's going to burn to the ground because they're letting in too many Muslims. Always kind of getting up to the point of actually supporting right-wing extremism, but he never actually supports it. But the problem always is the left. And in any given Ross Douthat opinion or column or anything else, and you're going to see this theme develop as we go through some of these pieces, he never can recognize the problem on the right. Just never. Trump is an issue, but it's not really a problem, and he's under control, and it's going to be fine.

0:18:49 Lydia: They're just reacting to the left. They are reacting to to the stuff that the left has started.

0:18:53 Thomas: I mean, he's priced into it. He has to keep his job. I don't think he's a fan of Trump. Like I really don't, but he has to like the, the market for anti -left is ubiquitous. Like there's always a market for Anti-Left up and down. The right loves it. The left loves it, the middle loves it everybody loves it that's why it's just anyway.

0:18:58 Matt: That' right. But but sure. Yeah.

0:19:14 Thomas: So it's always like just diverting and focusing the attention elsewhere, but he's, I mean, he's anti -Trump. He's not, or sorry, he is not in favor of Trump and he does, you know, he does speak about them thusly, but yeah, anyway.

0:19:14 Matt: Yeah, right. But he's never seen it as a crisis and that you will see this all the way through. He's never wanted to see the full crisis of Trump, but he doesn't support him.

0:19:33 Thomas: All Interesting.

0:19:34 Matt: So he's got that going for him. What's next in our lineup here?

0:19:30 Lydia: Are

0:19:37 Thomas: All right. We're just going in chronological order of the ones you found with the picture. I thought it was going to be about gay marriage or something, but it's actually, those are just two, two Trumpers or let's, I don't know.

0:19:39 Matt: Through the career. Yeah?

0:19:46 Lydia: They?

0:19:46 Thomas: What is this?

0:19:46 Matt: Yeah. It does look like

0:19:47 Thomas: Confessions, confessions of a columnist.

0:19:47 Matt: A wedding.

0:19:47 Lydia: Are they actually just two Trumpers?

0:19:50 Thomas: They're looking really fondly each other and they're well -dressed, but they have Trump stuff on them. I don'T know.

0:19:54 Lydia: I mean, if they're not a couple, maybe they should be. They look kind of cute together.

0:19:58 Thomas: They might be. Yeah,

0:19:59 Matt: They look good together. There let's

0:19:59 Thomas: That's true. They'd be a good couple. All

0:20:02 Matt: Read a few a bit of this

0:20:02 Lydia: Confessions of a columnist. Okay. Every New Year's in a spirit of self -examination, I try to catalog my worst blunders from the preceding year.

0:20:10 Thomas: We should have just gone through all of those each year.

0:20:13 Lydia: But this year, like almost every pundit in America, I have one mistake that overshadows all the others. One confession that makes my other faults seem venial by comparison. I underestimated Donald Trump. To really make a clean breast on this issue, I have to reach back earlier than 2015 — some forecasts take more than a year to be disproven — to a column I wrote in the far -off days of the 2012 campaign when Mitt Romney flew flew to Vegas, baby. Okay. To accept an endorsement from the Donald.

0:20:40 Thomas: I don't even remember that. Huh. In 2012? I don' t remember that.

0:20:44 Lydia: I don't remember that either. I don'T think I would have cared.

0:20:46 Matt: It's lost to history now if

0:20:47 Thomas: So interesting. In Vegas? Whatever.

0:20:50 Lydia: This struck me at the time as a needless move by Mitt because it left him sticky with the tar of Trump's birther nonsense while delivering little in return. The idea that Romney needed the kind of voters excited by Trump's flamethrower style, I wrote, confused, quote, the existence of a fan base, which Trump certainly has, with the existence of a meaningful constituency, which he almost certainly does not. And even if there were real Trumpistas, Romney would win their allegiance eventually. Quote, anyone who thrills to Trump's slashing attacks on the president probably isn't sitting this election out. As a third -party candidate, I went on, Trump might pose some danger to Romney's general election chances, but Trump's, quote, third -party rumblings are like his birther bluster, sound and fury signifying only ego. And Romney could risk little with conservatives by giving him the stiff arm. Quote, Trump isn't Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin. His conservatism is feigned.

0:21:41 Lydia: His right -wing fans are temporary admirers with no deep commitment to his brand or cause. Ooh, that did not age well. And hardly anyone in the conservative media is likely to rise to his defense.

0:21:41 Thomas: Boy, that didn' t age well.

0:21:48 Matt: Only yeah

0:21:51 Thomas: I don't know. Like, I don't think he was that wrong in 2012. Like it' s kind of like, again, this is what happens happens when, like, almost this process, and a lot of people did this, obviously, with the very thing he's doing in 2016, but I think this is almost over -correcting the other way, like by being like, well, I underestimated him. Well, yes and no. Like, you also, like there was a lot of things that went into it. We talk about it all the time. The primary system on the right, like it made it so that somebody with a little bit of support, if they won a primary two, would would grab such a hold of the winner take all primaries you know they would get such a lead it would be harder and harder to uh to beat it's also like it's always been like if it was true in 2016 and it was that his dieharders were there weren't that many at the time he definitely had some but he he had to take over the whole party that didn't happen right away I think people like maybe apply the the current now to like back then but it was a process and in certain 2012 certainly, I don't think it was crazy. I don'T think this is crazy at all. Like I think this take in 20, if you, if he's saying he wrote this in 2012, I DON'T know. I DON't think it's that wrong, but now to be in 2016, to have him kind of almost over -correcting to say,

0:22:46 Lydia: Yeah, that's fair.

0:23:08 Thomas: Actually, there's so much more to it. I don't know if that's true, actually. Like maybe that's a way of almost like over -signaling the other way. I dunno.

0:23:17 Matt: And but there is an ongoing theme with him where he just refuses to believe that anybody could actually get behind trump and that it could ever happen or that you know that he would have like a deep fan base eventually because of course once he really gets going with these rallies he gets an incredibly huge fan base uh which turns things and if you go down to the bottom though that's kind of the ending that I wanted to focus on. He's being reasonably honest about his mistakes here, but I'm very surprised.

0:23:43 Lydia: Am very surprised, though, that Trump himself himself would have the political savvy. I know, I know I saw that sentence too.

0:23:46 Thomas: Sorry. Go one paragraph up before that just for fun. Yeah.

0:23:50 Lydia: I certainly overestimated poor Jeb Bush, please clap, whom I wrongly predicted would profit from Trump's rise. But for the rest, no, I had a pretty low opinion of the right wing entertainment complex to begin with. And I'm not remotely surprised that the white working class would rally to a candidate running on populist and nationalist themes. I am very surprised though, that Trump himself would have the political savvy, the, in parentheses, relative discipline, and yes, the stamina required to exploit that opening and become that populist. And for that failure of imagination, I humbly repent. Of course, I'm not completely humbled. Indeed, I am still proud enough to continue predicting, in defiance of national polling, that there's still no way, in italics, that Trump will actually be the 2016 Republican nominee. Trust me, I m a pundit. And I'll see you in the confessional next year.

0:24:08 Matt: Got you there.

0:24:35 Thomas: Hey, hey, I predicted the same thing. I'm not going to go around pretending with, yeah, most people. Yeah, I still, and then it was like, okay, I guess he could win that ridiculous circus, but there's no way he'll win the general. And yeah, there were a few people who predicted he would, but not so many as who say they did at the time.

0:24:41 Lydia: I think everybody did. Yeah.

0:25:01 Thomas: There's a reason it was a massive upset and everyone was stunned.

0:25:01 Matt: No doubt. No doubt. Yeah,

0:25:04 Lydia: Shocked.

0:25:05 Thomas: But it's pretty easy to be like, in retrospect, well, maybe I said something that suggested I might've thought he could have maybe, and then point to that as the only thing you look at. But no, people didn't think he was going to win. So I don't know. I had the same take.

0:25:18 Matt: I just wanted to include this because he constantly underestimates Trump thoroughly every time all the the way through. We're going to see more of this.

0:25:19 Lydia: Is is Donald Trump loses. Okay.

0:25:28 Matt: Me more.

0:25:29 Thomas: So we're still pre-republican nomination

0:25:31 Matt: Yeah, July 7th, 2016, but we're getting closer.

0:25:34 Lydia: Donald Trump isn't going to be the Republican nominee. Six months ago, that was a truism. Three months ago it was the conventional wisdom. Now it's an assertion that inspires sympathetic glances. The kind you get when you tell friends that you think your new personal investment strategy is sure to beat the market.

0:25:46 Thomas: That's fair, hey man, I'm right like, this was everybody, this was me, I also thought this uh so I'm not gonna I'm going to join in like a retelling of our history uh and that's kind funny. I like that paragraph, honestly.

0:26:02 Lydia: I know you really want that to to be true, the glances say, but you just might be kidding yourself. It's easy to see why people are starting to think this way. Trump has led the national poll since last summer, and not by a little. Apart from the Ben Carson bubble. I don't remember a Ben Carson bubbl. That's so funny. Oh, I don' t remember.

0:26:18 Matt: That's a very brief bubble.

0:26:19 Thomas: I do. Yeah, two seconds of it. It was like, what was the using the pyramids to store grain or whatever? Like, there's that thing.

0:26:19 Matt: Tears in the rain.

0:26:26 Lydia: Weird. Nothing has dented his advantage. It's actually expanded over the last month, and nobody in the GOP seems to have a coherent plan to cut into his support. Quote, based on polling data, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium wrote this week, Donald Trump is in as strong a position to get his party's nomination as Hillary Clinton in 2016, George W. Bush in 2000, or Al Gore in 2000. Truth bomb, wrote Politico's Mike Allen, the insider's insider. If you think voters will suddenly get serious and that Trump is a lampshade candidate who will eventually wear out his welcome, you're running out of time to be right. Right. Against the combination of stable poll numbers and sands running through the primary season hourglass, what do Trump skeptics have to offer? One answer comes from Ezra Klein of Vox, who quotes Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's campaign manager in 2004, explaining why his candidate's Trump-like lead evaporated so quickly once the actual voting started. Quote, people get more pragmatic the closer they get to an actual vote. Vote.

0:27:24 Matt: If only. Now let's skip down to there's no credible scenario. That's always a good way to start a sentence in this situation as well. Scrolling down.

0:27:32 Lydia: There is no credible scenario in which a consistent 30% of the vote will deliver the delegates required to be the Republican nominee.

0:27:38 Thomas: Okay, so he just didn't do his research.

0:27:40 Lydia: So for Trump to lose, he doesn't actually have to collapse. He just has to fail to expand his support.

0:27:45 Thomas: Unless no one else gets more than 30.

0:27:48 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. And in the states where candidates are actually campaigning, voters are paying the most attention and the polling screens for likely voters are tightening. He hasn't expanded his support meaningfully since since he first climbed into the lead. Foolish pundit that I may be, I don't think he will. Instead, I think that Ted Cruz will continue to consolidate evangelicals as Ben Carson fades, and someone, probably Marco Rubio, will eventually consolidate the moderate conservative vote, which is currently splintered among five candidates in New Hampshire, but which, if it were consolidated, would very easily beat Trump's total in that state.

0:28:20 Matt: Right, you get the idea. We can scroll down to the next to last paragraph. You can take this home.

0:28:25 Lydia: Which is not to say that in that scenario the establishment candidate will win. Again, Trump is a genuinely disruptive force, and if his coalition holds together, it could make genuinely unlikely outcomes. Cruz is the most right-wing nominee since Barry Goldwater, a battle on the convention floor, far more plausible than they would have been without him. But disruption doesn't get you to the 1,236 delegates required for the nomination. Loki does not rule in Asgard. And Donald Trump isn't going to be the Republican nominee.

0:28:53 Matt: Yeah no. know, look, Loki won. That's what happened.

0:28:54 Thomas: Man. Sure. And now the next one. I was wrong. Jeez.

0:29:01 Lydia: Remember in 2016?

0:29:03 Thomas: Turns out Loki does rule in Asgard. Oh, boy. Yeah. You know, it's interesting looking back because I remember for a bit of the beginning of that primary process, I remember saying that I thought Cruz would maybe be worse than Trump in a lot of ways. And I think I just underestimated, like, I think that was true in certain sense. I think That was true, in that he would actually know more of what he was doing, and he's such an insane conservative idiot with really bad views. I thought he would be able to accomplish more. But I think I just discounted or didn't predict how awful the loss of all institutions would would be like the just the full embarrassment and just the I don't even the destruction of any legitimacy at all like that's just at least ted cruz was a senator you know what I mean like like it's it's crazy to say but like I think I for one miss some modicum of legitimacy and institutional you know whatever you know like feeling like the presidency was an important thing that an important person needed to have who at least kind of knew what they were doing Um,

0:30:15 Thomas: But you know, yeah.

0:30:15 Matt: Right? Those are the days. Yeah, but

0:30:18 Thomas: Should we take a, oh, sorry. Good.

0:30:18 Matt: Your job, of course, I was gonna say in 2016, I just want to continue this theme here. Your job in 2016 was not to be the conservative understander of the New York Times. And it was very much his job and he's continuing to fail at it all the way through at every step, including this week.

0:30:27 Thomas: No, that's a good point. You know, that, that is a good part. Um, I, I was thinking of commenting on that too, but I'm always, I'm almost hesitant to try to like, you know make excuses or special pleading. But when I think about it, it was his job to be the conservative voice on the paper of record and for him to be out of touch with conservatism like it's it's one thing to be wrong but it's another to be like you're wrong because you just are not understanding your own side that's the side the only thing you're here for really so okay

0:31:01 Matt: And yeah he understands moderate catholics so he's got that covered moderate catholics don't like trump

0:31:06 Thomas: That's why I thought you know marco rubio or somebody like that would would pull it out but yeah fair point should we we take a break or you want to okay let's take our second break and thank some hall of famers. I love it, let's go to that second batch here. Thank you, too probably a real person, Nick Fish, Thomas-Wrong, Lydia-right... Linkin Park rules. All right, update. That one, come on. A Negative Phenomenon.

0:31:10 Matt: Let's do it

0:31:29 Thomas: You can you can find another thing I'm wrong about lydia's right about just like move on to different yeah so much to choose from uh a negative phenomenon okay hold on before I I continue I must confess you gotta fight for your right to ex parte nice I like that yeah I like I think of like a like a tag team wrestling thing or something like tag somebody says something and tag someone and then just like body slam me or something. Jaysank. Vehicular Man's Laughter That's it That's the joke. Pahk the cahr in a North End spaht to taint todd

0:31:33 Lydia: There's a lot. I'm just... Email me. Oh that's a good confession yeah yeah okay how do you do matt

0:32:05 Matt: That's pretty good not too bad fanatically

0:32:06 Thomas: I just I just read it so I don't shouldn't be a criticism of me does north end need to change at all how does that how Who did they say that? Is there any?

0:32:11 Matt: I'm I'm not the expert every time I try I do very bad at it I hear a lot of it but I can't do it yes

0:32:18 Thomas: Two Taint Todd goes to the Senate. Oh, God. Yeah. David Souther. Today's episode is brought to you by the letter. UnreMerkable. Thomas Freeman. Cavalri. Cajunkilla. Fraud Fishy Hates Everything. Chris Simpson. Worst timeline ever! Anonymous Aquila. And check out www.galenacomic.com for a cool webcomic. All right. We'll take another break. But you can avoid patreon.com/law. And we'll see you with more doot hatting. More hats to doot.

0:32:43 Thomas: All right, Matt, we are, I'm sure he had many a column about why Trump was then not going to win the general and then probably had to say mea culpa for that, but we've got a lot of history to get through. Yeah, exactly. So we're going to skip on over to January 27th, 2018. What is this title? Holy God.

0:32:51 Matt: We only have so much time here. Yeah.

0:33:00 Matt: One of my personal favorites of all time, this one really burned into my brain, as you will see from the title.

0:33:05 Lydia: The necessity of Stephen Miller. You guys, that

0:33:10 Thomas: What do those words mean? You can't, there's no, that's like the circleness of a triangle. You canít, thereís nothing, there is no necessity for Stephen Miller in any way.

0:33:13 Lydia: Should not be together.

0:33:19 Matt: I don't think his parents believe there's a necessity for Stephen Miller at this point.

0:33:21 Lydia: Not even Katie Miller thinks there's a necessity of Steven Miller.

0:33:25 Thomas: Thereís nothing. There is no use for Stephen Millar at all.

0:33:26 Matt: Yeah that picture look at that picture I just think it's very funny

0:33:30 Lydia: Also, yeah, and you

0:33:32 Thomas: Even the camera doesnít even think heís, the camera is like, Iíd rather focus on this tree, tree, this meaningless tree.

0:33:32 Lydia: Get half of him. Exactly.

0:33:35 Matt: He's in shadow behind a column this hedge is interesting hey

0:33:40 Lydia: The necessity of this tree.

0:33:42 Thomas: Anything else but Stephen Miller.

0:33:45 Matt: There's a lady oh

0:33:46 Lydia: What an incredible picture.

0:33:48 Thomas: Well, in what sense does he mean this? Maybe it's, who knows, maybe it's not all bad. We'll find out.

0:33:53 Matt: It's pretty bad let's

0:33:54 Lydia: After 12 years of failed attempts at immigration reform, the current round of negotiations are turning on a strangely personalized question. When a deal is being made, should Stephen Miller be at the table?

0:34:04 Thomas: No, there, saved you two boobless hours.

0:34:05 Matt: Check can we check back to the date just remind everybody what date this is because we didn't I don't think we mentioned the date it is uh january 2018 so this is a very important time in immigration policy because they're getting up to the point where they're going to be doing family separation. That's all being talked about now and in this period. And also, they're trying to pretend they're going to get some kind of bill passed in Congress, and Stephen Miller completely tanks it just to set this up. He's going to tank it by...

0:34:11 Thomas: I did, January 27th, 2018, but just to remind, yeah.

0:34:13 Lydia: January 27th, 2018. Right.

0:34:29 Thomas: Yeah my memory is they almost maybe were going to right it wasn't like crazy

0:34:32 Matt: But then they insisted on ridiculous pillars of removing all family -based immigration and a bunch of other stuff that just wasn't going to happen.

0:34:39 Lydia: Miller is the White House's point man for immigration policy and for strange and strident encounters with the press, he says parenthetically. He is also an immigration restrictionist. He wants a policy that favors skills -based recruitment over extended families, and he wants a lower immigration rate overall. He says he's concerned about assimilation and crime and native wages. His critics say he just wants to keep America as white as possible, and that by even bringing him to meetings, Trump is making a deal impossible to reach.

0:35:06 Matt: His critics are correct. Always have been.

0:35:07 Thomas: Yeah that sounds right they

0:35:09 Lydia: The critics are right about this much. Having someone like Miller involved is a change from the way prior immigration negotiations have proceeded. Okay. Like so feckless.

0:35:18 Thomas: Have this right insignificant thing about what they're saying yeah

0:35:22 Matt: Going to say Yeah. In the same way that walking into negotiations with two giant guns pointed at everybody as a change, doesn't

0:35:22 Lydia: As we don't normally do this.

0:35:27 Thomas: They're right that's a change okay that's not important wait

0:35:31 Lydia: As Jim Annall points out in a column for The Week, those negotiations have been consistently bipartisan, bringing together John McCain and Ted Kennedy, Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer, now Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin. Wow, there's a lot of dead people in that list.

0:35:43 Thomas: When did ted kennedy die or oh is he talking about in the the path or I thought ted kennedy died like oh

0:35:47 Matt: Consistently. No, they're talking about the previous deals, the attempts at deals.

0:35:50 Thomas: Okay gotcha

0:35:51 Lydia: But, quote, they have mostly taken place between people who are fundamentally in agreement on immigration, who favor both amnesty for illegal immigrants and reforms that would probably increase immigration rates.

0:36:00 Matt: Just want to make the point that those are bipartisan agreements. By definition, these are Republicans and Democrats. And Republicans and Democrats historically have actually agreed on immigration for the most part. It's actually somewhat recent that they have not agreed as radically as they don't agree.

0:36:13 Lydia: Yeah. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't represent the actual divisions in the country. Americans have become pro-immigration since the 1990s, but there is still a consistent pattern when you ask about immigration rates, about a third of Americans favor the current trend, slightly fewer want higher rates, and about a a third, like Miller, want immigration reduced. And there are various reasonable grounds.

0:36:37 Lydia: But like reduce, like zero or like, like tack it down a tiny bit.

0:36:36 Thomas: So if it's like yeah I I'm trying to I'm trying to be as charitable as possible with this guy and

0:36:44 Matt: From he's saying that a third of people favor reduction like Stephen Miller, I don't know if they understand. Reduction

0:36:50 Thomas: That was just, that's what I was going to get to. Like it, it, yeah, it's one thing to say, like maybe they, Republican senators and the democratic senators aren't, aren't exactly representing the public. I know there's, there are issues where that happens, certainly, like Israel, for sure, as one. But, but it's another to say, like, and because of that, you need someone from this other group of people. So take like, you know, Stephen Miller, who's, he's on like the, the reduce immigration side.

0:36:51 Matt: Like Stephen Miller is a different thing. Yeah. Right.

0:37:17 Thomas: It's like, yeah, but that could include like, reduce it 2% or do a genocide. Like, you can't really just say that's like one side. He's a we need someone from the negative side, the con side. That's

0:37:24 Lydia: Abolish. Yeah, Yeah. Oh,

0:37:33 Matt: So need somebody who will just completely throw a wrench in everything at all times is what he's saying. We'll just destroy any possibility. An actual racist.

0:37:37 Thomas: And justifying it again, I think, Matt, you're nailing it when it comes to like this is how he's always this. This is sane washing. This is very, very sane washing yet.

0:37:45 Matt: Because we knew who Stephen Miller was in 2018. There was no question. He'd spoken plenty by now.

0:37:50 Lydia: He's been very clear about who he is.

0:37:51 Matt: Very consistent.

0:37:52 Lydia: Yeah they all knew. No.

0:37:51 Thomas: His high school teachers knew who he was.

0:37:54 Matt: There were stories about him at that time. It's not like we have all this knowledge later. Yeah. So you can skip this paragraph. You get the idea.

0:37:59 Lydia: And there are. Oh, OK.

0:38:01 Matt: He's just talking about how there are people that favor reduction. He is not talking about mass deportation, of course, which is what Miller's talking about. And then this up top here. This is really getting somewhere.

0:38:11 Lydia: All right. This bigotry from the point of view of many immigration advocates justifies excluding real restrictionists from the negotiating table.

0:38:18 Matt: Yes. All the tables.

0:38:19 Thomas: And well what big hold on so he's saying just to make sure oh it's also clear that many immigration restrictionists are influenced by simple bigotry with the president's recent simple bigOTRY with the President's recent excrement related remarks of a noteworthy oh yeah Yeah. Him, him saying shithole countries.

0:38:21 Matt: It's also clear, yeah. Shit all country, right?

0:38:35 Thomas: God, I know I made the point recently, but that was a, that was scandal. Him saying shorthole countries was a scandal that they kind of had to deny. They made, they denied it. And now that's just out in the open.

0:38:47 Matt: They're proud of it.

0:38:47 Lydia: That's every day. Day. That's

0:38:48 Thomas: It's not only out in the open, it's like, if you disagree with that, you're the secret who's like trying to whitewash what's actually going on with real America.

0:38:49 Lydia: Every day now. Right. Right,

0:38:56 Thomas: Like that's how, that's how far it's changed. So anyway, that bigotry, that is a funny sentence. Okay. Let's retake that sentence with the, with that in mind, that context.

0:39:03 Matt: I mean, yeah, just think what he's saying. Listen to what he is saying here.

0:39:07 Lydia: This bigotry, from the point of view of many immigration advocates, justifies excluding real restrictionists from the negotiating table. Yeah, if you're a racist, I'm pretty

0:39:14 Matt: All the tables! They shouldn't be at any tables. They should be outside the room on a farm somewhere. I don't know, put them...

0:39:20 Thomas: This Klan hood justifies excluding the people who are like not in favor of reducing penalties for certain crimes. You know, it's like, yeah, it does.

0:39:31 Matt: Maybe we shouldn't let them set the voting districts either. I don't now. I just had thought.

0:39:33 Lydia: Like you're literally not coming to this in good faith because you're racist, because that's what's driving all of your feelings about Yeah.

0:39:37 Matt: And this is such a doothed thing to be like, like, well, maybe we should make some room for these racists.

0:39:44 Lydia: Hmm. You can give them a little more money for border security, some promises about reducing illegal entry, but you can't let them play a large role in shaping policy. The limits of this strategy, though, are evident in the repeated failure of, quote, comprehensive immigration reform over the last decade and and more doomed each time by the gulf between the plans of Republican negotiators and the actual preferences of their voters.

0:40:04 Thomas: So that's that's kind of what I was referring to. So I want to ask you, Matt, what what then is the what then is the reason the immigration reform kept because it was long before Trump was failing repeatedly, right?

0:40:16 Matt: That's not Yeah, over and over again. Yep.

0:40:18 Thomas: Why couldn't they come to an agreement?

0:40:19 Matt: No, the DREAM Act, anything that looked like what they called amnesty, which was just creating new pathways, because there's always been this hardcore right -wing extremist move. And again, this is not actual regular voters. This is a very small percentage of people that they could rally at any given time to show up and yell and make calls and cause problems. I've studied immigration policy for a long time, and these people have always been doing this through the 90s, through

0:40:41 Thomas: It's like they've had enough because of the way our, you know, the Senate and all that bullshit and the filibuster and all that. It's like, they've been able to have a veto, you support to be a veto all the time, but it's not as as though they, you don't think it actually was a significant portion of the Republican voters?

0:40:58 Matt: I truly don't think it was a significant portion, at least at the time. Because at the time, I mean, if you look at the polling, if asked people, right, exactly.

0:41:04 Thomas: That's true. They'd always be like, why can't they do this? Everybody supports this. They'd say that all the time. Yeah.

0:41:09 Matt: If you have somebody, you give me an example of any given number of my clients that are doing fine in this country and don't have a path, most people would support giving them a path. But what they did is they they successfully created a third rail that you could not touch of amnesty. That's what they kept calling it.

0:41:23 Matt: And as you know, I don't like that word very much. But this idea though that you should have given Stephen Miller a seat the whole time, that's what we did. I mean, it's what happened is what you're saying. There was a Stephen Miller veto when Stephen Miller was 12. This is still happening.

0:41:32 Thomas: Good point. Yeah it's like they already did have a seat essentially.

0:41:37 Matt: Yes. Right. Right from FAIR and the other organizations that were just hammering this.

0:41:43 Thomas: That's a good point, okay. I see, yeah so it's the opposite of true. It's like if you want something to actually happen, get him and those people out out of the room and, you know, get some reform going that most voters would, uh, obviously it wouldn't be our, you Know, we wouldn't Be huge fans of it, but it would have been better than the nothing. I think probably, especially now.

0:41:51 Matt: I mean, yeah,

0:42:01 Lydia: Forward progress even if it's small yeah the don't know if there's a deal to be had along those lines restrictionists might rebel and democrats might simply not want a grand bargain with this president but a bargain that actually reflects the shape of public opinion not just the elite consensus can only happen with someone like stephen miller at the table

0:42:19 Matt: And the bargain he's talking about is basically giving up family green cards. I don't if he knows that or not, but not allowing people to bring their parents, not allowing to bring children to the United States. That's not a bargain. That is gutting immigration. And again, this is such a deta thing to be like, well, there's a compromise here. There's some way we can work this out. He's doing here is he's dealing with the dishonest thing they were doing at the time. They're calling it low -skilled immigration. Yeah, okay. Maybe your mother is low - skilled, but that's not really why you're bringing her here, is it?

0:42:45 Thomas: Your mother's low skilled. Yeah.

0:42:47 Matt: Exactly.

0:42:46 Lydia: Yo mama.

0:42:48 Matt: But I mean, also people who understand immigration policy and the greater picture here know that our economic future and our demographic future depend on immigration. It's really important. And we can't necessarily listen to people get whipped up by Trump as a serious policy position. Good question.

0:43:24 Lydia: So hard for Stephen Miller specifically? Why does he deserve a seat at that table?

0:43:25 Matt: Yep. Ted Cruz still exists in this moment. Exactly.

0:43:28 Thomas: Yeah. And to Matt's point, he's not just going to be a voice as part of negotiations. He's there to not let negotiations happen.

0:43:36 Matt: He's a grenade in any given meeting.

0:43:38 Thomas: It's like we got to have this grenade in here because it sort of is like some of the people who are anti this.

0:43:39 Matt: He has to go off.

0:43:44 Thomas: Okay, sure. All right. Well, now we're going to take a totally different direction here with the redistribution of sex. Here we go it's

0:43:52 Matt: Yeah, it's about as gross as it sounds.

0:43:52 Lydia: Can't wait to hear his opinion on this. Oh boy.

0:43:56 Matt: Making some pretty gross points here.

0:43:53 Thomas: About time is this about robot I see a robot large

0:43:59 Matt: Is in part about sex robots.

0:44:00 Thomas: -breasted robot and just for

0:44:02 Matt: Sex robots for everybody.

0:44:02 Thomas: The listeners this is 2018 so like what's the deal well why don't we have these yet or do we I don't know all

0:44:06 Lydia: May, May 2nd, 2018 is what we're looking at. Lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this. Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane. All kinds of phenomena starting as far back as the Iraq war and the crisis of the euro but accelerating in the age of populism have made more sense in the light of analysis by reactionaries and radicalists than as portrayed in the organs of establishment opinion.

0:44:36 Matt: Well, okay. If you're talking about me and you and you guys, I don't know, maybe, be, but we're pretty weird.

0:44:40 Thomas: Now yeah I mean maybe maybe radicals but where's the reactionaries part like I get I think the radical like the reactionaries are the ones that are doing the iraq war right I mean am I yeah

0:44:50 Matt: And he's only going to look at them when it's convenient, when he wants them. So let's keep going down to the... There's all this setup here. Basically, he needs a very long setup to get to his point because it's pretty weird."

0:44:58 Lydia: Which brings me me to the sex robots okay is

0:45:01 Matt: There you go. That's all we're going to need right there.

0:45:04 Thomas: For a second I thought that was you joking like that's where it was gonna be that that's actually the line okay let's

0:45:04 Lydia: This something that no no like that's literally a sentence from his piece like does do hat unless does he is he looking is he part of that weirdo group that wants sex robots I don't know I don' t know all right well well actually first it brings me to the case of robin hansen a george mason economist libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo okay so george this robin handson guy is a sex robot guy commenting on the recent terrorist violence in in Toronto, in which a self -identified incel, that is, involuntary celibate, man sought retribution against women in society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hansen offered this provocation. If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?

0:45:15 Thomas: See where he's going here yeah

0:45:16 Matt: It's on his mind, certainly. Do you really want an answer to that? I remember at the time that there were incels is talking about this, because I was following these weird upstart movements, talking about how the government needs to give them sex slaves, basically, because that's the only solution, which is kind of what it sounds like when you say that.

0:46:04 Lydia: Insane.

0:46:03 Thomas: Money's not sentient so So, yeah, yeah.

0:46:06 Matt: It doesn't have consent issues. It can just be passed around. Yeah.

0:46:09 Lydia: That's so disgusting. After all, he wrote, quote, one might plausibly argue that those with with much less access to sex, suffer to a similar degree as those with low income and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis, and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.

0:46:29 Matt: Why are you quoting this man?

0:46:29 Thomas: Is he going to come down? Where is he coming down on this argument is what I need to know. He's a, oh, okay, so it's

0:46:33 Matt: He's coming down to the sex robot side of things, which is better than the sex slave side of thing. Yeah, the third way, Exactly. But the fact that he's even quoting this weirdo, I don't know. Yeah.

0:46:37 Thomas: A third way. Yeah, yeah

0:46:44 Matt: So Slate, of course, reasonably asked, is Robin Hanson the creepiest economist in America? Yes, at that time, I think so.

0:46:45 Lydia: Bizarre. Yeah.

0:46:44 Thomas: . . . I don't know. What about, isn't that, what about the guy who was on the Epstein list? Wasn't he a, yeah , who am I thinking, the Harvard guy that, well, all right, okay. Sure. Sure.

0:46:57 Matt: More of a personal creep, I Think. This is a professional creep. I don' t know.

0:47:04 Thomas: I'm just saying this, I'm saying it's a crowded field, Matt.

0:47:03 Lydia: They can battle it out. We'll put them in the ring together. Yeah,

0:47:07 Thomas: I don't, I don' t know.

0:47:07 Matt: We can scroll down a little bit more. But also the idea that sex, like you said, like it's out there, like money, like it some sort of objectified thing rather than like, maybe let's talk about how men are treating women and how men are out in the world being unsexy, basically. I don't know. I mean, physically, I just mean

0:47:25 Thomas: It's like, it's just, it' s just a category error.

0:47:27 Matt: Toxic.

0:47:27 Thomas: You can't, you can't talk about it as like a object or a good or a whatever, like a in the, in the sense of like goods and services. It' s not a textile, you know, it'S not like it'd be one thing to be like, okay, in a vacuum. Yes, I do. I would wish that everyone got to have the opportunity to do, you Know, happiness, sex, relationships, but it's another to be like, well, okay, should we redistribute? What does that even mean?

0:47:54 Thomas: Like there isn't like a, there isn't like a quantity of sex that like that. The only thing that means is forcing someone to have sex with someone they don't want to. It's the only thing they can mean. And so how, oh yeah, yeah, sure.

0:47:54 Matt: Yeah, it's disgusting.

0:48:05 Lydia: Well, unless you genuinely want to engage with sex as a good in which you seek out legal sex workers and then you pay them for their service, but they're not wanting to do that. They're wanting this for free.

0:48:18 Thomas: But I still, by the way, I still wouldn't consider consider that a right to sex so

0:48:18 Matt: Douthat doesn't want that.

0:48:22 Lydia: I agree. I agree, I think the sex worker obviously would have the right to disengage for whatever reason at any time whatsoever, but that would be the step that I think that they should take next then, if that's what you're wanting to to do than actually pay for it.

0:48:23 Thomas: Like yeah yeah but it's also I mean we obviously we don't have time to go into all this into detail but it's also like this isn't the problem like it's not they don't just want like sex with someone like they just they want the control and status that misogyny and patriarchy offer to to them and yeah wow

0:48:52 Lydia: This I mean that as offensive or utopian the redistribution of sex might sound, the idea is entirely responsive to the logic of late modern sexual life and its pursuit would be entirely characteristic

0:49:01 Thomas: Why are you saying redistribution are we taking sex from the sex billionaires and like that doesn't even make sense yeah the one percent okay because no I'm not giving any up no I'm just kidding all

0:49:04 Matt: Yeah, stop saying that. The 1%, sexual 1%. Yeah, right. I worked for this.

0:49:19 Thomas: Right let's get yeah stupid anyway sorry god yeah

0:49:26 Lydia: Of a recurring pattern in liberal societies first first

0:49:28 Matt: So yeah, it's like a modest proposal, I guess. He's saying, this is what you guys want, you liberal societies. I don't even know. I'm losing the plot here, so is he. But this

0:49:39 Lydia: Because like other forms of neoliberal deregulation the sexual revolution created new winners and losers new hierarchies to replace the old ones privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration I don't where

0:49:52 Matt: Is incel logic. This is straight up incel -logic. You also

0:49:56 Thomas: So that so yeah allowing more freedom sexually means now we have an un it was better before where it was tightly regulated like it was like women were forced to have sex with different people and that way all kinds of it's weird how how that works like I'd like imagine saying this out loud yeah

0:50:07 Lydia: Women were property and yeah yeah yeah

0:50:19 Matt: Don't have to be beautiful and rich to enjoy sex or to have access to sex in his language.

0:50:23 Lydia: I think you need to not suck as a person, and that's going to open up a lot of opportunities for you.

0:50:26 Thomas: New

0:50:26 Matt: Just be reasonably interesting and charming, it's not that hard.

0:50:31 Thomas: Winners and losers god is that even I don't even know if that's true like in any sense I

0:50:35 Matt: It's incellogic, I'm telling you. It's just like he's reading incel boards or something. But we can keep going. But yeah,

0:50:42 Thomas: Think he's just really trying as hard as he can to like link this to other like liberal liberal ideas and is just trying way too fucking hard huh

0:50:53 Lydia: Is an alternative conservative response, of course, namely that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.

0:51:09 Matt: So his answer to redistributing sex is actually just celibacy. Let's just stop having it.

0:51:13 Thomas: Let's just make all the incels priests you're you're well qualified for the job yeah

0:51:17 Matt: That's always worked out. It's generally worked out in history.

0:51:20 Lydia: But this is not the natural response for a society like ours. Instead, we tend to look for fixes that seem to build on previous revolutions rather than reverse them. In the case of sexual liberation and its discontents, that's unlikely to mean the kind of thoroughgoingly utopian reimagining of sexual desire that writers like Srinivasan, that we should aspire toward or anything quite so formal as the pro -redistribution political lobby of Hansen's thought experiment. But I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels, be they angry and dangerous or simply depressed and despairing. The left's increasing zeal to transform prostitution into legalized and regulated sex work, in quotes, will have this end implicitly in mind. The libertarian and general male fascination with virtual reality porn and sex robots will increase as those technologies improve. And at a certain point, without anyone formally debating the idea of a right to sex, right -thinking people will simply come to agree that some such right exists and that it makes sense to look to some combination of changed laws, new technologies, and evolved mores to fulfill it. Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter, but that they will eventually be asked to do it in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical feels pretty much inevitable.

0:51:42 Thomas: It's true of us and no it won't be in service of that it will be because people are like well we can make the sex robot and people have a right to engage in that if they want like this idea where it's it's going to be like because of some goal to like give sex to these incels that's not like what are you talking about nobody nobody had that's stupid like it'll be because some technology company yeah makes a realistic sex robot and then maybe if depending on where we are in our fucking fascist descent maybe it'll be legal we'll see and then some people will want to do or will think we have the right to engage in that kind of commerce and that's why it would be like nobody's what are you talking about the whole thing

0:53:07 Lydia: Because capitalism. Yeah.

0:53:27 Matt: And obviously, chastity would be better, of course, as he thinks. I guess that's what he wants you to believe at the end of the day is that we're going to reach all these extreme solutions that you're not going to like, so we should all just be chaste.

0:53:32 Thomas: So instead of being an involuntary celibate just turn it into the voluntary part is that what he's saying we just need they these incels just need a mindset change I mean kind of but yeah sell just go back to sell

0:53:45 Lydia: They just need to be a cell. Just cell. Well, I

0:53:40 Matt: Just be a voluntary celibate. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. That's right. But nothing about the fundamental problem of misogyny or about how these men are approaching women or not approaching women or the messaging they're getting from society. Just this weird column about how it's pretty much inevitable that we're going to have to deal with this weird liberal stuff you guys want. It's very decent. On to the next bad opinion.

0:54:05 Thomas: A doozy coming for you. I don't know if we should take a break first, maybe? Take our last break? What do you think? Okay, we've got, we got a, we got a real doozy come for you, this headline, it's going to be, going to be fun.

0:54:11 Matt: I mean, I think so. That's right.

0:54:16 Lydia: Dootsie.

0:54:20 Thomas: It's a doozie, and as a teaser, okay, so before we get to that, final break, thank you to Blah Blah Blazala Podcast, ET, Philly Basement Bar, says we should take off and nuke the site from orbit, it. It's the only way to be sure. Elect Thomas Smith President, American Honkytonk Bar Association, Baltakatei, Philip Kizer. Charlie Kirk reminds me of the 1980s film Footloose starring Kevin Bacon because they were both shot in Utah. Wow. Corinne Lann, a string of unpronounceable characters. Malaika Chandler, David in Brooklyn, RhondaTheDork.com. Milo Meadsong, I think argues, but it says aruges, argues the plural form of footnote, kind of like attorneys general, should be notes feetsies that's not even the same notes featsies okay uh it should be like notes foot yeah uh chris Waltrip, Big Easy Blasphemy orders in the court before we report, Sam Donow, FRED R GROOTHUIS, Classic libtard and Mitchell all right final break and then we'll get to a real dootsie

0:54:45 Matt: Ouch.

0:55:03 Lydia: Notes Feetsies. That's really funny. Notes. There

0:55:05 Matt: I'll consider it. Briefly.

0:55:22 Lydia: Will

0:55:22 Thomas: Of a headline. You ready, everyone? Here we go. There will be no Trump coup.

0:55:27 Lydia: Be no Trump coup.

0:55:29 Matt: Let's note the date.

0:55:31 Thomas: October 10th, 2020.

0:55:31 Lydia: 10th. Yeah. Yeah.

0:55:33 Matt: Yes. So, just a few

0:55:35 Lydia: Final pre -election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat.

0:55:35 Matt: Months.

0:55:43 Lydia: Oh, dude.

0:55:44 Matt: This is a classic.

0:55:45 Thomas: Oh dude. What a dude -sy.

0:55:47 Lydia: OK.

0:55:49 Matt: Let's get a taste.

0:55:50 Lydia: Three weeks from now, we will reach an end to speculation about what Donald Trump will do if he faces political defeat, whether he will leave power like a normal president or attempt some wild resistance. Insistence. Reality will intrude, substantially if not definitively, into the argument over whether the president is a corrupt, incompetent, who postures as a strongman on Twitter, or a threat to the republic to whom words like authoritarian and even autocrat can be reasonably applied. I've been on the first side of that argument since early in his presidency, and since we're nearing either an ending or some poll -defying reset, let me make the case just one more time. Across the last four years, the Trump administration has indeed displayed hallmarks of authoritarianism. It features egregious internal sycophancy and hacks in high positions, abusive presidential rhetoric, and mendacity on an unusual scale. The president's attempts to delegitimize the 2020 vote aren't novel. They're an extension of the way he's talked since his birthdays, paranoid and demagogic. These are all very bad things and good reasons to favor his defeat. But it's also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianismo he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. He lacks power over the media.

0:56:57 Thomas: Okay. Let's see. What does he lack? Wow. I don't know about that one.

0:57:09 Lydia: Outside of Fox's prime time, he faces an unremittingly hostile press whose major outlets have thrived throughout his presidency. He.

0:57:18 Matt: They got him elected by...

0:57:19 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, That's such an interesting thing to think about for a while, because I was just about to say, this is so typical Douthit hat, because him saying, look, he doesn't have power over the media. He's just outside of Fox. These other outlets don't like him, but his power is that they've become irrelevant. Irrelevant. Like, yeah, he, his power over the media. Isn't that he converted all of mainstream media into Trump worshiping toadies. It's that he made them irrelevant. And many forces have gone into that.

0:57:48 Lydia: The people's consumption of media changed.

0:57:51 Thomas: Yeah. Like it does. It just doesn't, they're not powerful anymore. You

0:57:54 Matt: If you skip down to if you judge an authoritarian...

0:57:58 Thomas: Oh, hold on. Hold on. He is plainly despised by his own military leadership. That was true. That was real. And notwithstanding his courtship of Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley is more likely to censor him than to support him in a constitutional crisis.

0:58:09 Thomas: And they did, I mean, they did. They banned him for a little bit and then they turned around.

0:58:09 Matt: How has that worked out? Yeah. For a minute.

0:58:14 Lydia: Well. And then they all donated to his campaign.

0:58:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, so it was kind of true. I mean that was kind of tru. They did eventually, much to their own chagrin, they They took a long time, but after Jan 6, they did ban him, but that was, you know, they had to be forced kicking and screaming. And then, you Know, they got over that. All right.

0:58:34 Matt: Actually, if you get onto

0:58:34 Thomas: Where'd you want to go to? Yep.

0:58:34 Matt: His own Supreme Court appointees, that's

0:58:37 Lydia: His own Supreme Court appointees have already ruled against him. His attempts to turn his voter fraud hype into litigation have been repeatedly defeated in the courts. He's been constantly at war with his own CIA and FBI, and there is no mass movement behind him. OK. The threat of far right violence is certainly real, but America's streets belong to the anti -Trump left. What?

0:58:57 Matt: Right. Look out. Those leftists are going to swarm the Capitol any day now.

0:59:00 Lydia: It's just like because George Floyd protests and stuff happened that year.

0:59:04 Thomas: I guess this was like peak that, but I, this is the crucial miss that Matt, you keep talking about, which is, and to try to put a little bit of a different phrasing on it, it's, he he keeps, and we've seen this in other things we've, we've read from Dude Hat about this. He constantly talks about like, is Trump authoritarian or not? Well, here's what he's missing. And the things he's referencing are just like the system barely hanging on.

0:59:30 Thomas: Like that's not really, it's not a good way to look at it. Like, oh no, he's not, he'S not an authoritarian. I mean, some of the Supreme Court justices sometimes vote against him. It's like, yeah, okay I guess but like it totally equivalent way to look at it which would be more true would be like here's the remaining threads that our nation is holding on by and if they fall then we have an authoritarian you know like it's just such a more accurate way to like out what's happening it's not that he's it's Not that the things he's saying are like untrue per se but it's the presentation of like you say matt of like constantly trying to make it into like Like, nah, he's not there. Look, there's a thread.

1:00:15 Matt: Right. We don't live in a fascist state yet. Over and over again. We read the one where he explained why he wasn't a fascist and he made a couple of points that made some sense at the time. But again, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how fascism works and how it grows more to the point, because this is all stuff that we all saw potentially coming in a second Trump term, right? And he's making it seem like this is never going to happen.

1:00:34 Lydia: Well, I remember we talked about also the Jamal Bowie piece when he like explicitly called out Trump is an authoritarian. And I was trying to like find that exactly that exact one to kind of see the timing between these two, like if it's a battle like within the gray lady kind of thing. The only one I could find just really quickly was.

1:00:51 Thomas: Well, no, those were both from the same time. Those are both from 2016 when we did those. Yeah. This is later.

1:00:55 Lydia: This is this is a so this is A February 21st, 2020 article that Jamal Bui did kind of talking about authoritarianism. But, yeah, just kind of interesting.

1:01:03 Thomas: And again, I remember, like, we went through that. And again. The things he was saying were mostly technically correct. And in the end, he did say, yeah, he is an aspiring authoritarian. Authoritarian, but it's like, it's missing. And that was certainly more forgivable back then. Like before he was even in office, I think that was, wasn't it? Like right when he was, or yeah, it was 20. It might've been right when you got into office.

1:01:23 Lydia: I can't remember the exact

1:01:24 Thomas: I can't remember, but yeah.

1:01:24 Lydia: Timing. Yeah, yeah.

1:01:25 Thomas: But like at this point in 2020, especially when it's paired with the headline, like there's not going to be a Trump coup. Oh boy. All right. Let's see how he gets there.

1:01:34 Matt: And once again, the real problem is going to be the left.

1:01:39 Lydia: If you judge an authoritarian by institutional influence, Trump falls absurdly short. And the same goes for judging his power grabs. Yes, he has successfully violated post Watergate norms in the service of self -protection and his pocketbook. But pre Watergate presidents were not autocrats. And in terms of seizing power over policy, he is been less imperial than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Obama.

1:01:51 Matt: That's That's incredible. That's just not true. None of that is true. I mean, honestly. And again, it's easy in hindsight because we know what he's done since then too, but he was doing plenty of this in the first term of seizing policy and really twisting it to his needs. And, again, maybe it's because I'm so attuned to immigration policy and because the things he was doing even then were just so out of line. But, yeah, you can see where he's going with this.

1:02:16 Lydia: Well, and also this idea like that the post Watergate norms, he's violated those. But, you know, those norms didn't exist before Watergate and presidents weren't autocrats then. OK, well, we're not talking about them like.

1:02:27 Matt: Also, the service of self -protection and his pocketbook, that, again that is new. Protecting the way he was openly representing his own economic interest, the way he's doing it now, certainly, as president, we're new. That's huge. He just writes this stuff off. It's always hand -waving with him.

1:02:41 Lydia: Hmm. There is still no Trumpian equivalent of Bush's anti -terror and enhanced interrogation innovations or Obama's immigration gambit an unconstitutional libyan war trump's

1:02:51 Matt: Wow. Remember the unconstitutional Libyan war? That was good times.

1:02:56 Lydia: Worst human rights violation the separation of migrants from their children was withdrawn under public outcry yeah fixed wow his biggest defiance of congress involves some money for a still unfinished border wall and when the coronavirus handed him a once in a century excuse to seize new powers he he retreated ross my guy retreating is what he said, he retreated to a cranky libertarianism instead. All this context, yeah, not quite, yeah.

1:03:01 Matt: So that was fine. Yeah. Nobody got hurt. Everything's okay. Ooh. Yeah,

1:03:20 Thomas: Typo. Yeah,

1:03:25 Matt: I'm sorry. I just have to dispute this. The way he's talking about it, he definitely used coronavirus to seize power in all kinds of ways, to do all kinds merchant stuff, including at the border, and to redistribute money and resources around the country to his favorite people. But yeah, anyway, we can skip down to there are many answers because this is where, again, you have to blame the left. We can't be too quick to blame Donald Trump for anything, if

1:03:52 Lydia: There are many answers, but I'll just offer one. With American liberalism poised to retake presidential power, it needs clarity about its own position. Liberalism lost in 2016 out of a mix of accident and hubris, and many liberals have spent the last four years persuading themselves that their position might soon be as beleaguered as the opposition under Putin or German liberals late in Weimar. But in reality, liberalism under Trump has become a more dominant force in our society, with a zealous progressive vanguard and a monopoly in the commanding heights of culture. Its return to power in Washington won't be the salvation of American pluralism. It will be the unification of cultural and political power under a single banner.

1:04:14 Thomas: Jesus.

1:04:31 Matt: Only.

1:04:32 Lydia: Wielding that power in a way that doesn't just seed another backlash requires both vision and and restraint, and seeing its current enemy clearly as a feckless tribune for the discontented rather than an autocratic menace is essential to the wisdom that a Biden presidency needs.

1:04:31 Thomas: Oh, that's nothing. That's meaningless.

1:04:46 Matt: Thanks, Russ.

1:04:47 Thomas: Yeah boy. We got it. We are way over time. Well, that sucked. What's the next one?

1:04:47 Matt: Thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah, there's so much more. Well, so there's another one called How Trump Made the Fantasy Real that he wrote three days after January 6th. And I'll just read the beginning because yeah, it's really not worth reading in full.

1:04:54 Thomas: And then, oh, really? Well, we had before that, even we had, cause I love the sequence. There will be no Trump coup. And then the next when you picked December, why did so many Americans think the election was stolen?

1:05:12 Lydia: Yeah.

1:05:14 Thomas: It's like so weird. It's almost like there's a budding, you know, uh, anti realism movement that is going to be the very coup that he said won't happen.

1:05:13 Matt: We can bring that up. This one is not worth reading that much of why people believe it was stolen. But again, it is fundamentally mentally misunderstanding how they're lying to their advantage and why.

1:05:34 Thomas: Yeah. He's making it out to be like, well, you Know, we're all getting more conspiratorial, not like specifically, specifically this is being fomented by specifically this authoritarian guy.

1:05:47 Matt: But this purpose, right. And also that they're laying to you on purpose. He's just like, basically, we all understand it wasn't actually stolen. Okay, sure. You understand that, Ross. And

1:05:55 Thomas: Wow. Look at this last paragraph though. He nailed one here. I don't know if it's a joke or what, but the most important argument for the next four years. And one I'll be making firmly, passionately right up until the Republican party nominates Trump again in 2024. I bet he said that as a joke, but man, yeah. Oh

1:06:07 Matt: Well, he learned. Yeah. So you can pull up very quickly the next one I just sent you, actually, Oops.

1:06:14 Thomas: I would like to retreat, retract my previous, there wasn't a coup.

1:06:19 Lydia: How Trump made the fantasy real. The Capitol Hill riot tore the veil between the right's dream world, and reality. I will be honest and say that I don't know exactly how to interpret the surreal events that unfolded this week in Washington, D .C., when a mob inflamed by online memes and presidential fantasies rampaged through the halls of the U .S. Capitol.

1:06:33 Thomas: I agree.

1:06:39 Matt: Skip down to all I will say for certain.

1:06:40 Thomas: I agree that you do not know how to interpret that.

1:06:42 Matt: Yes, you still won't.

1:06:44 Lydia: I will say for certain, cocking my own head back and forth, is that when I predicted three months ago that there would be no Trump coup, I should have showed more imagination. He said that exact same thing, didn't he? Like about about the Trump.

1:06:56 Thomas: Yeah, sort of. Yeah but

1:06:52 Matt: Imagination. I mean, yes, about Trump himself. Yeah. Yeah, and the movement. Yeah. But yeah, so this is just him backtracking and being like, exactly.

1:07:04 Thomas: It was not a coup by any traditional definition of the term. All right

1:07:07 Matt: He argues this for a while. There's another whole column about why it wasn't actually a coup, and it's fine.

1:07:12 Thomas: Sorry this is just uh wow all right let's go to why Nikki Haley could be the most dangerous president yeah

1:07:13 Lydia: It's depressing. 20th, 2024.

1:07:15 Matt: Check out the date on that. January 20th, exactly. We

1:07:24 Thomas: A Haley presidency could be more dangerous than the second trump term what okay

1:07:28 Matt: -hmm, because she might start some wars, folks.

1:07:32 Lydia: Out of all the candidates haley's vision still reminds me the most of george w bush's worldview which at a time of seemingly unconstrained power set us on the path to our era of crisis and constraint having seen that vision undermine a strong america I do not trust it to rescue a weakened america and if what failed us once should fail again the price could be more terrible and the collapse much more complete yeah

1:07:54 Matt: Already know what it was like when Trump was president. He was same worldview, same America dominating the world worldview.

1:07:57 Thomas: I can't imagine now I I have I to be charitable to do that I cannot imagine and no there's nowhere I anyone who knows anything should have or would have said anything could be worse than a second trump presidency. That was the worst. That was always going to be the worst, it was catastrophically bad, there's nothing would be worse than that. I can't believe you'd have that take in 2024.

1:08:14 Lydia: Especially and like when he recognized in that previous piece too about about the january 6th riot and like like what happened there like you have a rabid group of people who like view him as their messiah basically why in the world do you think that nikki haley who doesn't have that would be more dangerous than trump who does have that and we have seen literally what happens when he gets into power

1:08:42 Thomas: Like totally regardless of what you think their policy might be, the endorsement that that was, like the re -election of Trump, the endorsements of all his bullshit, of you know the legitimization of this, of of january 6th I mean the the mass pardon I mean it is I give him a lot more leeway than I know matt does but this is that's inexcusable I mean that is just so that's so terrible there's nothing and if you time travel to 2024 you will find me and anyone else who knows anything saying there's something fucking worse than re -electing this guy like it just it we had a chance if we could have moved on somehow as a country if we could have had a kamala victory or whatever However, there is a real chance to make progress in putting that in our review or doubling down and just completely ruining everything and making the brief four years a temporary blip. And that's where we are on our way to fascism. So But who all

1:09:42 Matt: Oh, also don't remember a time when Nikki Haley was going to win. We're skipping over, I just want to mention an honorary mention. We'll link to it because we don't have time, but he wrote a column three days after Rene Good was shot in the streets of Minneapolis about how we can reach some sort of compromise with ICE, it's going to be fine. He doesn't use Rene's name at all in the column, which I thought was so offensive, but that more than speaks for itself. All right, so this is his swan song here.

1:10:04 Matt: The headline really says it all. This is a summary of his entire body of work. In this headline.

1:10:04 Lydia: Why

1:10:09 Thomas: It really is.

1:10:11 Lydia: Do you have a job dude hat like for an

1:10:14 Matt: 25 high -paid writers.

1:10:14 Thomas: Dude hat.

1:10:16 Lydia: Opinion writer you don't really have any opinions apparently who

1:10:18 Thomas: Why don't you read it for the listeners, hon?

1:10:20 Lydia: Are the good guys and the bad guys I'm no longer sure cool

1:10:25 Matt: How could we tell, folks?

1:10:26 Thomas: What does he mean by that? What is he talking about? Oh boy.

1:10:30 Lydia: I joined this newspaper as a columnist 17 years ago Barack Obama was still enjoying the flush of first -term popularity. In both political and cultural circles, there was vaulting confidence that his fusion of social liberalism and technocratic ambition had swept away the conservative era in American politics. The columnist's job contains multitudes, but it's useful to have a primary antagonist, a specific worldview that you think needs to be challenged and critiqued. For me, for many years, that worldview was the elite consensus of the early Obama era, a mostly left -of -center perspective that also belonged to Silicon Valley moguls, centrist politicians in the style of Michael Bloomberg, and portions of the Republican consultant class. It was a perspective that was morally permissive and self -consciously cosmopolitan, uniting multilateralism and hawkishness in foreign policy, and optimistic that a meritocratic elite could guide a globalizing world toward prosperity and harmony. In part, I opposed this worldview on substantive grounds. I was religious where it was largely secular. I was pro -life where it was pro choice. I had doubts about its approach to issues as various as mass immigration, marijuana legalization, and the Middle East. In part, I opposed it on political grounds. A lot of Republicans were convinced that the GOP needed to adapt to the consensus to survive, effectively becoming a second culturally liberal party, but with free market vibes, and I was certain that was wrong.

1:11:48 Thomas: This is what you're wasting your last column on? Like what? Okay.

1:11:52 Lydia: And finally, I critiqued the elite consensus because it desperately needed elite critics, and lacking them, it was constantly tempted into overreach.

1:12:00 Thomas: Okay, dude.

1:12:01 Lydia: Even when it started out in a reasonable place, it didn't know when to stop, and there was too much about human nature that it didn t seem to know.

1:12:08 Matt: So this would be a great place to transition from, yeah, maybe the real enemy was fascism, the incipient

1:12:13 Thomas: That was all meaningless. List. Like how wrong I was.

1:12:15 Lydia: How wrong I was, upon reflection of my many years here. The last decade in Western politics, this elite consensus came to grief for some of the reasons that I expected. It failed to anticipate the downsides of expert -driven policies. It was unprepared for the darker effects of technological change. It took social liberalism so far that it left vulnerable people adrift or abandoned to their vices and it blundered in foreign policy because it didn't expect the non -western world to push back so hard against its plans is

1:12:33 Thomas: So far. What? What? Why does that even mean? It took social liberalism so far that left vulnerable people adrift or abandoned to their vices? Okay.

1:12:44 Matt: What that means. Yeah, I'm with you.

1:12:52 Lydia: That like, like harm reduction and stuff, like he just doesn't like like needle exchange programs and yeah yeah

1:12:55 Thomas: That's what caused the epidemic. Yeah. The opioid epidemic.

1:12:58 Matt: The opioid epidemic in the early

1:12:59 Thomas: Sure.

1:12:59 Matt: 2000s, yes.

1:13:00 Thomas: Nothing to do with capitalism or anything like that.

1:13:03 Matt: Deregulation, corporate greed, sure.

1:13:04 Thomas: So that's the problem. It's like he's got this one consensus and then, but you know, but then it's just, it's too liberal. It took social liberalism too far.

1:13:13 Matt: Have you considered this meaningless stuff that I don't really understand myself?

1:13:16 Thomas: Yeah

1:13:16 Lydia: Watching this crisis unfold I find that that I've lost my sense of which contemporary worldview is most in need of criticism or opposition, where the good guys and bad guys are.

1:13:22 Thomas: Which is it I don't know who's the good guy who's a bad guy this

1:13:27 Lydia: Each major faction seems potentially dangerous, tempted toward the dark side in some unique way, contested or cross -pressured to a degree that makes me uncertain where the side of the angels really lies.

1:13:36 Thomas: Is so barry weiss coded this is so this is him giving his final interview for the very wise job even though he already had it but like yeah

1:13:39 Matt: Is. Folks, are the angels with ice or the people that don't like ice? I don t know.

1:13:48 Thomas: Guys they both seem potentially dangerous you know there's the one that controls literally every fucking thing in the country and then there's the other one that is on blue sky and they both seem potentially dangerous like fuck you

1:14:01 Lydia: I think I think it's also just like such a childish perspective on the world. Like we're talking about human beings, not angels. We're talking about politicians, not angles. Like be a real person, Ross. Be an adult. You're older than me. Be better than that.

1:14:18 Thomas: It's so barry weiss ah who do how's to know I just don't know which side is it so all right uh where'd you want to go after that yeah

1:14:18 Matt: Black hat, white hat. Right. He's just noticing that Trump's second term has been pretty bad, so we got a paragraph about that. Okay, great. Keep going.

1:14:31 Thomas: Hasn't been great all

1:14:32 Lydia: Yeah. Many liberal readers, these sins make populism the maximum danger, the singular emergency. But as Trumpism has flailed and failed, it It hasn't consolidated the kind of authoritarian power anticipated by its most alarmed opponents.

1:14:44 Thomas: We're still doing this we're

1:14:46 Matt: Its most alarmed opponents.

1:14:47 Thomas: Still fucking doing this dude oh

1:14:48 Matt: Come on. Okay. Yes, the people that said we'd all be in camps by now were wrong. Okay? I got you there.

1:14:50 Thomas: My god cool has flailed and failed yeah man

1:14:56 Lydia: Continuing on in this paragraph. At the moment, Trump 2 .0 has no great popularity, no legislative capacity, no

1:15:02 Thomas: My God where have I seen this before where have I seen this before oh

1:15:05 Lydia: Policy legacy that a Democratic successor can't easily roll back.

1:15:09 Matt: Can't easily roll back. Tell that to...

1:15:09 Thomas: Should be easy should be easy he's just got the entire Supreme Court and a billion federal judges we have literally judge fucking asshole who swore in yeah we have judge Bovey yeah yeah, it should be easy to roll back. I mean, it'd be a cinch.

1:15:18 Lydia: Emile Beauvais.

1:15:23 Matt: And USAID, and this is going to be an upcoming book club selection about how this happened, but USAID is gone. We got people dying all over the world.

1:15:27 Thomas: Well, Matt, we can resurrect all those dead kids, right?

1:15:30 Lydia: Yeah.

1:15:30 Matt: We've replaced the immigration establishment with a completely new radical immigration state.

1:15:34 Thomas: Your average Democrat is a level three necromancer. So it's not hard to just reanimate all the skeletons of the people that they killed.

1:15:41 Matt: Resurrect. Yeah, there you go. Also,

1:15:44 Thomas: Unbelievable.

1:15:44 Lydia: The president himself might still be a dangerous figure. There might be darker forces waiting in the wings.

1:15:48 Thomas: We're still doing this. Okay, Matt. I, I, you know what?

1:15:49 Matt: This

1:15:51 Lydia: You've come to the side. You're coming to Matt's side.

1:15:53 Thomas: I see, I See what you in a worse light where like, okay, you can be forgiven for this. Take it this time somewhat.

1:15:55 Matt: Is the arc. Yeah.

1:16:03 Thomas: And I stand by that, but you're still doing it. You're still don't you, this is the same language, man. The same, exactly. It's like nothing has changed.

1:16:11 Matt: Breaking. I still don't get it. That's pretty much.

1:16:13 Lydia: But I don't think that justifies making anti -populism the measure of all things.

1:16:18 Matt: I'm not even anti -populist.

1:16:18 Thomas: What does that even mean? Yeah.

1:16:21 Matt: Populism can't be good.

1:16:22 Thomas: What you've found a division that isn't relevant, like populist versus anti -populist.

1:16:26 Lydia: That has nothing to do with what people have

1:16:28 Thomas: It just shows how fucking out of touch he is. It's like, this isn't like two sides of an intellectual difference on populism. I mean, there's elements of that going on, but like the important part is the dead people, you know, like the, the, just come on. Like it's so stupid. It'S so obtuse.

1:16:28 Lydia: A problem with Trump for. Yeah yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

1:16:47 Matt: Do you even read the New York Times, Russ? I really have to wonder. Yeah. Complaining about the Biden era, more meritocratic hubris. Somehow that's his bad. Replacing experts with interest groups, maxing out on social liberals. Let me keep going. It just keeps going and going. Complaining about Keir Starmer.

1:17:02 Thomas: I, we got to read this paragraph. This one, at least this one right after that, especially read that might

1:17:06 Lydia: My Especially when you consider the alternatives. First, there is what remains of the center -left establishment, some of whose vices look less serious in light of Trumpism. Self -satisfied technocrats might be preferable to self -dealing hatchet men.

1:17:18 Thomas: Be by the way, self -satisfied technocrats. Yeah. They're technocrates. They actually know how to do stuff and they're not, you know, evil, but they're a little smug, you Know?

1:17:28 Lydia: Yeah.

1:17:29 Thomas: And so they might be preferable to self -dealing hatchet men.

1:17:23 Matt: Self -dealing Hatchiman. You're talking open naked corruption is what you're talking about to

1:17:36 Thomas: They might be preferred. God.

1:17:38 Matt: People making money off the government. Okay.

1:17:40 Thomas: But, but that next sentence too.

1:17:42 Lydia: Yeah, but that remains culpable for the mistakes that led to populism's rise and at sea amid changed political conditions right it's they're still their fault

1:17:48 Thomas: See, when you're evaluating the sides, you have one side that's the horrible, horrible stuff. And then you have the other side that like, I mean, they're the reason the one side is doing the horrible horrible stuff. Like, so how do you, how do evaluate between those two things? Like, what are you talking about?

1:17:58 Matt: Because they're kind of snooty sometimes, which is

1:18:03 Lydia: The ride is just full of little babies that have no agency at all they only do what in response to what happens to them because they're little babies uh

1:18:06 Thomas: Can't hold them accountable. Yeah. Oh

1:18:12 Matt: Fine. Oh, yes. If you don't want to join the populist backlash, I

1:18:14 Thomas: Here

1:18:18 Lydia: But if you don't want to join the populist backlash then the only alternative to propping up the liberal establishment is putting the West in the hands of Wokeness 2 .0, Hassan Piker thought, and Democratic Socialists of America energy, social progressivism with socialist characteristics.

1:18:27 Thomas: We go.

1:18:35 Matt: Think he's very clever with this.

1:18:36 Thomas: How horrible that that would be yeah

1:18:38 Lydia: I don't want to describe this movement as

1:18:38 Matt: Again, he's describing online stuff and a minority of everything. Is

1:18:44 Lydia: Categorically worse than its establishment opponents, and sometimes the left grasps things the center misses.

1:18:53 Matt: That the only reason you don want to describe the left is worse. Okay. All right.

1:18:57 Lydia: But I lived through the years of peak woke, and it was a McCarthyite experience.

1:19:01 Thomas: He survived he's one of the survivors of peak woke by the way his family didn't make it what are you talking about mccarthyite experience shut the fuck up what are you taking about oh yeah he was blacklisted from checks notes the exact same job he has right now and he's leaving to get more money for like what areyou talking about god oh

1:19:08 Lydia: I know. Yeah, people being dragged away. Yep. And then got a promotion. Yeah got more money. I lived with the blue state governance that doctrinaire progressivism encouraged and it yielded civic and educational collapse. Collapse.

1:19:33 Matt: This is my favorite. He's talking about Connecticut, which I recently...

1:19:33 Thomas: Come on on yeah he's talking about covid policies

1:19:39 Matt: Civic

1:19:39 Thomas: We we get it it wasn't good that kids had to stay home that did produce bad outcomes that's not all states had to do that by the way there's not yeah and

1:19:42 Matt: And educational collapse. Right. But collapse? Collapse?

1:19:53 Lydia: And I would prefer not to give the far left the power to regulate and prosecute and rewrite the federal budget.

1:19:57 Thomas: It's not the that

1:19:59 Matt: Let's let Trump do it.

1:20:00 Thomas: Was pretty much mainstream the the only thing he could be talking about in terms of educational collapse is the pretty bad numbers as a result of covid Like they are really bad, like education numbers. It's not good what happened to the kids who were in a critical age during COVID. But that wasn't because of Hassan Piker. That wasn't like the socialist thought, you know, it's like that a lot of that, A, happened under Trump, by the way, and also happened in red states. And maybe some red states might've tried to put people back in classrooms slightly earlier. I'm not even sure that's true. Like it's also, didn't it vary by like school district? I don't know. Who knows? But to say that that's like entirely the fault of the far left, that that like minimal difference in how education might've, you know, in how school might've been handled toward the end of COVID or like the middle of COVID, or whatever, to say to that, so not only so terrible, but but also so attributable to like the left is just silly. Like it's fucking stupid and it's not relevant to today.

1:21:07 Lydia: He also might be talking about colleges and universities and sort of like the collapse of institutions there.

1:21:10 Matt: Doctrinaire progressivism.

1:21:11 Thomas: I don't think so. Blue state governance. What, what do you think? What's, what's civic and educational collapse?

1:21:16 Lydia: Potentially I don't know. Yeah mm

1:21:17 Matt: The blue states are running the culture. He just hates that. And also the idea that the far left would do worse with the budget than Trump did. For regular people, I'd much rather put it in the hands of a stunt biker than, I mean, come on, with

1:21:31 Thomas: Trump's doing a great job right now.

1:21:32 Matt: The budget and letting Elon Musk run it and Russ Vaughn.

1:21:35 Thomas: How are gas prices? How are, how's anything finance, like economics wise?

1:21:38 Lydia: I'm just gonna go buy a house right now they're so affordable affordable. Give me a minute. Then finally, all of these political forces, the unpopular populace, the flailing establishment, the rising left are displaying their vices in the shadow of the artificial intelligence revolution, which is creating new zones of power in which the friend enemy distinction is almost impossible for me to parse. Anthropic or open AI, the Pentagon or the frontier labs, the weird accelerationists or even or the even weirder doomers, the China hawks or the data center skeptics, the people who think AI is a normal technology and thus might underestimate estimate its dangers, or the people who think they're making a machine god and thus might end up in its thrall.

1:22:15 Matt: Those are all kinds of people. Sure. Do we have to pick?

1:22:18 Thomas: Man.

1:22:19 Matt: Do I have to choose? There are other kinds of people too, of which I am some of them. Yeah, not those.

1:22:20 Lydia: Who are

1:22:20 Thomas: Those are all things yeah but who's but who is bad and who's good man I just don't

1:22:29 Matt: How could possibly know?

1:22:30 Lydia: The angels?

1:22:30 Thomas: Know who's the friends who are the enemies

1:22:31 Lydia: Who are the angels, which

1:22:34 Matt: Which makes us a very . Bari

1:22:36 Thomas: Let's go to which makes yeah yeah go to that it's

1:22:38 Matt: Weiss, that's

1:22:39 Lydia: Which makes this a very important time for the kind of journalism that asks a lot of questions before it leaps to opinionated claims.

1:22:46 Thomas: A time you know what we need we need to be just asking questions you know no one's ever tried that oh my God Bari

1:22:53 Matt: That's why I'm going to visit Bari Weiss. I'm gonna go live with her.

1:22:54 Lydia: For the for the past two years, I've been fortunate.

1:22:58 Thomas: Weiss might have written this like like honestly but

1:22:59 Matt: Pretty much.

1:23:00 Lydia: Yeah. For the past two years, I've been fortunate that the Times has let me pursue that kind of questioning as a podcast host.

1:23:07 Thomas: Now I get get to do it with more money so phallic

1:23:10 Lydia: And this month.

1:23:10 Matt: I've had everybody on my podcast from extreme Christian nationalists to moderate Christian nationalist and women who don't like feminism and women who hate feminism. So the whole range.

1:23:21 Lydia: This month, I accepted a position with CBS News's 60 Minutes where the asking of questions will be central to my professional work. That that means that this is my last column for the Times in this season, at least. Once I would would have imagined a valedictory essay offering some stirring brief for religious conservatism, some last foray into the territory where I was most likely to be in disagreement with my readers, but I don't think that quite fits the moment.

1:23:27 Matt: Hey, why start now?

1:23:37 Thomas: Phallidictory yeah

1:23:49 Matt: I also figured out nobody wants that. Nobody wants to read it.

1:23:52 Lydia: Instead, I'll express, along with incalculable gratitude to the Times itself, my colleagues and editors, a hope that I have contributed illumination. I hope my writing has added something to your understanding of America's complexity the world's uncertain future and the strangeness of our times I hope that I make that kind of contribution at 60 minutes I hope the times can continue to illuminate the world as only a great newspaper can and wherever I'm working whatever you're reading we'll all be going into the future together and trusting like many americans before us that there's an angel giving directions somewhere in the storm yeah

1:24:03 Thomas: Hasn't sure man imagine

1:24:24 Matt: If only I knew what the good guys looked like.

1:24:26 Thomas: That being your going out piece like I there are a lot of worse people who could probably write something where I'd be like okay you know for he's a jolly good fella you know like like to have a tenure that long and this is the best you could do is just like so bad you're at you're You're at such an advantage rhetorically when you're like, here's my swan song, my retirement. I'm going out.

1:24:50 Thomas: Let me reflect. And this is what he could do. Ah, who's to say what's good? Who's to Say What's Bad? No idea. AI? Anti-AI? Like, what the fuck?

1:24:59 Matt: This is one of the top 25 highest paid writers in the United States, folks. And if his going out piece had just been, we should all be a little more Catholic, like whatever we wouldn't be reading it but

1:25:07 Thomas: Jesus. Yeah, I know. That would have been better. Oh, Boy. That's, wow.

1:25:13 Lydia: And he could have still talked about angels yeah

1:25:18 Thomas: This is just, this is, I, it's a perfect end. The meaninglessness of Dude Hat's tenure. I mean, this is just nothing. Truly, it's nothing.

1:25:28 Lydia: I hope that I have contributed illumination no none

1:25:30 Matt: That's a whole lot of it oh

1:25:33 Thomas: And it's funny because in 60 Minutes, he doesn't get to be, well, I don't think, unless he's doing the Andy Rooney segment. Unless he's during that segment, he's not going to be an opinion guy. You know, like, you just do interviews and, you

1:25:47 Lydia: Doing interviews mm

1:25:49 Matt: He's gonna have to do journalism Bari Weiss journalism but

1:25:50 Thomas: Know, yeah. So, I wonder if he'll even like it. I don't know. It'll be interesting. Boy, well, that sucked.

1:25:56 Lydia: We'll see or we won't but

1:25:58 Thomas: And it was fully Bari Weiss coded. I mean, Jesus, that is couldn't be more. You know, in the end, he honestly he's maybe more of a bullshitter than I than I admitted previously. I just think he's he's rhetorically positioning himself to maximally cash in on the stupid Bari Weiss consensus that currently exists at CBS and Fox and 60 Minutes. And it's worthless. So there you go. That's a dude hat for you. Let's retire our dude hats, everyone. All right. Thanks, Matt, for duding your hat forever, like reading that much pointless stuff.

1:26:15 Lydia: Dude

1:26:37 Thomas: And Lydia as well. And we'll see you Friday for some real law coverage and back to always norm. But, you know, we had to salute the meaninglessness that was Ross Dude Hat.

1:26:32 Lydia: Out incredible

1:26:37 Matt: We are putting a hat on a do -hat yeah had

1:26:40 Lydia: Yep

1:26:51 Matt: To do it our own horn could not pass it up

1:26:52 Thomas: You're welcome.

1:26:58 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon.com/law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments@gmail.com. Make sure to follow our blue sky at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.