Green Shoots of a Responsible Right?
The Mona Charen Show
The Bulwark
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2023
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
New York Times columnist David French joins the show to discuss signs of sanity from Texas Republicans and the averted default. Plus, the dangers of AI, and our highlight and lowlight segment, including Mona's shout-out to Mississippi's successful effort to raise reading test scores.
highlights/lowlights
Mona's:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html
David's:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/29/two-weeks-at-the-front-in-ukraine
Damon's:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/opinion/hawley-reeves-bly-men-mascculinity.html
Bill's:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/30/erdogan-autocrat-electoral-power/
Linda's:
https://apnews.com/article/daca-lawsuit-court-hearing-dreamers-5f77f76eaa9b96dbb7d8123103f240de
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to beg to differ the bulwarks, weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation |
| 0:15.2 | across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm Mona Charenes, |
| 0:20.4 | indicated columnist and policy editor at the bulwark, and I'm joined by our regulars Bill |
| 0:24.9 | Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal. Damon Linker, who writes |
| 0:29.3 | the sub-stack newsletter notes from the middle ground, and Linda Chavez of the Nascannon Center. |
| 0:35.3 | Our special guest this week is David French. We are delighted to have David. He is of, well, |
| 0:42.1 | lately of the dispatch. Now he is a columnist for the New York Times, and people call columns |
| 0:48.4 | must read. I recommend David's columns by saying it is sheer enjoyment to read his columns, okay? |
| 0:54.4 | So how's that for a recommendation? All right, so I'm in good spirits this week because we |
| 1:01.0 | averted default among many other good things that are happening in the world. This is making me |
| 1:06.3 | quite cheerful because all the commenting world was worried that though we've had these |
| 1:14.1 | perils of Pauline moments before and always managed to avert them at the last possible moment, |
| 1:21.1 | we were worried that maybe this time, particularly with this crew of Republicans in the house, |
| 1:27.3 | that maybe this time they really would go over the cliff, and instead we have something like |
| 1:34.0 | business as usual, something like normality in politics. So David, French, I'm going to start with |
| 1:40.8 | you. One thing that comes out of this is the question, and I think Semaphore put it very |
| 1:46.9 | explicitly, they said, has Washington misjudged or underestimated, I think is the word they use |
| 1:52.1 | Kevin McCarthy? What do you think about that? Does he deserve a second look as somebody who has |
| 1:57.0 | pulled something off here? Yes, and no. I think the reality is, along with a lot of Republicans, |
| 2:04.2 | is they did not go to Washington to be Trump's doges. That is the last thing that they had on their |
| 2:11.3 | mind when they were elected to be members of Congress. With the exception of some of the more |
| 2:15.4 | recent The Boberts and the Marjorie Taylor Greens who were elected to be purely Trumpest and |
... |
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