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- [00:04]
John Potwor
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Abe Greenwald
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, January 27, 2025. I am John Potwor, editor of Commentary magazine, and I am importuning you to go to our website@comMENTARY.org, go to the top line there that you'll see and click on the word newsletter and subscribe to the daily newsletter we are now producing, being written by our own Abe Greenwald. Hundreds, if not thousands of you have already done so in the past week. We're very excited that you are going to have these daily reflections by Abe on matters of interest in the news, as well as links to important articles of interest in our magazine and on our website. So that's commentary.org, go to the top line, click on newsletter, put in your name, put in your email address, and join this new exciting venture in daily publishing. With me, as always, is the author of that newsletter, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi. Hey.
- [01:28]
John Potwor
Hi, John.
- [01:29]
Abe Greenwald
Back after a bout of illness, the winter illness that felled me a couple months ago. Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. How you feeling?
- [01:39]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John. Alive. Good to be here.
- [01:44]
Abe Greenwald
Alive is good.
- [01:45]
Seth Mandel
Today is the first day of the rest of my life and all that.
- [01:49]
Abe Greenwald
That is very. I'm delighted to hear it. And of course, Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:56]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John. And may I also importune, please can I importune? I would like to importune our audience to visit our YouTube page. You know, I go there every day to check on our subscribers and it's rising, but I have to say, the growth rate slowing a little bit so you don't have to watch the videos on YouTube. I know many people like to just listen to us though. If you do watch, you can tell who is speaking at any given moment. But do please subscribe because that helps boost our reach on the algorithm. And as we know, the algorithm controls all.
- [02:38]
Abe Greenwald
This is very true and I'm delighted that you have brought it up. Very important that you bring it up because yes, subscribing, liking, all of that is a pathway for us to expose the magazine on the YouTube algorithm to so many people who might really enjoy it. And there you will have find yourself in surprising company with people who don't know Commentary yet, but can learn about it through this new vehicle. We're very grateful to the people who have subscribed. Cost you nothing to subscribe costs you even less to hit like, or maybe it costs the same, which is zero. So that's actually illogical, what I just said. Nonetheless, yes, thank you, Matt, for that in particular.
- [03:27]
Seth Mandel
And you'll be pleasantly surprised because YouTube commenters are like the one nice place left on the web in the commenting sphere. Surprisingly wholesome comment sections on YouTube. So you might actually enjoy it. You might actually enjoy switching over and being a YouTuber in that sense and feel a sense of community.
- [03:51]
Abe Greenwald
That is true. And yes, there is for some odd reason, I think a lack of ugliness. I think maybe because people don't actually hate watch YouTube really. I think it's too much of a commitment to do that. And so the community of people who are watching are probably relatively like minded. It's not like responding to a tweet where you can basically read 200 words or 108, whatever it is, and then see a headline and then have a total meltdown and you didn't read the story. You don't even know what it's talking about. So, yeah, it's a more civilized and more enthusiastic, I would say. People get very bubbly so far. Upbeat.
- [04:37]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah, I know. I don't, I don't count on that. Plenty of people hate me. Yeah, I'm sure.
- [04:42]
Abe Greenwald
Friends two way. If you watch two way on.
- [04:46]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [04:47]
Abe Greenwald
On YouTube, it's, it's a, it's just, it's. Yeah, maybe it'll be worse.
- [04:50]
Matthew Continetti
They have serious. They have nice serious conversations on that show and they bring the two sides together, whereas we vent our spleen every day. And so maybe it produces a different emotion.
- [05:03]
Abe Greenwald
Well, you know, interestingly enough in the venting our spleen category, so much news has come out in the last week that would require us not to vent our spleen, but to kind of experience a level of relief at the making of policy in Washington, at least from our perspective that it's a relatively unusual feeling to open the newspaper and see headlines or open newspaper. I mean, click on a website or something and see headlines that don't make you instantly wildly anxious or that please you because you know, they are making wildly anxious a whole lot of people that you don't like and who have had, who have had the whip hand in American culture and politics for so long that it is that it's nice to see that the shoe is for once on the other foot. So I don't particularly care about the relations between the government of Colombia and the government of the United States. I am saddened to know that Colombia, which was 15 years ago. A very close ally of the United States is now being ruled by a leftist populist who seems to be going in the wrong direction. I haven't been paying that much attention to these matters until what happened over the weekend. But this peculiar scene yesterday, and I think it was yesterday or maybe Saturday, I can't remember, where these Colombian, essentially, drug traffickers are sent back to Columbia, deported and sent back to Colombia, and that the leader of the country petulantly announces that he will not allow them to land or he will always have got off the plane or something like that.
- [06:52]
Matthew Continetti
He turned the flights back.
- [06:54]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but I mean, that's the same thing, right? I mean, he turned the flights back. And so Donald Trump immediately said, okay, we're gonna basically, like, declare trade war on your country. And he was like, whoa, don't do that.
- [07:07]
Matthew Continetti
Well, in between, he wrote in a very long X post in Spanish. But according to the people who translated this post, it was kind of. It was wacky. It was talking about how he would die for his country and all of these gripes and grievances, and then he folded.
- [07:31]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, but Trump literally. Literally. And this is sort of. It's indicative of one thing, which is that Trump literally sort of waved his hand and capitulation came up. Came.
- [07:45]
Matthew Continetti
Well, it's not a waving of the hand. I mean, typically what would happen is that the State Department or the office of the White House would say, we're just very disappointed in this. Yeah, we're just very disappointed. And then nothing would happen. What Trump does is he goes all out, and he uses America's economic leverage unlike any American president in the modern era. And he did this throughout his first term as well. If you think about when Turkey was holding a Christian pastor, Trump essentially did what he did against Colombia just yesterday. He said, okay, if the pastor is now released, I'm going to have a trade war against Turkey. We're going to burden them with tariffs. What happened? The pastor was released. He did this with Mexico during his first term. About the remain in Mexico program, Mexico was resisting it. He said, okay, fine, we're going to close the border and we're going to slap all this economic penalty on you and remain in Mexico. Was the law, the program up until Biden ended it when he took office. So he. Trump uses America's economic leverage in order to obtain these. These micro objectives in a very successful way. And it's based on, I think, a very important but underscored point, which is that foreign markets need America much more than America needs foreign markets, right?
- [09:13]
Abe Greenwald
Well, the reason I said wave his hand is because this is what America should have in its pocket at all or should have had in its pocket at all times. That is, say we are the world's largest economy, we are the world's largest market. I mean, I know the EU is relatively equivalent across whatever that is, 17, 18 countries, but we are, you know, we are the engine of the world. And so American soft power isn't just American soft power to attain kind of vague ends like peaceful resolution of differences and lib. You know, freedom for people or whatever, you know, helping with schooling and all of that. American soft power for the purpose of American interests is to say, don't mess with us. We have many tools, aside from declaring war on you, bombing you, or arresting your ambassador, or doing whatever countries do to express their disgust. We have a thousand different things that we can do to make sure that you don't behave in ways that are injurious to our national interest. And you're right, Matt, that over the course of the post war period, because we were the guarantor of world stability and freedom and we were trying to encourage people not to sort of side with our enemies in the Soviet bloc, and then after that, with the sort of the sowers of chaos and malignancy in the world, we believe that our soft power all had to be used for purposes of the greater planetary good as opposed to the interest of American citizens or the enforcement of American law elsewhere. So if you talk about this case, right, I mean, I think it's unambiguous. We know that this Colombian, these Colombian drug gangs have managed to make their way into the country. They have made life horrible in all kinds of places and murdered people and, you know, and taken over neighborhoods and all of that. They were rounded up, they were sent home. Like it's an open and shut case. Like that's deportation is what we do with people who are here illegally who commit crimes. Now we're even looking at deportation for people who didn't commit crimes just because they're here illegally. But I mean, for 100 years, it's not like when we sent gangsters back to. Back to Italy, including, by the way, one of the real housewives husbands, right, from New Jersey who was born in Italy, was sent back to Italy in the last 10 or 15 years.
- [12:05]
Seth Mandel
It's not like that's a stereotype, John. You know, it happened. Unfortunately, the Sopranos made people think Jersey people from New Jersey are part of the.
- [12:16]
Abe Greenwald
I'm sorry, but that's right. But Teresa's husband did it and he was deported. And I don't remember the prime minister of Italy saying, this plane cannot be elected, allowed to land. Right. So this is not even a. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.
- [12:30]
John Potwor
On Matt's point about the soft power. The soft power over the decades has gotten ever softer to the point where it became a kind of joke. When a country would defy us, a US Administration would issue a strong denunciation in no uncertain words, and then everyone would joke about, ooh, those strong denunciations. This was something very, very different, immediate action. And it happened so fast. It happened faster than the speed of news.
- [13:02]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [13:03]
John Potwor
By the time Trump had waged and won this tariff war, largely, you know, carried out, as Matt pointed out, online headlines had still not caught up. You know, I was still reading, you know, Columbia pushes back on Trump by the time Columbia had folded.
- [13:26]
Matthew Continetti
I just say if this had happened under the Biden State Department, the State Department would have said the United States is concerned about the decision of the president of Colombia not to accept the agreed to deportation flight. And then this whole process begin. And we're just skipping that. And we're going straight.
- [13:48]
Abe Greenwald
We're skipping that.
- [13:48]
Seth Mandel
The retaliation, we're skipping. Somebody has to.
- [13:52]
Abe Greenwald
We shouldn't have done it in the first place. Right. Under Biden, in other words, the action, there's that too taken under Biden, let alone, let alone responding to it, the.
- [14:02]
Matthew Continetti
Action would never have happened because the process is more important than the result.
- [14:06]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [14:07]
Matthew Continetti
And also, I think this is also a reminder, another one after the past week. We've had many of them. This is what it is like when you have a president because if it has happened under Biden, who knows where he would be? They would have to wake him up. It's unclear which figures around him would actually make the decisions in order to respond. We now have one person, one president, and he's clearly active. He doesn't really sleep.
- [14:38]
John Potwor
And because of that, not only would there be, we're disappointed. First, there would be a whole period of obfuscation because they would say, well, that's not what we're, you know, the press can write whatever they want, but from our end, we are, we are, we understand that they are being cooperative or, you know, something like that.
- [14:56]
Abe Greenwald
Right. Yeah. Now.
- [14:57]
Seth Mandel
And I think there's two, I mean, I think there's, there's two keys here for countries to remember. The first is that, I mean, we talked about the, the post war and the Cold War era and remember the, the Thing about the Marshall Plan was that it set up an exchange, monetary exchange bank of sorts. It was, the Marshall Plan was set up to boost the American dollar into the stratosphere. And it, and that's where it stayed. Right. In other words, you went through, you took the loans, you went through the process, but it was the joining that process was creating the American led.
- [15:38]
Abe Greenwald
Right. Order.
- [15:39]
Seth Mandel
We weren't doing this just like we weren't just throwing people, you know. Yeah. A thing to help get them out of the water. That was first, which is that we understood that this was the type of somebody needed to be a democracy that was going to bestride the earth to stop what had happened from happening before and the system needed to be set up. So, you know, the second is that Trump has a couple of issues that you don't want to mess with him on. And I think that you, you really, I think that foreign leaders are going to be paying attention because gangs, foreign gangs and any sort of deportation stuff is. That is Trump's wheelhouse. And that's where he switched like throwing a fastball hitter, a fastball right down the middle, right in his zone. I mean, he's, that's where he's looking to hit the ball on immigration and secondarily tariffs. Those are the two spots where he's looking to hit the ball. He shows up and he's waiting for something to come down that lane so he can swing. He's sitting on that pitch. If you're the idiot who throws the first pitch down that lane, he's going to hit the ball very far.
- [16:53]
Abe Greenwald
And it is really important to point out that of course Colombia doesn't want these guys back. Why would it want these guys back? They're drug traffickers. Well, John, he would prefer them. That was like, don't throw me in this briar patch. You know what? I'll drive them up to the Mexican border just to get them out of Colombia.
- [17:15]
Matthew Continetti
That's fantastic.
- [17:16]
Abe Greenwald
It was not who can keep them.
- [17:18]
Matthew Continetti
The president of Colombia seems to be such a wacko. What was his objection? It was that the objection wasn't that the criminals were coming back. It was that they were coming back on a military at flight. And so he said this was undignified.
- [17:31]
Abe Greenwald
Right. They're murderers.
- [17:33]
Matthew Continetti
Right. You want to dignify their return.
- [17:37]
Abe Greenwald
So there's another point which I think gets to the behavior of what we expect the Biden State Department to do as opposed to this kind of Trump going, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're, you know, don't f with us, you know, you're, you're, you'll be screwed by 10 o'clock tonight if you go any further than you're going now. In the Pax Americana represented by our soft power in the liberal imagination, there is, and Trump doesn't have this at all, a kind of deep condescension toward the rest of the world. It was Barack Obama's tone. Even though a lot of people on the right would look at Barack Obama and say he was sucking up to Muslim countries. You know, he talked about, you know, the tradition of Zakat, and he wanted to, you know, extend his hand. His first trip was to Cairo. And it's so, you see, it's terrible what he's doing, but if you think about his attitudes toward people who are challenging American dominance or America, including Al Qaeda at times and including, obviously, Iran and all of that, there was this weird, like, patting of the head of other countries that threatened Americans, American, you know, America's position, America's foreign policy interests. Like, you're just such, you're all. Isn't this cute? You're so cute. We're so big. You're so small. You know, look, we'll let's. We'll make a deal because, like, you can't hurt us. You can't hurt us, and we'll just help you. And all together we could. Because, you know, where it's all so nice. Conflict resolution. There's no, no real problems here. And it is almost like, you know, you're such a nice puppy, you know, you mullahs, you're so cute how you're trying to, like, develop a nuclear weapon. We'll stop you. Really. We know. Okay, you want some money back, we'll give you some money. Don't worry. You know, we're all sitting there going, no, no, take them seriously. What's the matter with you? Like, this is. This is great power. These are countries attempting to become great powers. They are entering into what they think is great power competition. We are a great power. We can't just sit here and not respond in a way that will make sure that it discourages other countries to follow this path. They had it so in their heads somehow, for reasons that I don't really understand. Not only that we never get what we want right, or we screw everything up, so we shouldn't really be aggressive with other countries abroad, but also that there's no threat to us. You know, we can leave Iraq. We can just walk out of Iraq. There's no, there's no threat. Look, there are countries broken and we did what we had to do and we, I, we shouldn't have done it in the first place. And we're just going to walk away, you know, and then, and then ISIS arrives, arises and starts beheading people. You know, we. Oh, no, no, no, it's fine. Afghanistan, we've been there 20 years. We can leave.
- [20:45]
Matthew Continetti
I would look at it a little bit differently. I think it's less, you know, patting on the head, though. That was clearly the case when he responded to ISIS and called it the JV team. Right. But also there was, with Obama, there was a sense that, you know, America kind of has it coming because we, we're not so special and we've, you know, have you ever heard of Mossadegh? I mean, that most, that coup in Iran, I mean, that basically means we should just appease the mullahs at all costs according to President Barack Obama. And that, that's a little bit different than with Trump, where Trump is just like. And it's the same thing as him personally. If you attack America, he's just going to come at you with a ton of bricks. If you flatter America, well, you're our new best friend. And this is the danger because Trump is very good at exercising our leverage over countries that we typically consider allies. So Columbia, man, they got hit. They don't even know what happened. And Colombia reversed course. Think about what's happening at the same time with Denmark and Greenland. Trump had before the inauguration what we understand to be a very testy call with the prime minister, Denmark, over the weekend again, while he was in Las Vegas, he brought up the fact that American territory will be expanding under his second term and that Greenland is prime real estate. That's where we're aiming. And he refuses to rule out military force against Denmark. What we want to see, though, is we want to see him use that same sense of purpose and belligerence against American enemies like Russia and China and Iran and North Korea. But those enemies are very good at figuring out, hey, if, you know, we say nice things, then maybe Trump will back off a little bit. I just wish our allies would recognize that same method. You're muted, John.
- [23:10]
Abe Greenwald
Sorry. I do think that you've hit on the crux of the matter, which is that Trump is willing to do things in foreign policy in particular, that almost no one. Reagan a little bit, maybe first, Bush a little bit, but almost no one was willing to do in the post war period. And yet. And so it's a shock to the system. It's a shock to the system to have America say, America is not going to tolerate being treated this way. We're going to use our power to make sure that you don't do this or that you're really sorry if you do this. And let this be a lesson to everybody else. And one of the reasons I say that there is a kind of condescension is when you say, let's say you're a parent and you're upset because you think your kid is a bully, right? Your kid's a bully and you're like, my kid's a bully and I'm sorry, I'm going to make my kid go apologize and civilize my kid. So Obama's like, america's a bully. He doesn't mean that he's a bully. He means America's a bully. His prior president, prior presidents were bullies and they were conducting this foreign policy, the bullying. And it's so terrible. Part of what he's doing there is saying, well, you know, my kid has nothing to fear from anybody else anyway. I have nothing to fear. We're not in danger. We're never in danger. And you know, the whole logic of what his efforts, Obama's efforts after he became president in relation to terrorism were a kind of implicit acknowledgement of the idea that 911 was a lucky shot. It was a lucky thing. They got one off. They got one off. And you know what we did? We went to war in these two countries and we blood and treasure and that boy, that was stupid. I mean, never said Afghanistan was stupid, but, you know, he thought Afghanistan was probably reasonably stupid at least by the time he got into office. And it's like, you know what, we need to restrain ourselves because, you know, if we don't let our, you know, our kid, I love our kid, he's, you know, it's fun but you know, he kind of, we gotta, gotta like, gotta learn, teach him how to have some self restraint. And you only say that if you think your kid isn't then gonna be like killed by a couple of other kids on the playground. You know, you need to be relatively assured that your kid was not, was in the wrong and deserved to get whatever he wanted to get. And there is about this a willful blindness to what the rest of the world is really like and a peculiar parochialism.
- [25:55]
Seth Mandel
Well, that's what happens though.
- [25:57]
Abe Greenwald
Everybody's like the United States as opposed to the fact that there are a lot of people who don't actually have anything against murdering another, you know, 500,000 people in another tribe because they have issues over water rights.
- [26:13]
Seth Mandel
Well, that's, that's what everybody was saying after October 7, right. It was like, I'm so sad to see our friends in Israel make the same mistakes that we made in Iraq.
- [26:25]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [26:25]
Seth Mandel
We heard that a thousand times. Or we made the same mistakes after 9 11. Biden said it too. It was this idea that you let emotion run away with you. And it was like, I'm sorry, that's not convincing. And is Israel wasn't convinced by the, hey, don't be, don't be mad. You know, maybe take some time away at a yoga retreat and see how you feel and if you're still angry, have a beer summit or whatever. Like, that's not how the world works. And we like to pretend it is sometimes. But no, a war broke out. It was a devastating war. And that's what happens in the world when you invade another country and all that. And also when you have, again, when you have the threats next door as opposed to America sometimes gets this sleepiness about it because we have the oceans in between and stuff like that. But we have a tendency to preach that too, to try to export this weird Zen religion of, you know, and our power, first of all, is not replicated elsewhere. We really, if somebody comes here to America looking for trouble, they will find trouble. And, and that is a rare thing that happens, but when it does, you have to acknowledge that it happened, right? That that was 9 11. It wasn't like, well, usually they don't hit the towers, but sometimes somebody comes in and find, you know, and, and is looking for trouble and you have to give them trouble back. And the rest of the world has a much shorter trigger finger when it comes to that, in part because they're often lined up next to each other.
- [28:07]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [28:08]
Seth Mandel
Russia and Ukraine was, was, they didn't have to go very far. You know, India and Pakistan sit on that. Like a lot of these trouble zones are sitting tinder boxes and you can't afford to sit back and go, well, I don't know how powerful they are because the second you do, the second you do, Hamas finds a way to roll in and, and do something that hasn't been done to, to the Jews since the Holocaust. Right. This is, most of the world lives on that sort of knife's edge where if you fall asleep, very, very bad things happen right away.
- [28:46]
John Potwor
I think the, the, the liberal mindset we're talking about here, which is this not recog. Fragility of American well being, also accounts for why they are so comfortable experimenting with what we are and what we have. Right.
- [29:06]
Abe Greenwald
Because we're fine domestically in terms of our own lives.
- [29:10]
John Potwor
Right, right. Because everything's fine. We're fine. We can survive this, we can survive that. We're too big, we're too, you know, we're too safe. We can mess around with everything.
- [29:21]
Seth Mandel
You mean like the social engineering stuff?
- [29:23]
John Potwor
What's that?
- [29:24]
Seth Mandel
You mean like the social engineering stuff?
- [29:26]
John Potwor
Yes.
- [29:26]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Or tax. Or taxation, for example, is a very good example. It's like, sure, you can pay. Sure, the rich can pay more. Okay, sure. Yes, the rich can pay more. Are there, will there be consequences? Like things have reaction, like, you know, it's like nothing is. Nothing is unconnected. The rich pay more in taxes. There's going to be less money circulating in the private economy. Is that good or bad? Well, maybe you think that what's more important is for the federal government to have more money to do more collective projects or what they believe to be collective projects. Or you can think, well, you know, but if you do that, you just have to understand that there are going to be consequential results in terms of what might happen in the private sector. And that's where people go. No, no, no, no, no, that's. Don't, don't even, don't even go there. That's so silly. We're so big, rich have too much money anyway. And that's the whole point of having serious conversations about how if you do this, that will happen in the end. What Trump did, why the Columbia thing is important and I think unambiguously valuable, even though it was a total gimme. Like, he didn't know they were gonna do this. Right. He didn't know they were gonna reject. He were gonna not let the planes land or whatever is. It's deterrence. Like the entire structure of American foreign policy after World War II, because we did not wann Soviets directly was deterrence. It was, we're gonna try to make. Raise the cost of your doing things that we think are disruptive to us or disruptive to the planet so that you'll think twice or three or four times before you even attempt them.
- [31:14]
John Potwor
And yeah, this is, it's the best thing.
- [31:17]
Abe Greenwald
And so, yeah, that could have.
- [31:18]
John Potwor
It's the best thing that could have happened to Trump under the circumstances because it gave him an opportunity to give an example, to demonstrate what would happen if he's defied. And it lifted the hopes of the Trump detractors. They're like, oh, Columbia's pushing back. He thinks he can do whatever he wants. And before they could even update their headlines, it was resolved and made an example for the rest of the planet.
- [31:45]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, it all happens so quickly. One wonders whether anyone will remember the US Columbia conflict by this coming Wednesday.
- [31:53]
Abe Greenwald
Well, okay, no one in this country will remember it, but the foreign ministries of countries that have to deal with the United States will remember it.
- [32:02]
Seth Mandel
That's especially on immigration stuff, especially on his. There's a couple of sensitive issues that you don't. He's supposed to have something of a honeymoon, so to speak. He just gets into office. You don't just go poking the American bear sort of, you know, there has to be that feeling that you don't want to be the first guy to walk up and slap the president and see what happens. And this is what happens. And if this isn't what had happened, it would have opened the floodgates.
- [32:33]
Matthew Continetti
Right?
- [32:33]
Seth Mandel
I mean, he had to respond.
- [32:36]
Abe Greenwald
This certainly had to.
- [32:37]
Seth Mandel
He had to.
- [32:38]
Abe Greenwald
But the point is, I don't know that he is going to face comparable challenges from other countries in the next several months. Why don't we talk about states isn't going to.
- [32:50]
Matthew Continetti
Why don't we talk about another theater, the Middle east, where a lot also happened over the weekend and where there will be, I think, challenges certainly. So we had the release of four hostages this weekend. We had a moment where the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza and Hamas seemed to be on the verge of collapse, when Hamas would not provide details about another hostage scheduled for release. And Israel prevented Gazans from returning to the north of the Gaza Strip. That was resolved there, too. Israel stood firm and Hamas caved and provided information not only about the captive in question, but two others who will be released in midweek. And Israel relaxed and allowed Palestinians to turn to the north of the strip. Meanwhile, there was an operation in the West Bank, IDF going after terrorists in Jenin. And then in the northern sector, the ceasefire agreement was extended for another three weeks because as everyone with Hezbollah, with Hezbollah and Lebanon, because as everyone on this podcast expected, the Lebanese army has completely failed to secure its territory. And in fact, there are signs that at least parts of the Lebanese army are working with Hezbollah. So if you want to look at a region that's going to continue to give Trump challenges, I think the Middle east will be one of them. Even though he's the policy that he agreed to, this, this ceasefire, which came about as a result of his personal intervention, continues to hold.
- [34:33]
John Potwor
He also, I just want to say on this very thing, Trump Urged Arab countries to take in Palestinian refugees if they care so much.
- [34:43]
Matthew Continetti
Of course. Sorry, I forgot that.
- [34:45]
John Potwor
And he reestablished the flow of 2,000 pound bombs.
- [34:50]
Matthew Continetti
Yes, that's another Israel lot happening.
- [34:52]
John Potwor
Yeah.
- [34:52]
Abe Greenwald
And when asked what happened and said, he said because they bought them, you know, would be good. Yeah, you know, be really good. Would be if the, if the. God, the population of Gaza just like went away for a year and then we had a nice big construction project. You know, let's make Gaza great again. I mean, look at that beachfront. It's beautiful. Let's just everyone leave and then we'll just, you know, we'll rebuild. Now that's of course ridiculous. No one is gonna take 2 million cousins. And they would be terrified to and all of that. They're there because no one would ever take them. But it is. The point is like he is willing to sort of think about things in a frame that is not. And I, I mean this both in a good way and a bad way, like, is not, you know. Well, you can't do that because that's just not realistic.
- [35:51]
Seth Mandel
Or maybe, or maybe.
- [35:53]
Abe Greenwald
Why can't we just raise the question?
- [35:57]
Matthew Continetti
There are millions of Ukrainian refugees throughout Europe.
- [36:01]
Abe Greenwald
Yes.
- [36:01]
Matthew Continetti
What he's doing with that comment is exposing the fact that the Palestinians, especially the Gazans, are treated extremely. No, it's not that they don't have allies. If you look at the response by the Egyptian foreign minister, he said there was no way we would accept any Gazans because to do so would end the Palestinian cause. Egypt and Jordan have always understood the Palestinians to be leverage over Israel, and they continue to view Gaza as leverage over Israel, even though the terrorist mafia that runs Gaza has led to untold destruction of their own people as well as the murder of so many Jews. It's disgusting. What? Egypt and Jordan are disgusting.
- [36:48]
Abe Greenwald
But of course, they're also disingenuous. They do not want these people in their country.
- [36:53]
Seth Mandel
I mean, Jordan is majority Palestinian already. Right. So they see trouble brewing. Yeah.
- [36:59]
Abe Greenwald
So, yeah, but look, here's the point. Which is. Which is, yes, they want the power. They want to support the Palestinian cause by having Palestinians live in Palestine or what they deem to be Palestine. But they don't mean it. What they mean is, I don't want them. You take it. That's why they're there. They've been there for 75 years. They're staying. I don't need this restive population of suicide, you know, that. That basically creates and inculcates suicide bombers and monsters and murderers on My soil to disrupt. We just had to, you know, we. 12 years ago, we had to overthrow our government and bring in a military dictatorship into, Into Egypt in order to save us from people like this who were running our government in Cairo.
- [37:45]
Seth Mandel
Hamas is a, Is a, is a, Is a splinter group of, of the Muslim Brotherhood originally. Which was what.
- [37:52]
Abe Greenwald
Which was all about getting rid of Egypt.
- [37:55]
Seth Mandel
But I think it's also that they. They wonder. I mean, you're right, because after 1967, Israel was like, all right, we can. Let's talk about, you know, you taking Gaza back. And Egypt was like, what, are you kidding me? This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And, and Jordan had laid claim to the west bank and then officially renounced its claim to the territory it had lost in the war. It just said, it's not our problem. Literally. The territory had been holding cups. It's unprecedented to see anything like this. But the other thing I wanted to say is just that I think the other thing with Trump is that people believe he might just be crazy enough to do it. It's not just. Or to try it. It's not just that he won't talk about these things. I remember 20 years ago covering a speech by Bill Clinton in which he talked about how sad it was that the beaches of Gaza, they. It could be Singapore. This place could be the, you know, the richest country. It could be like a giant. It could be like Beirut was back in the good old days or whatever, and all ocean front and Israel would be happy and they would be happy and everybody would be rich. You know, American president saw this and were like, what are you doing? And. But nobody thought that Bill Clinton would then, you know, would. Would go the next step and say, why don't we move everybody out to, you know, the Sinai Desert for a bit and let's build those hotels ourselves. Right? And I think that there's some inkling of what if he's willing to do it with Trump? Like, what if he's just crazy enough to try? And that's why Egypt was like, absolutely not. Don't even bring it up. So I think that some of the threat is that is Trump personally is the crazy man theory of, you know, foreign affairs. The Nixonian thing that does sometimes get.
- [39:54]
Abe Greenwald
People is that there's a certain potential for policy creativity here that Trump represents in his chaos. I remember a leading American rich guy saying to me at the beginning of 2017, there might be opportunities in this chaos. I don't think in the end that Trump really, with the Exception of the Abraham Accords, that Trump actually managed to do that, you know, cutting of the Gordian knot of a policy that's. That was completely stagnant. But, you know, it was like, well.
- [40:25]
Matthew Continetti
Killing Soleimani shook things up.
- [40:27]
Abe Greenwald
Well, that's true. Although you could. You could see somebody else killing Sul. I mean, you could see there. There were you. You could. In. Obama wasn't against droning.
- [40:37]
Matthew Continetti
Obama would never have droned Soleimani in a million years.
- [40:40]
Abe Greenwald
Okay, fair enough. All right. Anyway, no, but. Right. I'm not saying that there weren't, but that he got so tied up and twisted in knots in his own way that he.
- [40:48]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, it started with the embassy, right. It started with moving the embassy.
- [40:52]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [40:53]
Matthew Continetti
That was the key to show that he would not be like the previous post Cold War presidents.
- [40:59]
Abe Greenwald
Now, I also want to talk about the difference here in the way that American liberals think about what is going on in Israel. And again, this bizarre way in which they do seem to think that Israel is Rhode island, but with a lot of Jews and there's a terrorist state on the border. A big story in the New York Times. Okay, the headline of the story, where did it go? It just disappeared on me is. Here's it. Israeli army raids home a freed Hamas member amid tensions over hostage deal. Soldiers disrupted a Jerusalem gathering to mark the early release of an imprisoned Palestinian, arresting his brother and roughing up his father. A Times reporter conducting interviews was also assaulted. Okay, so the story is there was a party in East Jerusalem for the release from prison of Ashraf Zugayer at his father's house. Ashraf Zugair was arrested for being like the driver to driving people to terrorist attacks in Jerusalem in 2002. So he's been in jail and there was a party, and the army showed up and said, there are no parties on Israeli territory in favor of Hamas releases. There will be no gatherings celebrating the release of an enemy of Israel who was released as part of this hostage deal. Hamas is our enemy. You are on Israeli soil. You stop or you're going to be arrested. And they got arrested. And then this very leftist 972 magazine stringer for the New York Times shows up and says, I'm an American. And they're like, I don't care that you're an American or a journalist. Get out of our way. Beat it, you little shrimp. You know, is basically what they said. It's like we're in the middle of a military operation here. You know, so, you know, basically, you know, they sort of Pushed him or something like that. Now, my point here is, imagine this Nazi is released and there's a big party and America doesn't do anything about the part. I mean, in Brooklyn, a member of Al Qaeda's family has a big party for everybody in the neighborhood to celebrate the release of Bin Laden. I mean, that's. And the Times. And you're going to hear about this all week. Watch Israelis roughing up a reporter, an American, an American Israeli reporter. I mean, it's crazy how terrible. Israel is still at war with Hamas. There's a ceasefire. There is a war. They are going into the west bank to kill Hamas members who are in the west bank, ready to act and move on the Palestinian Authority. The ceasefire is in Gaza, physically is in the territory of Gaza. If there is a Hamas person living in New Caledonia, off the shore of New Zealand, Israel can go there, given the sensitivities with New Caledonia, and kill that guy. He is a member of Hamas. Israel is at war with Hamas. All combatants in the war are. I was gonna say fair again, that's not the right term. Are just targets.
- [44:34]
Matthew Continetti
And Hamas is at war with Israel.
- [44:36]
Abe Greenwald
Right?
- [44:37]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, one can't.
- [44:37]
Abe Greenwald
That's what I'm saying.
- [44:38]
Matthew Continetti
One can't escape the conclusion, looking at these disgusting displays that Hamas engages in every time.
- [44:44]
Abe Greenwald
Making the girls appear at a rally.
- [44:46]
Matthew Continetti
Another round of hostages, Hamas uniform, the statements from Hamas leaders saying that we're already planning the next attack and we're always already raising the next cadre of terrorists. Now, I actually look upon those statements with some incredulity. I, I believe that Hamas is playing a propaganda game here and has been severely debilitated by Israel's campaign. However, there's no mistaking it. They still want to kill Jews and end Israel and they view this ceasefire as a temporary respite in between acts of war. This has been the goal since the founding of Israel in 1948. And I, I especially, I think it's important for people within the American government to realize that Hamas and Islamists operate on a very different timeline than Westerners. They don't. They don't think in terms of the news cycle, they think in terms literally of centuries and what they're trying to do. And so it's entirely incumbent on Israel to keep up the pressure to enforce the agreement. And then when somebody is released who's not having to, there's no reason to. To cater to these ridiculous people. Like you're saying, john, it's not catering.
- [46:01]
Abe Greenwald
This is literally fifth. This is on Israeli territory. This is on sovereign Israeli land in East Jerusalem. I'm sorry, you can't have a party that is an organizing effort to get people to do exactly what they're trying to do, which is reconstitute Hamas. They're sitting there at the party, they give some. Maybe somebody will get into a uniform and try to kill people, kill Jews on the front.
- [46:26]
Seth Mandel
Right. It's a terror joke.
- [46:28]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, it was a terror rally. That's what somebody's home. And I also want to point out, not that I want to spend too much time on the New York Times, it's just indicative of the way in which Trump and his people better, better continue to remain as disgusted by the fake news mainstream media as they. As they have been so far. Because there are signs inside his coalition that people might be tempted to use this kind of propaganda to help their own interests. Which I'll get to in a second. This is the headline this morning. Live updates quote, gazans make long trek home as ceasefire holds. Now, the long trek home is Gazans are being allowed to move from the south back to the north of Gaza on foot because they can't use vehicles. They don't want them to use vehicles for obvious reasons. This Trek is about 15 miles at most. Okay. It's a long walk. I'm not saying it's not a long walk. The long trek is like, is like walking a thousand miles. That's a long trek.
- [47:44]
Seth Mandel
You want a long trek? Let me tell you about some 40 years in that desert.
- [47:49]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah. Or like, if you're touring in, if you're like, you're going on a nice long hike in Yosemite, you might walk 14 miles. The long trek. It's the long trek home. They're gonna, they're returning the long trek, the sweat, the tea, you know? You know, it's a long trek. The Hajj is a long trek. That's like a thousand miles down, down through the Levant to get to Mecca. That's a long trek. 15 miles. Like, I'm a. I'm not a. I'm not a, you know, athletic person. I walked 15 miles three weeks ago in Italy, you know, in one day because I was on vacation. So this is how the New York, The New York Times is now casting this, as though the exiles are returning from Rafa, from the area around Rafa to the area around Jabalia. It's like, are you kidding me? That's like they, I understand people. It's like, people here don't have to do this, but that's like getting going from the Middle of Washington, D.C. to Fairfax City hall, or, you know, I don't know. Cheverly, Maryland Post Office. It's insane. It's an insane way of framing it. And it's being framed deliberately to create this kind of romanticized idea about a suffering population going back to where they. Where. Where they're going to find only rubble. They're only going to find rubble. Now, can I just say one last thing? Lily Albog, one of the. One of the hostages who was released, said to her father, they're all terrorists. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist. You have no. You don't know. Everybody, from the children to everybody. Anyone I saw in these 16 months cursed at me, called me names, said horrible things about Jews. They're all terrorists. Now, I'm not saying they're all terrorists, but I'm saying that this is a diseased, evil culture that they live in. And the idea that I am supposed to feel a smidgen's worth of sympathy for them is belied by everything that I've been seeing in the last 48 to 72 hours. And you want to call me a monster? I don't care about them. I don't care that they're living in rubble. I don't care that they don't have electricity. I don't care. They want to kill me and my family and my people. And they all believe this. Hamas remains popular in Gaza, and so it's them or me, then that's the way it's going to be.
- [50:52]
Matthew Continetti
I have a tiny comment. Our favorite morning news program had a piece about the Gazans returning to their homes in the north.
- [51:02]
Abe Greenwald
Yes, they did.
- [51:03]
Matthew Continetti
They described the phrase Palestinian joy, the joy that they feel.
- [51:09]
Abe Greenwald
The first joy. The first joy that this reporter has.
- [51:12]
Matthew Continetti
This rubs me the wrong way, because when did joy become the hot word? When did that become the go to emotion? It seems like it's only in the past year, maybe two years. I've been thinking about this all over the. I've been thinking about during the weekend, and then it came up in the morning. I think I blame David Brooks, because in David Brooks's book the Second Mountain, he opens up with a whole chapter on joy. And somehow that maybe. Maybe that was. I don't know. But I just. Let's just stop the joy. Let's just stop the joy. Let's go to another emotion, you know, Satisfaction. Please, I'm pleased. Just no more joy, please.
- [52:03]
Seth Mandel
Cautious optimism, contentment.
- [52:05]
Abe Greenwald
Listen, joy as a word in the English language really is a result of the translation, the King James translation of Psalm 30 people. This is the song. It's the dedication of the temple Psalm. And this is the one that begin that literally reads this. I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths, did not let my enemies gloat over me. I called to you for help, and you healed me. You brought me up from the realm of the dead. You spared me from going down to the pit weeping. Sing the praises of the Lord. Praise his holy name. His anger lasts only a moment. His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may be in the night, but joy comes in the morning.
- [52:53]
Matthew Continetti
Joy comes in the morning.
- [52:54]
Abe Greenwald
Joy comes in the morning. That's because of the dedication of the temple. So you want to know what joy is? Joy is the dedication of the temple to the Lord of the Hebrews. It's not for the installation of the coup, like installation of a fake McDonald's employee. And it is not for people returning home to their despoiled places that were ruined because they were supporters of a monstrous regime that killed and injured the equivalent of 23,000Americans in seven hours.
- [53:34]
Seth Mandel
It's cultural appropriation.
- [53:36]
Abe Greenwald
Enjoy your joy.
- [53:37]
Seth Mandel
Joy is out of place.
- [53:38]
Abe Greenwald
Why don't you build a Jewish temple and then you can have some Palestinian joy. All right, let's move on to Trump's other part of the weekend. Got p. Hegseth confirmed the interesting no vote of Mitch McConnell, who is clearly going to spend his last two years in office as a kind of representative of the old Republican establishment, expressing both what it will support and what it will oppose in Trump's presidency, because he is the honey badger. He was the honey badger toward the Democrats, and now he's going to be the honey badger toward Trump. He's got nothing to fear from Trump any longer, and so he is just going to do whatever it is that he's going to do. So. J.D. vance had to break after Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski announced there were no votes against Hegseth. And McConnell was the third. It was a 50, 50 tie. Vance broke the tie. Hegseth is now the secretary.
- [54:31]
Seth Mandel
But he, but we. Procedurally, he would not have done that had it. Would it have had it sunk had.
- [54:38]
Abe Greenwald
Vance the nomination had Vance not been there? Right.
- [54:41]
Seth Mandel
McConnell is a guy. Right.
- [54:44]
Abe Greenwald
But that's what I'm saying. It's.
- [54:45]
Seth Mandel
He is the honey. I'm just saying the honey badger thing has certain limits, even for McConnell, because he's not going to. We think McCain was, you know, John McCain was. He was the one who Gave the thumbs down to the Obamacare repeal on the floor. Surprise. McConnell is going to be a bit less of a honey bad.
- [55:03]
Matthew Continetti
I mean, we'll, we'll see. I mean, do we have Tulsi Gabbard's hearing coming up this week and, and, and RFK? But I would expect on Gabbard in particular, McConnell will have similar reservations. I do want to say one thing about the statement that McConnell issued after his no vote on Hagseth, because I think it's worth noticing in there, he made a great deal about Hegset's lack of experience in running an organization the size of the Pentagon. That's a fair point. But then he said, you know, considering all the challenges we face, we need someone of the stature and of the experience and of the kind of credibility of a George Marshall or of a Cat Weinberger. And I was thinking about that after reading the statement, and a couple reactions came to me. The first is we have no one like that anymore. There isn't no one like that.
- [56:13]
Abe Greenwald
And secondly, that's why we kept appointing Jen. That's why.
- [56:16]
Matthew Continetti
Right.
- [56:17]
Abe Greenwald
Everybody kept appointing Jim.
- [56:18]
Matthew Continetti
But that leads to my second reaction, which is that the people who have attained the credibility and experience are the same people who have gotten us into this message. So in a way, I came across, my reaction to McConnell's statement was to say, well, actually, you're making the case for Hagseth, because whatever you can say about Hagseth, it is that he is a completely new character. And also he's very young. So In a way, McConnell is arguing for age and experience when the record of American foreign policy over the last 10, 15 years is that age and experience have only made our problems worse. Right. What was Biden was the oldest and most experienced president in our history. And I happen to think he was the worst president of my lifetime.
- [57:06]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah.
- [57:06]
John Potwor
It turns into stagnation.
- [57:08]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. So, you know, I actually think that weirdly, McConnell made a backhanded case for Hegseth even while voting no.
- [57:17]
Abe Greenwald
Then Trump took off for or the night, the day that that night is when Hegseth was confirmed Friday, he was in North Carolina. And then he went to California and again did things that we've never really seen before. And I don't know how you can think that what he did was shocking or, or inappropriate. It was very combative. Right. So in North Carolina, he sat there with people whose homes had been destroyed, who were having trouble with insurance companies paying out their insurance, and he had them kind of name and shame the insurance companies on national television. So he was then serving as like one of those local reporters. You know, you go to when it's like, I bought a plane ticket and when I showed up at the airport, they canceled my flight and they won't refund my ticket. And then, you know, they get named, and then Irv gets results. You know, Irv calls the airline for you and gets your money back. So we can assume that those people at least are going to get a restitution in some form from their insurance companies. And then in la, he sat there with Karen Bass, with Brad Sherman, congressman from la, and saw Newsom and saw Adam Schiff, and basically, again, without weirdly, without condescension or he kind of lowered himself to their level, right? He's the president. They're, they're all local politicians. And he was just like, you guys did a terrible job. Like, what's the matter with you? Is this the way you. This the way you run things? Kind of amazing. You know, ordinarily would be, the president would be like, and we're working with local officials, a fema. He says he's shutting down fema. FEMA stinks. We're going to shut FEMA down. He's like, we're going to work with the local officials. And we have a very good relationship with, you know, our. The mayor. I mean, we have many differences ideologically, but when it comes to trying to do things for the, for the suffering people of Los Angeles, whereas of one mind, he's like, no, you stink. You're lousy. You were in Ghana. What's the matter with you?
- [59:42]
Matthew Continetti
Well, he seems to have had the better of the argument. The real exchange was over whether the victims of the wildfires can go to their properties and clear the debris themselves. And Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, was saying, well, they can do that. They can do that. And Trump said, no, no, they can't. I'm talking to these people and they're saying that they need a permit and that everyone I'm talking to says the permit will take 18 months, and that's just too long. And so I think he brought his combative style there and used it more effectively than he clearly did during his first term. When, of course, the famous visit to Puerto Rico where he was tossing the paper towels to the crowd. I found it amusing at the time. I know many people did not. But this is a very different type of visit that Trump gave. And another reminder at how different Trump, too, is, is from Trump won. I just, I've been ruminating over just the shock of Trump won that no one expected Donald Trump to be the President of the United States. When he won in 2016 and then going in to office in 2017, he was the first president in our history to have no government or military experience. So he really did not know anything about this job. Well, this time, eight years later, a lot of people did expect him to win, right? I mean, he had a consistent, small but consistent lead almost throughout the entire campaign.
- [61:16]
Abe Greenwald
We all know that he has small and consistent lead. It's astounding how few people, even as the real Clear Politics average had him winning from March till November. They could not, they couldn't conceive it.
- [61:30]
Matthew Continetti
But the reaction was less like, you know, manic this time than it was eight years ago. And on top of this, he knows a lot more about the job and the people around him know a lot more about how the government works than they did eight years ago.
- [61:49]
John Potwor
And I think, you know, if you take these moves, we started off with what he did with Columbia. Now you're talking about how he handled these disaster areas. The Trump, well, there's no resistance anymore. The Trump detractors are going to be in for a shock if they keep an eye on his approval ratings. These are popular things. These are not. He is not doing things that people object to. These are the kinds of things that make people say, thank God this isn't buddy or thank you.
- [62:23]
Seth Mandel
I think one of the things that.
- [62:25]
Abe Greenwald
Seth, let me, let me just. We're running short, but I promised I was going to mention this and I do want to issue a warning or a proviso to him and to everybody who is one of his fans, particularly if you are a supporter of Israel or you're concerned about things. You know, there are some bad emanations coming from Trump quarters about the ceasefire in Gaza. And what I'm referring to is his negotiator, Steve Witkoff, who went last night to the dedication of a new synagogue in New York City called the Altanoia Synagogue and said that he was concerned, you know, that he's very excited, people. He's excited that the hostages are coming out and cried with the hostages and it's so moving and need to get the debt out so that, you know, their parents can bury them and say Kaddish and that's very important. And he is concerned that, you know, in the course of all this, there may be flare ups and there could be a flare up and he's going to do what he can to make sure that there aren't Flare ups. And the reason I'm bringing this up this way is that he didn't mean that, you know, there would be like one incident where the ceasefire would be violated and there would be a flare up and then they could. He, I believe implicitly means that he does not want to see a resumption of the hostilities, the open warfare between Israel and Hamas. And if that is the case, there is a Israel and Hama, Israel and the administration, if he is speaking for the administration and not just for himself, because he's protecting his deal, are that they are in for a very, very serious conflict because this war is going to resume one way or another. And it can resume with America's support, or it can resume with America's and Trump's hostile opposition. But the number of people in Israel who want the war to be won to a successful and unambiguous conclusion vastly outnumber the number of people who want it to be ended with this irresolution. And all we can hope now is that the 98 or whatever the number now is remaining. Ninety, I guess, is now the remaining number living and dead get out during this six week period before hostilities resume. And obviously Hamas's interest is in doing what it can to make sure that that doesn't happen, that they can somehow claim some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat. And the question is, is the Trump administration, through the vehicle of its of this guy, Steve Witkoff, are they going to participate in that effort by Hamas implicitly, even though they don't want to? I don't know. But it's not, it's not a lead pipe cinch that this is a, that that is that Trump is going to have Israel's back here. Witkoff is signaling that the deal is what's important and that the, the phase two is what's though he supposedly promised Bibi that America would not, would not object to a restarting of the war should circumstances warrant that. I heard this last night and I do not think it is a good sign.
- [66:02]
Matthew Continetti
We'll see.
- [66:04]
Abe Greenwald
We'll see. I'm going to make a quick recommendation. 30 seconds. Amazon debuted this last week a new 30 minute police procedural called On Call, which is set in Long Beach, California and it is literally about two cops in a car. I mean, it's about, it begins with the shooting of a cop by a gangbanger, but it's basically about a veteran cop played by Troy and Bellisario, and a young cop whose first day on the job it is in a car and she's teaching him the ropes of how to be a cop. And the first episode, directed, interestingly enough by Eric Lasalle, who was on the in the original cast of ER, was, is spectacularly good. And it's 30 minutes long. It's a 30 minute long cop drama. Like not since I was a Kid and Adam 12 and Dragnet were on TV have we had a 30 minute long cop drama. It's like thrilling. It's thrilling. 30 minute cop drama. Anyway, that's on call on Amazon, so that's our recommendation for the day. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Seth, Abe and Matt, I'm John Pot Hort's Keep the Candle Burning.