Purposely Negative

Alright, y'all ready?

As much as I ever will be.

As much as you will be.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Thursday, September 24, the purposefully negative edition.

I am Emily Bazlan from the New York Times Magazine and Yale Law School.

David is away this week, not sure where.

But Julia Kayam, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of the early warning newsletter on Substack, is here with us instead.

As we love her to be.

Hey, Julia.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you for having me again.

Oh my goodness.

Our pleasure.

John is also here.

John, hi.

Hi, hi, Julia.

Hi.

David wherever he is, he's not far from his texts.

Right.

Really, really full of agitation.

Full of energy.

Okay, before we get started, I have two announcements.

The first is that we are doing a live show in.

JoJo Jo Jo.

Breaking news.

It will be on Wednesday, October 21st at the Strand Ballroom and their tickets.

So come get a ticket at slate.com slash Gab Fest Plus.

And if you sign up for slate plus, there will be discounts and ad free listing and bonus segments.

And slate plus right now is half off because slate is having a 30th anniversary special.

Hey, Julia, I hope you're going to come.

I that's like so close to me.

I'm in the come.

Can I handle from the back?

You can handle from the front.

This show is an outgrowth of because I had caused to be in Providence a lot over the last five years.

The many wonderful people in Providence who would stop me and talk about the Gab Fest and in fact implore me to bring us to Providence.

So here we come on the 21st show up, bring your friends and neighbors.

And if you live in the surrounding areas, Julia points out that Boston is very close to.

Very close.

Yeah, please come and we have a limited number of VIP packages if you want to come hang out with us before the show drinks light bites grilling us with burning questions.

So for more information and tickets, go to slate.com slash Gab Fest live that slate.com slash Gab Fest live and to sign up for slate plus you go to slate.com slash Gab Fest Plus at checkout.

Enter the promo code PG 50 and you'll get a year of full access to all of slate's content for just $59, which is half off.

That's a good deal.

All right, on to our show our topics this week.

First, Trump, band CNN, Politico, an MS now from the White House.

A judge has now totally unsurprisingly ordered the administration to let the journalists back into the White House press office.

Also, the press responded with unusual solidarity to Trump's move this week.

So what do we learn from all this latest round in Trump's battle against the media? That's our first topic.

Our second topic is about Trump's meeting with the president of China Xi Jinping this week.

We will talk about what to expect with Jane Perles, who is the former New York Times Beijing bureau chief and host of the podcast face off.

And our third topic is an election update.

I hope mostly from John thinking through whether we should consider this election to be all about distrust and what that means and what is happening among Democrats and Republicans all over the country.

And finally, we'll have cocktail chatter and our slate plus episode will be about where to send your kids to school.

This is an internal dialogue debate touched off a new this week by an essay in the New York Times magazine by my colleague Nicole Hanna Jones, who revisited the decision she and her husband made about their daughter 10 years ago.

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First topic in court this week, the Justice Department tried to save President Trump's spur of the moment decision to kick these three media outlets, MS now political and CNN out of the White House press office.

And the Justice Department argued that access to the White House is a privilege, not a right.

But this is not really true because the White House press office is what's called a non public limited forum.

That sounds super jargonianly holistic. What it means is that the government has opened a forum selectively for a limited purpose, right?

Like not everybody gets to go into the White House press office at every moment.

But once you have this kind of forum, you have to have a pretty good reason to kick people out.

And what Trump said the reason was very clearly was that he wanted to punish these outlets for what he called purposely negative coverage.

And this is just one of my favorite Donald Trump quotes of all time. He said.

It's sick. I mean, there's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative says now if they want to write them that's fine.

But I don't have to let them into my into the people's house.

I would argue there's something right with the country that can help criticism of its president.

Anyway, very early this morning Thursday morning as we're taping judge Kelly the judge presiding in this case blocked this ban issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately store press credentials for employees of these three news outlets, which is probably actually like a big relief to the Trump administration because right like this whole thing is kind of ridiculous.

Okay, so John my favorite thing about this story is the solidarity among the media outlets in the TV poll right the five networks that pay a lot of money to do tons of live video feed of the president and his public appearances are they banded together and they said as long as you're kicking out CNN, we're not going to just cover CNN spot and we're also just not going to provide you with the video coverage that we normally do.

So how a big a deal was that solidarity and where you would all surprise that Fox participated in it.

I mean the solidarity is basically the basement level obligation of people engaged in in the press in America. So I mean, yay, but like it would have been a total embarrassment and Fox has you know Fox isn't the Fox news that where it started where wonderful White House

corresponds like Jim Angle covered the news in the way that we would associate with news critical thinking evidence reporting that kind of stuff.

It's not that Fox news anymore, but they still flirt with some of the norms of journalism. And so in that in this case they were, you know, they were participating in the pool also I mean, which is to say joining in solidarity with the other pool members.

There are also other strategic reasons for doing it like you need to be the coordination between the networks is quite extensive.

And I think this is true. I don't know if there aren't really news magazines that were like there used to be when I covered the White House for time, but there's a lot of coordination that goes on day to day within the organizations.

They tried off pool duty because somebody's got a you know a family emergency somebody from another network covers it. So there's a lot of like collegial just get the job done that requires the networks including Fox to be.

It's not just being it together so distinct from the public norm and the American first amendment. There's just a lot of reasons why you you're a part of a team here when you cover the White House.

But I actually think the solidarity with the press is the least interesting part of this story.

So I'll give you my just three little things.

Well, the Wall Street Journal and Caitlin Collins of CNN said that Natalie Harp is the one who base this is the president's appointment secretary who showed him reporting from the human printer who showed the president reporting from these institutions and he responded in this way.

Every White House is focused on one thing getting good information to the president.

And there's the historic issues of how difficult that is to do this president has designed a White House in which he is cocooned more than any other president before.

And so this Natalie Harp relationship is a part of this cocooning and you wonder why he might be surprised about what's happening in Iran.

It's because he has built a self cocooning White House around him. And that's what this is in part a an example of also this idea of where the White House you know that this is about White House grounds vice president JD Vance made that case.

Mike Walts the UN ambassador made that case when the president showed up at the UN and saw Caitlin Collins the UN is not on White House grounds.

He said you should not be here. He said it three times. I'm surprised to see it in this covering me you should not be here you should not be here covering me.

The president had no White House grounds limit to his view of what the press should do as you said earlier Emily it's basically the press shouldn't be allowed to say negative things about me.

And no, by the way, there's a lot of negative things to say he's in the basement on the economy on Iran is approval ratings like things are not going well.

So yeah, you can see why he'd be a little grumpy.

All right, we're getting a breaking news alert as we're taping that the journalists who are supposed to be allowed back into the White House press office are being denied entry.

Juliet, what do you make of all of this?

Yeah, and violation of a court order. I mean, it is this is one of several moments in which the White House and the Department of Justice attorneys are essentially going to have to either lie to a court which will have its consequences.

Or we'll back down in the next couple hours, a challenge of taping right now as we, you know, Trump has a tendency to back down on stuff like this. And as we said,

you know, he does this for the shock value, but is I think beginning to realize that no one's really sorry that the show was canceled.

I mean, I think that for me is looking at it from the perspective of sort of national security and he gave a totally insane UN speech yesterday.

I mean, just between, you know, we can be best friends with Iran to we're going to eviscerate them and everything.

He cannot shock the world anymore. And I think his realization of that means that he's going to keep trying to get attention.

And he will miss Caitlin Collins more than Caitlin Collins misses him.

I want to just pick up on two things that that John address me. One is just to remember that the administration argues that these media outlets and I'm with CNN are a threat to national security.

They throw this argument out like it's, you know, candy for as well. It's not true. But secondly, just how base they've become in their use of the national security exception for media or for whatever else.

There's no national security claim here. And in fact, it's quite apparent that most of the things that Trump criticizes about the media coming from either JD Vance or other leakers who are in the inner circle and they're not going to be able to do anything.

And in a circle and want essentially probably want to get information to him or want to defend their own legacy as a case would be with with Iran.

I wrote about this for my sub sack early warning about how I was looking at it from the national security perspective, because it just has what we call risk avoidance attributes or ostrich in the sand attributes.

There's a famous book called the ostrich paradox, which is how can people who know that they are under risk or threat sort of avoid the reality of that. We know that there are harms and you just avoid them. And it seemed to me that Trump was

evening very ostrich like behaviors in the sense of he simply cannot deal with the bad news surrounding him that he doesn't it is not just his ego, he does not know how to fix this war because the Iranians are not letting him.

There's lots of bad news surrounding the president, but just I think it's really important to remember that we are in a war where we are seven or eight months into it in which not only have the Iranians won, but the extension of the war by the Houthis into Saudi Arabia this weekend is such a mind blowing deterioration of any idea that we can actually limit the impact of this war that in my mind, he just doesn't want to be a war.

I think my mind he just doesn't want to see it anymore and CNN political and MS now are reflections of that. So I see I see very typical risk avoidance behavior in this as well, which is consistent with the Natalie argument that that John was saying.

Yeah, I mean, it just seems like this is of a piece with trying to avoid reality if you can't change the facts, at least maybe you can pretend they're not happening and create your own video feed and obviously like news outlets that's just it's not going to work like they're going to keep holding a mirror up to the world and the administration is going to continue to not like that world.

John, is there any lesson here about the relationship between the White House press office and the administration?

I mean, let's assume that the administration is going to get its act together and abide by this court order soon. I mean, I at least hope that that happens.

Should the press continue to have some kind of limit on what it will kind of take from this administration and this presidency?

Yeah, it should, but it often it often doesn't. I mean, there are a lot of instances, particularly when the president singles out women or particularly women of color for verbal abuse.

I would like to think if I were still in the White House press pool, that I would respond and not let that stand when a colleague of yours is being called stupid or some of the other even worse things the president has done.

You don't see that. You have seen it in the past. I mean, there has been collective action. I remember when we were on the Bush plane in 2000.

He refused to come on the record, be on the record when he came into the back of the plane. And so led by Ron fornier from the AP, he was like, you can't come back and talk to us off the record if you're not going to talk on the record.

And everybody else was like, yeah, that's right. And there were people, particularly in the news magazine reporters like me, who lost in that deal?

Because when he came back off the record, you got all kinds of insight and color. And you could then sneak trundle that into your stories, even if it wasn't on the record.

So there are instances, Dan Balls, I remember in one instance, followed up on a, you know, it often, it happens when somebody asks a question and they get attacked, then a person further on down the line in a press conference will just reask the question, which is an act of solidarity.

But mostly it's kind of rare. So I would not expect blooming new acts of solidarity because it's an incredibly competitive business. And the public you're trying to keep watching your network is not, it doesn't really care about the solidarity stuff in the same way they do about whatever it is you might be reporting.

Julie, back to your very good point about Donald Trump needs Caitlin Collins, more than Caitlin Collins needs him. Oh, 100%. That's why he attacked her at the UN.

You know, in an election that's not going well and where enthusiasm for your Republican in your Republican party is low. This is an attempt, obviously, to use the press as a foil.

And but now the judges are involved. You know, that changes it. It's not just like the mean old press. It's another branch of government.

And I think, I mean, just if it is true, I mean, it is true. But you see how the day unfolds. I think I mean, two things is it is about time that judges hold literally hold Justice Department lawyers in contempt literally hold, find them, detain them, you know, whatever it is that you can do.

You cannot have a president explicitly define a court order like this. And what happens is because judges tend to be deferential. They're like, I'm giving you 10 more days. I'm giving you 10 more days.

This is one in which the violation is so clear. Court says open the door and the Trump administration closes it. That I think it's about time that judges start using their their contempt power much more aggressively.

And then let's see how many lawyers are willing to defend the White House in the same vein. I hope that the media because it's involves judges maintains its solidarity through this because this is one in which if a court defends journalist and a White House ignores that court order this this will impact every publication into the future.

So I'm hoping that that solidarity holds at this stage, including Foxes.

Hey, Emily, can I ask you a question about something Julia raised, which is that, you know, what the White House did is what they have done in a number of instances, which is they take an act, which is based on the essentially the emotional feelings of the president.

And then they bolt on some justifications afterward. And in this case, the national security justification, it's not the first time they've done that. The president tried to bolt that on top of his huge arch by saying, wait, it's going to be for drones and snipers. And as Julia knows, one of the things you want to do in national security and in homelys,

tell everybody where the drones and snipers are going to be with a big neon sign on top of the golden horse that says snipers be here.

Anyway, it's of course, it reminded me of that person. I think this is true. The person who claimed that their peacock was an emotional support animal.

It's just like, it just bolted on the idea of a emotional support animal. And in so doing, you're not allowed to question somebody. I think it's there's some legal thing that that allowed you're not allowed to sort of question whether the emotional support animal is truly an emotional support animal.

And no, I the same token. Do you see Emily all of this as basically supreme court shopping, which is to say, no matter how crazy if the president says, well, it's part of my duty to protect the country. And that's an executive branch.

So that's central to the executive branch. In order to get them to basically allow him to do stuff that is bonkers on its face.

Yeah, I mean, there are two sort of interesting legal issues here. One is if the president gives a reason publicly that is clearly illegal, you know, like this is just plain old viewpoint discrimination.

I don't like your critical coverage. I'm kicking you out. He made it clear. But then the Justice Department comes in and court documents and gives an explanation, which is obviously a pretext, but could be legitimate if it were true.

How much to courts take into account what the president just said. And in other context, the Supreme Court has wanted to separate those things, right?

If you go back to like the travel ban decision from Trump's first term, he said all these racist anti Muslim things and then the government came in with other rationales for the travel ban.

And the court basically like didn't want to look under the hood of the car. And so I think there is that question about how the government can justify its actions.

And then the second legal issue here is about where I kind of started with these limited non public forums because earlier Trump kicked the, the AP out of the Oval Office and AP sued.

And the DC Circuit actually in my view, unfortunately, split and the majority was in favor of the White House. This is all in the context of, you know, preliminary injunctions. It's not totally settled, et cetera.

But the reasoning of the two Republican appointed judges who ruled on the side of the administration was well, the Oval Office is private. And the cut just their analogy was, well, the president doesn't have to grant an interview to AP.

So they also don't, he also doesn't have to let them into his private office. Now I think it's really important that even that decision, distinguished the White House press office from the Oval Office, right?

Saying like, okay, the Oval Office is this inner, you know, sanctum, I guess, but the White House press office because it's open to everyone is not something we're talking about here.

So I think that's the most important part. But you can see the government in this filing in this new case saying, okay, well, even if you won't let us kick CNN political MSNOW out of the press office, what about Mar-a-Lago, what about Air Force One?

Trying to kind of extend the zone of these like so-called more private spaces. And that is just not a good idea, right? Which is why like, object to the Oval Office ruling that they made in the first place. And I think there's a different line you could draw here, right?

So I can say like, okay, the president on a particular day does not have to let this particular reporter from AP into his office because maybe Trump doesn't want to talk to that person on that day.

But I think when you ban an entire outlet from a government, you know, a presidential space, that should be where the line is, I think. And so I hope when the DC Circuit like finishes dealing with this case that they end up in that place because they've kind of opened the door to trying to

limit first amendment protections in a way that I just, this is not good. Like we want more access for more outlets. We want the courts to send a clear signal to any president that you don't get to limit your coverage because you don't like the critical aspect of it.

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We have Jane Perles joining us. She's the host of face off. There are new season nuclear anarchy starts on October 6th.

This week President Trump is doing lots of submitting with President of China Xi Jinping. The White House says the agenda is about artificial intelligence and fentanyl and the upcoming expiration of a trade truce.

There are a bunch of other things that Trump could raise with Xi. Like this whole problem that since the start of the war, a bunch of US officials have been saying that Chinese companies have been providing Iran with satellite imagery and even access to a spy satellite that Iran's military is using to mount attacks in the region.

There's also all the business that China is continuing to do with the Ron which is undercutting US efforts to hurt Iran's economy supposedly key to our war effort.

And then of course Trump has his own conspiracy theories about China. He accused China over the summer of sinister election meddling back in 2020.

You may remember there was a prime prime address about all that. And yet in the build up to this summit Trump has been doing everything he can to.

I mean I don't know tamp down any criticism of Xi and China and really just roll out the red carpet.

So Jane do you see that as can he diplomacy on the part of Trump in the United States that could pay off for US interests or does it just make the US seem weak and kind of in the thrall of this authoritarian rival.

Well I think the latter I think that this is all aimed at Trump having a smooth election he doesn't want any interference any risk of any interference from China.

He wants a smooth glide path to November so he's just pushing everything down the track.

So he said last night on the eve of the so called serious talks with Xi Jinping that he wanted to leave AI exactly where it is.

He doesn't want any serious dialogue whatsoever and that suits the Chinese just fine.

And I think we should remember that China really looks these days at Trump as the head of a declining power and that they're about to take the American place.

And they see that one third of the American Navy has been taken out of the Pacific region to go fight in the Middle East.

There's no aircraft carrier of from the United States in the Pacific at the moment.

And China is right there watching this and saying great we'll take more of this.

So they're quite happy to go along with what I'm calling the pageantry plus summit.

We can talk about that.

Jane go ahead and talk about that but you can also answer this which is does this create.

And we always have to recalibrate our idea of timelines with respect to China because they have a longer planning lead than maybe we do in our nanosecond way of covering things.

But does this invite attempt by China or are they just happy to let the decomposure happen and they'll stay on their 400 year long plan or is what they see in Iran and the diminution of US stockpiles something that might encourage them to speed up some of their plans.

I don't see them speeding up their plans because they're not really big risk takers and they see things going their way.

And there really isn't any need for them to put their foot on the pedal.

So I think they will go along with this.

I noticed that for example, Besant announced last night that they'd extended the trade truce by two months.

Well, that gets Trump through the elections.

He doesn't have to face that question really.

And that suits China too.

So I think China is just happy to let Trump create his own problems.

The not long ago you said something about Trump wants to glide through the election without China interference.

Not long ago a month ago, Trump had a prime time speech in which he tried to create an election narrative that accused the Chinese of election interference.

Do the Chinese actually think that that from the Chinese perspective that that's like a real issue or do they just see that as a way for Trump to narrate why he's likely to lose big time in 2026?

Like how serious are the Chinese about this?

Well, I don't think anybody really takes Chinese interference in the US elections terribly seriously.

If they had done this, we would have heard a lot about it and we would have heard more about it much earlier.

I think this is one of the, I mean, I don't think the Chinese are innocent by any means on many, many things.

And they may well have done some things around the edges of the election.

But if they had done some big time things, I think we would have heard about it from all quarters.

But where do we hear about it? We heard it from Trump in a speech when he probably got up one morning and said,

I'll hit the Chinese this morning. I don't think it's terribly serious.

Can you talk a little bit more about China and AI?

I mean, I understand that this summit is not going to probably lead to any developments.

But what's your assessment of how China approaches this issue generally?

Do you see them as being risk averse and interested in control of AI in a way that should be heartening to Americans?

Is we ourselves worry more about the safety risk from our labs?

I mean, I guess I'm wondering in some future world in which there are American leaders with energy to approach some kind of international framework.

Like how receptive do you think the Chinese will be to that? And how are they managing their own risk internally?

Well, I think the first thing for our listeners to understand a many of them probably know is that the Chinese government supports artificial intelligence in China.

It's a government proposition. Whereas in this country, it's a private enterprise company proposition, which is entirely different I might add to how the United States approached nuclear weapons.

We had a similar system and we have a similar system to the Chinese when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Ever since 1945, the government, since the dropping of the bomb, which was also a government enterprise,

the government has been running nuclear weapons and has been controlling and in charge of treaties and negotiations and so forth.

That's the case in China today, but now here we have open AI versus anthropic versus many, many, many, many start-ups.

So I think that's the first thing to say that the Chinese just have a different system.

I think they are concerned about safety, who isn't? Maybe they're more concerned about safety than the United States.

I think it's hard to measure that. But I think one thing that we can look at is the difficulty of managing AI between the two countries.

One of the most important areas where AI comes into play and Julia will know about this is in the control of nuclear weapons.

Do you want AI to be able to decide whether you launch a nuclear weapon or not?

Well, the Biden administration took this on in 2024 and it took one entire year to get an agreement between Biden and Xi Jinping.

They agreed in Peru in 2024 that humans would stay in control of launching a nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons would not be able to be launched just by AI.

It took a whole year to get that one sentence.

So I think the idea of the United States and China easily coming to agreement on where AI should go is pretty slim, particularly since China is reckoned to be only about six or seven months behind the United States in artificial intelligence.

So they see themselves getting closer and closer and closer. So why should they bend to any American ideas or American imposed AI controls, which Trump isn't interested in anyway.

He made it entirely clear last night. I want to leave it where it is. And it's called super intelligence and all it needs is a super smart president and I'm it.

So I don't think the Chinese have much to worry about in terms of, you know, the Americans imposing control.

Jane, can you run that same exercise on the question of Iran and just to remind listeners quickly the administration pivoted a few weeks ago with the vice president saying the real pressure on Iran now is going to be economic.

Leaving aside for a moment that they could have asserted that pressure long before they started dropping bombs. But the and the key to this pressure was going to be the asphyxiation of the Iranian economy, but that relies on China.

A, how much pressure do you see the US applying towards China at all and then assess the Chinese position as you just did with AI on the question of Iran?

Well, I don't see how the United States imposes controls on China, VIV, what they buy from Iran, which is a whole heap of oil, which is put them in a very, very strong position in the energy department.

I mean, they've been buying Iran oil for a long, long time.

So what can the United States do about that? That's my question.

Yeah, not much given that China sees themselves as ascending in the United States as as not. So on a scale from zero to 10, what do you think the likelihood of China military engagement vis-a-vis Taiwan at the stage?

Well, I think Taiwan is in the Xi Jinping's mind, the big prize and number one priority. And I think he's going to bring it up in the closed door talks with Trump, but I don't think he's going to make a big fuss of it publicly.

And the thinking seems to be these days, Julia, that China is looking more to coercive means to bring Taiwan around rather than military means because the military invasion of Taiwan, even though it's only 100 miles away from the mainland as Trump has noted, it's pretty hard.

I mean, it's sort of like another D-Day invasion and landing. So if they can bring Taiwan around in the next few years and make it more amenable to joining the mainland, that seems to be the way they're going.

So I think the example, interdicting ships that are going to Taiwan and demanding that they pay customs Jews at sea, sort of, I wouldn't say softer, but a different approach to outright military invasion.

Anyway, things are not so smooth sailing for Xi Jinping. He's got a military that is purged incredibly. He just fired the top two guys who had been his friends since childhood. And no one really seems to know what's going on in the Chinese military, but it seems as though they're not quite ready to take on Taiwan.

And why should they be? Because Trump said about six months ago, well, why should we go and fight for a place that's 9,600 miles away in his only 53 miles away from China?

Well, he slightly minimized how far Taiwan is from China. It's about 100 miles, but that doesn't matter. You get the idea. Why should we go send troops 9,600 miles for a small island of 25 million people?

Jane Perles, host of Face Off, the new season starts on October 6. It's all about nuclear weapons. It's called nuclear anarchy. Jane, thanks so much for joining us.

Pleasure.

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Right now NPR politics podcast has a time the midterms and the issues that are actually affecting your life, the cost of housing, health care, ice and immigration, growing debt.

This is a podcast where there's you don't feel a sense of doom a little bit like the gavfest it's a calm summary to declutter the chaos I listen to an episode this week about how many non citizens are on us voter rolls because we were going to talk about something similar on the gavfest and it's just calm and conversational and clear clarity without judgment.

It helps you understand how power works without stressing you out so listen now to the NPR politics podcast and the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts by the most recent measurement from you and this is admittedly from a year ago, but to go with it anyway only 17% of Americans trusted the federal government.

And I think that to me this really seems like it's resonating with these polls showing that Trump's approval ratings are in the basement that there are a lot of voters who are just in play.

A lot of voters who are disillusioned and maybe aren't going to show up at all, but it does seem like an I'm interested John if you think this is right, but it looks to me like there were voters who broke for Trump in 2024.

The voters who don't necessarily vote all the time they were a lot of them pretty low information voters and now it looks like they're up for grabs and they could well support Democrats even in you know districts and states that have like our plus significant advantages for Republicans.

They just seem like they're kind of fickle and they're pissed off and they're going to be mad with whoever is in power, especially if there is so much evidence that person is doing a bad job.

Do you think that this is a good framework for understanding the election?

I don't know. I mean part of the reason I don't know is we really don't know until we get actual election results and see the way things work differently.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical or not skeptical, but why I don't necessarily think it's the best frame is that we're not we're in an off year, not a presidential year.

So people's views about Trump are mediated by the fact that he's not on the ballot.

I think it is safe to say that a lot of people who I mean there's a class of voters who voted, you know Obama Trump Biden Trump right and so those people are interesting and I think they're in the category you're talking about.

You know the times had this piece this week about like this is you know the distrust election. I mean sure but every like we had a lot of it.

Yeah, every like so distrust now we've also had a machine in American politics like I think you can argue you've never had before, but that's easy because the reason part of what builds this machine is the hyper connected environment of our political discourse, which is both the amount of information we get.

But also the fact that more of us hold politics more of those who are engaged in politics hold it closer to our identity than used to be the case in the past, but we have a hyper political system in which people are just constantly disappointed and Donald Trump has both taken advantage of that system in 2016 getting elected and then he has turned it into a perpetual motion machine in which he so distrust knocks trust out of all institutions.

Then encourages other institutions like the Supreme Court and the press to trade away its trust by over reacting or reacting sloppily and so he always in a low trust environment benefits because his skill is creating a story out of thin air in the moment for his supporters and his supporters are particularly tied to him and the power of his stories and so you know it's when everything has been reduced.

The person who can make the quickest narrative to grab the most motivated group of voters has the leverage and so that's he's he's added to this distrust but a lot of it was there before and a lot of it is exacerbated by technology and the lowering of standards across institutions.

But what we see this week is well first of all just to update his approval rating is now you know depending on where you look anywhere between 28 and 38% which is awful.

The generic ballot is about eight and a half points which is to say when you ask people they prefer Democrat over Republican you see the rating groups like the political report and Larry Sabado down in Virginia moving races pretty uniformly in the Democratic direction does that mean the Democrats are going to take the Senate which is the real question no but it means the it means the chances are closer and they still were gave a really wonderful way of thinking about this which I think is important and then I'll shut up though I have a question.

I'll shut up though I have more to say important when we talk about what are these numbers tell us what are the prognosticators saying what what silver said is the chances of hanging over the over the Senate is like a 50 yard field goal in football.

Those are made all the time kickers make those 50 yard football 50 yard kicks but when but when kickers take the field even though a lot of them make a 50 yard field goal some do miss everybody's heart is in their mouth if they're in the home team because it's not a certain way.

It's not a certainty but it is something that happens quite a lot and that I think is a way to think about the Senate chances which is to say if it doesn't happen what has been the tradition in the last many elections is that people say oh you know the people said that the Democrats had a chance to take the Senate they do if they don't take it it's not that that chance was wrong or the measure made of it is wrong and I think the reason that's important to stress now same with polling is that if we don't stress it now when the actual results do we have to do that.

If the actual results do come in if they are different than some of these carefully moderated predictions then people think I was the whole business of analysis is wrong I'll shut up now.

That's a really helpful thing but I know in midterms let alone in presidential elections like national security foreign policy tends not to be an animating issue but what I've been struck by in the polling specifically on foreign policy national security issues the extent to which a foreign policy or national security decision has been made.

The security decision has become a proxy for the very distrust that John or the skepticism that John is talking about most obviously is of course the war in Iran the the fissures in the Republican party the Tucker Carlson condemnation of the Trump administration over the war and I think the war has become a proxy for incompetence for lack of interest for a group of people who surround the president who don't know what they're doing.

In particular hegseth and the fissures within the Republican party so while I think you know Trump's lack of popularity is due to a lot of things you know he's under consistently under 30% on the war and the war is a proxy for higher gas prices he's not caring about us potentially corruption with Jared and all the negotiator Jared Christianer son and law and all the negotiators on the democratic side I think it's interesting when you look at the Gaza poll.

We look at the Gaza polling obviously we've seen a number of people win on the progressive side who just are not buying the talking points sold by the democratic establishment that somehow criticizing Israel is anti-Semitism it's been a long time coming and those of us who were on the other side of our party on this have a lot of scars to show for it but now you just simply cannot fall back as a Democrat into the typical talking point.

It's about Israel and Gaza and the Palestinians when you look at not just democratic polling but polling across the United States and where I think that's a proxy for Democrats in the same way I think the Iran war is a proxy is on moral clarity I think the Biden White House as we've surely surely seen and the president himself made it very difficult to have moral standing on foreign policy and national security issues for the Democrats given what they are doing.

They supported the funded armed in the war the Gaza war and that has come back to I think haunt the Biden administration for rightfully so but also make the democratic base and young voters make this a little bit of a foreign policy election for them as well.

Yeah that's really interesting set of parallels to be considering in the parties I mean I was struck this week by a number of republican defections of you know people like Ashley Hinton who's the republican nominee for senate in Iowa saying the war needs to end same with Mike Rogers who's running for senate in Michigan then you start to have people in Ohio and Wisconsin getting on this train.

Yes that's exactly right if we were charting the things that happened this week these mild flutters away from from the president did take place which give us real data you know so we have the generic polling we have the presence approval rating we have history we have the fact that Democrats have done extremely well in special elections.

Some of those are hard data some of it's just polling some of it's just pranark prognostication but when you see candidates inching out of the room or removing all of the all of the pro trump stuff from their from their websites they are behaving in their self interest in a way that is against the president's interest however.

It's extraordinary how small something has to be for it to be characterized as breaking with trump actually and said you know the warnings to end and and successfully well that's hardly a break with trump right but it was framed Bloomberg Bloomberg headline was hints and breaks with Trump on Iran war no not true she repeatedly voted against house resolutions to limit Trump's war powers as recently as last week and the event.

So the menu in which she said you know the the the warning and quickly and successfully comes at the end of a long list which is basically about gas prices.

So basically what she noticed is that diesel prices are super high and really bad for Iowa farmers and she's down eight points in the most recent poll in Iowa and and that's a possible democratic pick up and so she says this thing that is the smallest little distancing from the president I mean if she like what

this opens up for me and you'll never get candidates to answer this question but you know if she wants to talk about what she thinks about the war there are some questions we can ask her was starting the war mistake given where diplomacy stood in February before the bombing started as the war been one is it a mistake to continue it now if it's if what does it mean to be successful and immediate immediate obviously means tomorrow but what does it mean to be successful does it mean to be guaranteed to get rid of the nuclear program in Iran because that's what the president says he's done.

And would you vote differently the next time on war powers given what happened with this one like you want to you want to say where you stand we got a lot of questions for you of course none of them will answer them but I just think our in our profession we need to be more when we see these breaks we need to put it in context or else people are going to get away without actually answering the questions.

Yeah that's a great point so this is looking like it could be a blue wave for democrats it also could not be back to your 50 yard field goal metaphor one factor that could still come into play and help republicans is this tremendous wave of fundraising from the republican super PACs and the republican party which in that context they're far out stripping the fundraising of democrats though individual.

Democratic candidates are doing very well john how much do you think that this particular kind of outraising could come into play in the home stretch i mean there's going to be a ton of tv ads presumably negative ads against all the democrats running in close and semi close elections i'm what are you watching and all that and is it will make a difference what's a chance to haul out some old campaign cliches like you know well they can make the rubble bounce right.

So the idea that at some point the tonnage of money doesn't matter Laura Egan has a great piece in the bullwork walking through all of this one small way to explain the mechanism of this in a way in which the money might not matter the money the money could very well matter as well but one reason one way it might not matter is these is that super PACs buy ad adds at different rates and candidates do so that's more expensive for them so they need a lot more money.

And so democrats position themselves in a way so that their candidates have money their candidates can buy ads at lower rates so they can have parity on the airwaves even though they might not have parity in terms of the bill who's paying more for what super PACs have to pay more for ads you also have a limited amount of both inventory on ads that you can run on the air and also just brain share of voters who've come to their conclusions a long time ago so late breaking ads.

And so the money that's in a mid term election unless there's a super hyper local reason to get people to pay attention are you know the the money advantage can be weakened there is no question you'd rather have more money than less and so the debt Republicans and especially since things are not going well for Republicans in all these other categories having more money is a big deal and in a place like Texas where it's going to be very hard for the Republican to sorry for the Democrat to win the set for

the Senate race because of the tilt of the state even though he's running against a super damaged candidate in a tight race you know all that money might be able to keep the Republicans in power so I would say it's a worry for democrats but it's not as much of a worry as the overwhelming disparity in numbers would make you think.

Once again we cannot underestimate or we should act knowing how unpopular Donald Trump is I mean it is these numbers because I'm in the disaster I mean these are hurricane Katrina 2000 Americans die because of lack of federal help you know to save them most most people died in hurricane Katrina did not die from hurricane Katrina they died from the neglect of any.

Adequate response these numbers are so shockingly low it I do sort of laugh when I see one of these you know talking head Trump supporters as like I kind of wish I could have half that cockiness at 30% like you know I mean the and I think you know part of what the Democrats have to do is just make remember how unpopular Donald Trump actually is it's not a figment of our imagination anymore or it's not because we live in a cocoon.

These numbers are are very damaging to the brand and to the extent the GOP decided that Trump was the brand unless he can fix it it's not going to change I will say one more thing the interesting thing about Trump is the more unpopular he is the less likeable he becomes and it was his like ability that I think drew a lot of people to him so it's like he's in this vicious cycle.

There was something I'm not going to say he was charming but certainly those of us who remember Trump 1.0 he was kind of crazy to watch right before all the damage before everything this is a very unwatchable Trump physically mentally personality wise and he's in this cycle where he can't get out of it.

One of the when you raised the question Emily about distrust the times piece on distrust this week had lots of Trump voters who said like he's lying all the time and they what's interesting to me about that is the times also to focus group with Trump supporters who were disappointed in his second term and they were they were saying you know I thought that he was going to like rain it in from the first time or they had all of these these excuses for why they supported him and the re what I took from that was you know there's a there's a cycle out of the

logical structure when you support somebody especially after you have evidence about the behavior that they are now exhibiting you it's a personal you were personally wrong and that's hard to get over and it's hard and it's why you stick with your candidate despite and so we don't know if the times you know if those are just some voters who feel that way and there are many of them or if they are bigger if there are more of them.

Then it's a turnout problem in an off your election and that's what the Republicans have been struggling with and I something stood out to me in the times poll from the 15th of September which really brought this home to me I think I wrote a piece for the Atlantic called the pinball president which argued basically it's the president's lack of focus he's able to get our attention better than any other president but he can't do anything with it and and evidence of that to me is that in the times poll among Republicans right press

president's party very tight with him just 29% said the economy was better than it had been a year ago that's down from 72% in January what is the president been saying to the extent that he talks about the economy at all he is saying it's the best in human history these are people in his own party who don't believe that and he's been saying it relentlessly this is the president who can get our attention and we do I don't need to go into the hand made and rolled at the press plays in that but

to his people he's not able to sell the idea that the economy is better and I think that that goes to turnout it goes to the problem that the Republicans are facing in the midterm

and now we're going to turn to cocktail chatter what will you be talking about over the weekend Juliet as you are hopefully having a drink I have to say in my house drinks are becoming more and more non alcoholic really yes what's going wrong I think everyone's just having trouble sleeping when alcohol gets

that's interesting yeah anyway do you know about my orange wine obsession did I ever did I talk to you about that no please I got into the wait is this my so this is true cocktail chatter yeah during COVID right before COVID I had I was at some fancy speaking to

vendors something in nap a valley and I tried orange wine for the first time which is a white wine where the skin is kept on the grape so it appears slightly orange people think it's

orange base it's not and I loved it and then I got sort of obsessed with it during COVID it was like ordering all sorts of stuff whatever and then to your dry household now Emily orange wine is what Rose wishes it could be which is such a great

line because it's like deeper than Rose different than white and and I can't drink red wine anymore I've just I aged out of red wine it just that only as a

put me out oh my god so everyone should try orange wine that was not my cocktail chatter but now it is okay fair enough I instant switch John how about you when you're

drinking your glass of orange wine what will you be talking about that was really I will be talking about I guess

I'll do you list is this grant there's a history channel documentary on grant which I watched on Netflix which I have only watched two of the three

episodes of but which I really enjoyed particularly some of the discussion by the experts including David Patreus of the Battle of

Vicksburg and why what granted there was so revolutionary and it reminded me that particularly for anybody in the military who is in a position of command your

understanding of history can't be the Ra Ra version of of fake history because it has to be real because you're going to you're going to draw on it or

rely on it when you are in battle and so there are a bunch of military historians who are a part of this biography or this documentary of grant and that struck me and you

really the reason Patreus knows about the battle of Vicksburg is like you know that was a part of his training for then what he he had to do but there

was a fact that I had I guess forgotten about grant which is that after he wins an early battle that sort of begins his success in the Western

theater a newspaper dispatch mentions that he was chewing on a cigar during the battle and he was sent thousands of cigars by regular Americans

which seems a very sort of modern thing you know like but anyway that of course the sad part is that grant ends up dying from

throat cancer which is a result of the fact that those all those cigars he was sent he smoked like 25 of them a day

oh my god to his to his throat cancer but I would recommend the history channel show on grant

excellent all right my cocktail tear this week is from one of the sermons I listened to from my rabbi

Eric Woodward in New Haven this week this was his second day of Russia Shana sermon and he was talking

about death in this way that I found really helpful this this passage comes from Kohele

rabbi which is a midrash on the book of Ecclesiastes and so our rabbi was quoting rabbi pinjas who said that Ecclesiastes

tells us the day of death is better than the day of one's birth when someone is born everyone is joyous

when they die everyone weeps but that should not be so rather when a person is born no one should be joyous

as they don't know the challenges and actions that will confront that person and whether they'll be righteous

or wicked good or bad but when someone dies they should rejoice that he passed away with a good name

and departed from the world in peace and the midrash compares this to two ships at sail into the

Mediterranean Sea one that's leaving and one that's entering the port and and the idea here is that

when you leave the port people shouldn't necessarily rejoice because you don't know what challenges

that ship is going to confront how many storms it will encounter but when the ship returns to

port everyone should rejoice that is returned in peace. Similarly when a person dies everyone should

rejoice and praise the person that they passed away in peace and it fits really well with the

whole idea in Ecclesiastes that there's a time for birth a time for death a time for all the seasons

under heaven right um anyway I just really liked this reversing how we usually think about the

stages of life um we're also going to have listener chatter and this week our listener chatter comes

John in Atlanta. Hey Gapfast my chatter comes on the 50th anniversary of when Jimmy Carter gave his

famous interview to Playboy magazine and that's when he said he had looked upon women with lost

and committed adultery in his heart many times and believe it or not that became a major political

scandal even though what he said was true and relatable and to me it makes Jimmy Carter seem very

cool some people think that being cool is about style and taste or fitting in but another way of

being cool is by being it easier with yourself and and settle enough in your convictions that you

don't try to be someone you're not lots of people mocked and ridiculed Jimmy Carter but in that instance

he said what he believed he took the hit and he let people react however they reacted

he had an initial tolerance for embarrassment and 50 years later I think that might have been one

of the cooler things about him thank you John in Atlanta that's all for our episode this week we

also have a bonus episode in your feed we're going to be talking about where to send your kids to school

that's for slate plus members only they also get special discounts to live shows no hitting the

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right now and please we would love to see you at our Providence show coming up on Wednesday October

21st at the Strand Ballroom to buy tickets please go to slate.com slash gabbess live and if you want

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that's our show for today our researcher is Emily Ditto our producer is Nina Porzuki our theme

music is by they might be giants Ben Richmond to senior director for podcast operations and Hillary

Fry is editor in chief of slate for John Dickerson and Julia Kayam thanks so much for listening we'll

talk to you next week.

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