That’s What Xi Said

Friends don't let friends have partisan brains.

By , and
97

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah discuss TikTok’s influence over the youth (See: Kids call Congress threatening suicide over TikTok ban).

The Agenda:
-TikTok’s Chinese ownership raises national security concerns
-Klon Kitchen being cool on 60 minutes
-Robert Hur’s testimony and partisan political narratives
-Did anyone watch the Oscars?
-Kate Middleton conspiracy theories

Show Notes:
-Jonah’s Gfile: I’m With Hur

By , and
Comments (97)
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  1. GregS

    Jonah said that this was a Kinsley gaffe - that the reason Democrats were incensed by Hur saying that Biden was an elderly man with a poor memory was that they *knew it was true.*
    I wonder if Jonah thinks this was the same reason Kavanaugh was mad about being accused of rape. Or does this logic only apply to Democrats?

    Also, I like how Jonah is very careful to say how much he dislikes Trump and cannot vote for him, without saying the same about Biden. It's as if he knows he's going to vote for Biden, but can't allow himself to say it out loud.

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    1. Nick Pellicciotto

      Of course he doesn't. Dispatch staff are convinced they're completely objective and non-partisan, but of course they are. They're just partisans for a party that left them about 8 years ago...

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    BrandonAlleman

    Does anyone remember what the other editorials were. My recall is the Jan. 7, 2021 was the first and this recent one was number four. I can't recall two and three.

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      Rajeev

      Impeachment on 1/6 was the 1st. Afghanistan withdrawal was the second one.

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      BrandonAlleman

      I think one of the others was the Afghanistan withdrawal but am not sure.

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    Ben Connelly

    I just want to say that I think the Dispatch has taken an admirable position and I could hardly be more pleased with that staff editorial. You’re doing great work.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    Another reason you're not old, Mr. Goldberg, is that you can't remember George C. Scott's protest/refusal of his Best Actor Oscar for "Patton" in 1971. QED: You're still a whippersnapper, even if (as I trust) you've since memorized two or three of his best speeches from that movie (and who hasn't?)

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    Ms. Isgur was exactly right about examining lawyers' canny reasons to flatter and encourage witnesses.

    However, Mr. Hur throughout the interview showed extreme courtesy, appropriate to the situation. My take from the transcript was that Hur was mostly trying to give Biden a polite acknowledgement that this long rambling answer had finally wound its way to an end when Hur described the answer as "helpful." That's not even a white lie: a long, rambling, nonresponsive answer can be helpful for many purposes. But it was the equivalent of a questioner, any questioner, saying, "That's very interesting" before refocusing the witness' attention politely.

    And Mr. Hayes was exactly right about the context of the "photographic recall" comment by Mr. Hur! Reprinting here my own take on this part of the transcript, with more specifics, as I've posted in some previous comments here:

    ====

    What Hur said was as part of a larger, rambling conversation by Biden about the rooms and furnishings, especially photographs, in Biden's house, which begins on page 43 of the transcript. He's trying to get basic information from Biden about where he's stored things over time, but Biden starts telling stories. "I'm a frustrated architect," Biden insisted, "and if you went through, you probably saw all those significant number of house plans [I] have drawn. And as a matter of fact, in order to try to convince me not to run for the Senate for the 19th time, my wife said, look, you don't run, pay for architectural school for you." There's also pages and pages of Biden monologuing about particular rooms, walls, cabinets, and especially, photographs "and the stories they tell" — one of which involved, apparently, Biden astonishing leaders of Mongolia with his archery skills during a vice presidential trip in 2011. As he wraps up this long diversion, we get to this (at page 47):

    ===begin quote===
    PRESIDENT BIDEN : Anyway, so I have pictures like, like that, you know, that are up against the wall, and down here they're all over in my in the, in the West Wing. [Court reporter's capitalization; doesn't fit the context, which isn't about the White House.] Anyway, a lot of those pictures that you remember seeing them piled up I know there must be 50 of them. I don't know what to do with them, you know. So there's a lot of stuff in that attic that is material that is, you know I think some of it is notebooks of mine. I'm not sure, but anyway, that's the totality of where things would be.

    MR. HUR: Understood. That was very helpful. We have some photographs maybe to show you, but you have appear to have a photographic understanding and, and recall of the house [you built].

    PRESIDENT BIDEN: No, and they busted their ass for three years to build the house.
    ===end quote===
    link: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/09313e5f67ff44be/8076faaf-full.pdf

    Pretending from this polite aside that Hur was astonished, surprised, glowing in his praise of the POTUS' overall memory during the interview is ... typical Adam Schiff.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    My recollection, without checking the video, is that Mr. Goldberg said and wrote that Mr. Hur was the Dispatch's "spirit animal." "Mascot" I recall being volunteered during the Dispatch Live by Mr. Hayes.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    A suggestion:

    Perhaps Mr. Kitchen could do a three-minute (TL/DR version) of his TikTok observations on streaming video, which — along with a transcript and the extended version — could be posted and hosted by Dispatch Media. It could be used by Dispatch members — and perhaps also others; put it outside the paywall; encourage forwarding — as an explainer of why TikTok is a very bad idea even from the perspective of a teen.

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  8. Dhetzel1

    With regard to the editorial, I understand the argument made on this podcast and the prior one as to why it was written, but as someone who read it I had the TLDR takeaway that it was saying: "both our options suck; we deserve better." To which my immediate response upon concluding the editorial was "yes...and?"

    The Dispatch does not do editorials often. For me it felt like this particular one wasn't needed. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't read or heard a hundred times before via Dispatch articles and podcasts. If you all are going to take the relatively big step of publishing only your fourth editorial in four and a half years, I expect it to actually advance the plot. I've read/heard all of you go on frequently and at length about all the ways we could systemically and institutionally make changes that would prevent this terrible choice from happening yet again in the future, changes with which I by and large wholeheartedly agree. But telling us our options suck and that we deserve better after the primaries are already essentially over just seems meaningless and a waste of publication space. This doesn't mean you need to provide an endorsement (I'm glad you didn't) but how about providing some wise words for us reasonable people to go off of regarding how to go about divining what we should do, and why?

    I will say that for me personally, despite ypur best efforts, the reasons listed as to why our options are so terrible still came across as a bit of equivocation that Biden and Trump's unfitness for office were of similar levels of despicable in terms of substance and magnitude, something I don't agree with in the slightest (and I'd wager you don't, either) but it came across as such to me, and I suspect was the underlying cause of much of the angst in response to the editorial. As you noted in the piece, reasonable people can come to differing conclusions with the choice at hand. As someone who is of much more like mind with Steve's foreboding doom and gloom view of a possible second Trump term than Jonah's "everything will be alright" attitude due to being on the Hill for the entirety of Trump's first term and seeing up close the train wreck it often was, I find myself of a more Bulwarkian mindset regarding this particular vote: I dont have any particular affinity for Biden, but to my mind, any vote that isn't for Biden in this election is a de facto vote in support of Trump. People can hate that and bemoan it until the cows come home, but it's just the practical reality given our highly polarized political climate and 2 party system.

    Love all the content here, keep doing what you are doing, and I look forward to what you have coming down the pike in the future.Show lessShow lessShow less

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      This is a thoughtful comment, Dhetzel1, and well put.

      The editorial was no surprise, nor, in the sense of containing new or additional facts or arguments, much "needed" right now by regular Dispatch readers, or perhaps others of like mind.

      Sometimes we have occasion, in discussing where a publication has "stood" on particular topics at particular times over years past, to look for the best, most concise, and most self-aware statement by its editors in editorial form. Indeed, substantial portions of Matthew Continetti 's 2022 book "The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism" were researched using editorial archives. He quotes from them promiscuously (but appropriately).

      Certainly for that purpose — setting an institutional milestone, for any who may wish to look back on it — the effective close of both major parties' presidential primaries is a reasonable choice. This particular milestone won't recur for another four years, after all.

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      1. Dhetzel1

        Appreciate it Bill, and I always enjoy reading your thought provoking posts in the comments as well.

        And thank you for the reminder that I still need to pick up Matt's book. Long overdue.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    My splenetic nitpicking for today:

    ===begin quote===
    The spleen is a fist-sized organ in the upper left side of your abdomen, next to your stomach and behind your left ribs. It's an important part of your immune system, but you can survive without it. This is because the liver can take over many of the spleen's functions.
    ===end quote===
    https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/spleen-problems-and-spleen-removal/

    You were thinking (at 14:46) of the liver, I'd wager, Mr. Goldberg. And are to be promptly forgiven as one who's under the weather, but still in possession, I know, of a liver; probably a spleen, the better to vent at quibblers like me; and perhaps an appendix, about which I decline to guess. Get well soon!

    EDIT: Even if you have had most of your apprendix removed, the portion left behind may be relevant, per this tip for surgeons:

    ===begin quote===
    Correct identification and removal of the appendiceal base without leaving an appendiceal stump minimizes the risk of stump appendicitis. If a CT scan has been obtained, it enables exquisite delineation of the surrounding anatomy, including the length of the appendiceal remnant.
    ===end quote===
    link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183543/

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  10. Echack

    Sarah, the audio might be worse for Biden than the transcript. This twitter thread by an attorney that is well versed in depositions lays it out. The TL;DR is that Biden tried to avoid answering questions posed to him by going off subject and gave wandering, often incorrect answers. The thing that could hurt him is that his answers were slow. He took way, way too long to answer the questions according to the timestamps.
    https://twitter.com/CrownMaybe/status/1768621919589298417

    Another thread from the same attorney. The one above is linked in the first tweet.

    https://twitter.com/CrownMaybe/status/1769101779818447212

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      I don't think Biden looks bad for answering slowly. In general, I am not persuaded that witnesses taking their time in answering questions is probative of much of anything. It's entirely common, and usually appropriate, for the questioner to reassure the witness that he or she can take his time. It's disastrous and self-defeating to cut a witness off or urge the witness to hurry through testimony.

      I do think the timestamp is incredibly important, though, to explain which I'll reprint here a comment I've left on some other Dispatch posts lately:

      ===========

      Biden was told at the beginning of the interview that Hur would be focusing on 2017, when he left the vice presidency. Biden promptly asked for, and got from one of his own lawyers, a piece of paper, on which he then wrote down "2017" as a peg to help himself refresh his memory.

      Forty minutes later, when he was working through dates out loud — when he left office, and when Trump entered office — he asked the room: "... 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟕?"

      But then when he was corrected by those around him, he said: "'16, 2016. All right. So -- why do I have 2017 here?"

      Biden's inability to remember that presidential elections take place in even-numbered years, and perhaps worse, his inability to remember why he'd left a note to himself to aid his own memory 40 minutes earlier, actually concern me a whole lot more than the fact that he struggled to remember the year of his son's death.

      If Hur's purpose was to attack Biden — to impeach his credibility, to prove that he had a bad memory, or to challenge the weight of his testimony — he, or any other competent cross-examiner, would have immediately asked Biden how it was that he had come to forget what he meant by that note written 40 minutes earlier, and would have had the note marked as an exhibit.

      But this wasn't a hostile cross-examination. It was an unsworn interview to gather information, upon which Hur and the DoJ could decide whether to seek an indictment of Biden or to instead decline prosecution. Biden got the benefit of that call. Talk about your "sore winners."

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    2. Russell J

      I’m guessing that video doesn’t exist but video could be bad. Audio to some degree. Sarah is probably correct that opinions are already pretty baked in if they weren’t before the report.

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        I'm pretty sure there was no video. There's no suggestion of one anywhere in the transcript. Nor does it appear that a stenographic or other sort of court reporter was present doing real-time transcription.

        Rather, the certifications at the end are by name-redacted "transcribers" from a court reporting transcription company, and in them, they respectively certify that specified pages are "a true and correct transcript, to the best of my ability, of the above pages [sic—ought to have said "of the audio corresponding to the above pages" IMHO], of the RECORDED INTERVIEW provided to me by the Special Counsel's office."

        There's also a disclaimer: "Within this transcript of proceedings, some of the names and/or technical terms are spelled phonetically, inasmuch as exhibits, files and supporting documentation were not made available to us for reference."

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