Jonah Goldberg: A NeverTrumper's Take on the 2024 Election

The Liberal Fascism author and co-founder of The Dispatch talks candidly about the weird state of the contemporary political right.

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Jonah Goldberg: A NeverTrumper's Take on the 2024 Election

Over the past quarter-century, Jonah Goldberg has made his name as one of the most provocative and unapologetic conservative journalists around. He was the editor of National Review Online for years before leaving over differences related to Donald Trump and he's penned bestselling books such as Liberal Fascism and Suicide of the West. He was a Fox News contributor for years, resigning in 2021 in protest of the channel's airing of Tucker Carlson's documentary Patriot Purge.

Along with former Weekly Standard editor Steve Hayes (who also resigned from Fox over the Carlson documentary), he founded The Dispatch in 2019. He also hosts the popular podcast The Remnant.

At a recent event in New York City, I talked with him about the fracturing of the political right into groups such as national conservatives, integralists, Never Trumpers, anti-Trumpers, and more. We also discussed the 2024 election and whether libertarians and conservatives can get along.

Previous appearances:

Jonah Goldberg on Why He Left National Review, Dislikes Sean Hannity and Seb Gorka, and Is Inching Toward Libertarianism, December 4, 2019

Is Jonah Goldberg Turning Into a Libertarian? It Sure Sounds Like It., July 5, 2017

Jonah Goldberg on The Tyranny of Cliches, Creating NRO, and the Firing of John Derbyshire, May 31, 2012

Comments

[Dillinger]

gonna require seven star reviews first.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Dude looks like he shares links with buttplug.

[Chumby]

His news website could be called The Lispatch

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[Mother's Lament]

Like Buttplug he's a notorious Neocon and they both stanned the Lincoln Project.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Dude looks like he buys feet pics.

[SQRLSY One]

Whoa! I am into chicken feet AND pig’s feet, and pics of the same! How do we get together?

(Mice feet are of interest to me also, but the calories are too scanty to bother with.)

[Nardz]

The DeSantis campaign

https://twitter.com/mitchellvii/status/1679181141536800779?t=35DjbMmzIvRiOMDGgomVFg&s=19

If Trump wins the nomination, I'll vote red then get my affairs in order for The Rapture since God has clearly given up on humanity.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Slack-jaws awaiting a Rapture -- in which a paltry, illusory fairy tale character is to rescue them from all of this damned modernity, reason, science, education, inclusiveness, and progress -- are among my favorite culture war casualties.

These gullible losers can't be replaced -- by their betters -- fast enough.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

You support a party that says sex differences don’t exist, please put a plastic bag over your head.

[charliehall]

That you think that that is an important issue shows that you have a perverted sense of priorities.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

This must be the part where your side deflects from the issue so you can continue pushing it without resistance.

[Mother's Lament]

Meanwhile Kirkland and his 83 genders will adjust their chakras as they fervently await the singularity to redeem humanity.

[Azathoth!!]

Kirkland NEEDS those 83 genders.

When Kirkland was born the doctors looked at the area on a human that would be a crotch and ran screaming out of the room.

He draws pictures with his own poo in an asylum these days. But he still likes to be called 'doctor'.

Kirkland's motherunclewife took it home from the vet with the 'sex' space torn off and burned.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

So Arty, as a culture war winner, have you celebrated by finally having your taxpayer funded bottom surgery?

[DesigNate]

Needs moar homophobia!

[retiredfire]

Your side loses all credence for providing "all of this damned modernity, reason, science, education, inclusiveness, and progress", when it becomes obvious that you've done it all, so that you can fuck little children.

[JoeB]

What, no "bitter clingers"? Maybe they ascended already.

[Libertariantranslator]

And Frank Zappa, the drugless objectivist hippie-impersonator, had the superstitious swastikarians pegged from the beginning. Youtube has a hoard of Zappa v. Murrican National Socialists up.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

talks candidly about the weird state of the contemporary political right.

And for the record, if you're paying attention, it's not that weird.

[Nardz]

No, it's pretty much a replay of 2016

[VULGAR MADMAN]

2016 never ended for him.

[Dillinger]

yes is when his self-coronation took place.

[Reg Parnell]

He threw away his career. Goldberg and his ilk have no political home. Republicans will never accept him again and Democrats will always hate him too.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

A big part of being in that political wilderness is that they can't actually bring themselves to openly embrace social leftism like a lot of other neocons have done since 2016. In formerly purple areas like Colorado that became deep blue, you have a lot of ex-Republicans who switched parties or call themselves "independent" but fully support Democrat politicians, and they've been able to change their opinions in order to fit in, simply so they have a seat at the table in their home state or city.

The Dispatch crowd are completely rootless, and so making that full-on switch is a lot more difficult because they aren't subject to that same peer pressure. Their entire motivation is to turn the clock on the GOP back to 2005.

[Patrick Henry, the 2nd]

It's weird to him because he's become a leftist, who think everything on the right is weird.

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/1679141992796676096?t=oysDuLhd0ix5uX-YWGRNiA&s=19

People don’t realize what a dramatic swing this is from pre 2020 polling.
"2024 National GE:
Trump 42%
Biden 42%
.@YouGovAmerica/@TheEconomist, 1,296 RV, 7/8-11"

Final The Economist 2020 was Biden +10

[Link]

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/catturd2/status/1679169054181933073?t=XEMFssF2QvmKk8Rg-CDXmA&s=19

Reminder …

A Republican majority in the Senate and House wouldn’t give President Trump 4 billion dollars for the wall - but the same Republican Party has no problem sending 50x that much money to Ukraine.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

We Have To Protect Ukraine's Borders! You know the ones drawn by Stalin and Hitler.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Russian soldiers are just dreamers.

[Social Justice is neither]

So the uniparty is protecting the legacy of their heroes, doesn't everybody do that?

[mad.casual]

LOL. Ukraine's borders are just, like, every possible permutation of national(ist) (,) social(ist) constructs, man!

[DesigNate]

That’s impossible, every one of our “not leftist, I just hate conservatives” libertarian posters has assured us that Trump took over the party and they’re totes a cult.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

If you can’t trust a homeless drunk who lives in a garbage can, located in a piss soaked alley, who can you trust?

[Libertariantranslator]

Ackshully, the Hitler painting of the Birchin Mary with pink ginger Jesus is Positive Christian prophesy of an Orange Savior. Germany in 2017 flooded with new nazis, and Soviet salvage states like Hungary and Mohammistan sprouted knuckle-dragging girl-bulliers like it was a combination Dixicrat Rally complete with Beatles records bonfire. The GOP platform pines for the good old days of shoot first prohibitionism, Comstockery, waterboarding Filipinos and helping Lt Calley rape and murder Vietnamese women and babies. That's Libertarian to Trumpanzees.

[charliehall]

Mexico isn't trying to commit genocide in the United States and erase it from the map. Only Israel and Ukraine face such threats today.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

TDS is the first step in inching toward libertarianism.

[Deep Lurker]

TDS is the first big step in repudiating libertarianism in favor of the leftist skin-suit version.

Trump was the most libertarian president in decades. Now that's admittedly a VERY low bar - but there it is. The other presidents (and major party presidential candidates) were even worse.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

For instance, if I want to get my "weird state of right wing" politics, I gotta go to left-wing news sources and watch the Libertarian from Reason.

[mad.casual]

@10:17 Apparently, I need to update my resume to reflect on how, 20 yrs. ago, I advised the FBI on anthrax bioterrorism.

[Mickey Rat]

The borders that Russia recognized when Ukraine declared its independence in the '90s.

[charliehall]

Don't confuse the Putin stooges with facts

[Public Entelectual]

Nick said Jonah was ” Inching Toward Libertarianism” four years ago.

Fortunately, the worm has yet to turn.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

Jonah is short on inches.

[retiredfire]

He's a cuck, of the first order.
Like his butt-buddy, French, he does what his wife tells him, even if it is to watch her with Bubba.

[charliehall]

Wonderful high intellectual level your comments have.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Guys like Goldberg, and other culture war-averse conservatives like the rest of The Dispatch crowd, have always operated under the pretense that they can snark about the left's hypocrisy and the left will somehow be chastened into acting according to some sort of shared principles. They've never understood the left's will to power, and readily conceded the nation's cultural institutions because they stupidly thought that "ideas" would convince people to vote for the GOP.

The problem is that their "ideas" are mostly fatuous and have no appeal to the masses outside the small circle of DC-NY gentry conservatives and the niche population who thinks tax cuts and foreign interventionism are the only real issues that matter.

They got kicked to the curb precisely because they don't have any "ideas" that actually matter or speak to the vast majority of the country, left or right, anymore. They're simply political parasites and establishment bootlickers who will serve whomever actually controls the status quo.

Never rely on them as allies, because they'll stab you in the back the minute they think they can't be the ones controlling the narrative.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The problem is that their “ideas” are mostly fatuous and have no appeal to the masses outside the small circle of DC-NY gentry conservatives and the niche population who thinks tax cuts and foreign interventionism are the only real issues that matter.

Victor Davis Hanson has some good insights into this mentality. He said he clashed with Bush conservatives who literally told him that "the market should adjudicate the border, and when wages drop below $1 an hour, they'll stop coming."

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Even though Dubya himself was a pretty religious person, the Bush crowd themselves were always money-grubbers. If it didn't put an extra nickel in their pocket, they weren't interested in promoting it.

[charliehall]

Trump is the biggest money grubber of them all. Grifter in Chief.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Trump is a piker compared to anyone who's inhabited DC for more than a half decade.

[Mother's Lament]

The problem is that their “ideas” are mostly fatuous and have no appeal to the masses outside the small circle of DC-NY gentry conservatives and the niche population who thinks tax cuts and foreign interventionism are the only real issues that matter.

Masters of the universe, with their little magazines and affected mid-Atlantic accents that made them sound like Frasier Crane’s gay uncle, perpetually explaining the subtle parallels between George W. Bush and Seneca.

Sadly, empty suits like Goldberg, Caruso, and their colleagues gave up any sense of obligation to honest debate a long time ago. Grappling with the actual arguments on the table takes effort, and gets in the way of stoking the unearned sense of superiority to which they're addicted.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

These types are forever wringing their hands whenever socons push back against the left’s ideology. One way they give the game away is when they say these issues should be “solved at the local level.” But when that very thing happens, such as abortion or school boards or drag queen story hours, they whinge that these policies don’t have “broad national support” and that “our ability to compromise has been lost.” They honestly believe that the things which conservatives consider to be important in their daily lives and communities should take ALWAYS take a back seat to whatever Big Policy Idea they’re pimping.

What they’re really frustrated about is that they can’t convince the right to give in on social conservative issues anymore. The commenters at places like Patterico epitomize this elitist attitude. That dumbshit Patrick Frey actually said last year that the war in Ukraine was more important than domestic issues like inflation, while every claim of the left is taken at face value. The complete disconnect these types have from the average American can’t be over-emphasized, which is why they’re constantly trying to claim that there would be broad support for a “moderate third party.” The sheer delusion of this claim would be laughable if a lot of them weren’t running in upper-level media and political circles to give the rad-left the pretense that it’s only those “icky Christian nationalists” that are gumming everything up.

[DesigNate]

So they’re progressives with a more subtle flavor?

[JoeB]

Personally, Tulsi is a lot tastier. Politically speaking, of course.

[I, Woodchipper]

He's the only major candidate so far who vociferously endorses getting uninvolved with Ukraine.

He's 10 times better than any democrat for that reason alone.

[Bubba Jones]

Came for the Trumpist comments. Was not disappointed.

Where did the libertarians go?

Reason gets so much bashing about not being libertarian. But it’s from a Trumpist commentariat.

So very confused.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

I think the “being confused” thing is a “you” problem.

[Mother's Lament]

Where did the libertarians go?

Actually libertarians or Shrike libertarians? Because if you’re looking for the latter try Salon, Jacobin, the Morning Star or Mother Jones.

[NoVaNick]

Nobody gives a shit about libertarians. 40 or 50 years ago it was understood by everyone, including establishment politicians that there were certain things that were simply not the government’s business, like making everyone wear a seatbelt, or what adults can put in their bodies. Not anymore.

[JFree]

Not sure I really believe that. I think 'live and let live' or 'none of my business' or 'leave people alone' is still a very powerful message for most people on many things. I think it has faded away only because that particular notion got attached to a bunch of manure that needs explaining and still kind of reeks. So that ceased to get voiced. And in a public discussion, if the conversation doesn't mention an idea then the common perception is - well no one else must even have that idea anymore.

[Pete Cumbaa]

In other words, most people are just like you: they want to be left alone on the things that affect them, but they're little bootlicking fascists on the things that affect others. Like using men with guns to enforce rules about strapping utterly useless paper masks to one's face to prevent the transmission of a respiratory virus, or using men with guns to enforce rules about taking an experimental medical treatment that has now been conclusively shown not to prevent or treat the illness for which it was developed.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

You do realize half the commentariat went over to Glibs due to the very thing you’re claiming never happened, right?

[Roberta]

Where libertarians went is into two camps, mostly.

One camp took an objective look at which trains were hauling a significant amount of passengers and freight in the direction closest to the one they wanted to move, and concluded it was the Trump train.

The other camp said they had to distinguish themselves as different from the crowd at the train station, and stopped looking at the train schedules and just criticized whoever was getting on a train.

[Libertariantranslator]

So the real libertarians are girl-bullying prohibitonist mystical bigots eagerly hopping trains for Treblinka. THAT makes a lotta sense.

[n00bdragon]

Sometimes they're still around, but most of them have learned by now the futility of arguing with the Trump cultists. They're very animated by the idea that if you just say something over and over again, regardless of how much sense it makes, it will eventually convince people (it works for Orange Jesus and it worked on them) so they post a lot thinking they'll convince someone.

[Pete Cumbaa]

They’re very animated by the idea that if you just say something over and over again, regardless of how much sense it makes, it will eventually convince people

Sounds exactly like how you, cytotoxic, Episiarch/Bo Cara Esq. and sarcasmic, on your many sockpuppet handles, have been circle jerking each other with the same ActBlue talking points for the last 7 years despite Trump having only been president for 4 of them.

[DesigNate]

When you posted this comment, the only ones that mentioned Trump were Nardz’s links and quotes from Twitter. One of which was a poll and one that was actually complaining about Republicans spending more on Ukraine than on the US border. Last I checked real libertarians are against foreign interventionism and aid.

Goddamn son.

[Pete Cumbaa]

I remember back before Trump got elected when you weren't a sniveling little fucking progressive bitch. What happened, Bubba?

[damikesc]

I'd argue nominating morons like Jorgensen and Johnson/Weld hurt the LP more than anything else could.

When an LP candidate for President lectures that we "must be anti-racist", then why not just elect a Democrat?

[SIV]

President Gary Johnson would've had American boots on the ground in Ukraine by now.

[Libertariantranslator]

Ooooh. The homosexual attraction to the Orange Fuhrer is strong in this little one.

[Libertariantranslator]

When Oswald Mosley spoke at British fascist rallies, his goons mugged and clubbed any who dared to ask an awkward question-according to Orwell's eyewitness account. This was when the Silver Shirts, The Radio Priest, the Klan, American Nazis and Hamilton Fish were the heroes of National Socialist Positive Christianity all spitting on FDR's prohibition repeal librulz.

[charliehall]

The Klan was a spent force by then but almost all prominent Republicans, a lot of Democrats, and the entire far left were by late 1939 apologists for Hitler. Every major Republican presidential candidate for 1940 parroted that isolationist line except for one corporate executive who had a year earlier still been a Democrat. Miraculously the corporate executive won the nomination.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The Klan was a spent force by then but almost all prominent Republicans, a lot of Democrats, and the entire far left were by late 1939 apologists for Hitler.

Jesus Christ, this is so ahistorical as to be similar to a claim that white people invented slavery.

By late 1939, the only Americans who really had a fondness for Hitler were already over in Germany joining the volk.

[charliehall]

Not confusing at all. Putin's uniformed army is getting destroyed in Ukraine but his troll army is still working overtime here and elsewhere.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

LOL, how did the spring offensive go? Even Time's getting it out in the open that the whole war is turning into a giant clusterfuck, and that Russia isn't really going anywhere.

[yiginim]

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[Dr Expresso]

Yeah, what did happen to the libertarians here. Lots of turdy Trumpists with no ideas. Calling Trump some sort of libertarian is like calling a bill of shit a chocolate sundae. Most of what Goldberg says is spot on. Cult war fools should go somewhere else other than to post their asinine comments.

[DesigNate]

I’ve lived through 7 presidents (Reagan to Biden), in your mind which of those was more libertarian?

(The post you guys are all alluding to had a huge fucking caveat btw.)

[Pete Cumbaa]

You need to get more imaginative with your socks, cytotoxic. This one is too grammatically similar to your De Oppresso Liber sock that you finally had to retire after your fake navy seal shtick blew up in your face.

When Jonah fucking Goldberg is your idea of a libertarian you should really consider killing yourself. And I mean in the immediate sense, not continuing to indulge your morbid obesity into an early diabetic grave.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Lots of turdy Trumpists with no ideas.

See my comment above about how the center-right always talks about "ideas," but none of them are particularly appealing to most people.

[Libertariantranslator]

All according to plan. When Reason said it was OK for mystical Trumpanzees to defecate in here, that made many thinking people head for fresh air. When Grabbers Of Pussy infiltrated the LP to deplatform the modest individual rights for women (Roe) plank, the ladies left. When Nicholas Sarwark said the party belongs to whoever shows up, the AfD bought tickets for shellshocked superstitious pinheads from girl-bullying televangelist swamplands, and that same process is evidently taking place in the Reason comments section.

[NOYB2]

Most of what Goldberg says is spot on. Cult war fools should go somewhere else other than to post their asinine comments.

Well, if you think that a pompous, neocon NR editor like Goldberg is "spot on" most of the time, one thing is clear: you are not even remotely libertarian.

One might say that calling you some sort of libertarian is like calling a bill of shit a chocolate sundae.

Lots of turdy Trumpists with no ideas.

For all his faults, Trump at least opposed most foreign military adventures, managed to shrink the size of the regulatory state, and appointed three supreme court judges that don't actually use the Constitution for toilet paper. I don't know whether that makes him "libertarian", but it certainly makes him more classically liberal and Republican than any president in living memory. If observing that makes me a "Trumpist", so be it.

Oh, and "no ideas" is what libertarianism is actually about: libertarians want government to have "no ideas", about anything. If you want a government based on "ideas", you're not a libertarian. But we already established that.

[charliehall]

Trump is as libertarian as Mussolini was. Which is to say, the opposite of one.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, just look at all the BLM riots that were supressed by him in 2020.

[Vesicant]

Jonah is a twofer -- proof of the moral degeneracy of nevertrumpers and whatever version of nuke'em neocon Jonah is espousing today, and proof of the intellectual degeneracy of 'reason'-style 'libertarianism'. Oh yeah, if he left National Review because of differences over Trump, it's high past time that he can safely go back. Don't forget your U-haul trailer, Jonah!

[Pete Cumbaa]

Why so mad, shreek? The guy believes literally exactly the same things you do, you neocon kiddie fucker.

[Honest Economics]

For sound economic perspective please go to https://honesteconomics.substack.com/

[Libertariantranslator]

National Lampoon's parody of Playdead Magazine offered a way for Conservatives to get along with Libertarians. It was the Dan Blocker interview. Blocker, already dead, did not utter a single moronic non-sequitur or belch out superstition, fake news, Armagedon forecasts or updates on how the Protocols of the Elders of the Federal Reserve proves that the stinkin librul Fed is at the bottom of all Evil things.

[NOYB2]

I respect Jonah Goldberg about as much as I respect William F Buckley.

[charliehall]

That neither is respected my modern so called conservatives shows the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of that movement.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Ah, another "the only things that matter are tax cuts, foreign wars, and making snarky comments" type.

[Patrick Henry, the 2nd]

The writer of Liberal Fascism either forgot what he wrote, or decided he actually wanted Liberal Fascism, because he has become a supporter of Liberal Fascism.