The New Right’s Thin Gruel | Ruminant

With those on the new right reluctant to say “uncle” after the Republicans’ midterm beatdown, it’s left to Jonah Goldberg to rub some salt in their wounds. Tune in as Jonah ruminates over Twitter fights, the SAVE Act, noncitizen voting, Oren Cass, Reaganites, postliberals, reification, liberalism, John Locke, Stephen Miller, Trump’s off-ramps, Kevin Roberts, The Bulwark, replying to critics, Chris Rufo, regime change, and kids’ education. Show Notes: The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Want to see more of The Dispatch in Google search? Add Us as a Preferred Source Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Music 0:01 [drum solo] [groans] Music 0:12 [drum solo] Ladies and gentlemen, the... Music 0:16 Can I please have your attention? Can you dig it? Jonah Goldberg 0:20 [crowd cheering] Greetings, dear listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the "Remnant Podcast," brought to you by The Dispatch and Dispatch Media. [sighs] Where to begin? Um, first of all, thanks to everybody who signed up to become a new subscriber, member, whatever, to The Dispatch. Hopefully, some of you have figured out how to now, um, download or access the full solo Remnant, because that's one of the things you get when you become a paid member of The Dispatch. It was quite a week. So, like, I guess it was just last week, I, I talked about how I felt like I had to address this really stupid Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk thing, Jonah Goldberg 1:08 and I did last week, but I didn't realize that I had, like, literally while I was recording the solo, it blew up even more. I ended up getting into this big stupid spat with Chris Rufo, who tried to sort of mau-mau me and emotionally bully me, and... Look, I think the murder of Charlie Kirk was heinous and grotesque. I've always said that one of the things I didn't fully appreciate was just how unbelievably popular he was. But it's also been 14 months. I didn't mention Charlie Kirk. I mentioned an organization that has become a huge liability, and that's one of the weird ironies of all this, right, is I-- This tweet of mine where I'd said, you know, "Thank God TPUSA mobilized the youth vote," you know, the day after the election, people projected onto it all sorts of, like, oh, I'm... Like, Larry O'Connor, uh, who's a conserv- right-wing talk radio hack who's sort of failed up for a big chunk of his career, I heard from a couple people that on the radio he was saying that, um, I was dancing on Charlie Kirk's grave. Which, look, I mean, I'm, I, I'm sorry to get vituperative, but that's BS, and I don't know if he's smart enough to know it's BS or he actually believes it. I, I get that there are people on the left who say horrible things about Charlie Kirk, and I thought the Dave Chappelle line about being glad he was murdered is gross. So I get that stuff is out there. You haven't heard it from me in over a year, 'cause I lament that guy was murdered. It's terrible. And I think Charlie Kirk's wife handled herself at that memorial service with unbelievable Christian grace. I'm not a huge fan of how they're running the organization now, um, which was my point. And, you know, Rufo wanted to make it sound as if, you know, he was acting as if I was saying this, like, during the memorial service or something, and I just think it's intellectually dishonest. Well, first of all, let me just say flat out, I was 100% right. I apologize for nothing I actually wrote. I do regret that some people over-read or allowed themselves to be led by the ear of other people who asserted what my motivations were and what the plain meaning of, of what I said was and turned it into this myth that made them very angry at me. But I'm just not a big believer in giving into Twitter mobs, and I have apologized countless times for things I phrased wrong, said wrong. I do it when I think I'm wrong, and it, it happens quite a bit. But this just wasn't one of those cases. And I do think it's part of a larger thing going on on the right, like the absolutely insipid and kind of amusingly pathetic effort to blame the election loss. Like, we've kind of moved beyond it was all about Iran. I mean, there's certain quarters that won't give up on it, but the new hotness this week was that, that it's John Thune's fault, that but for John Thune being major- Senate majority leader, this election would have gone swimmingly. I made, I made this point briefly, and I had quite a tirade yesterday on the Dispatch podcast, which I'm still embarrassed about. Kevin won't stop making fun of me for it. You know, the-- there's this phrase, the bad boyar thing, which is basically, you know, if only the czar knew, right? It's this idea that, that the leader is being misled, mis- mis- misinformed, led astray. We've seen an enormous amount of this formulation in the Trump years from Republicans who want to criticize what Trump is doing but don't want to criticize Trump, so they say, "Oh, I think he's getting bad information or bad advice." There was a slew of it in the days leading up to the election last week where, you know, people were like, "Whoever advised Trump to go to the Lincoln Memorial the day before the election and talk about caulking and, and the reflecting pool and, and, and, and marble, that guy should be fired." And let me just say, and there was a bunch of that, and it was from some, like, actually kind of serious people, or allegedly, you know, high-profile people. Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now