Batya Ungar-Sargon On Trump 2.0

Batya is a journalist and author. She’s a columnist for The Free Press, a co-host of The Group Chat on 2Way, and the author of two books: Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, and Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. Her forthcoming book is about, as she puts it, “why Jews are Democrats and why the left turned on the Jews.”

For two clips of our convo — on Trump’s class warfare, and deporting non-citizens over speech — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in an Orthodox family; debating issues with her parents and five siblings during Shabbat; spending high school in Israel; same-sex education; the mikveh; how sexual desire is better with limitations; becoming secular for a decade; getting a PhD in English literature; her “accidental” entry into journalism during Hurricane Sandy; the Great Awokening in media; Trump’s despicable character; his fickle tariffs; his tax cuts; Congress ceding power to Trump; Biden’s tariffs; his investment in factories and infrastructure; his disastrous immigration policy; Batya’s evolving views on Trump; marriage equality; Bostock; trans activist ideology; Trump’s EO on trans servicemembers; Scott Bessent; the overreach of neoliberalism; Adam Smith; the tax cuts in the BBB; crypto; defunding science at Harvard; gutting USAID; the State Dept’s AI surveillance; the 1952 McCarthyite law; Öztürk and Khalil; UNRWA and Gaza; Israel striking Iran; and the possibility of regime change.

There were eight clashes over facts in the episode. Chris ran them through Grok, which one presumes would not be too biased against Trump. Here’s where we end up:

1. Andrew: What about the EU; where we are with them [on the tariff rate]?
   
   Batya: 10%
   
   Andrew: No, it’s not 10% for the EU, that’s not right. He’s proposing something much bigger, isn’t it? 25% for the EU — not Britain, which is 10%, but the EU as a whole.

Grok:

2. Batya: I mean a million people have self-deported out of the workforce…

Andrew: Where’s the number of a million people self deporting come from?

Batya: That was in the Washington Post a couple of days ago.

Andrew: Really? How do they know that? What is that? Is that just people leaving the country? That does not include —

Batya: People taking the administration up on its offer to self-deport and reapply from home.

Grok:

3. Batya: You don’t mean people, you mean people on visas.

Andrew: People who are noncitizens, who are in this country, who are as covered by the First Amendment as any citizen.

Batya: Well, the Supreme Court has gone back and forth on that.

Andrew: No, it hasn’t. It is absolutely clear that the First Amendment applies to every person in the United States.

Grok:

4. Andrew: A law [the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952] that was used, by the way, to punish Holocaust survivors who were accused of being commies. Were you in favor of that when it was passed?

Batya: I think that if it is the law right now, then the administration has the right to use —

Andrew: Then you were fine with it back then in 1952.

Batya: I don’t remember any stories about —

Andrew: It’s McCarthyite law and you have no problem with McCarthyite laws but you're supposed to be in favor of free speech.

Batya: There were no Holocaust survivors attacked by it.

Grok:

5. Batya: You called me a liar for telling you a fact that the Biden administration deemed UNRWA, which Khalil worked for, to be a terrorist organization. That’s a fact. That’s not a lie.

Grok:

On Khalil’s connection to UNRWA:

6. Andrew: I’m not going to get into the particular details of Khalil because you guys are intent on getting to this guy. Whatever happens to him —

Batya: What do you mean by “you guys”? What does that even mean?

Andrew: The Trump administration and the Israel lobby.

Batya: I’m not the administration and I’m not part of the Israel lobby.

Andrew: You absolutely are, Batya.

Grok:

7. Andrew: There’s nothing that country will do that you will ever criticize, and nothing this country will do that is against the interest of that country that you will support.

Batya: That’s just, I mean, I criticize Israel all the time. Are you familiar with my writing?

Andrew: I am actually, yes.

Grok:

8. Andrew: This is a golden moment, right? It’s finally the war with Iran, is finally going to happen. Just like the war with the Iraq, the two main wars have proposed by neoconservatives the last 30 years. How do you feel? You’re gonna get the war.

Batya: I mean, you’ve obviously never read anything I’ve written, or you’re obviously not familiar with any of my views…

Grok:

You should listen and, with these independent sources in mind, decide for yourself on the facts. I think I missed the mark a little a couple of times, but was specifically wrong in assuming that Batya was all in on the war against Iran and always had been. I apologize for that — and for getting a bit too amped up. I should try not to do that when I’m a host and I hope Batya will forgive me. But a vast amount of the chat was nonetheless delightful — and this is a stressful time.

Coming up on the Dishcast: Paul Elie on crypto-religion in ‘80s pop culture, Walter Isaacson on Ben Franklin, Tara Zahra on the revolt against globalization after WWI, Thomas Mallon on the AIDS crisis, and Johann Hari turning the tables to interview me. (NS Lyons has indefinitely postponed a pod appearance — and his own substack — because he just accepted an appointment at the State Department; and the Arthur Brooks pod is postponed because of calendar conflicts.) Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod with Chris Matthews:

LOVED this episode. I really miss Hardball. It was my favorite part of MSNBC. He’s a walking political encyclopedia. Just a great interview, thank you.

Another fan writes:

Oh man, in addition to being a great conversation, the Chris Matthews pod hit me at a point of reflection — and inflection — in my life. My youngest just graduated from high school here in the Northern Virginia suburbs, and I’ve kind of had it with living in our nation’s capital. So we just sold our house, and I’m taking my NJ-born, retired Marine husband to my hometown in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

At this point in my life, two of Chris’ topics struck me in different ways. The first was his comment about the patriotism of small-town America. While I would quibble with patriotism being “all they have,” one of the things I’ve most missed living on the East Coast is the deep sense of pride people in small towns have in their country.