What’s Next for the Right?

When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog. A coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crox.com or a store near you now. Chevy is called the Heartbeat of America for a reason. With SUVs made to move with your rhythm. The versatile equinox tackles your entire day. The spacious traverse fits your crew and your whole weekend. And tracks bring style with value you can count on. All infused with tech that has your back. So your drive always hits the right cord. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we do some serious ideating on the state of the right and the Republican Party ahead of the upcoming midterms. And we also look ahead at what the conservative movement might look like in 2008. What is a conservative in 26? Is JD Vance, Donald Trump's heir apparent? And then not worth your time, a wordal word, ASPEC, starts an in-depth conversation about things we eat.

Let's dive right in. Gentlemen, welcome. Michael Warren, you have an exciting newsletter that is launching this week called Next Right. This is the product of, I would say, a lot of internal discussion. and a lot of what the kids are calling ideation. Oh, Lord. On your part. Is that what we were doing? Okay. Yeah. We were ideating. Nurse. To come up with this. It's to come up with this. Chris is just looking at me with utter contempt. Why did I wake up early for this? Ideation. You're on a vision quest, Mike. Oh, there we go. Ideation. Well, we assume that it'll be, that you'll be iterating once it's launched. Needless to say. Michael, tell us about Nextray. What is it? Why are you doing it? And what do you intend to cover? Well, thanks, Steve. Next, right, is a new newsletter. It's going to be weekly, and it is going to be coming from the dispatch. And it is... I think the name really sums up the underlying premise of this, which is there is going to be some new right coming out of the Trump era. We are now, what, about three months, two months now, gosh, from the midterm elections. Essentially after those elections, we'll have a, we assume a lame duck president in Donald Trump. He has been the dominant force in Republican politics and, of course, American politics for the last 10 years. That has really not just influenced the Republican Party. It's influenced the conservative movement. Some people would say destroy the conservative movement, remade the conservative movement. The political right in America has all been shaped by Donald Trump and the force of his political power. His ideology, I would say, is less clear. The point is that something will happen after Donald Trump is gone. In fact, something is already happening in terms of different power centers within the political right, within the Republican Party, jockeying for position, jockeying for sort of ideological supremacy within the movement. And so this newsletter is trying to report and analyze all of that. And that's from everything from the sort of activist. hyper-focused online level all the way up through, you know, the top-level premier politicians who are going to be running for office, who are going to be in control of institutions who are vying for the Republican nomination for president, even, and all of the other infrastructure around it. So I want to be reporting and analyzing what direction the right is going into who those leaders are going to be.

What young people are doing within the movement. I mean, I think it's really kind of a wide swath of this very important, but very unsettled at the moment political movement. That's what I hope to cover. So there's going to be newsmaker interviews. There are going to be coverage of polls and, you know, I'm going to be interviewing on background people who are. important, but not necessarily names within the movement, young people who are sort of trying to figure out where they fit into all this. I would say... that the premise of the newsletter does not depend on a sure view of who is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2028, but it does sort of, I am sort of operating from the viewpoint that that question remains unsettled, despite what, say, the current vice president's acolytes online keep insisting to me and to the world that JD Vance is the odds-on favorite. I would say... I'm certainly not discounting the fact that he is a favorite to win the nomination, but I don't think it's settled. And I think this newsletter is definitely something that if you're interested in what that future looks like, and if you agree with me or if you disagree with me, that JD Vance is not necessarily going to be the future standard bearer. This is where you can learn about what's happening and where things are going. Well, it sounds good to be. I would love to read this newsletter, Mike. Thanks for, thanks for deciding to put it out. Where can I find such a product? Can you give us a place to go and actually? Oh, I've got an address for you. Thedispatch.com slash next right is where you can sign up. It is going to be launching on Wednesday of this week. But the dispatch.com slash next right. I'll say that like about a thousand more times over the next few weeks. That's good. You did a nice promo on CNN the other day. You got in a lot of, you did a lot of work to get that in front of CNN. So yours, Jonah. To you next, you hold the august title of editor-in-chief at the dispatch. I think it's because of all of the hours that you spend editing, copy, and going over the kind of finer points, line editing things that we put out. Jonah's red pen is legendary around the dispatch office. People get copyback with these nicotine-stained sheets. That's right. Just with a spider web of line addicts for me. It's just... When somebody's going to write a memoir that will include their time at the dispatch... and they will talk about how, you know, this was basically like going through Marine Corps basic training. It was being edited by the Jonah Goldberg. That's right. But how they hated it at the time, but they learned so much and it made them much.

better. So you played a role in helping to brainstorm this, if we're not going to call it ideating. You must have signed off on this at some point. You're the editor-in-chief. And I can just imagine people listening to this, some people listening to this, particularly maybe folks in the MAGA world who hear Mike describe covering different power centers on the right and saying, What do you mean different power centers on the right? There's one power center on the right. You can publish one issue of this. It'll be this Wednesday. It will be Donald Trump owns the Republican Party. MAGA covers everything that the Republican Party once stood for. Every county chairman is MAGA. Every activist is MAGA. Every R&C official is MAGA. The conservative movement has more or less been blown up. The way that the conservative movement existed 15 years ago doesn't exist. all. It's been derided and dismissed as conservative ink. What is this newsletter going to be actually covering on a day-to-day basis? Well, I mean, the people I would hear that from are wrong, but even if they're right, it kind of misses the point. I don't know. I mean, there are smart, very Trump-aligned people who will concede that there are power struggles within broader MAGA. Right? I mean, we see them daily. I mean, Tucker Carlson is talking about starting a third party. I think it's BS, but it's a thing. Tucker Carlson has said that Donald Trump has betrayed MAGA, Marjorie Taylor Greene, all these sort of archetypal MAGA people are jockeying for different positions in this firmament. You have serious disagreements about, say, the Iran war within... If you want to say within MAGA, that's fine. If you want to say within the Republican Party, if you want to say within the existing right, that's fine. If you want to say within the new right, that's fine. These things cross all sorts of different currents. I mean, to make this a little more rarefied and cerebral, rather than just ideating, you know, when the Roman Empire fell and Europe was Christianized, you could say Europe was Christian. You couldn't say that... there weren't power struggles between different power centers within Christian Europe, right? I mean, like, you can say, I don't think it's necessarily true, but you can say the GOP has been completely magified. That doesn't mean... that everybody is on the same page about policy, about politics, about who should replace, who should come after Donald Trump, what MAGA looks like after Donald Trump? I mean, can't you be mega and be very pro Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis or, you know, even Tom Cotton or something like that? Trump is pro-Iran war, so why are all these people saying that real MAGA is against the Iran war? They're just arguments, and they're going to be arguments no matter what, and people are maneuvering both institutions and politicians, and it's worth covering. I mean, when war and I were up late into the evening with legal pads and cold, stale, black coffee, trying to figure out how we were going to...

he was going to get this newsletter done and how much he had would have to throw me under the bus to gain credibility in certain circles. We talked through a lot of this, and I gave him permission to speak as ill of me as his good cradle Catholic heart will allow. So there you go. I remember you were tearing your hair out, Jonah. You were tearing your hair out saying it can't work. It won't work. And then we stumbled upon the solution, you know. It'll be worth reading just for that. I will say one of the best parts of helping to run the dispatch over the past seven years was the session that we did a few weeks ago, Jonah with you and Kevin, where we went back and looked at some things that we might have been wrong about over the years. And you came with a handy sort of short list. And then we invited people to write in Roundtable at the dispatch.com. And use the subject line, Jonah was wrong. As they reminded us of other areas in which you were wrong, man, those were great emails. That doesn't have to be a one-time thing, people, so you can keep those coming because I'm just compiling a list. And Jonah and I will at one point go back and revisit all of those. It'd have to be a long, long podcast. Yeah, it's the danger one runs into when one is actually a productive writer. It's very difficult to do with Steve is wrong email series for the full three pieces you've written for the dispatch in the last seven years. Wow. It's been well, well over three. It's been well over three. Almost twice as many. Yeah, I'm sorry. I will once again offer to swap jobs with you at any time. The Styrewall, you and I've had. I like that, the Styrewald. The entire audience. One and only. All caps. You and I've talked about this online. We talked about it at the 92nd Street Y. We talked about it a bunch offline. I guess I'm interested in taking sort of this big picture, talk about what Mike's going to be covering in and applying it to the things that we're seeing today. Obviously, there's a lot to cover on these internecine battles on the right. We are going to see a midterm election that will be shaped in part by these fights and how they've played out, whether it's Donald Trump endorsing Julia Letlow in Louisiana, in the Senate race there. kicking Senator Bill Cassidy to the curb or John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. It is the case that because of Donald Trump's sort of willingness to do things like this to weigh in in primary elections at the senatorial level in House races and to sort of nudge out Republicans who in any other election cycle under any other president would have thought that they would. benefit from incumbency. They would have been endorsed and funded by the party. And they now find themselves on the outside of electoral politics.

looking in. This is going to be whatever happens in the broader election in less than three months, two and a half months now. One of the things that will come out is that it will be a sort of more purely magified or fully distilled magified version of the Republican Party. Am I understanding that correctly based on what we've seen? Well, first, thanks for having me on. And I'd like to talk to you about what Amway can do for you as both a product and a business opportunity. Excited to be here. Do you two have a website you want to share with us? That's right. Exactly. This podcast is available on video. Is that true? Indeed. So it looks like we've cast a Netflix police procedural crime show here. And Steve is the... Detective Lieutenant and Mike and Jonah are partners. Jonah is near retirement, and he doesn't need this. He doesn't need this problem. He doesn't need this heat. Mike is a renegade. Mike is a renegade, and he's trying to bring down the power structure. And I, of course, am the corrupt politician that Mike is targeting. We're good to go. We're set. I'd watch that. Jonah's going to do the right thing in the end. That's the thing, is that at the end, he's going to do the right thing. And I'm too green. That's the, that's the, that's, well, you don't, you don't know the limits. You don't know how this city works. But I think if the two of you team up, big things could happen and I'm in big trouble. The most Republicans, well, we'll go to something Jonah was right about. And something Jonah is right about very much is that in a disassociated. atomized society. The leader of a political party when that person is the president, isn't just the leader of a political party, that person is an avatar in a war in this long-running conflict between the right and the left. And certainly we saw that on the left with Barack Obama, but nothing like the degree to which the American right chose Donald Trump as their combatant. It's sort of like single combat that they chose Donald Trump as their combatant. It is natural in party politics, and we talked the other day about Watergate, which is a very similar vibe. It is true. It is remembered by history that Barry Goldwater led the delegation to the White House at the very, very, very end and said to Richard Nixon, you don't have the votes. They're going to impeach you. And you're going to get convicted because you don't have the votes. And they didn't go and tell him, I mean, I'm sure Barry Goldwater was personally disgusted by Richard Nixon and disgusted by Richard Nixon's policies. But even...

AUH2O did not, I'm sure, go and say, I condemn you, sir. What he said was, brother, you ain't got the votes. And I'm sure he was smiling inside when he saw his old enemy was really done. But that was at the end of the end of the end of the end. If you look at public opinion research about Nixon's favorability and popularity, He was strong, still strong with Republicans late, right? Late, late, late, late, late. And in 1972, he wins this massive epochal victory over a shattered Democratic Party. shattered by Vietnam, shattered by the civil rights move by Johnson, a destroyed Democratic Party. Nixon crushes and Republicans believe in 1972 and 1973 that there has been a vibe shift, that they have taken back a country that had come unraveled in the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Johnson years and that they are setting things right. And they stayed with Nixon a long, long, long time. It took a lot. But when it was over, the unwinding was fairly quick, right? The 76 primary between Reagan and Gerald Ford was an imperfect proxy fight because Ford was not a Nixon person. everybody is more conservative than Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon probably the most progressive, certainly the most progressive Republicans since Teddy Roosevelt, but probably more progressive than John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Richard Nixon is a very left Republican, and Gerald Ford was not. But Gerald Ford was the establishment. So the Reagan Ford fight in 76 is ideological. Reagan picked some issues. He picked the Panama Canal. He picked some other things as issues where he was to the right of the president. But it was about old versus new. It was about east versus west. It was about outside versus inside. And Reagan got fairly close, came up short, exceeded to Ford, released his delegates in San Diego, and Ford got a good run in it. And I actually did okay in 80. Based on what you would have expected from the 1974 midterms, Ford did pretty well in 1976, right? He did pretty well. I guess I say all of that to say. Giving up is hard. Forgeting is easy.

There would be no second children in the world if our species did not have the extraordinary capacity to forget about pain. And this is painful for Republicans. So the Democrats who are doing a good job right now, I point to Rahm Emanuel, I point to Jon Ossoff, I point to Roy Cooper, I point to these folks who understand that the correct argument to make this cycle is about corruption. And to talk about the Bitcoin and talk about the stock trades and talk about the Trump boys spree around the globe and the nationalization of the companies and all of this stuff, which makes Republicans sick, right? Unless you are... either a total dupe or actively involved in the corruption yourself. There's nothing that's happening in that area that makes you say, yeah, good, stick it to them. But you're not going to call them out on it because if you do, then you're helping the Democrats. And I will shut up by saying the plurality. Did you all see people using the term never JD Vance? So this is an effort by people who are in. process to say Yeah, anybody who opposes JD fans is just like the people who oppose Donald Trump. Right, we should just be clear, because if people haven't been online or whatever, they might not. Nevervance is a term that wasn't coined by Nevervancers. It was coined by JD Vance's inner core of Pretorians, trying to delegitimate. They're calling Advanced Arrangement Syndrome, that Never Vancers. They're trying to play on that thing. They're using the same tools that were effective. on Donald Trump's behalf to label. So my premise here is 40% of the Republican Party is always Republican. They would support Donald Trump. They would have supported Marco Rubio. They would support Ted Cruz. They're just Republicans. And their principal interest is in beating Democrats. That's what they want to do. They want to win. The 30%. that is Trump, Trump, Super MAGA, Mega, MAGA all the time. And then there's, what is that? Well, no, it's probably, it's probably 15 or 20% on the other side that critics would call Never Trump. Fans would call traditional conservatives. We'll call these Nikki Haley primary voters. They didn't leave the party. They're uneasy. They would love for... Brian Kemp or Marco Rubio or somebody to show up and do it. I think it is, I won't say, I won't say vanishingly unlikely, but it is very unlikely that those people will succeed in taking back the Republican Party. The weight and gravity of incumbency.

is enormous. Now, Donald Trump could screw over JD Vance to such an extent, and Lord knows he's done it to people many times. He could screw over JD Vance to such an extent that that plurality, that 45% of always Republican Republicans will become disaffected. But boy, they're going to give JD Vance a lot of leash. They're going to give him a lot of leash. And so I said I would shut up, but now we'll really shut up by saying, The point of never JD Vance and the effort to discredit critics of JD Vance is because in order for Vanceism to work, it has to be identified as a continuation of the current thing. So this makes it strategically, it is. disingenuous, it is sophistry, it is all kinds of bad things. But it is effective because it says, oh, are you going to go with these people again who hated Donald Trump? And that's why Donald Trump, if he wants to keep JD Vance and let JD Vance be his successor, he will almost certainly win the Republican nomination. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch Podcast. As regular dispatch podcast listeners know, I've now given each of my parents an aura frame. Well, earlier this summer, I was back home in Wisconsin, standing in the kitchen, and there appeared on the screen a video of my son's hockey game, his moment of the greatest glory, scoring a last second goal from an impossible angle. And in that way, and in so many other ways, the hour frame has helped. Keep my parents close to my kids. That's free unlimited storage on your aura frame. You can provide it as a gift fully packed with pictures and videos. Name number one by wirecutter. You can save now by visitingoraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get $35 off to select frames plus free shipping with the code dispatch. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code dispatch. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clock. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog. A coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crox.com or a store near you now.

Chevy is called the Heartbeat of America for a reason, with SUVs made to move with your rhythm. The versatile equinox tackles your entire day. The spacious traverse fits your crew and your whole weekend, and tracks bring style with value you can count on, all infused with tech that has your back, so your drive always hits the right chord. Chevrolet, together let's drive. And we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. So I'm going to spend some time on JD Vance and the 28 contest to see who will succeed Donald Trump as the titular president of or head of the Republican Party in the race for president. But I want to spend a moment here on the challenges that Trump is facing inside the Republican Party. I take Chris's point, Mike, that, you know, again, if you look across the Republican Party, if you look at the people who. hold the seats who are the county chairs in the Republican Party up through the head of the Republican Party, the infrastructure, the party infrastructure, the activists, the vast, vast majority. are Trump Republicans, or MAGA Republicans. But there is, there have been some surveys here in the recent weeks that suggests that one of the reasons Donald Trump's overall approval rating has dipped as low as it has. And in some surveys, it's down to the low 30s, 33%. and one out this weekend, is that he's bleeding support among Republicans in particular. So there was an economist, UGov poll out, I believe, last week, that had Trump's approval rating among Republicans at just 79%. Now, on the one hand, 79%'s a lot. Eight out of 10 Republican voters approving what the president's doing. Sounds like a lot, but it's down significantly, down 12 points since he was inaugurated. And at the same time, the percentage of Republicans who strongly approve of Trump's performance has dropped even more precipitously down 20 points from 68 to 48%. And in the same poll, if you look at the split between MAGA Republicans and non-Mega Republicans, non-Mega Republicans, only 51% of them approve of his form. performance with 47% disapproving. So among non-Maga Republicans, there's almost an even split, whether they like the Republican president or not, or think that what he's doing. And these also have dropped pretty dramatically, pretty quickly. Now, the asterisk there is that MAGA Republicans, to Chris's point, or non-Maga Republicans, to Chris's point, make up only about 30% of the party.

And some of those non-Maga Republicans, Nick Katoji, our colleague, had a very good newsletter about this a week or two ago. We'll put it in the show notes, pointing out that non-Maga Republicans are not all uniform in their views of Trump and their views of politics and their positions on policies. Some of them undoubtedly disapprove of Donald Trump because he's not MAGA enough because he launched the Iran War because he's not doing the kinds of things that he said he would do when he promised to keep. America out of Middle East forever wars, while others are more probably traditional never Trumpers, Trump skeptics who feel validated and vindicated by everything they're seeing these days. As you look at how to sort of think about this, how should we think about the different groups of Republicans? I have this thing. We've talked about it on this podcast. Chris, I think we talked about it at the 92nd Street Y discussion that we had with Jonah and Megan. When I meet with currently serving or recently retired elected Republicans, I ask them all the same question at one point or another in the conversation. And it is, what percentage of the Republican Party today if you're looking at Congress, senators, and. Republicans in the House of Representatives falls into these three different buckets. On the one hand, MAGA, Republicans hardcore, they love the president, they'll do anything for them. They are part of the cult. Two, sort of more broadly, they're just Republicans. They support Donald Trump today. They would support George W. Bush if he were president. They would support Ronald Reagan if he were president. They're Republicans. And three, non-Trump Republicans were anti-Trump Republicans. And, you know, the numbers you get back vary, of course, from person to person. I've had people, probably the most common answer I get is roughly a third, a third, a third. And the super... pro-Trump republicans are more outspoken they're the loudest their voices carry the most the trump skeptical republicans even if they're you know somewhere between a quarter and a third of the party they don't speak out because they know that they'll be punished if they do. But the biggest group, it seems to be by consensus, are these folks who are just Republicans? Mike, as you're setting about reporting these things, how do you think about the current Republican Party? And do those numbers seem real to you? Are they overstated, understated? I mean, I think somewhere between Steyerwalt's kind of divide and what you've just described, the truth is... somewhere in between there, depending on the day, probably. I think that's so important to remember. And this is like party ideation, if we're doing ideation, is that the same person can be, over time, will move through those spaces. Right. And on different issues and in different circumstances. And doing hard groupings is hard and should be hard because we know that people in an election cycle.

People are like, oh, there are too few Republicans in that poll. You're like, well, because there are too few Republicans right now. And there are people who would have said they were Republicans at the beginning of the year, then say they're independents, then by election day have come back to the party. So, yeah, people move through. Right. And so do politicians, remember me? Like, just think about Lindsey Graham on January 6th versus before he died, right? I mean, like, the validators for a lot of people. have been all over the place too. And so, like, the snapshot issue is, I mean, how many people do we know? who thought we were too hard on Trump or too easy on Trump, you know, or something in between over the last 10 years, you know, people change. Why can't you be exactly like me? I'm angry at you because you will not be exactly like me. And you say, okay, well, who are you? And the answer is, it depends. Sometimes I'm really angry at him and then I feel bad about being angry at him because I think about how bad the Democrats are. And then I come back and I like him again because he did something that I really like. And then he does something terrible. And then I'm mad at him again. Like the bad boyfriend argument about Donald Trump and the Republican Party holds a ton of water for me because it's an experience that the Republican Party, the difference between Donald Trump and other. chaotic Republican presidents, Richard Nixon, Teddy Roosevelt, the dogs of the 20th century. I say that, I like dogs. I shouldn't say it that way, Joan. Those guys had enough patriotic grace and decency that after the fight was over, they left the party alone. They quit stalking and harassing their party. Trump is like, Never. Yep. I'll never leave you alone. I'll never let you go. I will come back again and again and again because he knows that that third of the party that's really hooked on him, he can whip them up every time. And he can also whip up the 20% that's against him every time. Yeah. Well, I think a good comparison as well as, you know, a sports fandom, right? Sometimes like I'm a huge Atlanta Braves fan and this has been an up and down season for me because the Braves because the Braves are doing so well and yet injuries, you know, and there are these bad skids, you know, where the, that record, you know, that was so good. All of a sudden they're, you know, losing eight out of ten games and sort of thing. And. You know, so my fandom or my happiness with the team and the decisions they made or the decisions they made in a trade before the trade deadline, all those questions, like, it depends on my mood. And so when I think about Republican voters or people on the right, I am not trying, at least as a reporting matter, to have a clear answer on that question, Steve, that you asked. Like, what is this actual divide?

I think my reporting and the analysis that comes from that reporting that you're going to find in Next Right is going to be more about presenting what is the spread that the Republican or the conservative movement is offering to those people? What are they selling in these next few months and years to voters to people in the conservative movement? What is the product that Republicans are trying to settle on? As they figure out this market, just as we are trying to figure out, What does this party look like or what does this movement look like? And that's what I think is unsettled. Look, Chris is right about where things are likely to go in the presidential race. At the same time, This is a moment where things are most unsettled. The fact is that it's really easy now to have a lot of, and we're speaking in relative terms here, but to have 20% of the party disapprove of the current president's job as president. It's a really easy time, right, because there is no presidential election coming up, right? We are at the... what's the right word, the perigy, the apogee, which we are as far away from a presidential election as possible in these four-year cycles. And yes, there are mid-term elections and all of that. But look, Congress doesn't do anything anyway. And so it's really hard, I think, to get Republicans that excited or angry or energized about a mid-term election where everything is going wrong in the country anyway, the party looks like it's about to be crushed. And so it's easy at this point to... disapprove of the president that has so much control over the party. And, of course, we know that's relative. We're still talking about an 80%, 79% approval. But I think in that space is where ideas are sort of being thrown out. You're hearing this from JD Vance right now. He's sort of casting a skeptical eye, and I'm understating that toward capitalism or really, not even capitalism, but the slogans of free marketism. He is sort of trying these things out. And there was a lot of pushback happening right now. Again, it's in conversation. It's in the sort of elite circles. It's what's happening online in many ways. But for better or for worse, so much of that our political discourse is online and what the onlines are obsessed over. And those kinds of questions. Is the Republican Party, is the conservative movement going to be a free market party, a free market movement in the near and medium future? I think those questions are being thought about and argued. And that's the kind of space that I think deserves some coverage, some reporting, and being able to say, look, there are a lot of people right now. They're well funded, right? They have a lot of backers. They have a lot of institutional support. that are trying to take the Republican Party in a different direction. They are trying to sort of take Donald Trump's dismissal of certain long-held beliefs in the GOP and the conservative movement to their logical conclusions and trying to move the party in, say, actually probably a more Nixonian direction on economics and government intervention. That's happening, and I don't think that story is necessarily being told. And yes, there is some pushback. Maybe it's pretty lame.

Maybe it's not going to go anywhere. But that's the story that I think people need to know and people need to hear more about and know about all of those conversations, know about all the donors, that sort of thing. That's the story that I'm trying to tell. Mike, is there a website that I could visit where I could get more, that I could learn more about this? I'm so glad you asked. The dispatch.com slash next right. Let the record show that ever since Chris said, Never going to let you go. I have had the Sergio Mendez song running through my head. I'm never going to let you go. I'm going to hold you in my arms forever. Going to try to make up for all the times I hurt you so. You don't long have waited for here. Keep going, Steve. Do you want me to sing it? I could sing it. I could try to sing it. So, Jonah, let me push back on what seems to be this jelling conventional wisdom between Mike and Chris. Yeah, because if you don't, I will. Okay, well, let me do it quickly and then I'll turn it over to you. One of the things I think is hard to do is imagine how different things could be the day after these midterms. If they... go poorly for Republicans. And I think they are very likely to go poorly for the Republicans, even if the effects have been mitigated a bit by the mid-decade redistricting, what have you. If you look at the Senate polling averages right now in competitive Senate races, Republicans would lose the Senate at this point. If you look at the party ID, the generic ballot, this looks like it could be a bloodbath for Republicans. The day after that election, Jonah. Yes, it's true that, you know, Donald Trump is powerful in the Republican Party, even if he's seen his approval ratings drop among some Republicans. Yes, it's true that the levers of the Republican Party are run by people who are close to Donald Trump or like Donald Trump, approve of Donald Trump. Yes, it's true that JD Vance has all sorts of built-in institutional strengths by virtue of the fact that he's the vice president. But the day after, if this is really bad, In normal political times, people are going to be trying to get distance from the guy who made this really bad, aren't they? I mean, is that something that doesn't apply to Trump either? No, I agree with this. I think, look, it's an old rule going back to Sun Tsu, never get between Mike Warren and Chris Dyerwalt when they're ideating. But I just got to say, I think the rumors of, I want to be clearer, no one said that JD Vance was inevitable or anything like that. But there was the distinct whiff of Big Mo talk, that Vancementum will be difficult. and formidable. I don't think I said that, Jonah, by the way. Allow me to disparage you for a minute. Please, go ahead. And so, look, I think not only are the midterms important, right? I think, Steve, you make a good point. The zeitgeist can change very quickly after the midterms. And I'm a broken record on this. Since we amended the Constitution, so this guy who comes in second doesn't become the vice president in, what, 1804? Only two sitting vice presidents have ever been elected straight to the presidency?

Martin Van Buren, who ran against like four or five Whig candidates. Word. And was running for four more years of the Jackson administration, a very popular administration, and very bad, but very popular administration. And then our own beloved George H.W. Bush, who had the twin gifts of promising four more years of Reaganism and running against Michael Dukakis. If Donald Trump's poll numbers do not get above... I mean, like they're not going to stay where they are right now. We could see GDP growth go. We could, you know, pick up. We can see all sorts of things change. But you have to, let's say he gets up to 40, right, which I think is very plausible, if not likely at some point, right? He gets up to 40% approval. That means JD Vance has to be the guy people think. can get 10 to 15 points above Donald Trump's approval rating in order to win. And I don't think he has got the umph to sell that point very well. One of the lessons we've had over the last decade is that Trump's, whatever the charismatic connection he has with his voters, is not very transferable. And one of the reasons we know it's not very transferable is every time he tries to transfer it to somebody that voters don't like, he's very good at, like, helping in the primary. But in general elections, he's not great at this stuff, right? Trump's coalition is extremely different than JD Vance's coalition would need to be. And the idea that he can bring in the kind of voters who are like, gosh, I'm so sick of Trump. But I want to vote for the guy promising four more years of Trump, right? The guy who is going to be tarred with Trump's image and who will not be able to say, look, I mean, right now, this is one of the reason I'm being a little puckish on the social media. places, as we call them, all us very online people, like journalists should ask Trump whether he agrees with his vice president that we should no longer, the dollar should no longer be the world's reserve currency, right? What's making people soft, Jonah? Having all of that hard currency and economic dominance, it's weakening our youth. I know. Being able to have affordable groceries is really ruining this next generation. And so my point is, is that JD Vance is very capable because he needs to have distance from an unpopular president. So he has to pick an issue where he can show distance. He came very close to getting himself on a lot of trouble on the Iran stuff because he's Mr. MOU, Mr. Weaken, our partners in peace in Tehran guy. And Trump is like, no, I'm going to end their civilization. They all suck. They're making me look like idiots. At some point, you could see Trump being like, why should I endorse this guy? who is throwing shade at me. Why not have some fun and pretend to endorse or almost endorse this other guy? And so I just think that, I mean, Chris is very right. The recourse to accusing people of being never JD Vance and having JD Vance derangement syndrome and all of these kinds of things is a very thirsty, very needy, but not necessarily very dumb play that works in the rarefied world of social media. I don't think it necessarily works in the real world because...

People don't have that level of affection for JD Vance that they did for Trump. And we saw this in the beginning of the 2024 primary cycle. A lot of very Trumpy people were for Ron DeSantis. They didn't feel like they were betraying Trump. They didn't feel like they were betraying MAGA. It was only when Trump got in and say, you're betraying me, that people broke the other way. I don't think. Trump can pull off the karam shot of saying, you're betraying me if you don't love JD Vance the way you love me, particularly when Trump is the guy who has said numerous times to Maggie Haberman and other people, he kind of likes the idea that Republicans lose when he's not on the ballot. He's going to be a really difficult thing for JD Vance to manage up. There are going to be the enormous number of people, like the Nixon parallel that Chris was talking about, who are like, I'm not going to throw Nixon under the bus. I'm not going to condemn Nixon, but man, would I love to move on from Nixon? And the idea that those people are automatically going to go to JD Vance, I'm just extremely skeptical of. There are enormous number of people who are perfectly, and institutions and movements and, you know, new think tanks and all these kinds of things in Washington and beyond who are perfectly happy to pick a fight with JD Vance, who will never pick a fight with Trump. Because they're not afraid of JD Vance the way they were afraid of Trump. Right. And that just makes the politics of all this very, very difficult. And I just don't believe... that the mantle of Trump is transferable. It's not a German bearer bond from diehard where possession is 100% of the law. Like, you have to create that connection directly with the voters. And I just don't think JD Vance is a good enough politician to do that. He's good enough to co-op people and bribe people and cajole people and all that kind of stuff. But there's even talk, and I'll stop here. There's even talk. I don't think it's going to happen. But I love the talk of Trump picking Donald Trump Jr. as his VP, as his running mate, to really consolidate MAGA. Okay, well, great. So you've consolidated a third of the electorate. But where, like, if you want to say four more years, more, you know, more succinctly, a JD Vance Trump bumper sticker. does it. And a four more years campaign, we saw this when Bush left office. No one wanted a lot of diehard partisan Republicans who just would not criticize Bush. But once he was out of office, people were felt a lot more free to say, we don't need any more of these wars, and we can't just keep doubling down on this kind of Republican and McCain and Mitt Romney and whatnot. People are going to have permission. to criticize JD Vance that they just don't have to criticize Trump. And Parkis, Trump doesn't really care if you criticize anybody else other than him. Now, listen, Detective Goldberg, I don't know how it works in your precinct, but let me tell you how this city runs. I did not say that I thought JD Vance was likely to be the next president of the United States. I know. That is a distinction. And I think the knowledge among Republicans of the unlikeliness of keeping the White House. is shaping and will continue to shape the way that the nominating process goes. I don't know whether that's true or not true because we don't know what the Democrats are going to do and the Democrats are going to go through.

a real civil war, right? They're going to go through a real wrenching struggle over the next 18 months. It's going to be rough. The road for Democrats between here and March 1st of 2028 is going to be strewn with bodies. But the assumption among Republicans correctly is that it is unlikely since the White House has changed hands, 2016, 2020. 2024, we haven't done this since the 1880s, that we're in this period of flipping back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The assumption among Republicans is that it will be very hard for a Republican to succeed Donald Trump. That decreases the likelihood that people who either have time or have a lot of skin in the game or have a reason to say, I don't need this. I don't need to go fight, because JD Vance fights dirty, right? Yes, he does. He's this ugly. He is doing what Ron DeSantis did. Mean to the media, attacks within the party, blunt, rotten, right? And the whole point is, if you want to get in the pool, I want you to know that I'm peeing in it right now. If you, Brian Kemp, if you Marco Rubio, you want to get in here, it's gross already and it only gets grosser from here. And if you are one of those people, you are maybe likely to say, Well, we'll talk about it in 2032, but I'm not interested in challenging a sitting vice president. I'll tell you the story, and I think Steve points to it, I'll tell you the story of how JD Vance isn't the Republican nominee. And the story is midterms are a disaster. We've already seen JD Vance's... numbers among Republicans in reputable polls. I'm not going to talk about U-Gov polls. I'm not going to attack publicly U-Gov polls here. But in real polls... But people are saying that real polls... Some people suggest that in real polls, JD Vance's number was basically halved since the start of the Iran War. And Marco Rubio's support doubled. Who left JD Vance? The people who left JD Vance are people who, either A... believe that they have been betrayed by a guy who said in his op-ed endorsing Donald Trump for 2024 that he never, he didn't take us into any dumb wars. He didn't take us into any forever wars. And that's why Donald, so that's not an insignificant number of Republicans. You don't have to be Tucker Carlson to be a kind of Republican who says, I just wanted us not to be the policemen of the world anymore. I just wanted us to stop doing this stuff. Also, just to point out, you just also don't have to be Tucker Carlson, period. It's not necessary. It's totally available. The other group of people, though, were those who were disgusted by JD Vance.

and his mealy-mouthed approach to the war itself, trying to have it both ways, leaking to distance himself from the war, the way that he talked about the peace process. It was a botch from pen to post. He blew it. And the decline in his numbers reflected that. So here's the story of JD Vance, not being the Republican nominee. The midterms are a disaster. That is attached to JD Vance. Then he gets the right opponents. The most dangerous opponent to JD Vance. And the reason that JD Vance is going around right now doing a calming kind of, like, why can't we have the, did you all see Shane Gillis on Joe Rogan's podcast talking about how it's not, it's not socialism to have Medicare for all? Like, people want health insurance. Why can't we have that? the populist, progressive, new right culture war wing of the Republican Party, if he has a credible challenger in that space, it will be bad for JD Vance. So JD Vance is going around right now, saying to those people who are mad at him over the Iran War and who are mad at him like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the same JD Vance who liked Lena Kahn. I'm the same JD Vance who wrote legislation with Elizabeth Warren. I'm the same J.D. Like, I'm the guy. Yes. Tucker Carlson, to use him, but I don't know that there's anybody else, if Tucker Carlson said, I am going to run for president. And he's hinting, we should say, he's hinting at this. He's talking about growing this movement. I mean, and he and JD Vance are extraordinarily close. Tucker Carlson said not long ago that JD Vance will save American politics. Yes. Yeah. Right. He wouldn't be a U.S. Senate. He would have never been a U.S. Senator if it hadn't been for Tucker Carlson, who made it his cause. Yeah. And Donald Trump Jr., Peter Thiel, that part of the Republican Party, came in hard for JD Vance to get him on the ticket. If somebody from that world were to actually credibly oppose JD Vance, now JD Vance has a Pat Buchanan problem. Now he's got a populist getting to his right left, how it gets real messy in there. But to his right, he's got a challenger. The way that JD Vance's run fails then is not that that person gets the nomination, but that the other side of the party. the attitudinally moderate to conservative can coalesce behind somebody and say, this is our Reagan. This is our 76. We've got the guy. We like him. We agree. And it's going to happen. So the election, the primary that JD Vance loses is not one in which. Brian Kemp runs, Marco Rubio runs, this guy runs, that guy, you know, Nikki Haley decides she's going to go for it because he looks so weak. But the one that he loses is where he's bleeding 10% at the right edge. And somebody comes along and says, I don't know, it looks like everybody's good with Marco Rubio over here.

And he's going to do it. That's a lot of sequential ifs that require a lot of people to do things that are hard, dangerous, expensive, and unpleasant. The reason I think that the, I'll just say the most likely scenario is that JD Vance does indeed become the nominee after a lot of... Sturm and Drong goes into the general election and loses. That's just the chalk. I'm not saying it will happen. I'm just saying that's the like the Vegas line. This sort of slight tweak to your scenario that I would offer, Chris. And I'm, I'm somebody who, as we've discussed, again, both online and offline. I don't think JD Vance is going to end up being the Republican nominee. I think it's going to be. We've got a stake bet on it. We do have a steak bet on it. The last steak bet I made with Sarah Isker, I had to buy her a steak. She had to buy me a steak. She doesn't eat as much steak as I do. So this one will cost you more. This will not be a six-ounce ladies fillet. Chris will have the 72-ounce tomahawk. Exactly. The steak that comes with a t-shirt when you finish it. Right, exactly. The bet was I don't think JD Vance will be the Republican nominee, Chris, thanks JD Vance. will be the Republican nominee. I think I'd take the action just to put the fine point on it again as I did before. I don't, I'm not saying he will. I'm saying I'll take the bet because I like steak and I would be happy to buy you steak. Yes, I would love to have steak with you and we are going to get to some other tasty food here in just a moment. But the one sort of slight tweak or the way that I could see this happening, it's not that. these sort of non-mega, non-JD Vance Republicans would have to kind of agree in advance or have only one person. It's that the field would have to consolidate more quickly than the field is consolidated in 2016 and 2020, right? I mean, if Marco Rubio ran and Brian Kemp ran and Kevin Stitt ran and other, Nikki Haley ran again, and they decided very early, hey, you know what, it's not going to be me. I'm for this guy. I think you could see that kind of. consolidation having potentially learned the lessons better for them if they don't run though i agree of course of course makes it more likely but it's better more likely if stitt and Brian Kemp and others look at Marco Rubio Marco Rubio says i got the ball and they go right Go for it. Right. The one thing I think people, as people are speculating, and we are here in wild 2028, premature speculation, but this stuff is happening. I mean, I think we'll get some feedback that this is a premature discussion. People should understand this is taking place. Oh, yes. Candidates on the Republican side are. talking to pollsters and hiring people and laying this all out. So we are in fact not premature. We probably should have been talking about this a while ago. The one mistake I think that people make as they look at the potential Republican 2028 field is assuming that Marco Rubio won't run. Marco Rubio has been rather emphatic about his lack of interest. He has said if JD Vance is going to endorse JD Vance.

And I think people are working on this assumption that Marco Rubio won't run. I will just say, Marco Rubio may decide that it's not in his interest to run. He's less likely to eventually become president if he runs in 2028 because things are so bad. But it won't be because he's showing deference to JD Vance. This is the same guy who ran in 2016 against his mentor, Jeb Bush, despite having been told by Bush himself and by many people around Jeb Bush, It's not your turn, son. You should not be running. And Marco Rubio said, eh, I'm running. I think it's my turn. So I think it won't be because he lacks ambition. It's because he's made a calculation that he is not likely to prevail if he runs. I've got to cut this conversation short. Unfortunately, this could go on for hours. I would love for this to go on for hours. But if you are interested in these kinds of things, there is a place that you can get it. Mike, where is that place? I forgot. I don't know. No, it's thedispatch.com slash next right sign up in your inbox every Wednesday starting this Wednesday. And it's got, by the way, I feel like I should tease this first issue by pointing out one of the people that we have been talking about whose names come up in this conversation. Brian Kemp, my first issue will feature an interview with. Brian Kemp, the outgoing governor of Georgia, who has managed somehow to occasionally defy Donald Trump, occasionally support Donald Trump. But he has been sort of a strong Republican, a strong conservative, without bending the knee repeatedly, as we've seen so many other Republicans do in this era. I like that I've piqued Steyerwald's interest with that. Yeah, that's good. He's shown a little ankle there. That's interesting. Chris, do you know where you can find this? I mean, we don't need to keep you on it. No, it's probably www.dispatch.com slash next right is very good. It would just take my guess. As we discussed, Mike Warren is in Atlanta to interview Georgia governor, Brian Kemp. And here is a part of that conversation that will be featured in Mike's new newsletter, The Next Bright. A conversation that's been going on, the vice president has been talking a lot about. socialism and how to combat socialism. It's on the rise in the Democratic Party. And he said something the other day on television, which he said, you know, the way to fight back against socialism is not slogans about the free market or capitalism. It's to make people's lives better. I don't know. When I was growing up and coming up in this business, Republicans thought free markets did make people's lives better. There's a seems to be a trend that I don't know what the vice president's actual views on various things are, but just sort of among Republicans to embrace government as a solution to people's problems, whether you're talking about affordability. Do you see that trend? Does that concern you? What do you make of this? Do you think that it's fair to criticize sloganeering about the free market? I've seen great benefit from government getting out of the way and letting entrepreneurs and small business people.

thrive. I mean, that's what this state's built on. I mean, probably 90, 95% of the businesses in the state employ less than 50 or 75 people. So we are literally a state, probably a nation that's been built on the back of small business people and farmers and, you know, entrepreneurs. And I've rarely seen where the government involvement in that is the solution. Normally it ends up costing more. It creates more work for people. And, you know, for a guy that started a construction company with a pickup truck and a shovel, you know, government certainly didn't help me get to where I am in my business career today. It was just a lot of hard work and really fighting through government regulation. And it's something where, I mean, that's what got me involved in politics. I mean, I ran against red tape and... little common sense in government. The problem is when you get elected is worse than you think it is. And so it's driven my whole career. So I'm more in the camp of like, we got to give people the opportunity to do what they want to do. You know, if they want to go work for a great company and have, you know, good retirement count and good health care benefits, and they ought to be able to do that. But if you got people that want to start a restaurant or, you know, be a... startup, IT, you know, technology entrepreneur or whatever else. They should be able to, we should create an environment for them to be able to do that. And I don't think, you know, government being involved every step of the way is the way to make that happen. There's some polling that shows, though, that. people have more negative views than they have in years on capitalism, markets, whatever you want to call it, socialism. Well, they, yeah, I think they may have negative views on, you know, capitalism and think socialism is a great idea, but they also very much have positive views on economic freedom and economic opportunity. And I talk about that a lot. I mean, I ran on strength in rural Georgia, making sure we have economic opportunity no matter your zip code. That's not a message that a lot of Americans are hearing every day. You know, I just read an article about downtown Detroit, I think it was, or maybe it's Maryland. I think it was in Baltimore. It was just in the tank. And now it's got, you know, really hot real estate market there because things are turning around. You see in rural parts of our state, we've had great economic development projects, even in some of the poorest counties or close to the poorest counties in our state in southwest Georgia is giving people economic opportunity. Like I've seen firsthand how that literally changes lives. It changes the economic viability of these rural counties that they're in. And to me, that's what we need to be doing. Is the Republican Party still a party of free markets? Well, some of us are. I mean, I think there's a lot of debate out there on that right now with kind of the whole new populism and other things. But I would think, to me, when you look around the country and you look at the Republican states that have strong Republican governors, economic opportunity, and less government is really driving job growth in the country. Who in the party isn't supportive of free markets?

Well, I think everybody would probably tell you they are, but they also, some of them want more government involvement than what you think. But also, you know, like I'm also not worried every day about people that are saying things like that. I'm trying to just on my day job, and I'll put our record up against anybody. On the issue of naked self-promotion and all that kind of stuff, This morning, Monday mornings are a desert that I cannot slack my thirst for good up-to-the-minute podcasts because I've listened to a bunch over the weekend. I'm an empty nester. I do a lot of dog walking. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And I like to listen to stuff to get prepared. So I start searching through the Apple iPad app, Apple podcast app. And I just search for politics. The top results. With one or two exceptions, so I don't want to say it's uniformly rancid fecal matter. There are a few exceptions. Very few. But for the most part, most of the podcast, if you look at the top news, quote, quote, news podcasts or top, quote, unquote, politics podcasts, whatever your ideology. they're garbage. The worst version is always available. Yes. And so all I want to say is, like, I hate the podcast that always begin. Please give us a five-star review and blah, blah, blah, blah. We don't do a lot of that here. But my God, people, like, like. At least don't give those shows five-star reviews. I mean, like, there's a lot of terrible stuff out there. And if you could help this podcast. The Candace Owens' remnant crossover audience is substantial. It's, yeah. Anyway, it was just. It's not zero, I bet. Whenever I look at that. Candace Owens fans could be, hate listening to Jonah Goldberg. For sure. The Jew. We might guess. We might guess. I just put that information. out there for people. We do the soft ask. We do the soft ask. Hey, rate review, subscribe to the podcast to help new listeners find it. We do that. We aren't very insistent about it. But it is, it is very helpful. Actually, the algorithm pays attention. So if you want to stop this podcast now or as soon as Jonas starts talking again, you feel free and go and rate review and subscribe to the podcast to help new listeners find us. Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles, including Mike Warren's next right. You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join, and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back. When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clock.

But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog. A coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crox.com or a store near you now. One of the very first things I did when we launched the dispatch was to hire someone who could take care of the company's HR tasks, especially payroll. The questions and potential mistakes are never ending. Gusto helps remove some of that uncertainty by making payroll and other team-related tasks easier to manage from one place so the process feels more organized, more reliable, and much less stressful. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, on board, and support your team from anywhere. Gusto helps simplify payroll with automatic tax filing and unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price without hidden fees and without surprises. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash dispatch and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months free of payroll at gusto.com slash dispatch. One more time, gusto.com slash dispatch. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. So I have to, first, I've got to give Joe to credit, and this is so painful on a number of levels. But before I do, I need to ask you, are you all wordlers? Do you do the world? Okay. Oh, yeah, from time of time. So the wordal word on Sunday, I'm not giving this away for any word that this will be released on Tuesday, was ASPIC. Yep. And I am going to announce to you three and to the world my ignorance of ASPIC. I did not know what ASPIC was. Mike Warren, did you know, do you know what ASPIC is? Yes, and I'm shocked that a Midwesterner born in the 70s does not know what Aspect is. I know. I feel like that's so weird. I feel like. It's totally weird. Like having seen ASPIC, having Googled it after this, I now can't imagine how I somehow managed to go my whole life without ever being confronted with. I mean, the fact that you grew up in Wisconsin and didn't know what Aspect made me go check to make sure I knew what Aspect was. But I did. Yes. It's the finest hoof-based cuisine of all of the hoof-based cuisines. Chris, the first, I mean, this was, it was fortuitous that you were already scheduled to be on this podcast when I saw Aspect. Because take this however you want. I mean, it mostly is a compliment. Mostly. But when I saw the pictures of Aspick. You are the first person I thought of. Interesting. Like as a physiognomy question. There it is. For the people who are watching this on YouTube, that is Aspic. Chris, can you give, I mean, this is so disgusting. It makes me want to vomit right now. Chris, can you give, our dear listeners, a description of what Aspic is? We are looking at a picture, for those of you watching on YouTube, of some version of Aspick right now. What is Aspic?

savory gelatin, basically. I don't know what the chemical differences or biological differences between gelatin and Aspec are, or if there are such things, but Aspec is clear and more associated, I believe, with savory foods, whereas gelatin is more associated with sweet foods. I think that's... I think you got it. Well, listen, so I'm looking up on Mashed, the website Mashed.mashed.com. And this is how it's described there. Very close, Chris. Aspick is essentially a savory gelatin mold made with broth or stock. And if you look at the pictures, I mean, the pictures of Aspick, it's not just Aspick itself. which would be fine to tolerate and is used in foods that I actually eat on a somewhat regular basis. But it's, you know, the fruit gelatin molds that have, you know, they're big, they look like they're made with a bun cake mold. Have grapes suspended, trapped in suspended animation. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, if you Google Aspick, you have, you know. Hard-boiled eggs suspended in gelatin and peas and all kinds of nastiness. Chunks of pork. Chunks of pork. There was one Aspect picture that was made with two cans of Spaghettios and hot dogs as gelatin. So. I have a bunch of questions about this. Yeah, I'm very curious what the question is. I mean, it's like, let me, let me first. What's your favorite aspect? Hey, hey, Bucco, before you move me on. What do you think about other words Steve didn't know the meaning of? Jonah. Man, I'm just contemplate. Should I just not give you credit what I was going to give you credit? Okay, give me credit. I apologize. I was ever going to do. Jonah used the word aspic. in a G-file last year, which was very impressive to me. He was writing about Tang as one does when you write a column about... policy and politics and whatnot. You know why no one drinks Tang anymore, Jonah Rhodes. I mean, aside from it being meh, the baby boomers stopped drinking the NAS-inspired elixir. The younger generations never touched it. Jello will never recover its glory days because tastes and change and chunks of fruit in aspic-like globules are gross. Very well done, Jonah. Okay. Kudos to you. So my question to you is, let's say that I am going to have a cookout. I'm going to have the three of you over for dinner. And I'm going to invite your spouses. Oh. And you can choose for me what the main course will be.

Would you choose A, a Steve Hayes-inspired Aspick chicken wing gelatin casserole something? Mm-hmm. B, spam on the Traeger, or C, warm potted meat on potato rolls. Oh. Jonah, I'll start with you. So the not worth your time question is a multiple choice about a fictional dinner. Okay. Correct. Let me just float it here. I mean, it's not quite the People magazine exclusive, not worth your time, but I like this one too. And Sarah's going to love it when she listens, if she listens. Just to float an idea as like a hard-boiled egg floating an aspect. I want to float a quick idea here. The phrase frozen in Aspec is a phrase. And I have a theory that Jurassic Park. ruin, I'm going to do an engram search later. The Jurassic Park ruined the phrase frozen in Aspect because people started saying frozen in amber instead. Because the whole premise is that a mosquito is frozen in amber. To answer your question, I will not, first of all, the idea of having a Steve A's chicken wing kind of in Aspect thing, you make good wings, but you can't have anything with a bone in it. frozen in Aspect, because the whole point of having stuff in Aspec is it's like paté, you can just cut through it with a side of a fork. And so it wouldn't work unless you use de-bone chicken wings. Moreover, I do not like Aspec. It's the reason I stopped eating jello is when I found out that jello congeals even if you don't refrigerate it. When I was a kid, I always assumed it was like the coldness made it like ice cream. And it was sort of semi-frozen. And it's like, no, it's because of the animal fat in it that just makes it. congeal like old mayo and it disgusted me and i've never been able to get over it and it's why i still cut myself to this day anyway the obvious answer is b spam on the traeger spam is is orders of magnitude better than potted meat and aspic is grotesque so spam on the trigger for the win mike are you are you with jonah on on that Yeah, spam is not my first choice, but in this sort of choice from hell, yes, the spam on the trigger would be good. And if you get a nice sear on spam, it's actually not too bad. I think too much sort of spam hate is about just like eating it out of the can or like heating it up. But you get a nice sear, and I think that'd be good. Do you use sear spam, Mike? Is this something that you do on the regular? Do you not? No, but I've had. What do you suvee spams, Steve? Yeah, gross. No, he smokes it on the Trigger, I guess. I do not eat spam. I do not eat it. I've had spam. In a house. I do not eat it with a house. Yeah, right. Seared on like a on a grill in Hawaii, you know, where it is, of course, like the state meat there. You're the state meat. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you.

Anyway. And if you want to see Mike Warren as the state meet, you can go to WGWDispatch.com. This was a huge mistake. By the way, the comment section, you know what we're going to describe the common section on this? What phrase is going to come to? Aspic ratio. Aspic ratio. Now, there we go. Very well done. Chris, I consider you the authority on all of these kinds of. things. Gross meats is definitely, you're in my wheelhouse. You're definitely in my wheelhouse. Now, potted meat is not that bad. It has a bad name, but it's basically hillbilly patte, right? Yeah, it looks disgusting. Like, it looks disgusting. It doesn't look good. I'm not saying it looks good. But I would choose potted meat over Vianney sausages, I would say. Like, potted meat on rich crackers is, it can be done. Was that the plural of Vienna? Well, you don't call them Vienna sausages because we're not being fancy. It's Vianni sausages. Vianna sausage. And they look like little fingers in a can. Yeah. So I think potted meat, which is basically like patte, is a perfectly fine emergency food and can be delicious. The head cheese of the hollers. Head cheese of the hollers, which is what they call meat. Spam is gourmet bologna. What is baloney but a large hot dog? And fried bologna, grilled bologna, whatever. And spam is just a processed ham. It's a better version of bologna. And spam is kind of in aspect because when you open a can of spam, you see the fat that it's sort of sitting in. That's why, Steve, you have to cook the spam to melt that. So that's a great choice. Smoked, doing it like burnt ends, doing spam burn ends. That's delicious. But since the wives are invited, I am definitely going for the Aspic wings because Jessica's not going to eat any of that. She's not going to have. It doesn't matter. All of those three things is going to be a no. She and Carrie are going to have a glass of champagne. They're going to, maybe there'll be some French fries or something that they enjoy. But no woman is eating any of those things. And I want to see the ASPEC because the point of putting things in ASPEC was back when people entertained and they wanted to make a big presentation of something. And I want to be there for the moment where you invert your Packers-embossed ASPIC mold. on the table and present to us a two and a half foot tall tower of chicken wings in savory gelatin. And for the record, my wife presented with this menu. would simply go into your kitchen and make dinner for everybody. Yeah, she would, yeah. This might work, actually. That could work. Oh, like a terroristic threat menu. Yes. That's the way to do it. Well, you know, Chris, I mean, to your point about what it would say and what it would mean, there's this sentence from the mashed.com write-up, giving context to Aspect. This meaty gelatin has a long history and has been used for everything from food preservation and waste prevention to, and this is my favorite part.

signaling that someone aspires to greater social heights who knew that that's how you did it back in the day. Back in the dove. But I guess if you are the head cheese of the hollers, that's what you did. You got to put out a real spread, brother. You can't just open up a box of fried chicken. You got to put on a spread. You got to let them know. Well, now that everybody's mouths are watering as they listen or as they watch this on YouTube, we've featured some beautiful pictures of aspects so you can see it for yourself. Do we get an answer from Warren? I can't remember now. Yeah, I know you weren't paying attention, but I did say spam. Okay, that's right. That's right. I apologize. Sears, he said if you put a nice sear on the spain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I apologize. It can be very good. This whole conversation was making me so hungry that I just got distracted. I apologize. I could do the reverse sear spam. That's a good, that's a good thought. Okay, well, with everybody now hungry mouth watering, we'll let you go to go. cook, make your own aspect, grill your own spam, eat your own potted meat. And we will share your recipe in the comments. See you again. Share your recipe in the comments. And we will see you again next time.

Finally, if you want to support what we're doing here, as we discussed in our conversation earlier, you can rate review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice. It really does help new listeners find us. And speaking of support, here's a shout out to a few folks who recently joined as founding lifetime members. Frederick Feldman, Scott McIntyre, and Waylon Robbins. We're glad to have you aboard. One quick note, we are ending our founding lifetime membership offer at the end of August. If you're interested in supporting the dispatch and enjoying a lifetime of dispatch editorial goodness, please join us as a dispatch founding lifetime member today. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the dispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who do like a nice sear on their spam. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.

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