Krisit Noem

“Some people will correct me. They love to correct me. Even though I’m right about everything,” President Trump was saying, but no one was about to correct the President at this December cabinet meeting, the last in a series of extremely long such affairs that TV has carried this year. At this point, YouTube might as well set up a 24-hour livestream from inside the White House, like the sorts of stunts that were popular at the dawn of the personal video era. Trump is always with us, and talking at us. Before the roundtable of cabinet members listing their accomplishments and kissing the boss’s butt, Trump talked for nearly 30 minutes.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where the podcast has returned just in time for the final days before Iowa’s verdict. All those counties, all those fairs, all that fried food and all that slogging through freezing temperatures and Covid flare-ups has come to this: a caucus that will determine who drops out first, Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley. You can see in last night’s CNN debate why the hopes were once so high for the Florida governor. DeSantis won the debate, solidly, and has continued to improve as a debater throughout this process. But without Donald Trump on the stage, the back and forth with Haley turned into bickering over lying about records and meta commentary from the former South Carolina governor about bungled campaigns.