Jonah Goldberg: The GOP Is Becoming Anti-Conservative

This is the recent interview with Nick Gillespie. My guest today is Jonah Goldberg. He's the editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, and he is a longtime, a 20-year LA Times columnist, CNN contributor, two-time New York Times. Times bestseller, creator of National Review Online. And I suspect by the end of this interview you will be a self-declared libertarian. Uh Jonah Goldberg, thanks for uh talking to Reza. It's great to be here, Nick. It's always fun to hear you return to your Oh yes.

Yeah one never knows when the uh the mustard seed will bloom, right? Yeah. Uh I'm more like Xeno's arrow, right? Xeno's arrow always gets closer and closer, but I just never quite getting full going full libertarian. It's there on the horizon. Um but uh one of the things one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you uh particularly over you know in this moment and we had scheduled this before

uh the Iran uh war started. But um you have been uh and and people at the dispatch, which uh and correct me if I'm wrong started in uh launched fully early in twenty twenty and it's part of a remnant group of uh of uh uh weekly standard people as well as other conservatives like yourself who left national review. Um and uh you've been a a strong, strong critic of Donald Trump and of the uh kind of direction of both the conservative movement or parts of it and the Republican Party.

So um it's very good to be talking to you right now. It's great to be here. I mean I I I could quibble. I don't think it's of m much interest about some of the description. I think we really launched twenty nineteen, um and we we don't see ourselves as just sort of like Japanese soldiers keeping the flame of the weekly standard and national review alive. Um, we've kind of broadened our ambit a bit, uh, but we caught we still are definitely center right. But we have some center left type

who are great contributing, you know, writers on our m masthead. So you're talking uh uh talking about somebody like Jesse Single, I'm assuming the Jesse Single Jeremiah Johnson. Not to be confused with the Robert Redford uh movie I've made all the jokes already on that. Yeah, and he is but he kind of is he's kind of a wild man out in the frontier living his best life.

So he is, he is. And also we have a slice of the great Megan McCardle. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So a a libertarian, uh ish, if not full blown libertarian writing for the Washington Post. Married to Reasons I'm Peter Suterman. And when I uh not to quibble with your quibble, my understanding is that the dispatch soft launched in late twenty nineteen and fully opened.

in twenty twenty. But that's fair. I guess that's fair, yeah. We w we it was a blur back then, you know. And your uh you know, your podcasts, which you've continued for many years, is the remnant. So I and I don't mean to say, you know, it's interesting. We can talk about this. Let's do that a little bit at the end of

Do you see yourself as part of a remnant that is, you know, hunkering around the flame of conservativism and trying to keep it alive until the winds die down and it it can come out in its full glory? It doesn't seem to me like that's what you're doing at all. Um yeah, I mean you're making a large scale, you know, you're you're fighting a ground war. You're not hunkering down somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. But let's let's start with uh Iran and Trump and and kind of the question of process.

The last LA Times column that you wrote, which is from about a week ago or so, you were saying you start by saying, I really hate the uh Islamic Republic of Iran and you would like to see it gone. Uh, you know, the and um But, you know, things matter and process matters. Uh, you know, you if you need to have

Congress behind you, if you're declaring a full scale scale war, you need to make the case to uh the American people. How do you feel? We're, you know, as we speak, we're two and a half, three days into this. What's your sense of Iran? Yeah, so I have a lot of cognitive dissonance on this. Um I stand by everything I wrote insofar as I think it is absolutely obvious that

Trump should have made a case, should have gone to Congress. And I I gotta say, um, I think this gets kinda lost in a lot of this debate. It's not so much that he should have gone to Congress, which he should have. Yeah. It's that Congress should have demanded that he come to them.

Right. Right. That's the whole point. So much of our system doesn't work when um you have uh essentially a parliament of eunuchs in the form of Congress and um And it is not a new story to say presidents don't want to go to Congress. the new story here is Congress absolutely refusing to assert its prerogatives. So I think he should have done that for all sorts of reasons, including for his own benefit, right? If this goes

Tits up, which I think we'll both agree, we might put the percentage odds differently, but I think we'll both agree is a very live possibility that this could go really badly. Right. Um He's got no political allies that don't have an exit, an early exit ramp. I mean, even Tom Cotton could say, hey, look.

I wasn't in charge of this. He didn't you know I I didn't have to vote this. He didn't ask, yeah. And so like there's a political argument for it which the founders appreciated, which is that you it's sort of like the way I always try to explain to people is Amending the Constitution is really hard, not because not just because the founders didn't want the Constitution to be amended a budget, but what they also want is that when it was amended

There was a lot of buy in, right? Because everyone had to debate and argue about it vertically and horizontally across the system.

There's been none of that. And so uh I do think this so far is a war. There are I have friends on the right who say it's not really a war. No, it's a war. Like when you take out the supreme leader of another country, that's an act of war. Um and I think it's a lawless war and I think it's an unconstitutional the cognitive dissonance comes from the fact that like I also think it's a good thing that Khamenei is is dead and that it would be

A really wonderful thing if this whole thing were successful. Yeah. But There's a lot of downside to it too because it it just further entrenches the president that uh we're not a republic if Congress doesn't have to repro approve a war. And well and there's, you know, the qu I mean, within a couple of hours, Trump had originally said the reason we did this was to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

And that they had imminent, you know, threats from Iran were imminent against the the US or attacks or the possibility of that. A couple of hours later, literally he said, you know, the main reason was to uh decapitate the regime. Right. Um we don't have a good record when you're not even sure why you're going in. uh, you know, and and you change the rationale or the the the top number one reason a couple of times within a few hours of invading. And again, to your point, that's

If there had been a discussion in Congress, if con and Congress really needs to force it, um, but you know, all of this stuff would be kind of ironed out a little bit. So we would have a sense of what are the actual goals and then how might you approach. Right. Um, so do you I mean, do you think this is is this Trump doing something, you know, radically different than a Biden or an Obama or a Bill Clinton? Uh, you know, one of the stories that I read.

Uh recently dated from Axios this is apparently the seventh country that Trump has uh bombed or or sent to the first. military uh people too. Um, and um it reminded me that Bill Clinton was actually very fast to dispatch troops or to do military actions. Typically they were very small and minor and things like that. But Is this something new that Trump is doing, or is he continuing in the tradition of many presidents before him? And should we care about that? Um uh

To a certain extent I think it's new insofar as differences of degree become differences of kind, right? I mean, let's put it this way. All presidents have lied, um, but the scale of lying with Trump is different, right? Um all presidents I don't want to say all presidents, but a lot of presidents. have had one eye on their personal economic interest.

But this is different. Um and so you can go down a long list like that. I think, you know, my my friend Eli Lake was the first one to uh point this out. Um there's that great essay on bullshit by Harry Frankfurt. And I think the difference is We've had lots of lo presidents who lied, but as Frankfurt points out Lying pays tribute to the truth. Right? There is an in inherently in it, there is this thing that says

I know what the truth is. I acknowledge what the truth is. I want you to believe something else. Bullshit does not care what the truth is. And I think that that's sort of the essence of Donald Trump, you know, going back to his days as a condo salesman. He just says whatever he has to say to get through the moment. And I think that I mean you're absolutely right about the ch ever changing rationales for Iran, but it His entire first year as a president has been about pretext.

He says he's doing something for this reason, but then once he does it he says it's for another reason and if if If if he changes the reasons why he's doing things you know, like I I'm doing tariffs to reindustrialize America, but I'm also doing tariffs'cause the Prime Minister of Switzerland, which is which is not a person who exists

was rude to me, you know, that kind of thing. He says we're we're fighting the drug war off Venezuela and it's all about interdicting drugs and then when he takes when he does the decapitation thing in Venezuela, all of a sudden it's about um getting the oil, right? Right. And so that's I think the d in a w in a very serious way, the difference of degree on a whole bunch of fronts.

Clinton and Obama would never have taken out the Supreme Leader. I mean technically Israel did it, but you know, it's n but for America wouldn't happen. Um and I think that those guys Obama's whole foreign policy was about keeping the problems of the world at bay so he could focus on domestic stuff. I think A lot of the Trump stuff is Focusing on the foreign policy stuff.

to distract from domestic stuff. And um Which was certainly a Bill Clinton hallmark as well. I mean two of his major foreign policy, you know, bombing campaigns started when uh Uh Monica Lewinsky was testifying and when uh uh you know, uh various other domestic news came out. But do you there's a lot of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. You know, or doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, but yeah. Um but uh

I I just think that Trump is also trying to amat look once Trump leaves office either for constitutional or actu actuarial reasons, his name is coming off the Kennedy Center and a lot of other things, right? Um uh if he actually deliber liberates, which is big if a rent, that's not going away just because he's no longer in office. And I think that's part of what's going on there. Yeah. Do you um do you think when it comes to MAGA

Uh, and I'm not even sure exactly what that is, other, you know, than Trump's most diehard fans. Is it clear that they are leader based? That it's just they love him and they'll follow him to hell or or to heaven or wherever, but there's really no core policy or you know, decision matrix or a set of principles that the Trump MAGA movement representation. I think that's...

Generally right. There are some flavors, some themes, right? Some directions that I think apply to pretty much all of MAGA. Anti-globalism, anti-international institutions, that kind of stuff. Uh being a dick. To your enemies, I think is a is a vibe that is really, really important. Um being in favor of whole milk.

Seems to be very much near the top of the pyramid. That's moving in, yeah. Manliness, you know, push ups, yeah that kind of thing. Um and uh but Look, it shouldn't shock anybody that a movement built as a cult of personality, uh would not have an inherent policy core, particularly when the

personality at the center of the cult does not have an inherent consistent policy vision. Right? I mean Trump I've been saying this now, I'm I can I have receipts going back to twenty fifteen that any intellectual who hitches their wagon to Trump thinking that he's their guy will eventually face a choice.

either repudiate what Trump is doing or repudiate their coherent world view to stay with Trump. Because he offers n the only safe harbor he's ever offered is blind loyalty to him and I think that system I guess is what we were originally going to talk about, is starting to come apart. Yeah. I don't th uh to the extent the MAGA coalition was ever a ho coherent thing and I don't think it really was, um

It's now balkanizing pretty obviously. Well let's let's talk a bit about that because that LA Times article, I think the headline Realize you're not necessarily responsible for that, but it's like it was something like the world may be ready to not bend to Trump's knee anymore. And on one level that seems to be right. On another we are now, you know, a nation at war.

Uh, and you know, it's quite possible that Iran is going to rally around uh, you know, a common enemy and the US is going to rally around a common enemy. But um talk who are the people like take somebody like JD Vick.

Right. The vice president who, you know, over the past weekend or uh you know it's just been an endless stream, and anybody can go to Twitter and find all of the things where J D Vance, you know, a couple of years ago to ten years ago was just denouncing Donald Trump and everything that Trump stand to uh seemed to stand for.

What do you do with somebody like J.D. Vance? Is he one of the the examples of a person who has clearly hitched his wagon to MAGA and to Trump and is now being forced on an almost daily basis to eat his words from 15 minutes? Well one yes. I mean that but that and and it let's just be fair, I am not a big fan of JD Vance. Right. But eating giant bowls of feces handed to you by the president is the job of vice president and has been since time immemorial, or at least since we

amended the constitution. It's moved on from Warm Spit to John Cole's officies, yeah. Uh somet to something that rhymes with Spit. Yeah. And um and um That said, I uh it was instructive. You know, yesterday there was this video came out from Vance, we're recording on Monday. Um

Look, I understand why people don't like foreign wars, which is kind of his sh spiel these days, right? His shtick was I know w we're tired of the Forever Wars and the Foreign Wars, but you have to understand all the previous presidents who did that were dumb. And Donald Trump isn't. And this is a refrain that tr Vance has trotted out before when he was at a T P USA thing and someone said that America is Americ American government is bought and paid for by Israel or something like that. He said

Well, you know, if that was true in the past, we know it's not true with this president, right? And and so that's the only safe harbor for Vance is to say, put your faith in this prince, because he can't offer a coherent argument that both reconciles his past statements with what Trump is doing, but also works to keep his his slice of the coalition in his column. And uh that's gonna be the case for another, you know, three years.

Do you think, um, you know, how how big uh part of the conservative movement? And you're you know, you've been in the conservative movement your entire professional life. Um you know, how how big a part of that does MAGA or Trump represent? And you know, d uh You know, is is he at thirty percent, is he at sixty percent? What happens

when Trump ends, one way or the other. Yeah. So I mean there are different questions going on there. The the the polling people, the psychologists, the people who look hard at the numbers, everyone I've ever talked to basically says there's like Between twenty-eight and thirty-five percent of the the GOP electorate is MOG. Right. And that the reason why it's a little indeterminate is that we have witnessed in the last ten years the demographics of both parties really rapidly change.

And so what it means to be MAGA is kind of a moving target at times. But I think there are, you know, there are people who won't let's call it a third. Who just won't abandon him no matter what, right? Who won't tell Polstery he's doing anything wrong, that um they love his musk, all that kind of stuff. Uh lowercase M. Yeah. And um uh but It's really important.

I don't think this coalition lasts. I think the the movement by T P USA and these sorts of groups to rally around Vance, like I mean they already endorsed Vance, right? The the absolute Uh just I mean I let me just b as a brief parentheses, let me ask you a question. Can you, in y with your encyclopedic knowledge of American culture and institutions and having been around for a very long time, can you Thank you.

Can you think of yeah, can you think I'm old, I get it, thank you. Can you think of an analogue or c anything remotely similar to the way in which Kevin Roberts has destroyed the credibility and and mission of the Heritage Foundation in such a short period of time, right? Um I mean I I keep asking people this'cause I'm fascinated by it. I but I just I it's without certainly without precedent in Washington. Um, you know, uh but anyway, um

Back to the question a hand. So the I think the the reason why some forces are that they recognize that the coalition is just not a majority and that um And so they are trying to scare away internal competitors early. Um they're terrified of Rubio for all sorts of things. But I mean uh the punditry aside, there's also just the simple fact that Look, I mean I I I bring this up all over the place, but only two times in American history s since eighteen hundred has um

a sitting vice president been elected straight to the presidency, right? Is Martin Vernbur in eighteen thirty two, where he had the advantage of running against like four or five Whig candidates and was running with Andrew Jackson at his you know, on his as his guy.

And then George H. W. Bush running for a third Reagan term against uh that, you know, that sex Michael Tukakis, right? So um The only scenarios in which it makes sense that a vice president would win the third term or a you know, would win on the heels of the His president. As if that president was popular and like Trump has d has a huge ceiling. Yeah. And so there anyway, so back to the the central question.

There are people who joined the MAGA movement because they just like to see the world burn. There are people who joined it because they just like Trump's celebrity and think he's funny. There are people who are like Robert F. Kennedy make health great again people, and there are

serious anti Semites, there are serious nationalists, there are serious post liberals. I mean their actual numbers on the ground are very low. Um but these all these different and there are some serious racists. And then there are just some serious people who um or just some decent people who just just like Trump and like the change and and all the rest and or like the populist spirit of it all.

Those people that the idea that somehow there is a mantle, my friend Ross Dalt has been starting about how Trump will pass a mantle as if it's like the one true the one ring that rules them all. Right. I I just think that's like Utterly uh Unpersuasive. Like Trump's endorsement matters, but it doesn't mean everything. And it doesn't mean that people, low propensity voters that

got off the couch to vote for Trump, will get off the couch to vote for Vance or Rubio or anybody just because Trump told them to. Hey reason interview listeners, robots are coming for our jobs. Can you compete? Are you or someone you care about wondering how to stay relevant as artificial intelligence reshapes work, careers, and opportunity? Reliance College invites students and young professionals to AI Proof You, a new multimodule intensive certificate program.

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And now back to the reason interview. I mean, people had trouble getting off the couch to vote for Obama a second time, and he was seem to be much more positively viewed and and um accepted. Tell d uh describe a little bit your dislike of Vance, because Vance

is in many ways a repudiation of, you know, the the type of conservativism that you have often talked about in your career, both at National Review and at at the dispatch. Um what is it about Vance that Particularly gets under you. Um the wharishness, I think. Um the um I look I I I think I think he's very smart. Um but I think he wears his Resentments on his sleeve in obvious ways. I think his. He so like I I would put it this way. Um I don't think Vance is a Nazi.

Um I don't think he's a racist. Per se I don't think really I'm looking forward to the butt. But you know how there's this thing that you've seen a lot of over the last ten years where you get more normal conservatives and Republicans who say they're not

necessarily pro-Trump, they're just anti anti-Trump, right? Which is sort of a gateway to Trumpism for a lot of people. But regardless, it's just like I love him for his enemies, but yeah, he's kind of a fool and all that kind of stuff. Vance is at the forefront of what I would call and have called Um, the anti anti Nazi wing. Mm-hmm. He agrees with Nick Fuentes.

or he loves everything that Tucker Carlson's doing, but he'll be damned if he'll tolerate excessive criticism or any attempt to silence or cancel these people, right? He is he exerts more effort defending people making how many Jews can fit in a Volkswagen ashtray jokes than um he does his own wife um or anything else and like and so part of I think his ana his political analysis is wrong on this. I think it's a bad move on his part.

But the f but but first of all, the fact that he thinks it's a smart move terrifies me because it shows you how much of this crap is in the GOP coalition. Uh but second If he thinks this is true, if he does think that there is this sort of fifth column of, you know, American purpose or whatever these groups are, I shouldn't say American Purpose, I think that's a different group, but there are the bunch of these little sort of uh

twenty something uh Hitler youth wannabe posers that he th needs to pander to these people, if he actually thinks that he does need to pander to the people and is actually making that moral choice to do so rather than denounce them? then that is just the complete triumph of political appetite and ambition over any sense of morality and and morality and decency. I can I can wave away his private text to a friend saying that Trump might be America's hit.

But uh'cause I think that was, you know, hyperbably among friends and yada yada yada. Um rushing to defend What Tucker is doing with the Holocaust denial stuff and all that, rushing to defend playing FTSE with Nick Fuentes, rushing to defend what he called a bunch of kids in chat rooms.

When in fact these were like grown people's twenty and thirty year old staffers of some were staffers. Yeah, one was a uh uh pol elected politician, right? To def to to exert all the time all the energy to defend all of that. Um, while at the same time saying every past president of the United States was dumb to say that all the other people were corrupt and and do all the cul to personality bullshit. And I don't think he's nearly as good a politician as people think he is.

Um and so I I'm just I'm a deep skeptic. That doesn't mean I don't think he's a front runner for the denomination, but that's that's uh Where where does Vance come intellectually? Because you know, he he is not a dummy. Uh he's read books. Uh you know, this type of thing. Towards, you know, redefining Americans as heritage Americans, which means Scotch Irish Americans.

Um and also absolutely. But you know, part of that is like I don't give a shit about anything, but if you make fun of my friend, I'm going to back them and and attack you. But You know, so there's part of that and to use his, you know, titular term, you know, part of it is a hillbilly feuding mentality that that Vance channels opportunistically, but intellectually He's also part of he's announced a lot of post liberal kind of ideas. He's talked about how

You know, conservatives the big problem is that conservatives, when they're in power, they refuse to be as unprincipled as he claims liberals or progressives are. And that's gotta stop. He dislikes, you know, at various points he sounds like the grandson of Louis Brandeis, who, you know, uh who grew up a little bit down the Ohio River from Vance in uh in Louisville, Kentucky.

Um, where where do you think he's coming from intellectually? And where does that tradition sit within the broader conservative movement? Yeah, so um uh I've been talking about this for a very long time. I I think one of the problems that I helped contribute to um was a what I've called, and I don't necessarily mean it's all about Solinsky, but I mean this type of thinking. A kind of Sololinsky envy.

Right. When you know, fifteen years ago when I was writing about Solinsky, I thought he was a bad guy. You know,'cause he was a sort of nearest weapons at hand, do whatever you can to g achieve power, right? Sort of Gramscian kinda stuff. And I helped in s I wasn't biggest or most important by any stretch, but like I helped incept this sort of critique into the right.

And what happened And this was the idea that Saul Alinsky, a community organizer, I guess based in Chicago, best known for Rules for Radicals, was like here's a game plan. to from the far left to insinuate yourself in power, particularly through liberal kind of machine politics and whatnot to get what you want.

Right. You and um I this w I mean it was not just you. A lot of people on the right and some people on the left were like, Yeah, this was the game plan that was being used by various things and you're saying Vance and people like him are saying, Oh, you know what, this is a pretty good toolkit. And like, you know, Antonio Bramshi and the Long March through the institutions, like we can we can be the parade leaders as well.

Yeah, so I mean the evolution I'm talking about is is there are these people who saw Solinsky is sort of a demon figure on the left. But they convince themselves as part of this asinine notion that, you know, we have a we've had a culture war now for a while now where each side is convinced the other side wins every battle, which is like just logically ridiculous.

Um, so they convinced themselves that the right always loses because they are Olinskyites. And remember Obama was sort of connected to Olinsky and so was Hill and Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on it. So like that was part of the connected dots that I was part of. And But I never gave up on the idea that Linsky's tactics of smearing people just to discredit, you know, the other side, all that kind of stuff. I always thought that was bad.

And then at some point some flip switched um some ch switch flipped in the minds of a lot of people on the right, in part as a j partly to justify Trump in twenty sixteen with the butt he fight stuff. they convinced themselves that um No. using power for the good guys without without constraint or without procedural limits, without reference to sort of democratic or liberal small L liberal norms, that's good because we're the good guys, right? And that and that

It sort of had the logic of the cancer cell and change flipped a whole bunch of people. I mean, like I still love Marco Rubio. saying, you know, he had this op-ed a few years ago saying that he was in favor he was he changed his mind on industrial policy. He's in favor of it now, but just done right.

Right, because the idea was that, you know and th this is the same thing that Sorb Amari and some of the Catholic interview guys had. I don't know where Sorub is today on his journey, but for a while he was making the argument that You know, uh Social engineering.

can work. It just has to work with the right people, with the right post liberal integralist Catholic, you know, mullahs in charge. And that this is the thing that just drives me crazy is What the right is quickly becoming is not an alternative to leftism, left illiberalism, but a right wing version of left and liberalism as they internalize the same understandings of how power works.

And that's where I think Vance comes from. Yeah, and how, you know, people uh when we're talking about Catholic integralists and post liberalism, this brings up people like Patrick Denin and whatnot.

Do you feel like they are actually powerful within the conservative movement or or or politics more broadly? Because There you know, and this is where, you know, libertarians for the most part, and there are some libertarians who were like it i whatever Trump does is fine because we have to burn everything down and then the you know

things let things lay fallow for a while and something good will come up. But mostly um you know we uh there are a lot of people on the right and the left who are no longer talking about any kind of principle

They are just saying we need power. Every election is the Flight 93 election. Every you know, if we do not win the next election, there won't be any elections left. Both the right and the left have said that in recent memory. Um, you know, is the post liberal right um, you know, a major part of the conservative movement? Um, so I'm gonna do some annoying intellectual hair splitting here. Um I I think it is a major part of the right.

I just don't think it's particularly conservative. Um and what I mean by that is Um look I I'm I'm less and le I I still think right and left have utility as terms, but um less so than I used to. What is that? Yeah, what what broadly what is it? Uh what you know, broadly what's the biggest definition of right versus Um I in some ways I would say it has more to do with um

direction. Right. Uh insofar as the left still tends to see its utopia the future um and thinks that they can spring forth from r reason and will, right? And that kind of stuff. And you can d you can design uh societies from scratch that satisfy all the Rawlsy and veil of ignorance bullshit and all that. And I think the right still finds uh its inspiration in the past.

And um and then for a lot of politics flow from that. Right. You're not getting any uh people on the left saying, you know, um except for maybe some really weird greens, but you're basically not getting anybody from the left saying, you know, we were better off when a bunch of us were circled. But you're getting more and more on that on the right. Um but my point is look, I mean at National Review, this was always a d distinction that mattered, is that NR always saw itself in part as

Sort of like the Texas Rangers on the frontier. It's like this far is our territory of conservatism and beyond here are the badlands of craziness, right? And so that we would always be attacked from V Dare because we weren't you know, I know this is weird to you and some of your friends. We weren't anti immigrant enough.

four revived air in that crowd. And so I think, you know, there have been by my count, depending on how you count, four or five new rights in the last hundred and fifty years. The latest new right, um rejects anything that smells even slightly of Birkeanism, um and embraces radicalism. And I'm with Samuel Huntington on this, which is that Burke that that conservatism and ra radicalism

are as a matter of logic antipodal. You can't wanna conserve and tear everything down. It just doesn't work. One's a brake pedal, one's a gas pedal. And And so I think there are a lot of people on the right who are very right wing, but their respect for institutions, their respect for the constitution, their respect for norms.

basic decency and all that kind of stuff is gone out the window, which is why I don't think they're necessarily conservative. Right. And that also explains why they love Trump. I mean Trump is the personification of that impulse. What do you what do you do with somebody like Tucker Carlson? And I assume over the years you you know, you know him, you've sure.

Hung around with him. I was uh talking to somebody uh a couple weeks ago. I was a semi-regular on his MSNBC show, and this was before MSNBC had gone to a kind of uh orthodox left wing kind of progressive. thing. And you know, he I remember he had me on and he would pit me against people like Phyllis Lafley and occasionally Papu Cannon would sit in'cause he had a show either before or after Tucker.

Um, and you know, Tucker, um, there's an old reason video, a talk show I did with Michael Moynihan now of the fifth column where Tucker was a uh he was an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and he was going on explaining why he's so libertarian. Tucker Carlson now believes in demons. Uh he believes in a spirit uh filled world with where Satan is alive and well, seems to believe in the rapture.

believes that, you know, hummus eaters, you know, conspired to kill not just Jesus, but possibly Charlie Kirk. He is in fever swamp upon fever swamp and more popular than he has ever been. How does he fit into the new right? And also, can you explain, uh, do you have any psychological insight into what is going on with John? So uh I gotta say, you know, it was I I liked my job so much better when the question I got asked the most was, what's Charles Crowdhammer really like? Yeah. Um now I get

Can you explain what's going on with Tucker? Uh, you know, three times a week from a podcast host or journalist or whatever. Um, I haven't read the Jason Zengerly book, but uh I did talk to him for it. Um I knew Tucker pretty well. He was a neighbor of mine for a long time. Um Um I always liked Tucker. I think I think you characterize his journey well. Um I'll start with the end of the question first. I think that um

part of what o was going on. I don't ha I d I do not have a monocausal theory of Tucker. But I think an important part of what's happened with Tucker is that um Like my f my friend Yuval Levin is the guy who first made this argument to me, which is that cynicism is very hard to sustain. Right. Think about it in terms of Trump. How many people did we did we know who said, I'm holding my nose and voting for Trump? Who then six months later

think he was a just a genius beyond mortal ken, right? There people don't like to think that they're actually like the lesser evil. They don't like to think that their heroes are bad people because the whole point of them being heroes is they're supposed to but not be bad people. And For Tucker, he has a long history of doing things for cynical, mercenary financial reasons, um, for also sort of, you know

You know, joker, just want to see the world burn reasons, that kind of stuff. But he does it fully knowing that what he's doing is bullshit. And then he gets criticized for it and something kicks in that says Screw you, no, I actually believe that. Right. And he then convinces himself it's a weird ratchet effect that he goes into it unprincipled and then becomes a principled defender of his unprincipled thing.

And um so I think that's part of what has happened to him. Um I mean, one of the stories you heard a lot back when I was at Fox was that when he got that primetime show He resolved to do everything that he could to beat Hannity in the ratings just because he hated Hannity so much.

So it wasn't like some great philosophical thing, it was purely competitive thing. And I think that that's a big part of his mode is he's just a very competitive guy and he's like scri and he hates his enemies. I think a big chunk of his twisting in the you know, his his his heel turn on Israel. has to do with wanting to punish Bill Crystal for things. I mean, I think there's a lot of that kind of petty weird thing, weirdness going on.

You know, also adjacent to the Tucker turn, and this also true somewhat to JD Vance, although Vance, you know, converted to Catholicism.

Um you do so and there there's a real tension between a kind of fundamentalist Christian and a Catholic integralist model that You know, I I grew up Catholic and I remember when Catholics and Protestants were primary opponents of one another and they were jockeying to see who had a better relationship with Jews.

Um, you know, now it's anybody who is religious is all on the same side and and they're attacking everybody. But these the differences between a Catholic integralist and a evangelical Christian. Those will come to bear if this happens more. How do you in your kind of current you know, uh post at at the dispatch, how do you feel about the religiosity, uh the open religiosity of different forces saying?

You know, th there is one true God. And this was on display at the Charlie Kirk Memorial, which was much more like a evangelical rally than it was uh, you know, anything else really. Um, are you comfortable with that? And uh, you know, the dispatch I know Steve Hayes is a good kind of mainline uh uh Protestant Christian. Uh, you know, and you have Jews on staff, you have Catholics who are not, you know, who do not want

the uh, you know, Vatican, you know, uh opus day to be dictating the moral codes of America. What's going on in the conservative movement towards that type of religiosity? Yeah, so I I'm less concerned about the opus day part. It's the it's the marriage. I mean, we're now seeing this weird you know, what

Like Protestant nationalism, I mean, you know this stuff as well as I do. Protestant nationalism, there is a peanut butter and jelly, they kind of go together thing to it, going back to Henry VIII, right? You know, it's the whole point of nations breaking from the mother church and all that.

Catholic nationalism has got a real oxymoronic vibe to it, right? Um, and we're seeing some of that, that that racist conspiratorial goober Jack Basobiak and uh you know, he now has like this image of He's also big. Pasobiac. Is really into Heritage Americans too. But uh he's got yeah, but let's and and we'll let people kind of you know, Google Pesobiac and you know, when did the first Pesobiacs show up in America? And it's probably uh sometime around nineteen ten.

Yeah, I'm uh I'm I'm I'm Jack Pesobiac of the Mayflower Pasobiak's and but he's got this uh there was this thing that was going around this meme of him holding up an upraised fist. I mean it's amazing how much That again, this is like lefty cosplay that uh s is infatuated so much with the right. Um

with his rosary bead, you know, special rosary bead bracelet on. Um and this is uh this is something you and I talked about a long time ago, but like um You know, one of my One of the one of the takeaways I got from Julian Benda's Treason of the Intellectuals or Treason of the Clerks is um the way you can tell somebody is. um betraying Christianity for politics is when they start using arguments like Jesus was the first socialist.

Or Jesus was the first eugenicist, right? Um and we're getting a lot of this. That there's that former Miss World, Miss USA contestant, uh Prigen, who was on the White House religion council. who basically has now just gone full Nick Fuentes anti Semitic, which he was like floating on the panel.

And if you look and she's and she speaks with all of this authority as a Catholic. And she keeps saying, as a Catholic, this is my faith and I I can I must bear witness. The bear witness thing is kind of weird for the Catholic part, but anyway, that's the different point. Um and She converted last year.

And what I what I see a lot of, you know, as you know, I mean you used to criticize, I think sometimes unfairly, National Review for its It's Catholicism, but um I spent a lot of my career around very passionate, committed Catholics, married one, uh and um I I find the bigger problem are with the recent Catholic convert.

that has less to do with their religious I mean I'm just here speaking s in broad brush strokes about the sociology of it. It is the the people who are craving orthodoxy And who who convert and then all of a sudden become experts on on Catholicism and what what the church really stands for and don't really care what people who've been Catholics their entire lives have to say about any of this stuff. Um I do not like the Christian nationalism stuff. I do not like um uh

a lot of the religiosity. I am much more comfortable than a lot of people with public displays of religiosity. Um I just find it very difficult to square with um the idea that it's all coming from um places of sincere religious faith and ha and are not in fact masks and and Trojan horses for um, a kind of, you know, sort of nationalist populist politics. And you that's that's where I I see most of it. I'm a fan of Russell Moore. David French was at the dispatch for many years.

Um, I have no problem with evangelicals and evangelicals being in politics. I have no problem with Catholics and Catholics being in politics. I have problems with people doing a Mont and Bailey thing where they kind of pretend that their position is derived purely from religion when in fact they're using their religion to uh as a as a screen to to to push a political agenda that is not consonant with it. I mean Jesus Christ did not Preach stuff like Heritage America.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Um what do you what do you think? um and and this is something I've noticed and I I want to talk a little bit about the, you know, kind of uh borderland between libertarians and conservatives. I feel like Um, you know, part of what a lot of younger people and this seems to be particularly true of men more than women, but that might just be the the people who tend to speak to me, that

they look at something like uh r uh Catholicism in particular or Orthodox Christianity or sometimes Orthodox Judaism and they say, you know what? Um You know, libertarianism in particular. And I think there's a a kind of beltway version of conservatism using cartoon terms here.

that also fits this description where it's like, you know, your ideology or your worldview, like you say, okay, well, you know what is great is that you have a lot of room to develop whatever world you want to live in, whatever community you want to live in. You can build the company you want. You can marry who you want. You can redesign yourself, you know, using somebody like our mutual friend Ron Bailey, uh, you know, like self-directed evolution. You

What is great about America is that you have so much freedom to become whoever it is you want to be for how long you want to be that, as long as you're not hurting other people. And a lot of younger people seem to say, I am living in a world where I feel like a giant leaf blower is constantly pushing me off the planet. I have nothing to grab onto and nobody cares. about my background. Nobody cares about my story or my struggles.

Um, and so I'm gonna latch on to something like a J.D. Vance style uh Catholicism. Uh Rod Dreyer, who is somebody who we both know and have at various points intersected with, had a version of this, like, you know, you need a thick religion or social structure that gives you a place to hold on to and says, yes, you are valuable for who you are no matter what.

Um, do you think part of the turn to this kind of mixing of religion and politics and saying religion needs to start dictating more of life is answering you know, what life is like for people who feel like they have been cast aside in terms of economic innovation, uh, globalization. Not cultural fragmentation per se, but just kind of cultural mongrelization where nobody cares anymore that you are the J.D. Vance's of northern Kentucky, right?

like that. Um to a certain extent, I'm very uh let's put it this way. I'm very sympathetic to the way you characterize it. Um and I think that's a there's a real there there. Um I have long believed that the the pursuit of happiness is an individual right, but it's best realized in groups. And for a group to have any real meaning,

you know, as an institution, as an organization, as an association, however whatever label you want to put on it, there needs to be some stickiness to it. There needs to be a filter that says, this group is for these kinds of people, but not those kinds of people. Now We can't do that about race for all sorts of obvious reasons and shouldn't do it about race. Um

But I have a higher degree of I mean it's like sort of like uh you're talk about, you know, a uh a utopia of utopias, right? Because no one idea of a utopia is gonna work for everybody. For some people, being a marine is like A prison sentence. It's just the contrary to everything they ever wanna do. And for other people, being a Marine is the way they can realize

their true best selves and it's the perfect vision for them, right? Those are just different people. There's not like one is more right than the other. It's just the different people. And um a society that has a thick ecosystem of institutions and associations. is going to just by a matter of logic have more niches for more people to be happy. And I think p largely because of technology, um, but not only technology, um

we have been dismantling or destroying a lot of those kinds of niches. They've been cleared away. You know, one of the reasons Robert Nismet used to point this out. He's like, look, you know, the late 19th century was this golden age of institution formation, all of these different civic groups. But no one formed an institution. Purely to be because institutions are good. Institutions are tools, they're to do something, right? The institution of barn raising for the Amish.

is to do literally build something. Yeah. They're not just like, hey, we're really good at this and we're gonna shift from raising barns to doing those little fireplace things for the uh you'll recall from Fox News when they would advertise the the Amish built fireplace mantle and things like that.

And so it's like you know, it's like it at Reason Magazine, you guys have a great office culture and and and esprit decor, but you put out a product, right? There's a there's a point to the institution. Technology has um particularly communications, you know, the phone, um, iPhone. has allowed people to withdraw from institutions because they don't need other people to deliver the things that they want as much. And then you add in I mean, I I think, you know, uh

Easy access to porn is turning us Japanese in all sorts of ways. It's really bad for young people. Um, but you can go down a long list of things. But at the end of the day, I think there are a lot of people who feel like they don't have a home, they don't have a group. And I think I think the left has some serious blame to you know to uh i it is not all the evil in in a in a society where

you have a culture war mentality where one side takes all of its cues in an oppositional way from the other side. What one side does affects the other side. And the riot of anti-white bullshit, you know, the the whiteness studies and all this kind of stuff, the demonization of white people. That helped create the world in which JD Vance can say to a room full of white kids, you don't have to be

You know, you don't have to apologize for being white anymore. I I thought that statement was gross, but there's a reason why it resonates with people. And um And and you you did not grow up thinking of your and and I'm not to get into a massive argument.

You did not grow up thinking of yourself as white, right? No. I never said it. Well, you know, as a white person, I kind of think X. Yeah. And in in a New York context, but also in all sorts of places like you grow up, you're you're Jewish, you're Italian, you're Irish. you're Polish, you're uh, you know, Puerto Rican and Chinese. I mean, you're you know, so I think your point is taken and I think, you know, uh I would like to talk a little bit about how the left

is are you know, are they they have been destructive of certain kinds of institutions or identities which do change over time and kind of serve new needs, which is to provide people with a sense of self and community and continuity. Do you feel like the left is in a similar place as the right right now? Like who, you know, uh uh Kamala Harris is not going if if she's the nominee, she's not gonna be president.

Um, you know, nobody is going into the streets for Gavin Newsome. I mean, the the Democratic Party, the liberal movement broadly, maybe the progressive movement is in better shape, but none of these people seem to be like over brimming with. popular positive visions of the future either. Are they in a similar position as, you know, broadly the conservative movement? Um they're in a similar

position but not a symmetrical one, right? I mean so um I do think one of the So one of the problems that just say the left, progressives, whatever you want label you want to put on, um Because they've in cr you know, over time become the party of the unchurched, right? Um, they're the party that is sort of like um, you know, not to put too much of a Yeah.

Not j just for the sake of argument, this is sort of where I come from. They think the government should do the things that God would do if God existed, right? Is this sort of God state view of um the government being the driver of all good things. And um and this is a attitude that goes back to the Wilson administration and and cultivation. No, and Zoran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York, said almost explicitly that where there was like no concern too small.

For the government and the warmth of collectivism to kind of come in with the emergency blanket. So the problem is as a matter of sociology. Other than the universities and a few, you know, like sort of NGO type kind of things, there is no Like the right has this ecosystem of churches and other associations that it does draw forms of identity from. Um the progressive movement exists.

to organize to use government towards ends that they desire. And when you're out of power, that creates a real sense of we're in the wilderness kind of kind of thing, because they don't have a lot of other narratives to fall back on given the the sort of philosophical animosity towards civil society uh notions of civil society. I mean remember remember Hillary Clinton's definition of civil society was

Um, she said it was the term political scientists use for the things we all do together, which is just not what civil society is. And um and uh

And, you know, Barack Obama liked to say government is the one thing that we all do together, right? Is this cult of unity, married to state power kind of thing, and the fact that Trump and these people that they consider to be demonic have taken over power I think creates a real identity crisis sociologically and psychologically for a lot of people on the left that they don't know how like they assume

that the you know th it's really interesting. If you go back and look, for a very long time there was this assumption that if everybody voted You know, if you turned on all the lumpin' proletariat that were hiding in the nooks and cratties and a marginalized society, Democrats would never lose an election. And there were only two groups that believed. Democrats and Republicans.

And so Republicans wanted to make it a little more difficult to vote. Democrats wanted to make it as easy as conceivably possible to vote. And the problem is it just was never true. Talk to political scientists about it. Like if a poll of fifteen hundred people

accurately summarizes the attitudes of three hundred and forty million Americans. What about a poll of a hundred million people, right? I mean it's it turns out that if everybody voted, most elections would look pretty much the way they did. electoral college stuff notwithstanding. And I think but the Democrats took from this this idea, this baseline assumption.

that they were always justified in anything that they did because they n they assumed that the people were on their side and therefore they had a democratic sort of mandate, even if it wasn't reflected in elections as much as they would like.

That's gone away now. I think there are a lot of Republicans who have this silent majority mindset that says the real Amer real America's with us even if we lose elections. In fact, if we lose elections, that's proof the other side cheated. Right. And So they're different identity crises, different you know, corruptions of of Of politics. But they're related to each other. Let me ask you as uh you are a uh solid Gen X.

Right. Um, and you know, one of the hallmarks of being in Gen X was, you know, recognizing that at best the world did not care about you and that you you were on your own.

And you you helped, you know, in in at least two significant ways, uh, you know, and I and I'm undercounting it, but with the cre you were the primary creator of National Review Online, which I you know, whatever people can say about the content of it, it provided the model for the first fully realized mag political magazine to have an online community.

still up and going and things like that. So that's a that's a great DIY Gen X in innovation with people like Steve Hayes also, I believe, a Gen Xer. You created the dispatch, which you know, is, you know, part of the weekly standard. I always think of it as like um the uh Jimmy Cagney movie Angels with Dirty Faces, where Uh Pat O'Brien and Jimmy Cagney are being chased by cops at the very beginning. They're I believe in Hell's Kitchen, New York, where I'm calling from.

uh, you know, and one of them gets caught by the cops and goes to reform school, becomes a hardened criminal, the other one becomes a Catholic priest. the weekly standard split between the bulwark and the dispatch. And I don't know I don't know who's Jimmy Cagney and who's Pat O'Brien, but like that's but but it represents A real DIY, okay, nobody is going to build the institutions that we need now to take us into the future and to create community and identity.

How much of what's going on in America is just that You know, the old institutions are dying because institutions are like people and they have a lifespan and they die. And then the younger people, you know, like you need to create new institutions or revitalize them. Is Gen X actually, apart from ideology, is Gen X just the generational energy? that we need more of that millennials.

and uh Zoomers need to start building their own institutions in the same way that, you know, somebody like Bill Buckley in 1955 created National Review and a whole host of things that help con comprise the post war right. Lanny Friedlander, the great, literally insane founder of Reason, you know, created a magazine in nineteen sixty eight. Uh, you know, you can look at the people uh who were behind Descent magazine also in the fifties and

you know, the new republic in the twenties, et cetera. You know, is what we're what we need more than anything is just more Gen X sensibility of like, you know what, if it's not out there, we're gonna build it ourselves. Uh uh you know, it's funny. I hate generational analysis, but I agree entirely with the idea that Gen X is the best generation. And um I I get a lot of that, yeah. To a certain extent, yes. So like um When

the change was happening when the invasion of the body snatchers period in twenty fifteen, early twenty sixteen was going on. You know, the difference between me and Steve, uh we always used to joke about this, is that he had his ship blown out from under him. Um I had to sort of set fire to mine, right? And I you know,'cause The the standard you mean the we I mean the weekly standard was shut down by its owner. Right. Uh because it was seen as being too uh complicated or ambivalent about Trump.

Uh that was part of it. It was also eaten for parts to boost the Washington Examiner. Um uh And I would say there were a couple people from the Weekly Standard who didn't go bulwark or or or dispatch, but kind of went trumpy, but that's neither here nor there. Um the the So when all of that was going on, um

Part of it the reason why I wanted to I'd been talking to Steve for a long time about how to try to save the weekly standard and I had made the argument that, you know, there's an argument to start something new. Um

Because there are things about the standard that are liabilities and there's there's this market space for something else and so you're like, Yeah, I know I've been thinking about all that too, but I have a fiduciary obligation to try and save this institution and the jobs of my, you know, people who are working for me.

And he was right. And so we started calling, you know, the other thing plan B. And the dispatch became plan B when plan A was not feasible. And part of the reason why and I used to say this when we were trying to raise money for the thing is that I checked a bunch of boxes for my career that um was pretty proud of, you know, National Review Online, created the corner, uh wrote some best selling books, uh Syndicated Columns, all that kind of stuff, pretty happy with.

I did feel like I I hated being a burden to my friends at National Review, some of whom are still my closest friends. Um But like when you're that stridently taking a position that everyone else isn't about not politics, it you you you just uh the idea of people taking flack for you uh at an institution you love just is hard. But the main the main reason I did it was um If you look at the people who I really admired on the right, the

you know, the chief one would be Irving Crystal, but also, you know, William F. Buckley and some they were institution builders. And I had I mean, I mean l whatever I did for a national movement online, there were other people involved and it wasn't my brand. It was in a brand I was in service to. Um And I still probably wouldn't have done it except we looked around and

the people who were older than us, a lot of them were going Trumpy for interesting psychological and sociological reasons. You know, their last chance at the rodeo or they were just at the end of the day partisan Republicans more than they were conservatives. Um and you name name a name. Who is the worst?

Well, I mean, I'll give you the example that pains me the most, um, only because I've talked about it before. I don't need to make any new enemies. Um I got plenty um in the basket already, but um I was really disappointed with Bill Bennett's reaction. I've been close friends with Bill Bennett. I love the guy personally. I haven't talked to him in ten years. Um but you can't

And I had defended him um when he was under fire for like the gambling stuff in Vegas and I still will on the merits. But um Uh you can't talk about the death of outrage and the importance of virtue and all of these kinds of things and And then w push comes to the shove, say we have to rally round

Yeah. The president, right? But there are a bunch of people who are of a certain age. Newt Gingrich comes to mind, right? Newt Gingrich basically dismantled his own the best parts of his legacy as speaker of the house. Um, you know, i but for newt, you don't get NAFTA. But for Newt, you don't get the Baltics in the in NATO. Um and he basically

Just said, eh, those are all mistakes just so he could his wife could be the ambassador of the Vatican or something. And um Yeah, he's one of the strangest converts to Catholicism. I wouldn't have seen that coming. Well so it's funny. True story. Um my dear date late departed friend Kate O'Byrne, I believe was her his godmother, but brought her brought him into the church and she was I hope I'm not speaking too much out of school. I love Kate dearly, but Kate said

the she was really worried about Newt becoming Catholic because within six months he was gonna have a PowerPoint presentation about how to reorganize the Vatican. Um And so anyway, there weren't people building institutions and this seemed like a moment it was a new moment that required a new institution. And um On the Gen X stuff generally, I one of the reasons why I half jokingly say it's the best generation is because we were the only ones who grew up more or less in the analog world.

But we're old we're young enough to make the transition to the digital world. And there are things about the pre-internet world. that are wildly valuable and useful and and and good. And I don't I don't mean this in some sort of pious, oh, things were better when we were kids kind of thing. The number I mean, I'm sure you've seen something similar.

The number of people right out of college who were terrified to cold call somebody is just amazing. It's like I I sent an email, you know, like I have to wait for a response now. Like like the idea of just calling someone out of the blue. fills a lot of young people with terror when in fact that was our jobs growing up in a different generation. And there are a lot of those kinds of skills that I think

young people today kinda need um in order to succeed. And so anyway, you know, you asked at the very beginning about the name of my podcast, The Remnant, and I just want to defend it for a second. Yeah. Um First of all, it's a nod to Albert J. Nock, praise be upon him. Um, uh, and also Dwight McDonnell and all those guys. But um, you know, it was David French who pointed it out to me, um, which I've really come to embrace, which is that in biblical in the biblical language

Remnant has two connotations. One is the thing that's left behind, right? Hence a remnant, but also the thing that is the seed stock for the future. And um I do think You know, our politics aren't going to be the same for a very long time, if ever, but they're never the same as they were, you know, before. Um But I very much believe that like Classical liberal inflected conservatism or libertarianism. Um

Their days are not over. Um and Um, in part because as much as the Yoram Hazzonis and Patrick Denines and that crowd wanna claim that America's association with liberalism is paper thin. Um, because it's billy it's really just a bunch of false premises from John Locke.

That's horseshit. This is just a liberal country. It's a it's a like any European who sees an American in Europe is like, Oh, that's an American, right? But and it regardless of what party they vote for. Right. The I try to always explain this to people so that There's a lot of the left that is pretty friggin' libertarian. It's just it's not coded. You know, like say what you will but defund the police. Like I think it's incredibly stupid politics and stupid public policy. But

It's pretty anarchist, right? It's pretty libertarian, right? Well the idea of yeah, that fewer things should be illegal, it doesn't mean that people shouldn't speak out against them and things like that, but that the state should have fewer pretexts in you know, by which they can imprison you. Right. Yeah, pretty libertarian. I and we will uh we'll end it here before whatever is going on. Whatever new building in Momdani's New York is going on on forty sixth street.

uh right now. Um, you know, uh this is one of the ways in which I am hopeful and I want to just get your final comment on, you know, political realignments that might be happening over the next couple of years. As you were saying, You know, I I think the dispatch is more libertarian. I'm not claiming that you guys are libertarian, but there is or or more liberal in a classical sense.

the idea that government should be limited, it should be it should pay for itself, it should, you know, restrict its actions and allow people more autonomy in their life. There is a huge amount of people on the left who believe that too.

True. And I think libertarians, you know, there are the hardcore super anarchists, which I'm not even sure are actually libertarian as opposed to something else. But they're within this You know, kind of libertarian, conservative, l uh maybe liberal or or as opposed to progressive left. Um, you know, there seems to be, if not a uh a majority, a plurality of people who can get along. Do you see in the midterms which are looking like a bloodbath for the Republicans?

And for the twenty eight election, which is, you know, gonna be wide open. Um, in all sorts of ways because you're not going to have a sitting president. Uh there is no incumbent from the Democratic Party who's running or anything like that. Do you see, you know, what are your hopes for a political realignment?

um or a kind of shaking out of the odd decade plus that we've been embroiled in. Sure. So I mean uh I I'm gonna tie it into your characterization of the dispatch. I think your description of it

fits me perfectly, fits Kevin Williamson for the most part, right? And there are a few other people. But, you know, part of the mission as an institution has less to do with the ideological side of these things and more to do with the idea that you can demonstrate that you can have a fact driven organization news organization.

on the center right that you know and I think the the defining difference in some ways, um like I I often joke there are a lot of great people at the Bulwark who like the Bulwark. Uh but if Trump were to disappear tomorrow. It would be a crisis for w what they do with themselves and it would be the best news possible for our model. Right. We always pitched ourselves as not so much anti Trump as post Trump. And it's just that that post Trump Elysium is taking longer to get to. Um in terms of

that that centrist kinda that that that that that weird coalition in the middle, I agree with you entirely. Like I can ha like Part of the reason we do the dispatch is we just think facts matter, right? That arguments matter. Like you have to marshal facts and and logic to persuade people and and And because I care about that stuff, I can have a meaningful convers better meaningful conversation with a lot of people on the center left.

like Jonathan Rausch or somebody, than I can with a lot of people on the right, because a lot of people on the right think that, you know, facts and arguments are for cucks and that you gotta just, you know, power through. And I hate that crap in politics, whether it's from the left or the right. So I think that there is um I think there is an opportunity. Like we we the dispatch do not the one thing we absolutely reject, and I've I reject.

in my core is I've just given up on partisan water carrying. I just I I have no sense that the Republicans are my team in any way. And that's very, very liberating intellectually and journalistically in all sorts of ways. Um I think That's the same thing. there's gonna be a lot more room for that post Trump. Because the problem with Trump is getting back to the stuff we were talking about at the beginning, um

Is that he does because he believes in bullshit rather than lies, right? Because he just thinks that uh, you know, he's got this, he wants it's this personalist sort of Napoleon III kind of approach to government that Like Vance doesn't have that kind of charisma. You know, in Max Weber there's this stuff about the bureaucrat bureaucratization of charisma, which is what happens when like Mohammed dies or Jesus dies, right? All of a sudden

The institutions that were built up around them have to figure out rules and rituals and customs and procedures because no one has that kind of kinetic grap you know, relationship with the people. When Trump goes, that goes. And then the the Vance's are gonna be left in a world where you're gonna have to make arguments for their positions. And in that world, I think the stuff that you and I brought where the Venn diagram between you and I overlaps.

That's a better world for that because it's not about cult of personality stuff. It's about making arguments. And that's the only thing I really care about is making arguments. And that's the world where Mike Pence is gonna look better and JD Vance is gonna look worse. I think there's a lot of institutions on the right, you know, in the Coke universe and elsewhere.

that are just waiting, right? Like when in twenty sixteen we used to say and we were wrong, Oh, the laws of political gravity will eventually apply and Trump will come back down to earth and what we got wrong was that laws of political gravity don't apply to Trump. He he is a citizen of the laws of

of celebrity gravity. Once the celebrity grows, you're left with a bunch of politicians, some of whom are really dumb or mean, um, or obnoxious, right? And who have to actually make arguments not based on bullying. And in that world I think that's a great world for the sort of classical liberal, you know, mainstream conservative, mainstream libertarian stuff because

Those guys actually have good facts on them. All right. We're gonna leave it there. Jonah Goldberg of the Dispatch and many other things including the podcast The Remnant. Thanks for talking to Reason. Thanks for having me, man. It's good to be here.