Welcome to Beg to Beg to Differ, The Bull Works Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring

Civil Conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy at Earth Bullwork,

and I'm joined by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal,

Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center, and Damon Linker who writes the sub-stack newsletter,

Eyes on the Right.

Our special guest this week is Josh Kroshar,

senior political correspondent at Axios.

Welcome back, Josh.

Welcome again to my regulars. We have a lot to get through this week.

Busy busy newsweek, let's start with the Department of Energy revealing that it now

believes the lab leak is the most likely source of the

coronavirus pandemic. This has been the source of so much nonsense. I'm going to invite you to begin on this Josh.

The positions of the left and the right have been so locked in on this. It's as if nobody can evaluate facts without

considering whether it advances their side's preferred narrative.

Yeah Mona this is an example of how there's just such little nuance in our political discussions these days and this has become an issue of political tribalism on both sides and I was still stunned by

some of the reaction on the left to the revelation that the Department of Energy is

re-evaluating its analysis and has minimal confidence or some degree of

confidence that it's now the lab leak from muhan was the culprit of COVID

talk show hosts from Stephen Colbert

to a lot of progressive commentators

...