Steve Hayes
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I’m Steve Hayes. On today’s roundtable, we’ll discuss Sarah Isker’s new book, Last Branch Standing, and the history of partisan attacks on the Supreme Court. We’ll also discuss the Trump administration’s fragile and unclear ceasefire with Iran. And finally, not worth your time, we’re talking about the Masters golf tournament and the champions’ dinner menus. I’m joined today by my Dispatch colleagues Kevin Williamson, Mike Warren, and of course, Sarah Isker. Let’s dive in. [upbeat music] Hey, everybody. We will be discussing the Supreme Court, as I mentioned, and Iran, but I want to start by noting the forthcoming publication date of Sarah’s book. People probably don’t know that you’ve written a book, Sarah. I mean, I don’t know, like, probably have no idea-
Sarah Isgur
[chuckles]
Steve Hayes
-that you’ve written a book, but you have.
Sarah Isgur
Look, there are people who just woke up from comas.
Steve Hayes
[chuckles]
Sarah Isgur
Like, they need to know too.
Steve Hayes
Fair. It’s a fair point. So I have, I have gotten my hands on an advanced copy of Sarah’s book. I will acknowledge that I’m not yet finished with it, but I’ve started it. And I will just say at the top, this is a book very much, and I know that this is what you intended, for sort of deep scholars of the Supreme Court will get a lot out of it, but also people who don’t know much about the Supreme Court will get a lot out of it. And I would say the book is called Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court. And the thing that I come away with just now, a little bit into it, is how much it’s your voice, and you can’t sort of-
Sarah Isgur
Escape it?
Steve Hayes
You can’t escape it-
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
-was actually what I was gonna say. [laughs] I figured, I figured that might not be the best way to characterize it.
Kevin Williamson
I mean, somebody trained that AI really well.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
It sounds like Sarah all the way through.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
I’ve trained all of, like, the, you know, Alexas and everything in Steve’s house as well on my voice.
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Well, some- sometimes it feels that way. There are so many places I’d like to, you know, highlight, “Oh, that’s definitely Sarah. That’s definitely Sarah. That’s…” But anyway, it’s a very en- enjoyable read, and we will get to a brief discussion about the book and sort of what it took to, to put together. But I wanna start sort of on the substance of the court. I mean, i- you know, if we were to l- look back as historians in twenty-five years at the second Donald Trump administration, I think one of the most obvious stories that we would discuss is this tension, sort of the back and forth, the push and pull between the Supreme Court and Donald Trump as president. The Supreme Court and the executive, the legislative has basically disappeared. But it’s been, I’d say, a, a main consideration of sort of our politics of the moment. And I wanna start by looking at some of the attacks that Donald Trump has leveled at the Court, at the justices himself, and we have some sound to kinda make that clear.
Audio
The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing,
Audio
and I’m ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country. The Democrats on the Court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no. They’re an automatic no, just like in Congress. They’re an automatic no. They’re against anything that makes America strong, healthy, and great again. They also are a, frankly, disgrace to our nation, those justices. They’re an automatic no, no matter how good a case you have. It’s a no. But you can’t knock their loyalty. It’s one thing you can do with some of our people. Others think they’re being politically correct, which has happened before far too often with certain members of this Court, and it’s happened so often with this Court. What a shame. Having to do with voting in particular, when in fact they’re just being fools and lap dogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats, and not that they should have anything at all to do with it. They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It’s my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.
Steve Hayes
So justices who don’t agree with Donald Trump are unpatriotic, disloyal to the Constitution, and he goes on to say maybe controlled or influenced by foreign interests. Donald Trump does this somewhat regularly, Sarah. Is there any precedent for these kinds of attacks on the Court as an institution or on the justices as individuals?
Sarah Isgur
Yes and no. Obviously, Donald Trump does everything his own way. But historically, the Court has always been in this tension with our sort of most powerful, expansive, famous presidents in history. You know, you go back to sort of the original creation of the Supreme Court. Like, yes, the Supreme Court was created when the Constitution was ratified, but during the George Washington years, it literally didn’t really do anything. You know, there’s the, like, famous case where they say they won’t do an advisory opinion. I guess not doing something was doing something in that case. But, you know, when it’s George Washington, there’s not a whole lot that you’re checking at that point. And so you’re really in that 1803 Marbury versus Madison era, 1805, the impeachment of Samuel Chase. And if you go and study that, and I talk about it in the book, that’s the creation of the Supreme Court, in my opinion, because you have Jefferson constantly attacking the Supreme Court. Like, no, he’s not holding a press conference and calling them disgraceful, but he thinks the Supreme Court is disloyal. He thinks they are a disgrace. He thinks they’re all Adams dudes, Federalists, and they are hurting the country, andThat they are under a foreign influence, that influence being Britain when Jefferson is a France guy. And, you know, America’s in a very different place. We’re not a world superpower. We’re, like, quite the opposite, so we have to, like, pick a team of an actual superpower at that point. So everything that Donald Trump said, I don’t doubt that Jefferson said privately. You know, you can give them one thing, they’re loyal to their team, and it’s too bad, you know, they’re disloyal to our team, and we need to get rid of them. And so Jefferson concocts the impeachment of Samuel Chase for the purpose of then removing him from the Supreme Court. Then he was gonna remove Chief Justice John Marshall and make the Supreme Court bend to his will and reflect his partisanship, which would have put us on a path to do that for every president. Instead, of course, Jefferson’s own party, own members of his party in the Senate, even though he has the votes by his party, rejects his efforts. That is the moment that the current Supreme Court is created in 1805. Okay, so John Marshall is the chief justice. He outlasts so many presidents, right? That’s the other beautiful thing about the Supreme Court, is that we’ve had 17 chief justices and, you know, nearly 50 presidents. Institutions are built by the guys who just stay there a really long time. So after Marshall survives Jefferson, now he’s got Jackson to contend with, another president who really threatened the Court, this time not by trying to impeach them or replace them or say they were disloyal or disgraceful. Jackson’s gonna try a new strategy of ignoring their decisions. The famous, like, John Marshall made his decision, let him enforce it. Probably he never said that. But he did say John Marshall’s decision has come stillborn, meaning, like, good luck with that, everyone. And that leads to the Trail of Tears. So my argument, I guess, is the Supreme Court is actually made by being in tension with really powerful, popular presidents, and when they survive that, withstand that, it builds up the Court over time, and that’s how we get this Supreme Court, is by having FDRs and Lincolns through the years. Nixon is another challenge.
Steve Hayes
Wouldn’t the distinction be that the sort of back and forth and the disagreements that you describe in those early years of the Court were largely focused on sort of ideas and conceptions of the proper distribution of power or the proper role of the Court, and much less focused on, “These people are not loyal to me,” this pers- Donald Trump. Is that a fair distinction or no?
Sarah Isgur
No, not for Jefferson. For Jackson, maybe. But with Jefferson, you know, Adams has the Midnight Judges Act, where he creates a whole new line of judges, this, what we would sort of think of as the circuit judges these days, so that the Supreme Court justices don’t have to ride circuit. He fills them, of course, all with his party. This is what’s gonna lead to Marbury versus Madison. Jefferson comes in. This isn’t a policy difference. This is a partisan difference. He un-creates all of those judgeships, fires all those judges. He doesn’t have distinct policy differences with all of those judges. They’re Federalists. He doesn’t want them to exist. He wipes them out, and even though this case isn’t very famous, the Supreme Court upholds him getting rid of all these judgeships even though the Constitution says life tenure and all of that.
Steve Hayes
What about Trump singling out in the clip that we just played who he calls the Democrats, to pick up on your point about partisanship, and said they vote in lockstep. They always oppose him. That’s not accurate, is it?
Sarah Isgur
No, it’s not accurate at all. We had a record number of seven-two cases last term where Kagan splits from Sotomayor and Jackson. It depends, you know, if you count Trump versus conservative, of course. But just recently, we had the Chiles v. Salazar case on conversion therapy, talk therapy that did not seek to affirm someone’s gender identity. That was an eight-one decision. I think my favorite day is last term, these were considered big cases at the beginning of the term, and then we mind-wiped them, but there was a case on gun manufacturer liability, religious liberty for religious organizations in Wisconsin that didn’t proselytize. They weren’t eligible for a tax break if you weren’t a proselytizing religion, which is sort of amazing. And reverse discrimination if you were straight and argued that you had been fired by a manager who was gay. All three of those cases were unanimous. All three of them were written by a liberal justice, and because of that, because they didn’t fit the ideological narrative, we just mind-wiped them entirely. The liberal justices do not vote in lockstep together at all. I… You know, the stats are all in the book. But what’s, I think, more remarkable, and what Trump, of course, doesn’t wanna hit on, is what would not be remarkable is that the liberal justices think a president has exceeded his constitutional bounds. What’s remarkable is that the conservative justices did over and over in the Alien Enemies Act case, in the nationalizing the Federal Guard, in the tariffs case, and of course, what I think we’ll see in the birthright citizenship case. So, like, it’s pretty hard to blame the liberals when the conservatives agree, just like it’s pretty hard to blame the conservatives when the liberals agree, which is the beauty of the Supreme Court, that they only take the hardest 60 cases that have split the lower judges around the country, and close to half the time, they decide them unanimously.
Steve Hayes
Yeah, Kevin, a cynic might say that Donald Trump is just expressing in more crude terms, more regularly, more aggressively, the basic views of most presidents regarding the Court and justices. I mean, if you look back over the past three presidents, Trump supporters point to Joe Biden’s willingness to shrug off court decisions, Barack Obama, and others. Is Trump really sort of as out of the mainstream as he appears when we listen to something like that kind of unhinged attack on the Court and the justices, which obviously seeks to impeach the credibility of the justices themselves and the institution by suggesting that they’re on the take?
Kevin Williamson
Yeah, I think that Trump’s criticisms are different from Jefferson’s in that Jefferson’s were generally delivered in English,
Kevin Williamson
and Trump speaks whatever weird Oompa Loompa language he’s doing in that press conference there. He’s just kinda hard to follow, I think. I think that Trump actually really is in the mainstream in this sense, that most people, including a lot of people who should know better, don’t give a damn about the law or the Constitution. What they want is policy outcomes from the Supreme Court. There was a big piece, I think it was in The Washington Post, on Thursday morning about how the current court is hostile, allegedly, towards civil rights and civil rights cases, and the entire discussion was about the policy outcomes. You know, they decided against what trans people wanted in this case, and they decided against what a gay rights group wanted in this case. And there was essentially no discussion in the entire thing, and it was probably a four thousand-word story, about any of the underlying legal points.
Kevin Williamson
And this is something that occasionally, um, occasionally comes up in the Supreme Court, I mentioned this in a piece the other day, that what genuinely seem to perplex people, like the recent conversion therapy case. It was eight to one, and all these, you know, nice liberals rule. How could Kagan and Sotomayor be against us on this case when it’s these, you know, horrible, homophobic weirdo Christians in Colorado trying to talk gay kids out of being gay? And because the answer to the question, of course, is it’s a legal question and not a policy question. They may think it’s a bad policy. They may think that it’s a bad undertaking, but that’s not to say that the First Amendment doesn’t cover people’s right to do this sort of thing. You saw a similar thing years ago with Scalia and flag burning, where people would talk about how surprised they were about, “Well, how is Scalia on the side of these flag burners?” Well, it’s not that Scalia was on the side of the flag burners, but the First Amendment certainly was, and Scalia kinda tried to follow that stuff most of the time. And, you know, I’ve come around a little bit on my views of the Supreme Court a little bit. I used to be a lot more, more hostile to them, and I can thank Sarah some, for some of this. But also just the Supreme Court by the numbers stuff that we have in SCOTUSblog, when you see how many of the cases actually are unanimously decided or how many of the cases do not actually break down along the sort of expected ideological lines, how mixed people are, that, you know, Kagan is in the majority of seventy percent of decisions that aren’t unanimous and eighty percent overall. So I think the expectation that they’re going to be a policymaking body that just follows partisan preferences is being frustrated if you actually look at their outcomes, but that’s not what people are looking for, and I think the sort of average idiot voter, the average lawyer, and certainly the average idiot American president looks at these things and says, you know, “Well, why didn’t they decide for me?” Without even giving any consideration at all to the underlying legal arguments.
Steve Hayes
Yeah, I would say one difference between what we’ve seen from Trump and what we’ve seen from his predecessors, you know, Obama, Biden, but going back to the sort of Jefferson era that you’re talking about, Sarah, is that his arguments are heard by a lot more people, right? I mean, Donald Trump says this, they hit, and you sorta can’t escape them. I mean, all the arguments that you laid out, Sarah, that Thomas Jefferson was making were known to a small group of people, maybe people who were news consumers and stayed up on sort of– or were civically engaged. These arguments, blunt and crude as they are, are reaching a lot more people.
Sarah Isgur
Wait, I wanna push back on that idea really quickly because I agree, except that back then, Jefferson, by a percentage, was probably reaching way more voters.
Kevin Williamson
Well, and there’s also, I think, something that has to be kept in mind was that, I mean, Jefferson’s time, people were getting their news generally from a, mostly from a partisan press, and these newspapers had something close to monopolies in a lot of places. Now, I mean, Trump can say what he’s going to say, but people have lots of choices about where they get their news and feedback. If you lived in Sherman, Texas, and this is after Jefferson’s time, obviously, ’cause there was no Texas back then, but, and you got the Sherman Democrat newspaper, you got a newspaper that was going to have Democratic views on things, and there wasn’t a Sherman Republican newspaper down the street.
Steve Hayes
I agree with that. Obviously, that’s accurate descriptively, but I would say that in today’s media environment, people are choosing partisan outlets rather than having to consume them because they’re what’s available.
Kevin Williamson
Yes, they have sought out ignorance rather than having ignorance thrust upon them.
Steve Hayes
[laughs] Yes, this is increasingly a problem. Sarah, go ahead and, and make that argument. I mean, I think it’s maybe true that Jefferson was reaching more voters because they were more concentrated, but there’s no question, I think, that Trump, in the media environment that we live in right now, is reaching more people, and I say, I would argue has the ability to shape opinions and perceptions about the court in a way that Jefferson couldn’t back two hundred plus years ago.
Sarah Isgur
I don’t know if I agree with that. My only point was on the franchise expanding so much that with a much more limited franchise, they were reading the newspapers that Kevin’s talking about. And so Jefferson, I think, had a lot of sway, near complete control over his party, and, you know, Donald Trump is– We have a much bigger country with a lot more people. The franchise is near universal, and so just as a percentage, he’s never gonna reach a higher percentage than Jefferson reached. I think the threat to the court, you know, in FDR’s time when he’s talking about packing the court if they don’t decide the case the way that he wants from now on, was more existential than anything we’re seeing from Donald Trump yet.
Steve Hayes
[laughs] Yet. That’s an ominous yet. Mike, let me go to you quickly, though, on the question of public perception of the court. I don’t think there’s any doubt that what Trump has done, the sort of consistency of his attacks, has contributed to a decline in the esteem in which the court has been held. Does that– How much does that matter?
Mike Warren
Well, I don’t think we should discount the way that the people’s view of the court has, I think, been on the decline even before Trump.
Steve Hayes
For sure.
Mike Warren
Really, I mean, Sarah could probably, has her favorite, you know, starting point, origin point for where we are at this moment, but you could start it at Bork, you could start it somewhere else. But this, essentially, this idea that it’s, it is a partisan tug-of-war, and is our side, do we have the most muscle right now, and how are we gonna do it? Are we gonna really take advantage of that? I do think it matters in lots of different ways. It matters on a sort of a campaignPerspective because the court has become, depending on who’s in power, and right now I think because conservatives are correctly perceived as having, you know, the majority and the power on the court, it’s an issue in campaigns for Democratic politicians. Liberals are interested in this, and they wanna hear Democratic politicians talk about expanding the court or other kinds of ways of limiting the court’s power or shifting the power of the court toward their preferred policy preference. I think Trump is, in many ways, voicing something that conservatives and Republican voters have been hearing on talk radio for 20 years prior. You know, all you have to do is sort of go back to, say, like, the Rush Limbaugh transcripts from the 1990s to hear, you know, complaining about David Souter, who’s a Republican appointee to the court, but sided with the more liberal justices over his tenure. And a sort of degraded and less accurate [laughs] version of those complaints are what you hear today about, say, Justice Amy Coney Barrett from Donald Trump himself. So the difference is, it’s, I think it’s less accurate, and it does have a bigger megaphone. For as much as people, you know, say talk radio was a huge influence, I think the president adds a lot of heft to any argument because he is the president, and his partisans do listen to what he says. And so it’s louder, it’s cruder, it’s less accurate, and more personalized than it was, say, 30 years ago. So I think it matters in the way it continues to degrade our trust in institutions. But one thing I’m interested in in Sarah’s book and also sort of Sarah’s sort of thesis about this, because I think it’s really interesting perspective, you know, to point out that the conflict makes the court stronger, it makes the institution stronger. I’m curious about historical precedent or any knowledge that we have about the way the individual people on the court now and in the past, uh, were affected by these kind of presidential incursions or the ways that presidents sort of get involved in arguing and going after the court itself or justices in particular, because we forget sometimes [laughs] that they are human beings, and they are not, you know, legal and judicial robots, and they have reactions and feelings. And that’s something I would be interested in sort of knowing a little more about, not just how it’s affecting the public’s perception, but even the court members themselves, their perception of their power, their position, what they need to do, what they sh- ought to be doing in response to these kind of presidential whining and gnashing of teeth.
Sarah Isgur
So I feel like Trump’s attacks, like these attacks from past presidents, have this double-edged sword. Like you guys are saying, on the one hand it gives voice to this frustration on the right about outcomes, and that hurts the court’s legitimacy and credibility over time perhaps. You know, it certainly hurts their approval numbers. At the same time, the president is actually describing how independent the court is from partisan politics, and that builds the court’s legitimacy and credibility over time. And, you know, you look at the approval numbers right now, and they do follow very partisan lines. You know, Democrat approval of the court went down. Now Republican approval of the court is going down. And so you have to look at those cross tabs to actually see the real story of the Supreme Court’s approval numbers.
Sarah Isgur
Mike, to your point on the individuals, I think, yeah, you’re exactly right. They’re humans too.
Mike Warren
Breaking news.
Sarah Isgur
And by the way, during [laughs] FDR’s time when he’s attacking them, they hate each other, and they’re all miserable. This is the book The Scorpions by Noah Feldman. You have the Three Musketeers, who are pro-FDR, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who are the anti-FDR guys, like the media, to Kevin’s point, was not biased at all about that. But I think that all of the justices today, like truth serum, polygraph, whatever you want, truly believe themselves to be independent, believe that it is an independent branch of government, do not see themselves as partisans. They are the good guys in their own stories. So you can disagree with their outcome on any given case or criticize it as inconsistent or hypocritical. They do not believe that. They can tell you why they are being consistent. And so when Trump attacks them, I think it actually does bond them closer together and make them sit up a little straighter because, “See, we are independent. He is validating my view of myself the more he attacks me.” I think they are concerned about threats, fears for their children, stuff like that. I’d say the biggest thing that Donald Trump has accomplished with these attacks has been to make it less likely that we get normal people raising their hand to do this job in the future. Because between the confirmation hearing, the assassination attempts, and then this attention and increased threats to your family and sort of lack of ability to live a normal life, the secret recordings, I mean, you name it. Like, if you’re a normal, highly successful lawyer, the type that would generally be in line for these types of jobs, you’re looking at that and saying, “You know, I think I’ll take the money. Like, I just, I’m not sure that I can do this to my family.” And I’ve talked to short-listers who are already on the circuit courts, meaning they’ve already sort of made that choice to serve and go into public service. And even the idea of putting themselves up for the promotion to the Supreme Court, for those that have young children, they question whether they would be a bad parent-
Sarah Isgur
… if they did that to their children. That’s the effect of Donald Trump’s attacks, is the types of people who are gonna, you know, raise their hand in the future.
Kevin Williamson
You know, for the longest time it wasn’t sort of like that. You know, there’s this famous thing about how four years or eight years in the presidency ages someone 20 years. Like, Supreme Court justices tend to do kinda okay over time.
Sarah Isgur
It’s a good life, yeah. [laughs]
Kevin Williamson
You know, Taft lost, like, 70 pounds. He came out of the [laughs] Supreme Court just looking, you know, looking probably the best he had his adult life. [laughs]
Sarah Isgur
He was taking these long walks, very healthy.
Kevin Williamson
Yeah.
Kevin Williamson
Good life.
Sarah Isgur
Not no more.
Mike Warren
Speaking of the personal implications of work, Sarah, this is your first book.
Steve Hayes
Writing a book is not easy. I’ve written two. My last one was 20 years ago.
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
There’s a reason that my last one was 20 years ago.
Kevin Williamson
I have questions.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
What was the most difficult aspect of writing this book for you on a personal level, and what did you learn about yourself as you went through the process? We’re putting you on the couch.
Sarah Isgur
I know. I think those are kind of the same answer, because I thought all you guys were crazy ’cause I loved writing the book. Like, researching it, learning new things, interviewing clerks and judges, and, like, collecting all my information, and even the writing it part I was surprised that I had a really good time with. Like, you know, giggling to myself-
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
… and like, “Oh my gosh, can you believe this?”
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
“And I need this in a footnote.” The John Jay getting hit with a brick in the head during the Anatomy Riots, which is why he doesn’t finish writing The Federalist Papers with Hamilton and Madison, I was like, “Whoa, how cool is that?”
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
And it really felt like there were, you know, so many moments where things would sort of fall into my lap that were perfect for what I was writing right then. So I was like, “You guys, this is so… It’s fun. It… You know, it’s hard in the good way, in the way that makes you feel good at the end of the day, so, like, all you people complaining about writing books are out of your mind.” Then I finished the draft, and everything from that point forward was incredibly hard. [laughs]
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
So I wrote, like, 165,000 words, and my publisher was like, “We told you 80,000. We will accept a maximum of 100,000.” [laughs] And I was like-
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
… “Oh.” And they’re like, “And you have five days to get it from 165,000 to 100,000.” That was miserable, and, like, incredibly long hours. And, like, reading your own stuff sucks. [laughs]
Steve Hayes
So just to clarify that for our listeners, your superiors in this case gave you a specific instruction-
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
… and you just ignored it. Is that-
Sarah Isgur
Totally.
Steve Hayes
Okay. Okay. Just wanted to-
Sarah Isgur
Like, yeah
Steve Hayes
… just wanted to understand that.
Sarah Isgur
Totally ignored it.
Kevin Williamson
This is the little c- things are falling into place. Yeah.
Steve Hayes
How that worked.
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Isgur
Yeah. So, I mean, not surprisingly, like, the learning part, the writing, you know, funny little sarcastic quips, like, that part I, I loved, and all the rest of it felt like… It is like having a child, but you have to start from the very beginning. Right? The pregnancy, you know, at the very beginning you maybe are like, “Oh, this is hard,” like, “I need to, like, get over the writer’s block,” or whatever. Like, eventually, it’s, like, actually pretty easy. It’s pretty fun. You’re wearing cute maternity clothes, and you’re like, “I hope this never ends.” And then, like, you start having contractions, and you’re like, “Oh, this is not fun. This is not what I wanted to do.” And I would say that, like, here we are, you know, but days, you know, hours from the book coming out, and it definitely feels like, you know, the head is crowning. [laughs]
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Kevin, did you enjoy the cute maternity clothes-
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
… moments of your books?
Kevin Williamson
Yes.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
As, as Sarah was saying, the best part about a book is, like, the best part about, you know, having kids, which is the very beginning part-
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
… when you get paid.
Kevin Williamson
You know, the advance is good.
Steve Hayes
Guys, come on. I knew from before we started recording that this was gonna go off the rails at some point.
Kevin Williamson
It’s gonna go off the rails.
Kevin Williamson
So I’ve been trying to finish a book of any sort, I’ve got, like, three kind of in the works, for, like, two years now, and I’m finding it really hard to get anything done. And I- I’m kinda wondering how Sarah pulled that off while, you know, having a regular job, and the kids and all that. I’m finding it really quite difficult myself. But I… was actually a, a slightly more serious question, though. Well, two things.
Kevin Williamson
One is, did you have a, an editor who actually knew the material? Like, did you have an editor who was someone who kinda knew the history of the court or the legal stuff, or you had someone who’s just editing you on kind of purely a “Is this a good book?” grounds?
Sarah Isgur
Yeah, the latter.
Kevin Williamson
And did you find that better, or d- would you have preferred it the other way?
Sarah Isgur
I found it better, although shout out to David Lat and Zach Shem Tov, who were sort of my subject matter experts. You know, my husband, Scott, Supreme Court clerk, did some, you know, fact-checking for me. So, like, it takes a village to raise a book.
Steve Hayes
Yes, it does.
Sarah Isgur
I had a, a lot of people sort of helping me with little factoids. I think I talked to a clerk from every justice’s chambers at one point for the book or another. Again, to, like, fact-check, make sure I’m getting some things right. I needed… You know, [laughs] I knew the portraits of Marbury and Madison hang in the dining room that the justices eat in after each of the oral arguments. But, like, you know, I was like, “Are they on opposite sides of the wall, or are they sitting together, Marbury and Madison, facing the justices?” Stuff like that. So, like, it’s amazing. Like, even if you’ve clerked at the court or something, people are like, “I don’t remember that.” Like, I… You know, ’cause they don’t care about the things that I care about. So, like, stuff like that took a weirdly long amount of time. And by the way, I thought, obviously, they should sit across from each other, like, on walls facing each other, Marbury and Madison, but they don’t. They’re next to each other.
Kevin Williamson
Hm. Also, a word of advice for you on the, on the publicity stuff. You probably already have an idea of this, because you’ve done a lot of communications work, but think really carefully when your publisher asks you to write sample questions for interviewers.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
Because-
Sarah Isgur
I just was doing this last night at, like, 1:00 in the morning, Kevin
Kevin Williamson
… in 90% of the cases, the interview will consist of them asking you-
Steve Hayes
That’s unbelievable
Kevin Williamson
… the questions that you sent to them, in the words you sent them in-
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
… the order you sent them in.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
And because, you know, I, I, I, I’ve written a lot of these books that, you know, get you on conservative talk radio a lot, and so I would do, you know, I’d do 20 radio interviews in a day or something like that, and having exactly the same questions-
Steve Hayes
Literally
Kevin Williamson
… and I’ve never been so sick of the to- sound of my own voice.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
So people listening to this podcast probably sympathize with that. But, yeah, put some thought into that, because they’re gonna, they’re gonna be in your face for a while.
Sarah Isgur
They’re not all gonna read every word of my book and be curious about things?
Steve Hayes
But that, like, isn’t that the most basic question?
Kevin Williamson
The one guy will, and he will ask-
Kevin Williamson
… you about stuff you’ve forgotten about-
Steve Hayes
And it’ll be great
Kevin Williamson
… in your book already by this point.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
No, it’ll be great. And you know… I mean, it was interesting. It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t have read the book when they’re gonna interview me about the book in a public-Setting? Like, how do you do that? But I’ll just echo Kevin’s point. And you know very quickly the people who did read your book and took time, I would say, like, credit to Hugh Hewitt, always read the book. He asked really good questions. I’ve certainly had my differences with him since then, but-
Sarah Isgur
Aw, I was texting with him last night.
Steve Hayes
Yeah. Their interviews were great, and the other people, you just can’t even imagine that they’re literally asking you the questions that you have prepared for yourself.
Kevin Williamson
And some people who review the book will not have read it as well.
Mike Warren
Re-read it? I haven’t even reviewed it.
Steve Hayes
That’s probably true, too.
Steve Hayes
We need to spend a few minutes on Iran. There have been some arguably significant changes to the trajectory of things over the past several weeks that took place this week, but maybe not actually significant changes. And I think that’s one of the things that we should try to help people understand. I’ve been away. I was overseas in Ireland and then Spain. I kept up with the news, but I wasn’t consumed with the news as I am on a professional basis when I’m here paying attention. So I will use you to help bring me up to speed and understand what we’ve seen. Mike, let me start with you on this ceasefire of two days ago that came after Donald Trump basically threatened to end the Iranian Persian civilization, arguably threatening war crimes. Actually, not arguably, threatening war crimes. And then at the last minute came this ceasefire. There have been many different statements from the participants, from the parties about the ceasefire, about what it means, about what it includes. It seems pretty clear that there was a lot of ambiguity in the language of the ceasefire and in the negotiations that led to the ceasefire, which is something that people who have done this before would know not to do. But it has led to two days of information chaos about the ceasefire and, in many ways, continued fighting, except mostly from Americans.
Steve Hayes
So Mike, what’s your understanding now of what the ceasefire was and where we are today?
Mike Warren
I think you cannot think about the ceasefire itself on Tuesday night without including the threat that you mentioned at the beginning of your spiel just now, Steve, which is that threat from Donald Trump to wipe out I- Iranian civilization, which we all woke up to on, on Tuesday morning. And basically, those of us following this, but I think also just a lot of the world was sort of on pins and needles waiting to find out what that meant. Is this a real threat? Is this a credible threat? What does it mean? What is he prepared to do? And what kind of off-ramps is everybody going to take? So when that announcement came on Tuesday night from the Pakistani government that they had brokered a ceasefire deal, I mean, I think there was a lot of relief that it seemed that the President was not going to fulfill this threat, what, again, whatever that was actually going to look like, and that there seemed to be some kind of agreement to stop fighting. And, you know, I have to wonder how tied together those two things really were from the president’s perspective. You know, sort of create a crisis out of, out of kind of nothing, out of, out of his own words, in order to get some kind of agreement or some kind of deal that sort of heads off the crisis that he created. That’s, like, straight from the Trump toolbox. He loves to sort of deploy that. We’ve never really quite seen it in terms of, you know, international relations and, and, and civilizational war and fighting and potential destruction of that civilization, so-
Steve Hayes
Is what you’re looking for there is genocide?
Mike Warren
Yes, genocide is another word that is, would be a correct way of describing that threat. So the agreement to stop the fighting happens, but then, as you say, Steve, the, nobody can agree on what the agreement is or whether it even exists. It’s like a phantom agreement, and it seems to have been bought into, on the margins maybe not so, but bought into by both the Americans and the Iranians. The fighting stopped, except for some missile launches from Iran on some Gulf State allies of the US.
Steve Hayes
Which is a pretty big ex- [laughs] It’s a pretty big-
Steve Hayes
… asterisk, right? I mean, if you ask the people in Dubai. [laughs]
Mike Warren
One hundred percent, but the sort of lie that there is a ceasefire is kind of limping along here, and it is now turning into, you know, negotiations are ongoing. The vice president is going to Pakistan to engage more in negotiations. And I think there’s, in the way that the President set things up on Tuesday, there is a benefit to both the Iranians and the Americans sort of engaging in the lie that there’s some kind of agreement, even as they disagree about what is in that agreement. The Iranians basically have a maximalist approach to what they say. There’s so– There was, like, a ten-point plan, and it was all these long-term goals of the Iranian regime in that. The Americans said that’s not what the agreement is or ever was. There was this, you know, whole question about whether there had been ag- an agreement for Israel to stop bombing Hezbollah sites in Lebanon. The Americans said that was never in the deal. The Iranians says it was. Hezbollah, of course, is a proxy for the IRGC. And so nobody can agree on what the agreement is or I suspect, i- is there really a-actually some kind of substantive agreement? I don’t think so, but everybody has sort of agreed to stop the big, you know, fighting on the American side, certainly, and try to approach some kind of peace deal, and I think that’s to the benefit of the Iranians. Like, they now have the ability to sort of drag out this idea of a peace deal and maybe extract as much as they can from this. And the Americans, I think, and, and Donald Trump, are in a position where they’re really seeking some kind of end to this. But in terms of clarity about what the ceasefire really is about and what a peace deal could be, we don’t have any, any of that kind of clarity now.
Steve Hayes
Yeah, Sarah, the one thing that, that we heard from Trump supporters and proponents of this alleged ceasefire was that it would result in the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. That has most decidedly not happened. Where does that stand?
Sarah Isgur
Well, we don’t– I mean, to Mike’s point, in law, we talk about contracts being a meeting of the minds. You know, if you have a contract and you both sign it, if you don’t agree on what those words mean, you know, if you thought literally meant literally and the other person thought literally meant figuratively, you didn’t have a meeting of the minds, even though you both signed the contract. Well, I mean, here we don’t even have a written agreement, but we definitely don’t have a meeting of the minds when it comes to the Straits, at least as best as we can tell where we’re sitting right now. If you talk to people who have worked in the Department of Defense in these sort of long-term planning policy type roles, everyone has always seen Iran as a threat. You know, they will point to, like, what we should have done in the ’80s. We basically let the roots of the Iranian regime take hold at a time where maybe we could have done something in the early ’80s. We had some other things going on then, if anyone remembers, and we didn’t do that. Now, the roots are quite deep, and the options have just never been very good. But any of those people would tell you, like, “Of course, we’d love to attack the re- Iranian regime. We’d love regime collapse. We’d love regime change.” The problem is the first thing that they will do is shut the Straits of Hormuz. This just wasn’t, like, a unthinkable thing. It was the obvious thing that would happen.
Sarah Isgur
And so I think for those sort of DoD veterans and military planning folks, they’re just sort of scratching their heads. They’re confused about what appears to be the administration’s confusion or lack of foresight that that would happen. That being said, the other thing that I’ve heard, you know, just really universally is, which might surprise you, like, they’re really rooting for America to succeed. Like, there were always talks of attacking the Iranian regime, and past presidents didn’t take that step, and so now it’s like, well, we’re in it. There were always plans to potentially do this. It was always sort of a close call, like, “Let’s do this. Let’s see this through.” But you have to understand this mirroring problem where the Iranian regime does not think like we do. They don’t have the goals that we do. They don’t react to the incentives that we do. And so when it comes to something, for instance, like the Straits or, or anything else, like, they’re not going to act rationally as we define rationality because they’re on a very different project-
Sarah Isgur
… than the American project has been for the last two hundred and fifty years, and their project has been fifty years. They are willing to kill two hundred thousand of their own people toward that project. Of course, they’re willing to shut the Straits of Hormuz and have the economic consequences of that. And by the way, they see it mostly helping Putin, who, you know, like, this all has these second and third order effects that at this point, I won’t say it goes to their benefit in every case, because obviously what America has been able to do just from the air is no joke. Like, we shouldn’t ignore what has been accomplished. That being said, again, when you look at it from their perspective, the survival of the regime is number one, always number one. Everything else is secondary to that. And the purpose of the regime, which is an Islamic caliphate state between this, you know, Sunni-Shia war that has been going on, that America is only a part of that war to them. We are not sort of a separate thing.
Steve Hayes
Yeah. Kevin, I want to ask you about something that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at his briefing on Wednesday morning.
Kevin Williamson
Was it really, “I can drive”? [laughs]
Steve Hayes
No, it wasn’t that, but we do have the clip.
Audio
Listen, I, I would love to see the Iranian people take advantage of this opportunity. Um, they have been oppressed by the previous regime, and, uh, they’ll have a new opportunity with this regime, um, that remains to be seen. That was not our objective in this effort, um, but they’re brave people. Horrible things have been done to them by the previous regime. Tens of thousands targeted and killed and assassinated in a way that government never should, uh, and we wish them the best, absolutely. Thank you all very much.
Steve Hayes
Kevin, he said, quote, “They will have an opportunity with this regime,” end quote, contrasting this regime with what he described as the previous regime. What is he talking about?
Kevin Williamson
God knows.
Kevin Williamson
Uh-
Sarah Isgur
Does he?
Kevin Williamson
[laughs] Yeah.
Steve Hayes
What’s the opportunity, and what’s the regime?
Kevin Williamson
Well, I think this goes back to the mistake the Trump administration seems to have made in thinking of this as essentially the Venezuela thing replayed out. That they go in, they do this decapitation, they’re gonna get a whole bunch of different people, and they can call that a victory. Without understanding what they’ve done is they just cleared out a bunch of, you know, elderly ayatollahs and replaced them with younger versions of the same thing. I think what we’re seeing here is that the Iranians have an advantage in the sense that they understand the American administration better than the Americans understand them. So when Trump is out there talking about, you know, “Open the effing Straits,” and escalating from, “I’m gonna commit war crimes,” to, “I’m gonna commit genocide,” over the course of a weekend, the Iranians don’t hear that and think that he’s going to nuke them. They hear that, and they run it through their Trump decoder ring, and what they hear is, “Oh, my God, I didn’t think they were gonna close the Strait of Hormuz. I’m really scared about this, and I don’t know what to do.” And so they put out this wonderful Van Halen tour rider of a peace deal. You know, that you’re gonna take all your troops out of the Middle East, you’re going to pay us reparations, you’re gonna give us a snifter full of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed, and they send that over to the Trump administration. And the Trump administration does exactly what you expect them to do in a situation like this, which is pretend like they got what they wanted, which was some sort of reasonable proposal from the Iranians.And then follow essentially what the Pakistani-Chinese proposal is, which is a ceasefire that’s just a ceasefire while we try to figure stuff out. So let’s take a couple of weeks, hope we can get some ships through the strait, and then begin negotiations with nobody basically having any real commitments anywhere. Which is not an uncomfortable place for the Trump administration to be, I think. I think that the Trump administration and the Iranians in this case both want the same things, which is a temporary cessation in combat or at least a reduction of it to get it out of the headlines a little bit here and to give the Iranians a little bit of a break at home while they start to try to figure out other stuff, which is how we’re going to go about leaving the Iranians in control of the strait and leaving the regime in place while pretending that we didn’t, because that’s where this thing is going, and that’s how we’re gonna settle this thing out. So Hegseth and people are out there talking about, like, the new Iranian leadership as though it were some kind of radical change in regime, as though there was some sort of new– like they’d had an election or something, or there was a constitutional convention somewhere, rather than just it’s, you know, the chain of command has gone down a few links, and now it is where it is. But that’s what we’re seem to be pointing toward is pretending as a matter of policy that some kind of big change has been affected there. I’ve heard sort of the, um, how to say, lower information types talking about, “Well, this is great because now the Strait of Hormuz will be open.” When was the last time that was the case? Well, like three weeks ago, actually. [laughs]
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
So the whole problem that now has to be solved is a problem that wasn’t really much of a problem until the war was started. The strait was open and functioning, was vulnerable, of course, and subject to, uh, Iranian whimsy. But now we’re probably gonna see a situation in which Iranian control over the strait has been tightened and that they’re going to be, you know, essentially charging a toll. They’ve been throwing around the number of a dollar per barrel of oil or something like that. So you figure, you know, two million dollars for every good-sized ship that goes through, creating a new revenue stream for them to rebuild their missiles and weapons programs and rearm and do all the rest of that stuff. This is just another version, I think, of the Trump administration not understanding that there’s no question that the American military can always accomplish its military goals. In terms of conventional warfare, there’s not an army anywhere in the world that can stand against the US military, not even the Chinese, not even big countries like that. There’s never any question that we’re going to be able to kill the people we want to kill and destroy the property we want to destroy. What we’re looking for in Iran isn’t a military outcome, but a political outcome. Political outcomes take negotiation and intelligence and creativity and knowledge and work of the sort that the Trump administration just doesn’t do, never has done, is never going to do. So a-again, they’re thinking that the military victory is a goal in and of itself when it’s just a means to something that they’re not going to get to because they don’t know where they want to get.
Mike Warren
And can I say to the point of the misunderstanding or the mismatch of understanding of who they’re– who’s going to be across the negotiating table from them? I mean, the way in which the Trump administration has a very personalized view of how they negotiate in general, and that goes, you know, from negotiating with Congress to negotiating on the international stage, is that, you know, y-you get the right people together in the room, and you just cut the deal. That is, I think, how Trump views things, and that is, I think, what you can see in the, in those Hegseth remarks when he talks about the regime being different than the last one. They, they view the regime as being the people who are in the room and not, say, the ideology, the very deep-seated, as Sarah pointed out, you know, the roots go deep on this particular regime, which it is the same regime that has been in power since 1979 in Iran. That misunderstanding of how the Iranians are going to be approaching this, these negotiations, that they are interested primarily in civilizational survival and regime survival, and that they’re not going to be wined and dined by J.D. Vance or anyone else and sort of giving away what they think is existential for them. And that mismatch is just really apparent in what Hegseth said, and I think in the approach here to this ceasefire agreement and whatever peace negotiations are going to be happening from here on out.
Sarah Isgur
So Steve, before we finish out on Iran, I just– to go back to our previous conversation about what a sociopath writing a book makes you, it’s really important that the day your book comes out, the week your book comes out, that there’s no sort of other really big news that knocks-
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
… your interviews to get canceled.
Sarah Isgur
And so here’s what a sociopath this book has made me, as you ask about the process of book writing and what I’ve learned about myself. When the ceasefire was announced, my first thought was, “That’s super helpful for me.” [laughs]
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
Yes. Sociopath indeed. I think there’s a philosophical debate to be had about whether it makes you a psychopath or just reveals that you’re a psychopath.
Sarah Isgur
Excellent point.
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
I think my wife probably would say it revealed that I was a psychopath-
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
… but that was hiding inside me a [laughs] while. Should we take a vote? [laughs]
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Kevin Williamson
Let’s not. Thank you very much.
Sarah Isgur
No, Kevin. No, you will not get to vote on that.
Kevin Williamson
We have a delicious Not Worth Your Time coming in a moment, but I do wanna take just a second to ask each of you if you have something that we published at “The Dispatch” that you would recommend. I will start with mine since it is what we were just talking about, Nick’s terrific newsletter published Wednesday evening, “Schrödinger’s Ceasefire,” goes through sort of point by point what this means, the kind of chaos, the information chaos that this represents, the lack of clarity from the administration. It is really a sharp analysis of what we’ve just been through with the ceasefire, so I highly recommend everybody go give that a read. We will put that and, uh, these other recommendations in the show notes as always. Kevin? Well, that was gonna be my choice too, but my second choice is the piece on Ossining, New York in the 1950s from the Where I’m From series.
Mike Warren
That was terrific. Was that Thomas Dichter?
Kevin Williamson
Yes. Talking about going to high school in Ossining in the supposedly moreInnocent and carefree days of the 1950s and what it was really like. I thought it was a really interesting and worthwhile piece of reading, so go check it out.
Steve Hayes
Yeah, fantastic. I will say I, I really liked this. I was probably a little bit skeptical of this Where I’m From series. I liked it, but if, you know, you always worry that it could be self-indulgent or it might not work. We have had some great pieces in that collection.
Kevin Williamson
We’re gonna get about fifteen thousand words on Lubbock, Texas, so hope you’re ready for that one.
Steve Hayes
Well, I’m even motivated to write about Wauwatosa, Wisconsin at some point.
Mike Warren
I don’t find that hard to believe.
Steve Hayes
I need to get going.
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Fair. Sarah, recommendation.
Sarah Isgur
SCOTUS Today, the SCOTUS blog newsletter, but not for any high-minded reason. I just really liked– They have a quote at the bottom that always comes from oral argument, and this one was from the famous twenty fourteen Yates case about whether fish can be documents. It led to a well-known citation in Justice Kagan’s opinion where she cites to one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Sarah Isgur
But I had not remembered this quote from the oral argument. Chief Justice Roberts: “Well, what if you stopped them on the street and said, ‘Is a fish a record, document, or tangible object?'” The advocate: “I think if you, if you asked them that question and you, you pointed them to the fact that…” Justice Scalia interrupts, “I don’t think you would get a polite answer to either of those questions.” [laughing]
Steve Hayes
[laughs] Man, I miss Justice Scalia.
Sarah Isgur
So check out SCOTUS Today. There’s always a fun quote at the end. It’s like a little treat waiting for you in the center of the Tootsie Roll pop.
Steve Hayes
Sort of like Not Worth Your Time when we talk about food. Mike, what’s your recommendation?
Mike Warren
If you want a more informed and better articulated sort of version of what we were talking about with this Iran ceasefire, I can’t recommend enough A Peaceful, Uneasy Feeling, the latest piece from our contributing writer, Mike Nelson. Give it a read for some really informed analysis of what this ceasefire really was, what it entails or what we don’t know still, but what it means on the ground.
Steve Hayes
Yeah, I second that recommendation. As well, finally, Not Worth Your Time today. As most of our listeners know, Sarah has a very strict definition of Not Worth Your Time as something news adjacent or in the zeitgeist, or I think she said at one point, what the kids are talking about on social media. And I like those, too, but I also like Not Worth Your Time that gives us a break from the news cycle and might give us all greater insights into the panelists as people outside of their roles as reporters and analysts in the news. Sarah in particular has strongly objected to my occasional inclusion of food as a topic, as we’ve discussed here before. So of course, I wanna end our discussion today [chuckles] with a Not Worth Your Time on food.
Sarah Isgur
Mm-hmm.
Steve Hayes
We’re recording this, it’s about ten o’clock on Thursday, April ninth. The Masters golf tournament teed off about two hours ago. And on Tuesday, the tournament held something called the Champions Dinner, hosted each year for all previous Masters champions by the winner of last year’s Masters tournament, who has the privilege of choosing the menu. And usually, sort of customarily, this includes foods that represent the home countries or hometowns of the champions. It says something about these champions.
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
But this year’s menu was chosen by last year’s winner, Rory McIlroy of Ireland, and it’s been the subject of a lot of buzz because McIlroy didn’t represent his, his native land in his choices and instead went very highbrow with his picks, and he was asked about, “So why didn’t you represent Ireland?” And he– and I’ve got a quote here from Rory McIlroy, said, “People keep asking me, ‘Why didn’t you go more Irish?’ And I said, ‘Because I want to enjoy the dinner as well.'” [laughing]
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Taking a shot at Ireland and Irish food. And I think, look, there’s some good Irish food. I was just in, in Dublin for five days. We had some wonderful meals there, some great cottage pie. Then we got cottage pie the next meal, then we got cottage pie the next meal.
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
We did have fish and chips.
Mike Warren
It’s a very narrow menu of what could be considered good.
Steve Hayes
You’re able to get a good meal in Ireland.
Mike Warren
In Dublin, really.
Steve Hayes
But I wanna ask the panel here, McIlroy had a great menu, and I will read some of this, but I want to ask the panel here, if you were next year’s Masters champion and had to come up with the menu, what would you offer as your menu representative of you or memories or where you’re from? So here’s a few things that McIlroy included. I’ll go first while I give you all time to talk. So McIlroy’s appetizers included peach and ricotta flatbread, which he said the, the tournament organizers insisted that he have at least one vegetarian option. That was it, with balsamic hot honey and basil, rock shrimp tempura, bacon-wrapped dates, grilled elk sliders with caramelized onion jam, roasted garlic aioli. Then his first course was yellowfin tuna carpaccio or foie gras. Main course was wagyu filet mignon or seared salmon, and a variety of other sides, Brussels sprouts, glazed carrots. And then for dessert, he had sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream and warm toffee sauce. The wines that he chose generated a lot of discussion because they were extraordinarily expensive. All– I think all of them above one thousand dollars a bottle. But if you’ve won the Masters, you can afford to pick those things. So my menu is basically a combination of Wisconsin and Spain, not surprising anybody. So I think I would start with lightly breaded deep-fried cheese curds and mini cocktail brats, sort of pigs in a blanket.
Mike Warren
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
But then pivot to gambas pil pil and jamón ibérico with manchego cheese as the pass around appetizers. The first course would be salmorejo, which is a chilled Spanish tomato soup with hard-boiled eggs and jamón, and then grilled octopus, which is also a great Spanish entree or appetizer. Main courseTwo choices, pan-seared walleye from Northern Wisconsin or a brisket and ground chuck half-pound cheeseburger. My featured drinks would be Pabst Blue Ribbon or Spotted Cow, which is a great beer from New Glarus. And my wines would be Pintia from a, a red wine from Spain’s Toro region or Pago de Caravejas El Anejon. And then finally, the dessert would be Tarta de Queso Vasco, Basque Country cheesecake, very light, fluffy, incredible, and a selection of frozen custards from Wisconsin. So that’s mine.
Kevin Williamson
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
So I could go on. I have other options-
Kevin Williamson
Yeah, uh-
Steve Hayes
… but I’ll cut myself short-
Steve Hayes
… there. And Sarah-
Sarah Isgur
Yeah, I’m ready
Steve Hayes
… I’m really interested in what, what you would choose.
Sarah Isgur
Oh, this is real easy. We’re gonna do red checkered tablecloth, old school smokehouse Texas barbecue. There’s no appetizers. That’s what the pickles are doing on your table. Feel free to eat those if you’re hungry and you’re waiting. So it’s just a whole lot of stuff put on your table at once. It will be sausage links, you know, cut at that nice angle, turkey, brisket, the end.
Steve Hayes
Smoked turkey.
Sarah Isgur
What? Yes, the smoked turkey and the smoked brisket.
Sarah Isgur
The brisket’s gonna have been on for about 20 hours. Look, if we’re doing high-end, I’m gonna go get a wagyu brisket. It’s pretty delicious. For my sides, I’m doing mac and cheese, coleslaw, and green beans, and for dessert, blackberry cobbler. For my drinks, obviously, I will have unsweetened iced tea, and you’ll have some lemonade if you wanna pour it and make the Arnold Palmer ’cause this is the Masters, right?
Steve Hayes
Wow. Wow, what a pro.
Sarah Isgur
And I will offer Basque cider, which is, like, funky enough to stand up to that peppery, smoky brisket, and I think that would be a delicious meal, and everyone would leave super satisfied without any of the frou-frou.
Steve Hayes
I mean, I’m hungry right now. Kevin?
Kevin Williamson
You know, there was a really good taco stand in my hometown, and they made really good barbacoa, and barbacoa traditionally is made from the head of a cow. And I was there one day, and I was having my barbacoa, and I’m eating my barbacoa, and I bite into something that is not barbacoa, and I spit it out, and can you guess what it was?
Steve Hayes
No idea.
Kevin Williamson
Well, it’s,
Kevin Williamson
it was a tooth. Uh- [laughs]
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
A tooth. Oh, no.
Kevin Williamson
It was a cow tooth.
Steve Hayes
Oh, my G-
Kevin Williamson
Uh, it was a tooth from a cow that had just gotten off into the barbacoa ’cause they were doing it the way you’re supposed to, right?
Sarah Isgur
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Williamson
And so I think my, my, my meal would be barbacoa from that particular place.
Steve Hayes
Mike, bring us home, from Georgia.
Mike Warren
Yeah, originally from Georgia, so I’ve been thinking about this a lot, not just for this Not Worth Your Time in the last, uh, you know, 120 seconds, but the Masters is always a, a sort of exciting time. I grew up about two hours from Augusta, so I can’t say I’m a local, but it’s just always been a part of my life. And so my meal starts with something that you see a lot of at the Masters, which is pimento cheese. Pimento cheese is-
Mike Warren
… just-
Sarah Isgur
Disgusting.
Mike Warren
Well, more for me than Sarah.
Steve Hayes
So good.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Mike Warren
Jalapeno pimento.
Steve Hayes
Jalapeno pimento? Is that legit?
Kevin Williamson
I was actually thinking that would be a good side to Sarah’s barbecue.
Steve Hayes
Yes, I agree with that, actually.
Mike Warren
Yeah, so was I, actually. Well, and as you’ll see that, that there’s some, there is some crossover-
Steve Hayes
She’s shaking her head no
Mike Warren
… on the different-
Steve Hayes
No encroaching. [laughs]
Mike Warren
Look, again, m- m- you, you don’t have to eat it, Sarah. You know, you can have, you can have the hot boiled peanuts, which is also, uh-
Sarah Isgur
Also no.
Mike Warren
Oh, going down in South Georgia to a stand, you know, on the side of the road on the way to the beach in Florida and getting a bag of hot boiled peanuts, oh, so good, so good, nice and salty and mushy.
Sarah Isgur
So it’s 95 and humid, and you want some hot boiled peanuts. Okay.
Mike Warren
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So but starting with those pimento cheese and hot boiled peanuts is like a s… is a nice starter. My wife makes an excellent pimento cheese, but also Palmetto cheese, which is a South Carolina store-bought cheese, is also a great store-bought substitute. By the way, for a cocktail, Chatham Artillery Punch, I don’t know if anyone is familiar with it. It is a classic Savannah, Savannah’s in Chatham County, and so Ch- Chatham Artillery Punch, it’s just a classic Southern punch. I think it’s got, like, bourbon and rum and cognac and lots of different stuff, and it’ll get you going. Um-
Steve Hayes
And being Savannah, they serve it at 7:00 in the morning.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Mike Warren
Obviously. Or the end of the night, actually, at 7:00 in the morning.
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Mike Warren
The main course, of course, is barbecue, but not brisket, but pork barbecue, which is what we have in Georgia. Georgia doesn’t have its own sort of defined barbecue style. It’s a kind of a mix of whatever part of Georgia you’re in. I’m from North Georgia, and so it looks much more like a Western North Carolina sauce, but it’s gotta be pork. It’s gotta be pulled or chopped. I prefer pulled pork. So you let that butt roast for a long time, and then it just falls off the bone. You mix it with some more of that Western Carolina sauce, and you can have it with nice thick pickles and, uh, have it on a sandwich or just eat it. And then for, you know, you can throw in some collards or some green beans. I kind of prefer green beans, actually, as my side. Throw that in with some really savory, not sweet, I’m sorry other Georgians, but savory coleslaw. That’s just got, you know, a ton of, like, mustard and, and celery salt in there to really bring out the savoriness of the slaw. And then we end the night with a peach cobbler. You’ve got to do it with peach cobbler and vanilla bean ice cream. That’s kind of the perfect– I mean, you know, when I win the Masters, when I get that green jacket in, in just a few years-
Steve Hayes
[laughs]
Mike Warren
… that’s gonna be what everybody’s gonna be eating.
Sarah Isgur
Well, at least we can agree on the pickles.
Mike Warren
Oh, good.
Steve Hayes
It’s interesting, though, that, that all three of you, I would say, offered some variety of barbecue.
Sarah Isgur
Yeah.
Steve Hayes
I wouldn’t have necessarily predicted that.
Mike Warren
It’s America.
Sarah Isgur
Damn right.
Steve Hayes
Maybe we should have some kind of process by which when we have a Dispatch all staff get-together, somebody gets to choose the menu.
Mike Warren
This is a good idea.
Steve Hayes
Some kind of incentive reward, yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t do it based on, like, web traffic or anything like that, but maybe a productivity thing or a-
Mike Warren
This has, this has been a productive Not Worth Your Time, not just for content, but for administrative purposes. We, we’ve got, like, ideas for-
Steve Hayes
Yeah. We gotta, we gotta give this some thought. I think this could be a thing. Well, thank you, Sarah, for indulging my food talk and for the conversation about Iran and the Supreme Court. Sarah, good luck with the book.
Sarah Isgur
Thank you.
Steve Hayes
For people who don’t know, she’s got a book coming out. I guess you’d know if you’ve been listening.
Sarah Isgur
[laughs]
Steve Hayes
Thanks for joining us. We will see you next time. [upbeat music] Finally, if you like what we’re doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. And as always, if you’ve got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at roundtable@thedispatch.com. We read everything, even the ones from people who prefer Sarah’s Not Worth Your Time to mine. That’s gonna do it for today’s show. Thanks so much for tuning in, and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible, Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time. [upbeat music]
