Jawing with Crenshaw 2: Congressional Boogaloo

Jonah collaborates with Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw on their second Remnant together in an attempt to hash ...

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Jonah collaborates with Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw on their second Remnant together in an attempt to hash out their differences of opinion regarding why Congress doesn’t work. (Or does it?) Come listen, and discover why members of Congress feel the need to have such robust media teams on staff all the time, why Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually a swamp creature nowadays, and walk through Dan’s “favorite moment of 2021,” which features a shockingly bad instance of Spanglish.

Show Notes:

–Dan’s podcast, Hold These Truths

–Dan’s article on fighting, not performing

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  1. Avatar photo
    Balducci

    I don't want to pile on but I agree with a lot of the other commenters here. I find Crenshaw to be one of the most frustrating people on the political scene - based on the way he talks with you, he's just about the perfect congressman. Yet the reality of what he was done -- in particular the abomination that was Paxton's suit -- is very, very far from that. I certainly don't think Jonah needs to disown him or anything, but I think Crenshaw does need to be called to account before I can consider supporting him.

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  2. Mark Vondersaar

    A great podcast that gleaned insight into how Crenshaw thinks and wants to govern. I would encourage Jonah, Steve, Sarah, et al to have more conversations like this with folks with progressive leanings. What feeds today's acute dogged partisanship is everyone practicing Media Training 101; i.e. prepare key talking points and bridge every question to a talking point without really answering the question. The Dispatch podcast conversations make that more difficult for the talking head.

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    Brett Myers

    When is Rep. Kinzinger coming on?

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  4. Kmsinatra

    I am a little late in getting to listen to this one (I took my time). I was surprised at how often he invoked Shapiro and how little Jonah said anything. I understand Shapiro wasn't relevant but Crenshaw invoked him twice very positively and it was odd.

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  5. Kevin P. Holsclaw

    Rep. Crenshaw is worthy of admiration and respect for his service to our country. However, his support for the Texas lawsuit and the "big lie" undermine his credibility for the one non-negotiable principle of American leadership--support for the constitution.

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    Ethan

    It seems like there's a consensus of disappointment in this episode, and I must say I feel very much the same. When Jonah prefaced the conversation saying that he suspected Dan's listeners might not love the episode, I took that to mean that there would be an honest discussion of January 6th and Crenshaw's worrying support for the ridiculous Texas AG lawsuit. Instead we got complaints about "Democratic tactics" and paeans to the virtues of producing "content" for voters. I know that Crenshaw has voters to appeal to; I certainly don't envy his position in having to straddle such a difficult line between appealing to base voters and maintaining some semblance of statesmanship. (I'd love to see this explored on a future Remnant, because it seems to me that the Republican base is increasingly dismissive of truth, statesmen, and responsible governance.) Nevertheless, Rep. Crenshaw's support for that lawsuit is pretty inexcusable, and I'm yet to hear him give any defense of it whatsoever. I did, and still do, have high hopes for him, but it seems that he's spending a bit too much time in the world of Lib-owning with the Daily Wire crowd.

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  7. Maddmac

    I can't stand Dan Crenshaw but he's probably better than most Rs in office these days. Which isn't saying much. Do I dare listen? Scared I might blow a gasket.

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    CP

    Is this really the right time of year to ask, “Why isn’t this Jewish prophet a bit harder on our political enemies?”

    In all seriousness, though, part of what I really like about Jonah is the fact that—as committed as he is to telling the truth and not sucking up to the Trumpies—he wins people over through humor and being...enjoyable to be around. This isn’t a compromise—or if it is, it’s one that’s worth making, because it cuts through the usual dynamic of entertainment-based politics, which are usually too cynical and savage to allow room for anything resembling friendship and courtesy. Crenshaw knows where Jonah stands on this stuff. Is Jonah likely to win him (and his audience) over by being a “reporter” or by showing he’s a good guy? If you object to this style, there are plenty of confrontational-style interviews all over. They often get us nowhere, even if they make those who agree with the reporters feel very righteous.

    Friendship—with those who haven’t put themselves beyond redemption—is probably more powerful, long-term.

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    1. Jackson

      This is a fair point, but I think there's reasonable room between him playing gotcha journalist and not even bringing up an important topic that would be worth them having a public conversation about.

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        Aylene Wright

        I think however that if Jonah isn't comfortable doing more confrontational interviews, that his trying to do so and failing miserably wouldn't really be helpful. Same thing happens with Sasse. Jonah obviously felt obligated in the What's Next event interview to ask him to respond to critics who think he was too quiet in 2019 / first half of 2020 and didn't push back on Trump hard enough. I think that's even how he presented it, that OTHERS wanted this question answered, not Jonah himself. But he was obviously more comfortable asking less confrontational questions.

        But I think that it's actually pretty difficult to conduct such an interview, one that isn't a total softball session, but not one along the lines of the reporter screaming "pay to play" at Desantis (who actually had a thoughtful reply to that but then of course 60 Minutes edited most of it out). I think Steve is good at the "polite but not shying away from tough questions" style as often demonstrated on the Friday TD podcasts. But obviously he has tons of experience interviewing people.

        IMO Sarah also seems more comfortable being friendly or at least neutral than confrontational in interviews. Which isn't to say she doesn't confront people in interviews, but there's a jarring disconnect at times in her demeanor when she does. The Sterling interview where she was at one point almost shouting at him "but WHY do you even want to stay a Republican", but then fairly abruptly transitioned to lighthearted discussion of his fried okra recipe. Honestly it made my head spin a bit.

        I guess my conclusion is that Jonah mostly sticking to a friendly back-slapping type of interview format may just be about knowing his strengths and not cowardice or fear of losing access if he's meaner, as you seem to be implying.

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      Aylene Wright

      Sadly many Resistance types will claim that ANY past support of Trump is indeed an unforgivable act that puts that person beyond redemption. Some of them were on Twitter today gloating over an announcement from Crenshaw that he had Emergency surgery on his remaining eye due to a retinal detachment and is at risk of going completely blind. A relative of mine went through this and thankfully didn't lose sight in that eye but at least he had two eyes (still does). But even if I didn't, I would find that kind of reaction ghoulish.

      Unfortunately I get the sense from some comments that there are Dispatch Members who are just wanting their own echo chamber that is totally free of any taint of Trumpism. Some are also obviously angry that TD didn't fire Danielle Pletka after her WaPo oped about deciding to vote for Trump, and refuse to read her pieces or listen to her podcast interviews. I think it's a good thing that TD decided not to cancel her for that, though.

      BTW, not even the Bulwark podcast has a total ban on anyone who ever supported Trump. They have had Kinzinger, who voted for Trump in 2020 though not in 2016, on multiple times.

      And although Kinzinger is vehemently anti-Trump now, I don't ever recall him saying he was mistaken to support him, or to support the Trump declaration of a border emergency, which was something the Bulwark treated as a purity test at the time. And although he has been critical of Trump even before 1/6/21 (mostly regarding FoPo), I even recall at least one pretty Trumpy tweet he sent in 2020 predicting Trump would win in landslide.

      Anyway, while people can say "ok but he's totally broken with Trump now, and Crenshaw hasn't done that, and Crenshaw also personally got involved in the Stop the Steal scam by endorsing the Paxton lawsuit". Ok. I guess we all draw our lines at different places. I get a feeling Sarah hasn't cancelled Chip Roy (who I know is a personal friend of hers) because of his recent antics either. And I don't expect her to.

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      1. GregS

        They don't have to be cancelled, but they'd better have damn good explanations and/or mea culpas for their actions. Indint expect people to be perfect but if they can't understand and admit when they've made mistakes I don't trust their judgment. Allowing them to memory hole their past actions is malpractice.

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    Mike Krogh

    I think my only real complaint about the Remnant as a whole is Jonah's tendency to run away from argument--especially if the guest is a friend of some sort. He's happy to get into it with cohorts on the Dispatch podcast, so he's not afraid of an argument, but seems like he's just too polite to argue with a guest on his own podcast, and Crenshaw needed a lot of arguing with. This was my least favorite Remnant (having listened to them all) with the only competition being the last Charles Murray one, with his endless "real American" garbage--another instance where Jonah failed to respond to concepts he regularly argues against when they aren't being proposed by people on his friend list.
    On his own, Jonah does a great job of providing a good-faith intellectual history and rationale for his thoughts and opinions, and those of conservatism in general. Whether I agree or not, I understand why. In a show like this one, though, I'm not sure if he's too polite or too afraid to stand up, or actually doesn't believe the intellectual history and rationale and just has too much fun piling on opponents like everyone else.
    Or perhaps the issue is that this was going on Crenshaw's podcast, too, and Dan had to do his performative BS for his halfwitted following? In that case, Jonah, please don't play that game again. He used you. He rode you hard and put you away wet.

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    cheerio

    Maggie Haberman blinders award winning podcast. She would be proud. Jeez.

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