Is Optimism Warranted?
The Mona Charen Show
The Bulwark
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2023
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Noah Smith tries to bring a little sunshine to the dour regulars (and Cathy Young) who are worried about the economy, the threat from third parties, and more. Plus, in our highlights and lowlights segment, Mona celebrates the fact that a famous Trumper has to liquidate.
highlights/lowlights
Mona's:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mypillow-auction-mike-lindell_n_64acffa0e4b0e5efaaddd535
Bill's:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/world/middleeast/israel-protests-judicial-overhaul.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/12/biden-vilnius-nato-ukraine/
Noah's:
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/17/manufacturing-semiconductor-tech-biden
https://heatmap.news/politics/inflation-reduction-act-updates-biden
Cathy's:
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/russian-opposition-ukrainian-activists-clashing
Damon's:
https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/the-global-progress-of-right-wing
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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 |
| 0:15.0 | across the political spectrum. |
| 0:17.0 | We range from center left to center right. |
| 0:19.6 | I'm Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and policy editor of the bulwark and I'm joined |
| 0:23.9 | by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal |
| 0:29.1 | and Damon Linker who writes the sub-stack newsletter notes from the middle ground. |
| 0:34.4 | Linda Chavez is off this week but the bulwarks Kathy Young has kindly agreed to sit in for |
| 0:39.7 | her and our special guest is Noah Smith who writes the sub-stack newsletter No Opinion. |
| 0:46.9 | Welcome one and all. |
| 0:49.3 | Noah I am so glad that we scheduled to have you here this week even though it's a little |
| 0:55.3 | bit of serendipity but the fact is looking at the front pages this morning what do we |
| 1:00.5 | see inflation down to 3% the elusive soft landing for the economy seems to be more than |
| 1:12.8 | a wish right. |
| 1:14.2 | Yes I don't want to jinx it knock on wood but it looks like we're doing amazingly |
| 1:19.2 | well you know employment is still extremely robust incredibly good labor market and yet |
| 1:23.8 | inflation down you know it's not all the way back down to 2% but it's pretty close |
| 1:27.5 | and a lot of measures are actually pretty close right now so I'd say that we're definitely |
| 1:31.8 | out of the danger zone in terms of inflation and there's always the possibility that the |
| 1:36.0 | interest rate hikes that we've done will induce a recession a year from now or something |
| 1:39.9 | like that there'll be this delayed reaction effect so of course we have to knock on wood |
| 1:43.4 | and not counter chickens and blah blah blah but things are looking really good right now. |
| 1:48.1 | So can you think of examples of or give us some examples of when there's been a delayed |
... |
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