Donald Lame Duck | Roundtable

The Dispatch Podcast

The Dispatch

News, Politics

4.6 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Warren is joined by Megan McArdle, David French, and Kevin Williamson to discuss the popularity of President Donald Trump and whether he's influential in the MAGA party. Show Notes:—Media fatigue and Miss Piggy allegations —Cracks in the MAGA coalition—Trump's foreign policy agenda—Understanding Trump's relationship with Saudi Arabia—'The most populist black tie dinner ever'—Silicon Valley politics—Crisis in learning outcomes and dismantling the Department of Education Show Notes:—New York Times: The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart We’re running a listener survey, which you can find at thedispatch.typeform.com/podcast. The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:23.5	sanity and understanding to our readers. And I can't wait for you to read it. Cheers. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. On this week's roundtable, we'll discuss if Trump is already a lame duck.
1:29.7	Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman's visit to Washington, D.C. and the current state of education in America. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleague Kevin Williamson, David French of the New York
1:35.3	Times, and Megyn McArdle of the Washington Post. Let's dive right in. All right, well, the conventional
1:40.6	wisdom took a turn this week on President Donald Trump. And I want to read you all a few
1:46.3	headlines that that demonstrates this, CNN. Is Trump a lame duck now? MS now, which is what
1:54.4	MSNBC is now, MS now, lame duck Trump, Politico, Donald Trump enters his lame duck era. Look, and there are plenty of
2:05.2	examples in these articles that these headlines are attached to. And we can start at his,
2:11.7	at Donald Trump's, you know, approval rating, Fox News approval in the latest poll. 41% of all voters approve of the job Trump is doing.
2:21.8	Even 86% of Republicans approved.
	...

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