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CNN This Morning
Vance Says Republicans Shouldn't Ignore Pro-Socialist Ideas; Concerns for the Crew on the USS Abraham Lincoln; Legal Concerns Over Kids' Solo Outings; University of Michigan Drops First Semester Letter Grades for Freshmen. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired August 14, 2026 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:33:47]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: So, the Democratic Party establishment, as we've been talking about, they're trying to hold off a surge in socialist candidates. And the latest challenge this week ended with a narrow win over DSA lawmaker Francesca Hong in the primary for Wisconsin governor.
Vice President J.D. Vance was telling this to Fox News, that Republicans actually need to pay attention to why these candidates are gaining ground.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our response to that can't be just to ignore the economic concerns that I think are feeding this rising interest in socialism.
And my warning to my fellow Republicans, Will, would be, if we don't get this right, don't blame young people for being sympathetic to socialism. We've got to blame ourselves.
You don't stop socialism by throwing slogans at people about the free market.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And Vance's message is coming at a time where voters are actually preferring Democrats over Republicans when it comes to handling the economy. Now, look at this recent Reuters poll. It's the first time in a decade this has happened.
The group chat is back.
Mike, I want to talk to you, because we were talking earlier about like Mangione and this sort of anti-sentiment. And I find that that's not what Republicans are doing in terms of how they're approaching this. Let me give you an example of how they're tackling the threat of socialism.
[06:35:08] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MI): So, let's call it what it is. It's communism.
REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): Think about what's happened in those countries where they've had socialism and communism. The press is the first one to go.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): And communism is on the ballot this November against freedom. Make no mistake about that.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We had been saying for months, you've heard me say it, a contrast between common sense and crazy in the midterm. And now it's common sense versus communism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL WARREN, POLITICS EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": Look, there's a lot of muscle memory within the Republican Party to just sort of knee jerk and say, it's socialism, now it's communism or whatever. And to be fair, I mean, you have Democratic socialist candidates who are winning Democratic primaries who are explicitly trying to sort of change the direction of the Democratic Party.
What I find interesting about the vice president's tack is, I think it's a signal to young people within the Republican coalition, not so much that he's a, you know, sort of, he's interested in socialism as well, although you could make an argument that sort of --
CORNISH: Populism (ph).
WARREN: The populism, there is a socialist element to that. But I think it's a signal, I'm not like that old crew of Republicans.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: I'm with you. It's a signal that I'm -- you know, he says things like, I'm a post-liberal. I'm not like the old, dead Reagan consensus.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: That's how I read that comment.
CORNISH: Or at least just saying, I heard you.
WARREN: Yes.
CORNISH: Can I play for you Alyssa Farah? She was kind of -- I think we heard it earlier, but I want to play it, like her read and sort of how he phrased this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: When you see this rise of interest in socialism with young people, it is because they feel economically displaced. And simply telling them, well, it's because of your $20 burrito or the avocado toast that you bought. That does not answer the question. The only thing that makes it interesting to me is, I think J.D. Vance is a little bit like socialist curious.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I think a lot of people are socialists curious right now.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Yes. They're not really socialists, just experimented with socialism a little bit in college, freshman year maybe, but --
CORNISH: Who among us?
WILLIAMS: Who among us?
But no. You know, it's interesting, I think the smartest candidates right now are recognizing, and you were touching on this a little bit, that populism is the word of the day, but also economic anxiety and pricing is the word of the day.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And that transcends party lines. You hear conservatives talking about --
CORNISH: Can I put up some headlines while you're talking?
WILLIAMS: Sure. Yes.
CORNISH: It doesn't look great. Inflation cooled 3.4, but gas prices started to ease. Wages did not. Keep up, really, right? You got to work longer in order to beat the inflation. Inflation remains stubborn while wages slowed. And then, meanwhile, the S&P is closing at a new record.
WILLIAMS: Right. And moreover, the -- where the president of the United States, his poll numbers are suffering the most are on the economy. Smart members of his party, number one, ought to get some distance from that.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: But number two, are recognizing that the thing that makes many people, particularly young people, uneasy, is how much things cost. And there's an element of that J.D. Vance seems to be picking up on.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: I think he's going to have a hard time with that, too, because, I don't know if you know this, he's a part of the Trump administration, J.D. Vance is. And he wants to run for president.
NICOLE KING, CO-HOST AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, "TODAY, EXPLAINED" PODCAST: But --
CORNISH: She's got --
WARREN: How can he distance himself?
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: But he sort of seems like he's not on this.
WARREN: Yes. Yes.
KING: This is actually a really weird and interesting thing about Vance. I mean, I will say, first, the Trump administration taking government stakes in American companies, which it is doing, is the closest thing to communism we have seen in this country in a very long time.
CORNISH: Correct. Correct.
KING: So, let's all say that.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: Yes.
KING: I think J.D. Vance, I've seen him out on podcasts yelling about, you know, Milton Friedman had it wrong.
WARREN: Yes.
KING: The kind of thing that a decade ago you could not imagine a Republican saying. I'm not entirely even sure President Trump, at this juncture, would get what J.D. Vance is saying. And that's why I think what J.D. Vance is doing here is something that is distinct, which is to say, like, look, the 70 and 80 year olds are still hung up on neoliberalism. And Reagan was a great guy. And NAFTA, you know, was a wonderful thing. But you, 30-year-old, I know what you're experiencing because I'm closer in age to you. He's got the whole J.D. Vance backstory.
CORNISH: And I hear you.
KING: And I hear you.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
KING: And I think this is going to work for him in some ways going forward.
WILLIAMS: Yes. But I just want to say, real quick, he's not going out with a beret on and ending all of his speeches with viva chea.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: No, he's making -- he's using the right words and saying that, well, pricing and economic concerns are the word of the day. CORNISH: Yes. Yes.
WILLIAMS: And it's, you know, wink, nod, dog whistle to all who need to hear it.
CORNISH: Yes. And it's also hard to know, are you pro-socialism or anti-capitalism or disappointed by capitalism? That is (INAUDIBLE).
KING: Right. And the words ultimately mean nothing if you can't pay the rent and you're angry about that.
CORNISH: Yes. All right. We're going to talk more about being heard.
There are reports of poor conditions, lack of food, and sailors maybe jumping overboard. We're talking about those concerns growing for the USS Lincoln. And is the Pentagon listening.
And want to talk about one other thing. Is it actually a crime to let your kid play outside alone? Elliot lawyers up.
WILLIAMS: Let's do it.
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[06:44:13]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The morale is low because we haven't hit a port in about seven months. I mean, I haven't stepped off the ship in the year 2026. I haven't been off the -- I haven't been off the ship. I haven't touched land.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And that was a month ago. But, guess what, there is another U.S. ship on the way to the Middle East to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln amid reports of concerning living conditions and, frankly, worsening mental health for the crew.
So, the Navy is saying that the mental health episode is behind an incident where one sailor actually jumped overboard. He was rescued.
But here is how Pete Hegseth has been responding to questions about all of this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Completely misrepresented. Listen, we make sure at every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others. And I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:45:09]
CORNISH: Now, this reporting comes in part from the "Military Times." And the reporter who broke that story is responding to Hegseth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NATALIE OLIVERIO, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, "MILITARY TIMES": I think gaslighting our force is disrespectful. And at a minimum, they deserve transparency and accountability.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, joining me now is Karen Gibson, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former director of intelligence for U.S. Central Command.
Thank you for being with us this morning. I know we're talking about Navy, not Army, but can you give me a sense of long deployments and the consequences in a situation like this?
LT. GEN. KAREN GIBSON, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Certainly. So, I think a couple of things I'd say, Audie. One, it is important to differentiate between fatigue, morale and readiness. They are separate but related. And I've been part of very lengthy, very intense deployments where we were, frankly, exhausted but had really high morale because we were excited about what we were doing, working for good leaders, seeing success on the battlefield. They can be, they are related. You can have an exhausted crew that also has poor morale, but those are different.
And I think for the Lincoln in particular, your question about the length of deployments, there is a difference between deploying for a nine month tour that you're told will be nine months and deploying for a five month tour that becomes seven months, that becomes nine months.
CORNISH: Yes.
GIBSON: And we saw that in the Army when we went from 12 to 15-month deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan announced once troops --
CORNISH: OK, we might be losing Karen. Let me see if our line can come back on.
We're going to come back to that. Again, we were talking about the USS Abraham Lincoln. A new ship is on the way.
I want to turn to this very briefly. Elliot's here. And we were talking earlier about kind of generational differences. And in the 90s, today's would-be parents would honestly face legal trouble for letting their kids play outside unsupervised. We don't think so. A "New York Times" article points out, quote, "in recent years, in places like Baldwin City, Kansas, Silver Spring, Maryland, parents have actually been investigated or arrested for letting their children walk to the store or play in the park, or ride their bicycles unsupervised."
Time to lawyer up.
WILLIAMS: Let's lawyer up.
CORNISH: OK, so is this a real problem, or is this like one or two stories, or is there like case law actually building up on what happens when you get arrested for letting your kid take a walk by themselves?
WILLIAMS: There is case law building up just because there's somewhat of a backlash to child neglect laws, oddly enough, to some extent. And part of it stems from how vague the language is on what constitutes child neglect.
Now, what we're talking about here is a kind of neglect called supervisory neglect. It's not depriving food to kids or something like that, but places where adults are giving inadequate supervision per the child's age and circumstances, or leaving them --
CORNISH: Per their age and circumstances.
WILLIAMS: Age and -- see, notice I'm using very open-ended terms here, Audie.
CORNISH: OK.
WILLIAMS: And that's the problem.
CORNISH: Do these laws stem from like milk box era fears?
WILLIAMS: They do. They do.
CORNISH: I mean, if you came up in that age, like, going missing or, as I've learned from covering in Boston, child sex abuse --
WILLIAMS: That's right.
CORNISH: That could happen, you know, on very innocent kind of looking trips.
WILLIAMS: Yes. Absolutely.
CORNISH: There is a world where we thought, let's do better and create more laws to kind of combat this.
WILLIAMS: Right. And then what you've produced is an environment in which now parents, the parents of the -- now adults of that generation are looking back and saying, wait a second, the very rules that sort of permitted that kind of behavior when we were kids are much more restrictive now. And they're very open-ended. They vary from state to state in terms of what the definition is.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Another big one is -- like so Colorado and California require consideration of religious or cultural observances in deciding what's OK because --
CORNISH: So, you can be like, it's my culture to --
WILLIAMS: It's -- I'm Amish and it's rumspringa. I'm allowed to go out and be by myself.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And so it's just incredibly complicated. And that vagueness, yes, sometimes leads to, as that "New York Times" article had pointed out, situations where kids are, you know, parents have deemed the children able to walk alone in public or be unsupervised --
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: But someone, you know, a lady looks in the window and it's like --
CORNISH: And I don't mean to make light of it --
WILLIAMS: No.
CORNISH: Because it can have real implications for having your child in the system.
WILLIAMS: Of course.
CORNISH: Like, once child services gets involved --
KING: Oh, yes.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
KING: Knocking on your door and wanting to know where you're --
CORNISH: Yes. Arrests.
KING: I mean, the story in "The Times" was actually incredible because the parents seemed to really think, you know, it's fine, it's a nine year old, let him go to the park by himself. And then the government is knocking on your door asking --
CORNISH: Is it the -- is it other neighbors, though? Is it this kind of thing where someone calls and says, there's kids running around the park?
KING: Oh, yes, but when you get, as you said, when you get reported to the system, and then suddenly your name is there, your kid's name is in there, I mean that's really terrifying.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Yes. And I also think what's complicated about it is that even within families, I'll use my own kids as an example, kids develop and mature at different rates and are able to be alone or have more autonomy in different ways, even from their own siblings. [06:50:03]
And this idea that there has to be a one size fits all, not just between different states in the country, but also literally different households --
CORNISH: Right.
WILLIAMS: Is one going to lead to, you know, or pardon me, both could lead to the Department of Family Services showing up like that at your door.
CORNISH: One other thing in this story that cracked me up. They actually polled children. I don't know how, because we can barely poll adults right now. But kids aged eight to 12, 62 percent of them in this poll they referenced had never walked or biked somewhere without an adult.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
WARREN: Yes. I mean, this is something that I --
CORNISH: Raise your hand if you were in a teen biker gang, a la stranger things. What were we doing --
(CROSS TALK)
CORNISH: What were we doing?
WARREN: Absolutely.
KING: Yes.
(CROSS TALK)
CORNISH: Why didn't anyone stop us?
WARREN: Always the creed. No.
WILLIAMS: Always the creed. Because that --
CORNISH: And that's why that's the start of a horror movie. Yes.
WARREN: Exactly. No, but my kids are going through the same thing. You know, my oldest is going out in the neighborhood, riding his bike, going, just knocking on every friend's door, hey, can you come out to play? My eight-year-old is really excited about doing more of that. We're sort of having to make that decision about letting him do that. And I do think there is a -- there's a sort of a cultural backlash to the safety-ism the over -- over the top safety-ism that came out of the fear.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: Which some of it was legitimate. CORNISH: The flipside though is the rise in liability. And I'm not using culpability, I'm using liability. We are seeing cases here and there of people who have done shootings at their schools, where the parents are now in court.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: And I do think that this is navigating that shift between the community responsibility to kids and the parents' responsibility, and just how much you can hold a parent to account.
WILLIAMS: Yes. And we are -- look, America has long been a litigious society. And you're seeing it here, particularly in this circumstance with how people raise their own kids. Again, we don't want to poo-poo the idea that neglect is a real thing. Abandonment of children is a real thing. But you are absolutely, as Michael was saying, seeing the backlash of the pendulum from the 1980s swinging and literally states are now dialing back their laws and making them less restrictive because of these kinds of circumstances we're talking about today where this could not have been in the spirit of the law and, to some extent, we might be harming children by the idea --
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: You know, to the -- to the point of that poll that kids don't have the autonomy.
CORNISH: Oh, my God, I'm going to have to wrestle with this because mine are under the age of ten, and I am one of those people that's like, I'm not ready to say, no, just run down the street and do it yourself.
WARREN: Let them free.
CORNISH: Even though I guarantee I went and purchased milk like actual groceries for my family by myself.
KING: (INAUDIBLE).
CORNISH: Let's move to an area I won't be so afraid of, college. The University of Michigan has come up with this idea. They're going to drop first semester letter grades for freshmen, OK. So, it's a pilot program. It's going to roll out next year in an effort to curb mental health crises that they say is happening among college students.
So, what's going to happen instead is their transcripts are going to show either a pass or no credit. And students will still receive grades, but they will be retained internally. That part I don't get.
But I remember -- do you remember Hampshire College, which is the now defunct Hampshire College. You had no grades.
KING: I do. Had no grades.
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: And people always made fun of it. It was just like, oh, these hippies who just don't want to be part of the meritocracy.
KING: I am inclined to want to make fun of it. I am. But --
CORNISH: But.
KING: But I don't know.
CORNISH: Freshman year.
KING: Does it actually matter? If the kids are in crisis, and UMich (ph) is telling us the kids are in crisis, I don't know, I'm not on a college campus, but we're hearing that the kids are suffering and we're going to take the pressure off by not giving them grades or not telling them what their grades are. I don't know, maybe we just ease up on them a little bit. Let them take their pass/fail.
CORNISH: Wait, who just snort laughed.
WILLIAMS: No, when you said -- when you said it, I was laughing at delivery, not at the underlying sentiment.
CORNISH: Oh, OK.
WILLIAMS: No, not at the underlying sentiment at all.
Let me say this, if it did not involve mental health, no one would care about this whatsoever. The fact that it's -- that mental health is involved makes people reflexively say, oh, they're soft, oh, whatever. No. If MIT has not had grades for its freshmen, at least for the first semester, most medical schools have not had grades for the first semester.
CORNISH: I actually did not know that.
WILLIAMS: That is a common norm in American higher education. And I think there's -- I think a willingness of many people to push back on it because its about mental health. No, they're just -- this is how the University of Michigan is choosing to evaluate its students (ph).
CORNISH: And I should say, the university said, quote, "our goal is to help first year students acclimate to the demands of college," which is a real thing.
KING: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: And also "allows intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys." That last part sounds harder, but, yes.
WARREN: I don't know. I'm a little skeptical. My wife went to Georgia Tech and, you know, that -- at Georgia Tech they tried to fail half the kids out of certain --
CORNISH: Sounds good. Sounds healthy. Yes.
WILLIAMS: For 1980s.
WARREN: But you know what? It remains an elite engineering institution as a result of that.
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: I don't know, I just -- it does seem like it's -- it's dumb because not only they --
CORNISH: Yes, Harvard's done a caps on A's. And attack (ph) grade (ph) inflation.
WARREN: Well, we've been hearing about grade inflation --
CORNISH: Yes.
WARREN: I mean grade inflation's been a huge problem with these elite schools. And I don't know if this helps in that -- in that regard.
CORNISH: One thing I always think about is the change relationship between students and families and college because of the sheer cost and mountain of debt.
[06:55:03]
KING: Oh, yes.
CORNISH: And how that debt falls on them almost for life. Right now outstanding student loan debt is 1.7 trillion (ph). And 42.6 million borrowers have federal debt. The average loan balance is $40,000. And even at a public university, the average student borrows $31,000.
But here's the important part. Ten percent of federal student loan dollars are delinquent right now.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: And I think kids have a different relationship to college, which is, I'm paying to be here. The cafeteria better be good.
KING: They're so stressed.
CORNISH: The gym better be good. And you're not here to fail me.
KING: This is the thing. Yes, I remember, I took out college loans, of course. Lower white collar family. I didn't have hundreds and thousands of people on TikTok telling me, like, you're going to be in debt for the rest of your life.
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: I just -- CORNISH: Well, you weren't going to be. I mean the debt loads are higher.
KING: I wasn't going to be in debt for the rest of my life. That's right, it was like $16,000 in student debt -- you know, student debt.
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: OK, now it's $100,000, it's six figures easily.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
KING: I just -- again, all of this is contributing to the idea that when you are young, or to the fact that when you are young there's just an enormous amount of stress and pressure and thinking that you're going to be in debt for the rest of your life, because you might be. Well, I don't know. Pass fail.
CORNISH: Yes, everyone decides -- yes.
KING: Pass fail.
WILLIAMS: Yes, you know -- you know, it's funny, if anyone's been -- as people have been watching for the whole hour, I think the theme of the day is generational divides here.
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: And evolution.
CORNISH: Mike versus the youth.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: People like me who are extremely --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: Yes, you're older than I am.
CORNISH: My person is young.
WARREN: Please.
CORNISH: Well, that's why you surprised me. You're like, these (INAUDIBLE) kids need to --
WILLIAMS: Well, look, you know --
WARREN: I mean, like, I don't know, like I'm in my late 30s, I'm stressed too. I mean, everybody's got stresses. I just think that --
WILLIAMS: Well, but this is not --
CORNISH: Yes, but your financial position is way different from a young person. WILLIAMS: Yes.
WARREN: Well, maybe.
WILLIAMS: To me, this is -- this is not just about -- this is -- it is, but this is not just about college. This is about the dream of the baby boomers not being available to gen z.
CORNISH: Yes, not passed on.
KING: Yes.
WILLIAMS: They can't buy -- they can't buy houses. They can't go to college. Just literally look at what baby boomers paid to go to college and buy their houses in their neighborhoods in the suburbs.
CORNISH: Yes, but with the belief that it was done through their own ingenuity and not government policy.
WILLIAMS: Yes. And they're -- yes.
CORNISH: And I think kids do talk about that way more -- with way more specificity, even off a college campus, than when I was coming up.
WILLIAMS: And the reason why their kids are living at home with them now at a much higher rate than --
CORNISH: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Than certainly they did 30 or 40 years ago is that the economic conditions are just different.
CORNISH: OK, I want to talk about what's in your group chats. Can I start with you, Noel?
KING: Shopping online has gotten very weird. It's supposed to be frictionless.
CORNISH: Yes, it's bad.
KING: And something has happened. I was trying to buy a box of -- I was trying to buy contact lenses the other day. I'm talking to somebody. I don't know if it's A.I. or a human being. I say, are you a human being? It says yes. I'm not sure --
CORNISH: We don't know. We don't know.
KING: And then they give me the price. And I say, that can't be right. That is so much more expensive than it was a year ago. And they say, well, it is right. But if you can find it cheaper elsewhere, we'll match it. I don't want to. Give it to me at the lower price.
CORNISH: Yes, just give it to me.
Also, just the sheer amount of stuff that you're looking at.
KING: Yes. Yes.
CORNISH: And I think the A.I. models. There's a lot of like images of clothing that is really A.I. generated. And then it comes to you and you put it on and you're like, this looks horrendous. And it doesn't look like what I paid for.
KING: Yes, I don't think it's me.
CORNISH: Yes. Yes. OK.
WILLIAMS: Thanks, Temu.
CORNISH: OK. Don't be like name -- OK, go on.
WILLIAMS: You know, 2026 has been a year of a lot of hazards when you think about it. You got the smoke coming from Canada, the explosive diarrhea, all the things.
CORNISH: This is a very legal group chat, but go on.
WILLIAMS: Well --
CORNISH: It's been a time for billable hours, yes.
WILLIAMS: But, you know what the big threat is now you've got to watch out for?
CORNISH: What?
WILLIAMS: The beavers have rabies. And they're -- a state park --
CORNISH: What --
WILLIAMS: A state park in Canada had to shut down part of its water access because people were getting bitten by rabid beavers. This is -- yes, 2026, Audie, this is what's happening.
CORNISH: We're just running from bison. Now the beavers rising up.
WILLIAMS: It's just everything.
CORNISH: What happened to nature is healing?
WILLIAMS: That's in -- it's in Maryland. It's Cunningham Falls State Park. I feel bad because I don't want to out them, but it's a reality. It's a fact in the news. But they had to shut down. A fisherman got bitten. A kid got bitten.
Have you seen a rabid beaver? Like, what? You know, because they were saying -- you know, they're usually animals that avoid human beings. But, no, they're coming up to the fishermen now. It's not good.
WARREN: I've taken my kids on a hike in that park. Yes, that's horrifying. No.
All right, well, I'm going to commandeer this to do some shameless self-promotion.
CORNISH: Hey.
WARREN: That J.D. Vance conversation we were talking about earlier, about socialism, it's going to be a part of the conversation that I'm going to be having in a new newsletter at "The Dispatch" that is launching next week. It is called "Next Right" if you want to sign up for it, thedispatch.com/nextright. You can sign up anytime (ph).
CORNISH: "Next Right." What's the vibe? What are you guys looking for? Who's after Trump?
WARREN: We're looking -- we're looking at the future of the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the political right. It's reporting. It's analysis. There's going to be a newsmaker interviews.
CORNISH: Oh, I love this.
WARREN: There's going to be, you know, conversations about what's happening behind the scenes. And, you know, everything from activists to donors to the ideological arguments that are happening.
WILLIAMS: How many puns on the word "right" did you go through before landing on "Next Right"?
WARREN: You -- I -- you don't even want to know. It was so many.
[07:00:01]
WILLIAMS: Right now. Right way.
WARREN: It was -- like turn. It was --
CORNISH: Paint the town red. You can have that one.
WARREN: Yes, I know.
WILLIAMS: Yes, right.
WARREN: Yes, I mean, in this -- in this first issue, you don't want to know how many times I've like tried to go with the driving metaphor.
CORNISH: Got it.
WARREN: You know, to keep that. So, anyway, so sign up, thedispatch.com/nextright. Thank you.
CORNISH: All right. Love it. I hope you bring some of that here to the group chat. Always love to see you, Mike.
OK, thank you so much for being here. We've got the headlines next. I'm Audie Cornish. Have a great weekend.
