Episode 846: Bezos Makes Some Cuts

Jeff Bezos destroys the Washington Post, or does he? And major medical groups back off on trans. We'll discuss all this and more on this edition of the Editors. I'm Rich Lowry, and I'm joined as always by the right, Honorable Charles C.W. Cook, The reporter, Audrey Falberg, and the notorious M-B-D, Michael Brendan Doherty. You are, of course, listening to a National Geo podcast. Their sponsors this episode are Vare and Strawberry. More about both of them in due course. If for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review wherever you listen to your podcast. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything. So, Audrey, we had a press conference from Tom Homan, Donald Trump's man on the ground now in Minneapolis, saying things are going great. They're getting unprecedented cooperation by his account from city and county officials, scooping up illegal immigrants who have committed crimes from city and county jails. and things are going so well, including they've ticked a lot of people off their target list. They've already gone and gotten them that they're drawing down 700 DHS agents. Two ways of looking at this on the right. One is this is a surrender, just declaring victory and going home or easing up. Another is this is Schroeder. Homan is going to make more progress than the more bumptious approach was. Yeah, I think one of the reasons, first of all, that we're seeing this drawdown of 700 agents with, I think, 2,000 still on the ground in Minneapolis is that Trump is very sensitive to optics. Like with the economy, he always says, you know, I'd give myself an A+++, and I'm confused why voters aren't seeing all the good that we're doing. He kind of has the same reaction to, you know, immigration enforcement. and I think a revelatory moment was when he did that sit-down interview with the New York Times and they showed him a video of it was either the Renee Good shooting or the Preddy shooting I'm blanking on which and he kind of reeled back and was like ah you know that doesn't look good so you know clearly he's very sensitive to how different parts of his agenda are being portrayed in the media. But I do think that this drawdown was significant for a number of reasons. As the White House tells it, the drawdown is, you know, a reminder to Democratic officials of the rewards that they will kind of reap if they cooperate with federal officials on immigration enforcement. You know, you turn over your arrested criminals, you'll get fewer roving patrols in the streets, which means fewer otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants getting kind of rounded up and arrested and deported. But when I talk to people close to the administration about immigration enforcement, they agree that it is wild how much the polling has flipped on immigration enforcement in such a short time. Obviously, Trump vaulted to a second term because of Biden's failures on the economy and immigration. But really, people just wanted a secure border, and they wanted mass deportations. If you look at the polling still, people are pro-deporting criminals, but they're uncomfortable by the tactics and they think that it's gone too far. I think, you know, when we think about the president's immigration agenda, one kind of smart person close to the White House described it into, divided it into three sort of different camps. There's closing the southern border, which has been wildly successful. And again, people really want incentivizing voluntary deportations, which has also been pretty successful, and then the process of internal removal, which has had a lot of divisions. There have been a lot of divisions within the White House on this. So it's kind of been breathlessly covered everywhere. But, you know, for the past year or so, Christy Noem, the head of DHS, Corey Lewandowski, who has worked under her, and Stephen Miller, who's kind of the president's right-hand man on a lot of issues and is kind of overseeing Christy Noem, they're kind of, they've spearheaded the increased deportation numbers at all costs sort of strategy, whereas Homan, who worked in the first Trump administration and also oversaw Obama's deportation agenda, is seen as kind of the more level-headed process hardliner. So I think it's kind of a mistake to call Homan a moderate, right, because he's still kind of a no-nonsense guy who wants to deport a ton of people. But obviously, his more methodical approach is going to focus on criminals. I think the problem here is, you know, first of all, we had a partial government shutdown last weekend. Now the government, most agencies are funded through September 30th, which is the fiscal year. But then there's still this, you know, a lot of disagreements over what to do at DHS. There's about a week left until this funding deadline comes up. Obviously, Democrats are making a lot of kind of strong demands of what they want to see in terms of restrictions on DHS. And, you know, the administration's kind of in a pickle here because obviously they don't want immigration to drive liberal voters to the midterms. But obviously they're very sensitive to attacks from the right as well. They don't want to be seen as caving to progressive agitators and Democratic lawmakers. And maybe most importantly, the media on this issue, just because they've been hammered so much in the wake of these shootings. So it's kind of a tricky balance moving forward. But I do think that the fact that, you know, Trump sent home into Minneapolis is a sign that he's thinking to himself, OK, clearly, you know, I have a strong pulse on where my voters are. And clearly, even some Republicans are kind of uncomfortable by what's going on. So we need to make a shift there. Yeah. So MBD, as I've said before, a little bit of two minds on this. On the one hand, you don't want to give in to insurrectionists. And the mob actions in Minneapolis were absolutely horrible. We're learning more about how organized they were. You still have these idiots setting up checkpoints in the streets, sort of classic insurrectionist type activity. On the other hand, there was no need necessarily to send 3,000 guys to Minneapolis in the first place. I think that was chasing internet headlines and chasing the Nick Shirley YouTube video and the Minnesota fraud story, which has kind of taken a backseat now because all the drama has been in the streets over these deportations and the protests and mob action. And ironically, they kind of blew up the U.S. Attorney's Office. Not kind of. They did blow up the U.S. Attorney's Office. They had done such great work on the Minnesota fraud story for years because they objected to what the administration wanted them to do with regard to the Rene Good case. Yeah, it was an own goal, I think. I mean, I always, I was against this kind of, you know, I think there's a, there's a school of thought among some of the administration, like maybe Corey Lewandowski, maybe Stephen Miller of you want to have these dramatic confrontations with the left. And, you know, like you want to totally discredit the left. And I actually don't think that's what people want from border enforcement is for border enforcement to go to like Ann Arbor and fight with the Subaru people in the used bookstore. it's like they want the law to be enforced quietly in the background regularly without you know chaos without a sense of disruption without a sense of siege you know and um and instead we went for this dramatic confrontation and the two americans were shot and killed and whatever you think about the the individual shootings, whether, you know, I, I tended to think the first one might've been justified. I tended to think the second one was a bad shot, but I think people can come down any which way based on the video evidence we have. I mean, you know, it was obvious that this was going to be a polling disaster for the president, which is, you know, you, you, you turned up the temperature and Americans died in this, you know, you know, you know, whatever you thought of the Vietnam war, like Kent state was not like a, a smashing victory in the Vietnam war. Like this, this was never going to be a good thing. And you took, you took away now the heart of Republicans to do, you know, basic work, which is work, work site enforcement, which has, is really powerful in getting people to change behavior, whether it's employers or getting immigrants to self-deport, instead you thought, oh, let's instill fear in leftists, and now you've galvanized opposition, and you're underwater in the polls. So no, it's bad. And where's the Donald Trump of the first term? Why haven't we seen a firing? But you think this is kind of a form of surrender and going back, defaulting potentially to a more traditional Republican position on posture on immigration, which you... Yeah, I mean, so far, you know, Donald Trump has said we're going to do a lighter touch and announcements have come out that we're going to do just, you know, enforcement on illegal immigrants who have some other crime in their record, which, okay, everyone agreed on that previously. uh then five days ago the administration said they're going to double h2b visas so that's the the temporary work visas for you know that mostly go to agriculture hospitality um and a few other industries and you know this is just exactly what i don't want which is basically the government saying like hey here are entire industries where we're not going to have legal american labor like normal legal American labor we're going to have this second class imported workforce and you know that's the chamber of commerce agenda and it's like you know if I wanted to vote for 2016 Marco Rubio I would have voted for you know we would have voted for 2016 Marco Rubio but instead we voted for the guy who said I want to wear the mantle of anger you know like you know now he's going back to the chamber of commerce roots and to his roots as a hotelier you know on legal immigration that's always been kind of where he is yeah but you know still like as a political figure it's a far cry from mass deportations and they're not sending their best and Mexico's going to pay for the wall you know and And really, like, I don't think this is just something that, like, Trump can pivot on and then we're going to revert, everyone's going to revert to 2008 or 2006, you know, comprehensive reform. I mean, I think these are the trend towards restrictionism on the right, I think, is still actually in the ascendant because I think the trend toward the trend of emigration from the third world to the first is still going up post-COVID. And it's going up because modern communication and modern travel makes the price of leaving your homeland less than it ever was. And so the pressure is going to keep coming from millions of people moving. So, Charlie, I have restrictionist friends. Some of my best friends are restrictionists who are really hardcore on this issue, who don't mind, in fact, support what Homan is doing. They make the case, one, it just wasn't sustainable. what was happening. We were losing the battle of Minneapolis politically, so you just don't want to lose the whole store on that battle, which was going the wrong way. But two, substantively, if you focus on criminals and the worst of the worst, one is politically saleable. Even Chuck Schumer says we should focus on the worst of the worst. But you also shouldn't think of it just as single rifle shot removing this one guy, because almost all of them have families. Someone has a DUI, they have families here. You deport the guy at the DUI, the family's probably going to leave too. And then if you do the other end of what Homan has talked a lot about, but we haven't seen much of yet, which is worksite enforcement, both raids and kind of paperwork enforcement, you can squeeze the job market, which is the fundamental reason. Some people come here to deal drugs and they're gangbangers. Some people, very small group of people actually fear some persecution back home. But the vast majority, they're just here for the job. So if you can squeeze the job market, then you have people leaving and leaving in a way that's kind of invisible, that doesn't create big optics. Some people in the White House want the big optics, as we've talked about in the past, because they think it scares people into leaving. And I think they've been right to some extent there. But also the big optics have a political downside, the likes of which we've seen in Minneapolis. Whereas if you just did this squeezing the employers, you might get a similar effect in a more politically sustainable way. Sure, I'm in favor of all of that. I think once again, we have to acknowledge that if you shifted to that, the opposition would also shift to that and the campaign would be different. We'd have, as we have in fact seen in Nebraska, people filming outside of meatpacking plants while illegal immigrants are led away. Yeah, there's pretty wild scenes too. Yep, smashing cars. We would see the argument become, why do you hate those people? They have jobs. productive members of society we would see the argument shift to republicans are supposed to be pro-business so i think as long as we don't kid ourselves that using what seems like it might be the nicer set of tools would cause those whose objection is to immigration enforcements per se to back down, and as long as we accept what we're talking about here is given that our aim is to deport lots of illegal immigrants, that might be a better tactic for whatever reason, then sure, I'm on board. But the aim has to be the same. The aim should be to remove as many people who are here illegally as possible in compliance with the law. Now, I think that E-Verify is a no-brainer. I think it's a no-brainer because it goes after one of the key reasons that people are here illegally, whatever they might say. I think it's a no-brainer because it helps prevent one of the most pernicious side effects of illegal immigration, which is identity theft. And I think it's a no-brainer because it, notwithstanding my conviction that the objections would merely be transferred, does make it look more two-sided as a process. That is to say, if you raid illegal immigrants working in a factory and you go after the person who knowingly employed them, which is more difficult now, but with E-Verify would be easy. if you had an e-verify rule you could demonstrate that an employer wasn't using it or ignored it or bypassed it then it might look to a moderate voter as if you were not just picking on the little guy but going after illegal immigration and the causes of illegal immigration as Tony Blair might have said so I'm in favor of all of this but I'm not going to, and I know you're not asking me to I'm not going to kid myself here that that would make this easy. This is difficult. The United States is a huge place. It is, thankfully, a small-l liberal place. And we have tens of millions of illegal immigrants. And it is just a lot easier to let them in than it is to get rid of them. And if you have, as we do, a press corps, one of the political parties and most of academia opposed per se to that process then whatever you do is going to be met with resistance So Audrey I ask a question to you In your mind, who will win the negotiations over changes to ICE, reforms as Democrats call them, or a DHS shutdown if it comes to that? Well, I think the winner of the news cycle will probably be Democrats. I know that's not exactly what you're asking because I think, you know, with shutdowns, they typically hurt the party that's in power. But I just think here, the way that Democrats are portraying their demands is coming across to a lot of Americans as reasonable demands, even though in reality, a lot of them kind of aren't. I guess I'm leaning toward maybe a little bit of a shutdown. But I don't know. These things are to predict mbd um i would say i don't think there's going to be a shutdown and if there were i think thames would lose it charlie i don't think there's going to be a shutdown either now of course i didn't last time so i got that wrong i think michael is right democrats might lose this one but never underestimate the press yeah i i think there's a problem a problem republicans have as audrey points out is these demands a lot of them sound reasonable you know makes it sound like they just want warrants and they want they don't want raids and churches etc but i i think they're they're limited a few limited things that republicans can give on and maybe that'll be all they give on and that's kind of a democratic victory but not it doesn't catastrophically change policy you know uniform uniforms for these guys. They all have the same uniform if they're out in the streets in some place like Minneapolis. Body cams, which everyone's going to support, and even the administration has already given on. Making sure that identification number is visible on a badge or on a vest is entirely reasonable. More training. Who can really oppose more training? But any of this other stuff, moving to judicial warrants instead of administrative warrants, as we talked a little bit about an episode or two ago, in any big way would kneecap and interior enforcement. You can't unmask these guys in this current environment, but Democrats think they have the whip hand. I think they'll at least get some concessions. If they go too far and go into a shutdown, I think eventually they'll be stuffed because you'll have another TSA meltdown that will end the shutdown. So I think Democrats will move the ball some in their direction, but I'm hoping it's not too far and not on the most important substantive questions. With that, let's hear from our favorite watch company, Charlie Cook. Yes, Vare. 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And the reaction to this on the center-left, among the center-left journalistic establishment, has been total outrage in the sense that it's the obligation of Jeff Bezos, because he has a lot of money and has made a lot of money doing other things, to lose $100 million a year on the Washington Post and keep cutting checks to people. some of whose work is clearly not being read. Yeah, I just find this so tiresome. First off, it sounded like you were working your way up to an MBD sigh there for a second, but you didn't quite... It was a half sigh. I think the first point to make here is that Jeff Bezos' money is his. Perhaps that sounds obvious to you, but it doesn't seem to be obvious to everyone commenting on this. There is an explicit or implicit assumption that Jeff Bezos has an obligation, because he is rich or because he spent his money in other ways, some of them flamboyant, as with his wedding, to lose money subsidizing a Washington Post model that isn't working. And I think that's nonsense. Peter Baker of the New York Times listed Jeff Bezos' net worth over the years. Bernie Sanders listed the things that Jeff Bezos has spent his money on over the years. And then they contrast it with the supposedly paltry cost of the Washington Post. But it doesn't matter. what's the argument there that if you have a lot of money and can afford to spend it on things you want to spend it on then you're also obliged to spend it on things you're not interested in spending it on that is no different as an argument than claiming that you whether you're a private actor or a government official have some extra constitutional claim to Jeff Bezos' wealth you don't it's his money now he evidently thinks having lost money on this newspaper for a long time that it's not doing a good job he wants to change it up so he is that's his prerogative i am not agnostic on the quality of the washington post i think that it wasn't very good i think a lot of the people who lost their jobs weren't very good, however much they congratulate themselves on Twitter. And I think that the media in general is not very good. I think there is a chasm between how members of the media see themselves and the quality of the journalism that they put out. I think it's a big problem. The only analogy that I can think of is with academia. I think the total lack of self-reflection here is an indication of why this happened. No one seems to stop and say, well, hang on a minute, why were we losing $100 million a year? Why don't people like us? And good lord, they don't. Look at the polling. I think the media is less popular than syphilis. It's the least popular institution in the United States. I haven't read yet a single piece in a mainstream newspaper or written by somebody who was laid off here that accepted that the Post was not doing a good enough job to turn a profit. They just can't do it. so instead they say ridiculous things that would be advanced in no other case and on behalf of no other industry they pretend that the exact size of the washington post as it existed prior to these layoffs is somehow synonymous with the first amendment they regard the changes that have been made as an attack on the free press per se, on the United States, on its republican form of government. They believe that this is some boon to authoritarianism. No one, incidentally, ever explains how cutting the sports section allows Donald Trump to implement the Fourth Reich, but it's always there under the surface hinted at but never quite said so I find this wildly annoying I find the sense of entitlement with other people's money wildly annoying I find the pretense that newspapers are imperative public services like water or highways or the military intensely annoying i find the people who whine about it intensely annoying i don't have any time for this i'm sorry i know i'm supposed to be nice and i know that i wasn't and i know that there are people out there who are cross with me because i've seen their responses and i've got their emails but my job is to say what i think and i think that having what was it 19 climate reporters all saying the same thing is an indulgence i think they're down to four gosh four climate reporters thank goodness they're suddenly so sparse and they and they ax their dei reporter yeah what what a loss oh while i'm being horrible let me add this there are some people who lost their jobs and complained about it and linked to their work whose firing is a net positive for America. It's not just that it doesn't matter, as is the case in most instances. It's actually good for America. If you spend your days in a national newspaper trying to stir up racial disharmony, it is good if you do something else. One of the people who was let go wrote a piece a couple of years ago about how birds carry racism with them through their names. It is not a loss for the United States that that person is going to do something else with their life. I believe in lots of things. I believe the United States is a good place. I believe in colorblindness and meritocracy. and if you spend your days working against those things trying to make people cross with each other it's probably good that you're gone so no i don't think that this is a great blow to america but even if it were and you take completely the opposite view it's not your newspaper it's jeff bezels's this elementary fact of life yeah so so mbd it's not as though he acquired the newspaper and then starved it or neglected it, he made massive investments in it that just didn't work out. Now, if he doesn't have a plan for what it's going to look like in this next iteration, I think he should just sell it. I think he does have a plan, and we'll have to see how it goes. But I was just, these big newspaper institutions, they can thrive. The New York Times, for better or worse, has. And I was thinking about this today. I'm from the Washington area, but I'm not a Washington sports guy, except for the Capitals. I really like the Capitals. I'm not intensely enough interested most of the season to read routine Washington Capitals coverage. But I was thinking about this. When I do, I go to the athletic. So I go to the New York Times, in effect, for Washington sports coverage, which is kind of crazy. But it just goes to how the Times has adapted to the new environment by hook or crook in a way that the Post hasn't or hasn't yet. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, The Times has been really innovative, and they've been buying games. They've been buying kind of like the modern equivalents of stuff that used to appear in newspapers and print to tie people into their ecosystem. You know, they have like a great cooking section or a great reviews section or, you know, whatever that people are interested in just on their own and that produce a ton of revenue. the Washington Post didn't do that I want to say though I mean I agree almost with everything Charlie said about you know the frivolousness of so much of what appeared at the Washington Post especially under the Bezos iteration I mean his injection of so much money was kind of coincident with the great Woko you know woke revolution in journalism where suddenly you know people barely out of grad school thought that they could lecture the nation on you know their moral attitudes through any subject whatsoever even apparently ornithology as uh charles points out um you know it was a kind of disaster. But I will say this, I, I, I do, you know, I've heard that the focus is going to be on politics and on, you know, government inside Washington, even as they're closing foreign bureaus and, and stuff like that. I do think we are losing something, however, by losing all of the metro sections that used to exist in this country and cover city politics, uh, where, you know, there was often totally, you know, there was often inadequacies, but because the, often the partisanship was toned down, many cities are one party towns. And so the kind of political fights are within a party and don't challenge this kind of tribal loyalty of journalists, you got better coverage at a Metro desk of what's happening in the city and in the mayor's office than you're going to get with just, you know, citizen blogs, I think at this point, I mean, is what you're turning to in some cities, if you even have them. And so that's one thing I regret is like, this is another major city that's going to lose a metro desk. And, you know, I do think, you know, the fourth estate should have a role in informing the public about what's happening in policies where they wouldn't find it out elsewhere. Audrey? You know, I don't delight in people losing their jobs. I don't know too many Washington Post journalists. I have a ton of friends on the opinion side. The young ones I know on the news side, I have met our political reporters and still have their jobs. There have been a couple, you know, I think MBD, you mentioned they're trying to expand their political coverage. There have been some political reporters who are also laid off. But, you know, I hate to say this, if you click on their bylines and look, they really haven't written much over the past few months. I've always just wondered how people and mainstream institutions get away with this and also just why, because I'm not sure what you're doing all day if you don't write at least a couple pieces a week um i do think that this came as a shock to a lot of people i mean for example there was that one example of the uh you the reporter i don't know if she's a bureau chief or just a reporter in ukraine the war zone i mean that's pretty pretty tough but um as mbd and charlie have complained for those who don't know that she was getting fired while she was literally in a in a war zone and didn't have power i think which is pretty tough They called her back to DC for a meeting Right right These things are never easy Pretty rough But I do think as MBD and Charlie have also alluded to there is this kind of alarming sense of entitlement that we seeing from a lot of these people Not everybody's expressing this. I mean, some people who are laid off are just saying they're laid off, they're sad, you know, keep their mind for work. But then other people have just taken it to another level, really criticizing Bezos and just saying, essentially, I can't believe that they had the gall to fire me. And I just think that this is kind of embarrassing to be that not self-aware. I mean, if I got laid off tomorrow, obviously I'd be devastated. I'd probably cry. But, you know, I'd sit down and ask myself why before I posted publicly about it. And we're kind of not seeing a lot of that, I think. There was a protest, right? Wasn't there a protest outside the building? There was. It was very cringe. I think one of the big problems here, though, is that, you know, clearly at the start of the first Trump administration, they made this bet to be kind of the resistance, you know, adopting the democracy dies in darkness label. And so as a result, I mean, they've always had, you know, kind of diversified leadership, but it became much more liberal. And so to the point where really, really liberal resistance coverage is what a lot of their readers like and expect. So I do think that's kind of a tricky balance for them. You know, a lot of people have been joking on social media about how we can't just have sub stacks. I do think that that is an issue. I mean, I think all of us would really like strong newspapers. I think that they're good. It's good when people aren't just writing on, aren't just blogging, because a lot of young reporters especially really need strong editors to give them feedback and often tell them, you know, what not to write. so I think you know that's obviously a tough development but yeah I mean obviously the journal and the New York Times are thriving right now so you can thrive with pretty liberal coverage you just got to kind of do it in a smart business sense but yeah not not looking great over there all right Charlie I ask a question to you what is your favorite newspaper either now or in some past period of time? Well, this is perhaps informed by the fact that I never read it, but when I was younger, my dad used to get the Times in England, which was huge, and he would sort of open it in his chair and it would completely cover him while he was reading it. And I always assumed that it must be very interesting. Maybe it was terrible and I'd be pleased if everyone there lost their jobs, but it looked cool. someone said to me the other day well you know they missed that and i agree so it looks the the sheer size of it and also the sense that it was good i mean this is the thing a lot of this sensibility is aesthetic this is what progressives do they take over good institutions of which people are fond then they ruin them but then they appeal back to the time before they'd ruined them and they use that imprimatur to defend the institution that they've ruined. Right. You've talked about this a lot lately. There might be a book idea in there somewhere, Charlie. MBD, favorite newspaper now or some other time? I mean, when I was a kid, I had fond memories of the Newark Star-Ledger coming into the house every morning and just the ritual of checking the sports scores, the standings in the comic section oh the agile agate type oh yeah yeah yeah i you know that was part of it like i would i had sports center on in the morning but then like i would i would pull out the sports section and see what what the uh standings were in the nba or the or major league baseball you know you know i mean i came as a real revelation in that regard that usa today because they they first had the kind of expanded box scores that had like the average in their every day and whatnot. And that was so, so, so, so groundbreaking. I remember USA Today had a great, like a yearly, like poll of players in every league. They would do like this fantastic, you know. Yeah. The sports, sports section was a major emphasis. And, um, you know, so I remember that I, um, for a very brief time in my adulthood, I worked for the very local and very venerable and old Putnam news, Putnam County News and Recorder, which was the oldest newspaper in New York State. Such a great newspaper. And what was my favorite thing? This is such a vandal thing to do, but my favorite thing was we would reprint some of the earliest articles that we could find in microfiche. And these dated to pre-Civil War. and I found out that the Putnam County News and Recorder was a copperhead paper of immense passion and retained those sympathies well after the Civil War. The Washington Post was set up in the late 19th century to support the Democrats, so it has a similar history. There was a lot we couldn't repeat, reprint, But it was also amazing to see these kind of, sometimes very literary dispatches from the Spanish-American War. And so I love that sense of history. And then lastly, like today, contemporary, you know, contemporary paper, I kind of love the London telegraph, the daily telegraph, because it's so obviously written by this weird subculture in where it's like the political section is written by all of these like conservative Catholics who are really reactionary. and then the lifestyle section is all about like getting coked up and having affairs with your wife and it's just very bizarre and uh i love that i love the i love the janice face of it um it's just yeah middle-class london is must be quite quite a world to itself audrey uh definitely the wall street journal i had the uh privilege to briefly uh work as a Bartley fellow on the opinion side for about 10 weeks. And to date, one of my greatest professional achievements are the three times James Toronto didn't change my headline suggestions on op-eds. He's very tough with those, but their news side is just phenomenal. I mean, they get just all the scoops. So I'm constantly refreshing their political news page. So my favorite newspaper is the New York Post, hands down. It is the nation's newspaper. I have a history with the Washington Post since I grew up in the Washington area. It was such a big deal. I'm never going to say that I liked the Washington Post. I was basically, to use Charlie's term, intensely annoyed by it even as a kid, but it had some great writing. Tom Boswell, the baseball writer for the Washington Post, was so fantastic. The opinion columns, where they tilted left, but still were very well done, and you had George Will in there. So I have a little bit of fondness for the Washington Post, but I've never been a huge newspaper guy. I've always been a more magazine guy. So my favorite print publications besides NR would be The New Republic and The American Spectator in their heydays were just so good. They were so good. I used to have them in boxes, but I gave them away at some point or trashed them at some point. But I wish I still had some of those to look back to with that. Let's hear from our next sponsor this episode, Strawberry. You've heard it all too often. AI is here and will eventually take your job. Sound familiar? But it turns out there are lots of other things threatening people's jobs. Things like boredom, underappreciation, burnout, and dead ends, just to name a few. And yet so many people stick with their jobs for fear of making a wrong move. It's time to get unstuck. It's time for strawberry.me, where a certified career coach will work with you to determine what you really want and help you put together a plan to get it, either at your current job or by helping you land a new, more rewarding one. Your coach will push you, encourage you, and help you achieve more than you ever possibly could on your own, and they'll do it using good old-fashioned human intelligence. Why not see for yourself? Go to strawberry.me slash editors. Get 50% off your first coaching session. That's strawberry.me slash editors. Now is the most affordable time ever to find out if career coaching is right for you, please check it out. So MBD, some major developments on the trans front. We had this first successful major medical malpractice case, horrifying, double mastectomy. A woman had all sorts of other problems, and they kind of rushed her through this process, and she regretted it and she sued and got a big, big, big damages, I think maybe over $2 million. And as you know, I like to give people credit for their correct predictions on this podcast, except for Charlie here and there. But I remember at dinner with you, and I've probably referred to this on air before, I don't know, it might've been 10 years ago now, years and years ago. And you said, the way this is going to end is malpractice suits, massive malpractice suits sure enough you have the successful malpractice suit and not coincidentally you have major medical groups that were all in on board the fashionable trend here to say yes you got to treat minors it'd be terrible not to treat minors as a suicide risk you don't treat minors etc etc reversing course what do you make of it yeah i mean um yeah always listen to me i mean that's the major lesson from this and what everyone should take from it. Yeah. I, I, I always thought this would end in lawsuits. I thought it would be, you know, a trans woman, you know, someone who could, you know, go up on stand and say, I was, you know, eight years old, you gelded me and now I can't be a father and I'm incontinent for the rest of my life. You know, And the damages would be absolutely astonishing. And that would begin to change how insurance companies spoke to medical groups and hospitals and to psychiatric doctors and their boards. I'm amazed. I actually had written earlier this week to undermine the reputation you just gave me, Rich. I said earlier this week on Monday that I thought there would still be a lot of fight left precisely because the medical boards hadn't changed in the United States yet. And you still had mostly colleges and a lot of other states that are engaged in the fight on the other side of it, you know, suing the Trump administration over its executive orders. but then these two two results come in and i have to say it's it's following roughly the pattern we saw in the united kingdom you know but almost like two years behind the united kingdom where you know they had kind of adopted what was called the dutch protocol in the you know early 2010s and then there was just this bonanza of giving children hormone blockers etc and then slowly you know the nhs because of its nature started to like look at it is this do we see any real rational benefit from this treatment not really then a pause then inquiries then the you know uk supreme court gets involved in rules that women are women and men are men and you know suddenly the gender clinic is major gender clinic in the UK is shut down in the United States you had this proliferation of private gender clinics it was kind of like a wild west situation but when you're seeing these medical boards the AMA and the the plastic surgeon association both saying this, I mean, that has huge effects. I mean, that means insurance companies can, you know, tell people, knock it off. We're not going to cover this. We're not going to treat it. And you're potentially exposed for these lawsuits in the future if you proceed. So this is, this is massive. The only thing that's shocking to me is it kind of took as long as it did. I mean, it really is nuts that for a decade, we allowed these kind of deranged moms to put their children through these surgeries and these hormone treatments that often render them infertile for life. that condemn them to a lifetime of further surgeries to kind of hold together these wounds that are made and that we have somehow deemed into calling them like pseudo genitals of the opposite sex. But some of them, though, and I think maybe this is an element of the malpractice and the facts of the malpractice case, some of them were intimidated maybe this also played a role with elon musk too intimidated by the suggestion oh that well your son or daughter is going to commit suicide if you don't do this yeah of course no that's that's the other evil thing that doctors have done and um in that they've had the collaboration of this kind of weird trans online culture which initiates and and the people into this idea that it's acceptance or suicide. And yeah, it's, it is a bullying tactic and it hasn't been, it hasn't been entirely abandoned either. I mean, you still have tons of people who will say like, this is, that all of these things are meant to encourage trans suicide, which they are not. And the big finding that turned the whole thing around was when Northern European countries looked and found that post-surgery, suicide ideation and suicidal action increased after surgery. that Dutch study by the way the start of the whole thing was so flawed, it was so limited, they basically excluded people that were having bad outcomes from the final result and then the whole western world, at least for a time, copied it but Audrey, we're seeing a disparity here where elite institutions are coming back from where they were out on a limb with a fashionable opinion, but the fashionable opinion is still held by the supposedly fashionable people, if you include among those progressive leaders, they haven't shown any wiggle room here at all. You had a Gavin Newsom or a couple others right after the election saying, yeah, maybe the trans sports thing isn't so great, but they're all back in line. And as MBD was alluding to, they're still sticking to their guns on the medical stuff as well. Yeah, here's a headline from Axios on January 18th. Dems potential 2028 contenders are cautious on trans rights. And what prompted this was the interview that Ben Shapiro did with Gavin Newsom. And Shapiro presses him, the question you're not wanting to answer is whether boys can become girls. And Newsom goes, yeah, I just, well, I think for the grace of God. And he can't answer the question. And so this prompted these Axios reporters to send inquiries with three questions to a bunch of 2028 contenders, which is really interesting. So the questions they asked were, should transgender girls be able to participate in girls sports? Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones? And what is your response to the question, can a man become a woman? So the vast majority of would-be 2028 contenders did not respond to the inquiry, unsurprising. And then you'd had a few people, Rahm Emanuel, Shapiro, and Buttigieg respond, but not really giving any kind of forceful denunciation of this kind of activist movement. It's been really interesting because I think for the past couple of years, when reporters ask about this, the question typically revolves around the sports issue. In reality, probably the more consequential one, even though it is kind of uncomfortable to talk about, is whether children can consent to these medical interventions. And in some cases, obviously, extremely invasive and, you know, typically irreversible surgery. So clearly, this is going to be a big issue, I think, on the debate stage, as it should be in 2028. But just one other quick thing. I mean you know obviously there are a ton of detransitioners out there And it because of them and some brave reporters and whistleblowers that there is kind of this reckoning Obviously conservatives have been writing about this for a while But you know this is, the word traumatizing is thrown around a lot, but this is genuinely a traumatizing experience to go through this realized, you know, after telling everybody that you were undergoing this life-changing thing, it is kind of a humiliating and traumatizing thing to say, okay, I was wrong here. I was really misled. So, I do really applaud people who are coming out and speaking about it. Hopefully those people will get, you know, what they need through the courts in some sense of justice. But, you know, it just all along, this has been such a human interest story that should have interested liberal writers for the past, you know, ever since this kind of became such a craze. And it's just really a shame that only now, once there is this reckoning, is it finally okay in elite circles to start talking about it? So, Charlie, you've already made your distaste for elite institutions clear. or hijacked elite institutions, at least clear. On this episode, what do you make of the performance of the AMA and others? Well, I'm glad you led in with that, Rich, because you correctly telegraphed what I'm going to say briefly, which is that this is of a piece, in some sense, with the last topic. The lack of trust that we are now seeing in many of our institutions is regrettable. because you do want to have people and organizations that you believe. I live in an area that has a lot of medical professionals in it. I don't burden them with every question I might have, but occasionally I will ask, because I don't know very much about medicine or the human body. I am, in fact, quite ignorant. If I strain a muscle and I ask them which muscle it is and how long it might take to heal, I believe their answer. They're my friends. I don't think they have a reason to lie to me. But if they did lie to me, if they tied up their answers with fashion or politics, I'd stop asking. And that would be their fault. Now, of course, if I then extrapolated that out into all sorts of nonsense, that would be my fault. But the lack of trust would be their fault. What we have seen here is insane. What we have seen here is institutions changing definitions and issuing statements that were false. all of a sudden it became trendy to pretend that one could change one's sex all of a sudden it became trendy to declare that it was okay for minors to permanently alter their bodies all of a sudden it became trendy to suggest that there is no difference between men and women in sports. Those things aren't true, but they were said nevertheless. And they weren't said in a vacuum. Elsewhere, the same trend obtained. For example, during COVID, when the pandemic started, a set of rules were put in place, and they were labeled science with a capital S. Some of them were made up on the spot, but, you know, I had some time for that. We were dealing with a crisis with which we were unfamiliar. And then a whole bunch of protests broke out, and the same people said, ah, yes, well, all of the rules that we have just set up and enforced with law don't apply if you're protesting against racial injustice. that's nonsense too many of these institutions had no respect for the truth and no respect for themselves and because of it they are no longer respected so now what you're going to see is them go back on their work change their minds why not because they saw any different data or did any research that first changed their opinion and then reversed their opinion, but because they're going to be sued. In both cases, they have altered their guidance based on force. In the first instance, force applied by cultural institutions that demanded that they say the right words in the right order, and now force in the form of good old-fashioned money that threatens their livelihoods and in some cases, them personally. That's very bad for America. That's why I'm complaining about this tendency for progressives to take over key institutions that are trusted, that have value, completely screw them up, but then keep pointing to the logo, the seal, the coat of arms, as if it and not their behavior is what conferred the prestige and the trust this has been an absolute disaster not just for all of those who were affected who are of course the main victims of it but for trust and continuity in american life and i'm glad that it seems that the tide is turning but i feel a little bit nauseated by the fact that the tide is turning because of litigation and not because of a renewed commitment to the truth. So MBD, exit question to you. Let's talk about another elite institution, the NFL. We're on the cusp of Super Bowl Sunday here. So exit question to you first. What is your favorite Super Bowl dish? And who, by the way, is going to win the game? you know usually i would have said just hot wings um but i don't know you change as you get older um your your tolerance for abusing your stomach with the hot sauce declines and you end up settling for the spinach dip that your uh sister yeah that your sister-in-law makes in the bread This is what I'm talking about. Elite institutions like MBD. Bread Bowl. MBD, you never lose your capacity to surprise. I'm literally looking forward to, you know, if we get together, I'm literally looking forward to my sister-in-law's spinach dip. It's good. Is there something, does she have a secret recipe? I don't know. I don't know what she does. It's just, it's there, it's in a bread bowl and it's, you know, tons of garlic and onions. and it tastes great. And I don't know whether we have access, whether Sarah can hop on, but we should get her on one, the propriety of spinach dip as a Super Bowl dish and what her favorite dish is. Sometimes you just, you know, you just got to admit to yourself that you're old sometimes. All right, spinach dip. And who's going to win? The Seahawks. They're like, they look like a video game that's played on turbo against everyone else. Audrey? No idea who's going to win the game. Don't know anything about football. My boyfriend is a big Jets fan, so I guess he doesn't know anything about football either. We were talking before we started recording that you feel sorry for the football players getting hit so hard. It makes me nervous to watch. My boyfriend's got me into baseball. You know, I don't actually have to watch the game. I can just drink beer and just talk to people. But football, just something about it makes me sad. in terms of food probably wings um i'm gonna make a bunch of a big spread this sunday so i've learned how to make wings recently i'd never made them before and they're actually pretty easy um so so excited for that so regarding the baseball yankees or mets mets also always a disappointment but that's why he uh we're perfectly matched on this podcast we have two yankees two math charlie favorite dish who's gonna win well i will say despite making fun of mbd i do agree with him this has been the most disappointing part for me of getting older is my inability to eat really spicy food and then not pay a price for it i would as a result historically have said hot wings as well but instead i'm going to say mozzarella sticks which i absolutely love especially when dipped in what's it called marinara sauce delicious anything that you could get at a tgi fridays is good in a super bowl party yeah i still think you got to do some wings but i i would go with a good seven layer dip i made i made fun of mbd for the spinach dip but a good seven layer dip does not have one of the seven layers is not spinach and I'm going to say, did you say the Seahawks, Charlie? Actually, I forgot to say that at all. I think the Seahawks are going to win the game. I wouldn't be surprised if it were quite one-sided. I think the AFC has been weaker overall this season. I haven't been impressed with the Patriots in the postseason. I'm not saying they're frauds. They did have an easy season. I think Mike Vrabel is a terrific coach, and Drake May is an excellent quarterback, and they do have a good defense. But I have a feeling they're going to be outclassed and that this is going to be a year in which people have said throughout this is the NFC Super Bowl. Yeah, so I'm seven layer dip and the Seahawks. I don't care for either of these teams. I'll be rooting for the Patriots on underground, underdog ground. And I like Mike Rabel as a former Titans coach. But I've just never liked the Seahawks. I don't like their uniform. I don't like the stadium, although I guess it's one of the most exciting stadiums to be at. So it's so loud. but I'll be pulling a little half-heartedly for the Patriots without great hope with that. Let's hit a few other things before we go. MBD, you're preparing for the Superbowl. Yeah. Um, I don't know. For some reason, my kids got really into this a couple of years ago when we moved, when we moved into her house, my daughter's like, Oh, the big game, you know, cause on the radio, they call it the big game, you know? Yeah. Uh, cause you're like, for whatever reason, like any commercial entity is not allowed to use the term Superbowl. and they like the ritual of it, that there's food, that there's a ceremony, that there are a lot of funny commercials. Yeah, it's a great national festival that's denuded of any, not burdened by any meaning, really, right? Yeah, exactly. Gathering with people. Yeah, exactly. So it's a fun family day. So, Audrey, the snow is beginning to meld a little bit in Washington, D.C. Yes, it's been a disaster here. two weeks after the snowmageddon, there's still a ton of black ice, a ton of the sidewalks on Pennsylvania Avenue in Capitol Hill are still not paved. People's cars are still stuck. And so finally, it's starting to melt a little. Of course, the problem is once it melts that, you know, it gets colder at night and then it all kind of becomes an ice sheet again. But really just say, people keep joking that Muriel Bowser, because she's not running for re-election, that's why She phoned it in on the snow plowing. Her fatal error was not plowing the day it snowed in the immediate aftermath. So it's just been a total disaster. I fell for the first time today, which was not great. And then I almost fell again on my way over to the Capitol here this morning. So looking forward to it finally melting. Well, given other stuff, you've notoriously stepped in the Washington, D.C. area. That's a little better. Yes. Charlie, you've been watching John Wayne movies. Yes. So one of my perennial complaints, and I may have made it on this podcast, is that when I finally was able to afford a big 4K TV and surround sound and install it in my house was also the time that I had kids. And as a result, I really don't get to use it. I thought, well, I'll catch up on all these great movies. And I can't because I'm working when they're at school. And then when they get home, they're around and I don't want them to be around if I'm watching any movie that's rated above, you know, maybe a PG. and so instead I've used this TV to watch Bluey and SpongeBob and other kids shows. It's a massive waste. But I have learned that there are all sorts of westerns from the 1950s and 60s that are in fact kids safe and many of them star John Wayne. So I've started to watch these movies and the kids seem to love them. I thought they would just hover around or do what they do around and then if they did pause to watch the screen, it wouldn't matter. But actually, they don't just pause to watch the screen. They stop whatever they're doing, and they come over, and they sit wrapped for the whole movie. So clearly, John Wayne, whose movie career started in the 1930s, is just as much of a draw 96 years later as he was at the time. So have you guys watched The Searchers? I have not watched that with the kids. I have, you know, actually, I love that movie. It's one of my favorites. I haven't watched it for a long time. But I have not watched it with the kids now. So I'm basically the Paxitani Phil of when the sun is getting demonstrably warmer and more powerful, even if it's cold. And it was Wednesday this week when I was standing outside, and I felt it. It has that pitchers and catchers feel to it, the sun already. And sure enough, pitchers and catchers are going to report, I don't know, in a week or so. but as far as I'm concerned, the winter is basically over. We just need to endure some more cold. And then what in the Northeast is going to be a terrible long spring, early spring MBD. I can feel it. It's going to be very MBD weather. It's going to be like there's still going to be snow on the ground. It's going to be 45 degrees and raining, and it's going to be misty. And so it's going to be great weather for MBD brooding. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. MBD, what's your pick? um my pick is you've all live in nationalizing elections is a very bad idea and it was when democrats tried it ah my call mine too well you know it's hard it's when he writes it's hard not to pick him and um you know you've always always right like ramesh is always right um you know it's kind of hard to argue with him and um here he is standing up for a party once again So it's depressing and disconcerting that learn you have a strong opinion on something and then you learn remesh or you've all disagreed. You're like, oh, no. How could I be wrong about this? Audrey? Mine is MBD's Midnight Strikes for Immigration Restrictionism, asking a lot of timely questions about what the heck's going on with the debates inside the administration. And most importantly, why Noam hasn't gotten the X. Charlie? Well, I'm not going to change mine. I'm going to dig my feet in in my dyspeptic mood and also pick Yuval Levin's. I think the key here is the substance of the argument, but the other utility of it is that it reminds everyone that the Democrats are not actually opposed to this and that their newfound love for federalism is fake. There is no such thing as a principled democratic opposition to the nationalization of elections. They just don't want this particular one. and i do agree with you val that we shouldn't nationalize elections but if we're going to nationalize elections it would be much better to include voter id or something that has 80 support than whatever it was they were trying to do last time so he's right and i'm with him but we really should not pretend that what we're looking at here is the republicans trying to nationalize elections and the democrats trying to stop them everyone's trying to nationalize elections and neither side should do it so my pick is by one of our young writers john puri on the administration's war on drug development, as we've talked about previously, kind of mixed bag on the administration's economic policy. And this is an area where I think that populism has really put them on the wrong foot. And we're adopting European style policies that have suppressed drug development on the continent. And we really don't want to import that approach here, but that's the direction we're heading in. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a National Youth Podcast and you'll rebroadcast, retransmission, or counter this game without the express written permission of National View Magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the aforementioned incomparable Sarah Schitty, who makes us sound better than we deserve. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, MBD. Thank you, Audrey. Thanks to Vera and Strawberry. And thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. We'll see you next time. Bye.