The Dispatch Podcast

Latest Episodes:

An Enduring Memory Sep 11, 2020

Show notes

It’s the 19th anniversary of September 11, 2001, one of the most harrowing historical events in living memory. Today, our podcast hosts reflect on their personal memories of the day as a launching point into a discussion about the United States’ current understanding of al-Qaeda nearly two decades later. In reality, we don’t talk about al-Qaeda much anymore other than within the context of Trump’s “endless wars” rhetoric. Just this week, the Trump administration announced that troops in Iraq will be reduced to 3,000. What’s more, peace negotiations are taking place with Taliban representatives, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and representatives of the Afghan government this weekend. So as Steve points out, “You’d be forgiven for thinking this is all over.” But as Dispatch Podcast guest Tom Joscelyn reminds us on today’s episode, “Al-Qaeda is still very much alive.” Though Tom concedes that there’s a lot you can criticize about U.S. military intervention post-9/11, “It’s much more common, in my experience, that people who are against the U.S. using military force or U.S. military action to play disconnect the dots than it is for some sort of a so-called hawk to overconnect the dots.” On today’s episode, Tom, Sarah, and Steve discuss American intelligence officials’ current misunderstanding of al-Qaeda, the UAE and Bahrain’s plans to normalize their relationship with Israel, and the real and imagined foreign threats to the upcoming election.

Show Notes:

-“Why ‘Outside-In’ Diplomacy Could Be the Key to Middle East Peace” by Jonathan Schanzer, “This 9/11 anniversary arrives with the end of the war on al-Qaeda well in sight” by Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and “The Falling Man” by Thomas Junod.

-Tom Joscelyn’s Vital Interests newsletter for The Dispatch.

-30-day free trial of The Dispatch

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Latino Voters and 2020 Sep 09, 2020

Show notes

News broke overnight of President Trump’s plans to reduce U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, less than a week after Jeffrey Goldberg’s bombshell article in The Atlantic highlighted anonymous accusations of the president’s poor conduct toward American veterans. Sarah, Steve, and Jonah tackle some of the move’s political implications for Trump’s re-election campaign before launching into a lively debate over the ethics of using anonymous sources in journalism. “It is the case that reporters can pick and choose their anonymous sources to tell the story that their predetermined narrative would have them tell,” said Steve. “But I think you judge anonymous sources to a certain extent based on the amount of credence you give to the particular reporter who’s using them.”

The Dispatch Podcast also covers curveballs that could upset current polling favoring a handed Joe Biden victory—namely, the Hispanic vote and presidential debates. New data out of Florida reveals that the former VP might not have the Hispanic vote locked down, but as our hosts point out, assuming that a diverse group of people will vote as a monolithic bloc has always been a dangerous oversimplification. Steve, Sarah and Jonah also chat about the upcoming debates and how possible Biden blunders could either hurt him or paint him as a sympathetic figure, depending on how the president chooses to respond.

Show Notes:

-Jeffrey Goldberg’s controversial investigative journalism: Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Art of Nuance Sep 04, 2020

Show notes

Erick Erickson, host of 95.5 WSB’s Atlanta’s Evening News and creator of The Resurgent, joins Sarah and Steve on the latest Dispatch Podcast to state the case for the president’s re-election, despite his own wide-ranging reservations about Trumpism and the future of the Republican party. To Erickson, Trump represents the lesser of two evils—acting on the better judgement of behind-the-scenes administration officials to move forward beneficial policies like the Israel-UAE deal, the Trump Tax Reform Plan, and economic deregulation.

When pressed about dangerous outgrowths of the populist right, like the QAnon conspiracy theory, Erickson contends that the misinformation crisis coincided with the country’s lost faith in the media. He says that when journalists for self-described nonpartisan mainstream news sources publicly exposed their biases on verified Twitter accounts, many Americans abandoned orthodox news sources in favor of word-of-mouth and alternative media. “All of this plays into more and more people tuning out of media and tuning into their friends on Facebook, and not being able to distinguish truth from fiction,” Erickson said.

Listen to the end for a spirited discussion about the luxuries of adulthood, during which Steve inevitably brings up Spanish wine and Sarah shares her clever method to track down the best mattress in your area.

Show Notes:

-Erick Erickson’s online publication The Resurgent

-Atlanta’s Evening News with Erick Erickson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'Mostly Peaceful' Sep 02, 2020

Show notes

On the campaign trail and throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has painted himself as a law and order candidate. We’re now three years into Donald Trump’s America and waves of violence and racial unrest are sweeping across America, most recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Do the riots and looting in Kenosha benefit Trump electorally? It’s hard to say whether the rioters and Antifa supporters—who are burning down small businesses and hitting innocent bystanders with concrete water bottles—are supporting Biden’s campaign or even voting at all. But if everyone thinks that the left is a monolithic movement—as alleged by Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump—that’s a bad look for the Biden campaign. “If you can get successfully tagged as the party of people who are setting fire to Korean grocery stores,” Jonah warns, “You’ve got a huge problem.” Listen to today’s episode for some thoughts on the way our preferred media outlets warp our worldview, ongoing Senate races nationwide, and an update on election meddling from foreign actors as we approach November 3.

Show Notes:

-“Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting” chyron on CNN and last month’s statement from NCSC Director William Evanina on foreign election interference.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Tale of Two Conventions Aug 29, 2020

Show notes

The Democratic and Republican conventions are finally over but most of the major credible pollsters are waiting for the dust to settle before tracking public opinion of both presidential candidates. The critical message pushed by the RNC this week was that Trump kept the promises he made to voters, but is that a real policy agenda moving into his second term? Is Biden’s “nice guy,” “Build Back Better” strategy winning over wobbly Republican voters? Do conventions even affect voters’ perceptions of candidates all that much? “I don’t know that anything unexpected or dramatic came out of the last two weeks, and I doubt that to the extent there are persuadable voters, a lot of them are spending eight hours of their life in front of the tv each week watching this,” said Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson on today’s episode. “I would highly suspect you had more hardcore Democrats hate-watching the Republican Convention than you did genuinely persuadable voters in the middle.” Tune in to hear Sarah and Steve chat with Anderson—co-founder of Echelon Insights and columnist at the Washington Examiner—for a conversation about the historical importance of conventions in moving the needle for presidential candidates in the polls.

Show Notes:

-Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, Alice Johnson’s speech at the Republican National Convention, “The ‘Rage Moms’ Democrats Are Counting On” by Lisa Lerer and Jennifer Medina in the New York Times, Donald Trump’s RNC acceptance speech

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unrest in Wisconsin Aug 26, 2020

Show notes

Widespread destruction of businesses and private property has devastated Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the wake of the police shooting of a Jacob Blake last week. As we explained in today’s Morning Dispatch, “Blake was airlifted to a hospital, underwent surgery, and is still alive, but reportedly paralyzed from the waist down.” The details leading up to Blake’s shooting are still murky, but protests, riots, and looting have ravaged the city for days in response. “Suppressing civil unrest is one of the most difficult things that any law enforcement agency can do,” David says on today’s episode. But still, we should expect leaders to draw brightline distinctions between constitutionally protected expression and violent protest. There has been a predictably partisan reaction to the riots: Democrats have been reluctant to condemn the violence in fear that doing so will alienate young voters. Republicans, on the other hand, have been quick to ridicule even peaceful protesters. When it comes to quelling the violence, there is also a difference, David adds, between “overwhelming force, which can be often extremely counterproductive and inflame further violence, and overwhelming and prudently deployed presence.” Beyond the events in Wisconsin, tune in for some punditry about the Democratic and Republican conventions, the GOP’s non-platform, and comparisons between the presidential elections of 2020 and 1988.

Show Notes:

-The Morning Dispatch, “Riots in Wisconsin”, the president’s second term agenda, and Jonah’s column: “About Those Bush-Dukakis Comparisons …”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GOP Flirts with QAnon Aug 14, 2020

Show notes

When Politico reported on Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Greene’s racist and bigoted comments in June, several top GOP officials—including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—condemned her campaign. But after she beat her Republican opponent Dr. John Cowan in Tuesday’s primary race, McCarthy immediately switched gears. A spokesman for McCarthy’s office told Declan that the GOP leader “looks forward” to her win this November. Why on Earth is the House minority leader welcoming a racist conspiracy mongering candidate into the GOP with open arms? Our Dispatch Podcast hosts have some thoughts. It’s also worth exploring how she was able to win her primary in the first place, especially with all the negative media attention she’s gotten in recent months. A source close to her opponent’s campaign has a theory: “The most consistent thing we heard [about why voters were supporting Greene over Cowan] was that, ‘Well, she’s gonna go and she’s gonna fight, she’s gonna fight, she’s gonna fight.’ When you prodded a little bit deeper and asked, ‘Well what does that fight look like?’ They couldn’t tell you, but they just know she’s going to fight.” Tune in for some insights into what the future of the Republican Party will look like with a QAnon supporter in its ranks.

Show Notes:

-Declan’s piece on the GOP’s reaction to Marjorie Greene’s primary win, Audrey’s piece on the growing conspiracy fringe in the Republican Party, Politico article on GOP condemning Greene in June, Trump’s tweet congratulating Greene on her win, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motto.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Kamala Harris Aug 13, 2020

Show notes

On Tuesday, Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris as his running mate. But let’s be honest—we all saw this coming. As we wrote in The Morning Dispatch today, “D.C. conventional wisdom had Sen. Kamala Harris pegged as Joe Biden’s likeliest choice for months.” Despite Harris’ numerous attacks on Biden over his busing record and relationship with segregationist senators —not to mention her dicey criminal record as a prosecutor in California—she checks a lot of boxes. She’s a senator in one of the country’s biggest states, she’s the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and she has experience running her own presidential campaign (albeit a failed one).

“When she was running for president, it was pretty obvious she didn’t know what she was running for,” David says on today’s episode. “But now as a good lawyer she sort of has a client, and the client is the guy at the top of the ticket and the Democratic platform, and that will unleash some of her better skills.” Today, Declan joins The Dispatch Podcast for some punditry on what Biden’s VP pick means for the future of the Democratic Party, a deep dive into foreign election meddling, and a much-needed update on the status of sports during the pandemic.

Show Notes:

-The New York Times’ front page spread of Kamala Harris, Trump’s tweet this morning about suburban housewives, and the DNI Report about election meddling.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Iceberg, Right Ahead! Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

Last week, President Trump experienced one of the most challenging interviews of his presidency when he sat down with Jonathan Swan from Axios. Swan asked some tough follow-up questions, and Trump’s responses demonstrated that he is not used to this level of pushback. What’s more, the interview highlighted the fact that the White House’s media strategy revolves around reassuring the president rather than getting the facts straight.

The gang breaks down the interview and Trump’s answers on the latest podcast. According to Jonah, the videography of the interview was also damning for Trump: “It was sort of like one of these twenty-something consultants from McKinsey going and interviewing the paper mill owner who still uses the fax machine.” If he knew what he was walking into, why did Trump agree to this interview in the first place? Our hosts have some theories.

For weeks, the president has been telling his supporters that mail-in ballots will rig the election in every state except for … Florida? Trump knows many of his supporters in Florida are elderly Americans who will vote absentee. But as Sarah points out, telling all of his other supporters that mail-in voting is rigged might just work in his favor. Polls show that there will be a partisan divide in this election when it comes to in-person versus mail-in voting, with Democrats more likely to vote by mail. What these polls aren’t telling you is that a not-small percentage of mail-in ballots that are likely to be invalidated for technical reasons, especially given most states are wildly unprepared for the sheer number of mail-in ballots that are coming their way. Whatever happens, the election is going to be ugly. Tune in to today’s podcast for some punditry on how American civil society has mishandled the pandemic, a debate over whether calling female political candidates “ambitious” is inherently sexist, and some bickering over America’s best sit-down diners.

Show Notes:

-Jonathan Swan’s Axios interview with the president, Sarah’s newsletter The Sweep, Jonah’s column this week on mail-in voting.

-25 percent of the mail-in ballots cast from Brooklyn for the primary election were disqualified.

-“How the Pandemic Defeated America” by Ed Yong in The Atlantic.

-“ ‘She had no remorse’: Why Kamala Harris isn't a lock for VP” in Politico.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chaos vs. Community Jul 31, 2020

Show notes

As our colleague Jonah Goldberg always says, the parties have never been weaker than they are right now. Democratic political strategist Joe Trippi joins Sarah and Steve today on The Dispatch Podcast to discuss how parties no longer have the power to push out irrelevant, personality driven candidates from the establishment. According to Trippi, this phenomenon is here to stay: “You’re going to have 20 or 30 people in both parties running from now on,” he tells Steve and Sarah. Political outsiders now see throwing their hat in the ring as a win-win situation, because “the worst thing that happens to you if you lose is you get a TV show or you can sell books.”

As we approach November 3rd, Joe Trippi believes that Trump allows Democrats to speak to both sides of the aisle, meaning unenthused progressives and politically homeless Republicans. Speaking for progressives, Trippi tells Sarah and Steve “He both inflames our base to turn out and he’s making it possible to reach Republican voters that we could never have hoped to reach.” Check out today’s podcast to hear Joe, Steve and Sarah discuss campaign mechanics, including the Biden veepstakes and both presidential candidates’ fundraising efforts.

Joe Trippi has been at the forefront of numerous Democratic presidential, gubernatorial, senate, and congressional campaigns for nearly 40 years. Most recently, he was the senior strategist behind Democratic Senator Doug Jones’ historic 2017 victory.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected