The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

It’s been a crazy few weeks, so The Remnant’s editorial czars have allowed Jonah to bring back Dispatch CEO Steve Hayes to engage in some classic punditry. After Steve forces Jonah to make some monocausal arguments about Joe Biden’s withdrawal and Kamala Harris’ ascension, the pair lay out some soft predictions regarding the outcome of the 2024 race, call out some DEI-hire hypocrisy, and consider the pros and cons of flip-flopping politicians. The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Call her an oracle or consider her a wise observer of Occam’s razor, but Bulwark contributor A.B. Stoddard saw this coming. A.B. returns to The Remnant to discuss her longstanding—and ultimately correct—prediction that Joe Biden wouldn’t be on the presidential ballot in November. Among the questions discussed in this Biden-Harris post-mortem: Is Jill Biden the American Eva Perón? Is Nancy Pelosi a bene gesserit? Jonah and A.B. have the answers, helping ye loyal listeners make sense of Kamala Harris’ coronation and her potential running mates, J.D. Vance’s growing pains, and the causes of conspiracy. Show Notes: —A.B. told you so —A.B. told you so, again The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though we all got precious little sleep the past two weeks, we are nothing if not devoted to our listeners. In this belated Ruminant, Jonah looks back at a week that contained years (yet also very little). Is there much to say about J.D. Vance's nomination and RNC speech? Did Trump, having survived an assassination attempt, cross the Hegelian threshold and become a nigh-Napoleonic age spirit? Will Jonah get to sleep in his own bed this weekend? Important questions all. Show Notes: -WATCH: Dispatch after hours reacting to The Neverending Trump Speech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Jonah predicted in the outro of yesterday’s Remnant episode, everything is indeed on fire. To help interpret what is perhaps the most chaotic news cycle in recent memory, Jonah is joined by Bulwark contributor Damon Linker. Tune in for Jonah and Damon’s referendum on newly selected VP candidate J.D. Vance, the state of the GOP at the 2024 convention, and the conversions of conservative think tanks. To close it out, they discuss the great Republican schism and the fallout of the Trump assassination attempt. Show Notes: —Damon’s Substack: Notes from the Middle Ground The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode of TheRemnant, Jonah’s guest is none other than Robert Doar, the president of the American Enterprise Institute. The two New Yorkers inevitably spend much of the episode quibbling over New York City. Fortunately for us, they also laud the Eisenhower administration and RFK’s (the first one, not the falcon one) DOJ, discuss the realities of the Jim Crow era and welfare reform, and dive into some top-tier AEI lore. Jonah remains obsessed with the topic of neoconservatism, so to close it all out, he drags Robert into the discourse. The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s Ruminant is dedicated to the devoted gnostic scholars of “Trumpism,” the Holy Grail of embattled conservative intellectuals and political toadies alike. Jonah also addresses the new elephant in the room: Project 2025 (consider our fact check on the discourse as mandatory reading). Blame the early hour, but Jonah also finds himself regressing to his days of media criticism, and even doubles down with media criticism-criticism. For dessert, he responds to comments on his debate with Niall Ferguson. The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. —Eliana Johnson: “Meet the Harvard whiz kid who wants to explain Trumpism” —The Dispatch fact-checks Project 2025 —Wednesday’s G-File —Jonah debates Niall Ferguson on The Remnant: Is America a late-stage Soviet country? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the octagon! The summer of 2024 has been one of epic feuds: Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake, Joe Biden vs. George Clooney, and, most notably, Jonah vs. Hoover Institute fellow and Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson. Jonah and Niall duke it out over the latter’s controversial claim: that America is the new Soviet Union. Jonah says nyet. Questions fly and accusations abound. Why is U.S. life expectancy declining? Is Jonah in denial? Is Niall just a provocateur? This match-up covers it all: the distinction between excess freedom and excess repression, why fentanyl is different than vodka, what causes deaths of despair, how illiberalism shapes both institutions and social outcomes, and what Cold War II could look like. As for the title-winner? We’ll let you be the judge, comrade. Show Notes: —Niall Ferguson: “We’re All Soviets Now” —Jonah Goldberg: “No, We Are Not Living in ‘Late Soviet America” —The Twitter Spat —“The Flight 93 Election” —“Why Socialism Failed in the United States” —Joseph Schumpeter: “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve heard the English countryside is lovely in July, so The Remnant is taking a vacation. Daniel Hannan, member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, stops by to discuss last week’s historic British elections. The Conservatives have taken a beating, a new prime minister takes the helm, and exceptions are acknowledged. Daniel and Jonah bridge the gap between American and British politics, prod at Trumpery and its Farage-ian offshoot, and take a day trip to France to investigate the popular front and the far-right. Show Notes: —Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Independence Day is in the rearview mirror, and the party is over at the Goldberg dojo. On today’s episode, Jonah airs some grievances with the current state of political discourse: the Democratic Party is screwing the pooch, Vice President Kamala Harris is burdened by what has been and more burdened by what can be, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is overrated, etc. Further ruminations cover executive privilege, the mystique of the Serbian Black Hand, and quotations from the book of Coolidge. Show Notes: -A Brief History of Executive Privilege -Coolidge's address —The super-mega-extravagant episode of Advisory Opinions —This week’s Dispatch Podcast The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke Burgis, author and professor of business at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, grants Jonah a well-deserved break from punditry with a crash course in mimetic theory. René Girard takes center stage as Luke and Jonah discuss the roots of human desire; how such desires lead to tribalism, conflict, and violence; and the relationship between mimetic processes and social discord. Scapegoats and gossip abound as Luke schools both high-minded Remnant listeners and theoretical normies on the psychology of nepotism, institutional debacles, and mob mentalities. Show Notes: —Luke’s website —Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To repent for his absence and abbreviated Ruminant, Jonah bequeaths listeners a special live episode, featuring American Enterprise Institute all-stars Chris Stirewalt and Yuval Levin. Together, the trio conducts a presidential debate post-mortem. Is it finally time for the Democratic Party to face the music? Have we reached the endgame of a nightmare political era? What is a golf handicap? Topics outside debate-gate include the Supreme Court verdict in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, George Washington’s basement crypt in the Capitol, and the dangers of ultra-transparent governance. Show Notes: —Yuval Levin: American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation-and Could Again —Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are days in media that call upon the entire newsroom to fuel up on caffeine and join in camaraderie to produce timely, round-the-clock coverage. Then there are days that leave a producer waiting lonesomely for a Ruminant recording until 11p, while the interns are out drinking, the staff long asleep, and the research assistant returned to the locked basement under the trapdoor where she slumbers and dreams about her vanishing youth and Il Duce's future show notes. But come rain or come shine, this Ruminant will be out, speedrunning through topics including the balmy days of Georgia, the furies of President Biden, and the dehumanizing language of Mr. Goldberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Jonah still MIA, Chris Stirewalt returns as Remnant guest host extraordinaire, joined by Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss Steil’s latest book and determine if the bizarreHenry Wallace was a noble man of the soil, an unsophisticated victim, or vindictive villain. To determine how Wallace changed the course of history, Stirewalt and Steil discuss the Soviet Union’s duping of an Einsteinian genius, the cult of Nicholas Roerich, and why you should never slaughter 6 million pigs. Show Notes: — Chris' American Enterprise Institute page — Benn Steil’s The World that Wasn’t — Benn Steil’s The Marshall Plan — Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States — Benn Steil and Elisabeth Harding’s “The Farm Legacy of Henry Wallace: Regressive Subsidies” The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonah abdicates his duties and conscripts Dispatch national correspondent Kevin D. Williamson to pick up the slack. Kevin is joined by Kent Lassman, the president and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to discuss Adam Smith, free trade, and the recent SCOTUS verdict on Moore v. U.S. Kevin and Lassman shoulder the Sisyphean burden of decoding tax law, discuss the miracle of American innovation, and debate the hot question of punditlandia: Who should make law? Show Notes: -Follow Kevin’s work at The Dispatch -Kent’s CEI Page The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s installment of The Ruminant, Jonah talks about all the things he says he doesn’t want to talk about. Digs are thrown at tariffs, the administrative state, popular fronts, and executive orders. The definitions of unity and democracy are debated as Jonah bushwhacks the path towards productive political debate. To close it all out, Jonah revisits the Juneteenth discourse and addresses his Soviet kerfuffle with Niall Ferguson. Show Notes:—Kevin Williamson for The Dispatch: An Economic Policy that’s Just a Little Bit Radical —Scott Lincicome for The Dispatch: Trump's Latest Tariff Idea is Dangerously Foolish —David French for Advisory Opinions on the administrative state —Suicide of the West —Charles Murray: By the People —Jonah’s piece on Juneteenth: American Passover —Niall Ferguson for The Free Press: We’re All Soviets Now —Jonah’s Rebuttal —Subscribe to Dispatch Faith                                                                                                                       The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remnant mainstay Matthew Continetti, director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Jonah for a trip to think-tanklandia. Rank punditry abounds: Joe Biden’s identity crisis is discussed, the vibes of the American electorate are analyzed, immigration policy is considered, and laughs are had all around. As a treat for all 16 listeners who care, Matt and Jonah revisit the recent Ruminant diatribe on neoconservatism and review the new hit reality TV show that is the United States Senate. Show Notes: -The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservativism -Matt’s AEI page -Matt’s new Commentary Magazine piece: Who Will Speak for America? -The Conservative Manifesto The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Francis Dearnley, assistant comment editor at The Telegraph and host of the daily “Ukraine: The Latest” podcast, joins Jonah to dig into the wide, Whiggish world of British politics. Francis helps those of us in the former colony understand the who’s and what’s of British conservatism, the B-word (Brexit, that is), and the failures of U.K. immigration policy. Francis and Jonah continue this brilliant edition of The Remnant by discussing the anti-Israel demonstrations in the U.K., the future of war in Ukraine, and how Russia can be defeated. Show Notes: —Follow Francis on X —The New York Times: The Enduring Importance of the 1965 Immigration Act —Enoch Powell: Rivers of Blood —Douglas Murray: How Mass Immigration Makes Antisemitism Worse —George Orwell: Second Thoughts on James Burnham —The Rest is History Podcast The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First and foremost, Jonah clears up the controversy surrounding The Dispatch cake-gate and discusses the rats that live in his walls. Topics for this week’s Ruminant include Donald Trump’s return to the Capitol, the true intentions of free-speech absolutists, the insidious nature of the Hamas PR team, and the most recent episode of The Skiff with David French. Jonah condemns trolling and partisan point-scoring and continues to pontificate on Hunter Biden’s legal woes. Show Notes: —Targeting of Jewish Homes in New York —Matt Continetti for the Free Beacon: No Haven for Hamas —David French on The Skiff —The Dispatch Podcast on Justice Alito The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Sasse, former U.S. senator and current president of the University of Florida, stops by for a fantastic conversation covering college admission reforms, the most sought after job in higher education, problems facing collegiate history departments (and how to solve them), and the roots of the recent campus protests. In order to avoid Sasse’s desire to discuss the College World Series, Jonah asks the big question: Where have all the good politicians gone? Show Notes: -The Hamilton Center at the University of Florida -Washington’s Farewell Address The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The one and only Yuval Levin, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Jonah to discuss his new book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—And Could Again. Jonah peppers Yuval with a variety of questions: Is the Constitution a cultural document or a document that creates the culture? Why are the principles of the Constitution so hard to export? How do we interpret the Civil War-era amendments? Buckle in for a deep dive on unity, the Electoral College, and a healthy dose of Woodrow Wilson slander. Show Notes: —American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation-And Could Again —Yuval’s AEI Page —Federalist 10 —The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution The Remnant 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 Jonah’s G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices