On Again, Off Again

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: On Again, Off Again
Date: May 26, 2026
Host and Panelists:

• Jon Podhoretz (Host, Editor)
• Abe Greenwald (Executive Editor)
• Seth Mandel (Senior Editor)
• Christine Rosen (Social Commentary Columnist)
• Eliana Johnson (Washington Free Beacon Editor)

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
This episode delivers an in-depth, candid analysis of the chaotic state of U.S.–Iran negotiations, the recent failed ceasefire/peace deal over the weekend, U.S. foreign policy challenges in the Middle East under President Trump’s second administration, as well as the wider implications for American politics and media. The panel also examines the evolving role of campaign finance and influence operations, the fragmentation of a shared reality in American society, and notable primary races.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Middle East "Peace" Non-Deal & U.S. Negotiations with Iran

• Unprecedented Confusion and Stress: The panel likens the weekend’s diplomatic chaos to the stress of an uncertain election night.

  • Jon Podhoretz: “The stress of following the news this weekend, unlike pretty much any such stress I've ever experienced...” (00:50)

• Erratic Progression of Negotiations:

  • A peace deal was touted Saturday but collapsed almost immediately; conflict flared, including a naval skirmish in the Strait of Hormuz and escalations between Israel and Hezbollah.
  • The supposed imminence of a deal was leaked by divergent (sometimes “MAGA-aligned”) elements inside the administration and by self-interested Middle Eastern actors—not rooted in reality.

• Iranian Intransigence:

  • The Iranians insisted on up-front sanctions relief, claimed ongoing right to enrichment, and leveraged control over the Strait.
  • The only mutual agreement: the deal would ignore missiles and proxies.
  • Eliana Johnson: “The Iranians seem to have now prevented the administration from being able to agree to a deal they have snatched.” (05:24)

• U.S. Desperation for a Deal vs. Reality:

  • The panel expresses skepticism about the Trump team’s resolve and negotiating strategy, worrying about eventual U.S. concessions (“They can keep 40% of their non enriched uranium…” (05:31))
  • Comparison to the Obama administration’s JCPOA strategy—fear that U.S. will capitulate after repeated Iranian refusals.
  • Abe Greenwald: “My fear is that we're gonna do this so many times and eventually it will be … the US starts making those types of concessions, John, that you're talking about, which is what the Obama administration did.” (08:33)

• Nature of U.S. Leverage — Do They Really Believe America Will Go Back to War?

  • Skepticism about whether Iran takes U.S. threats seriously, particularly given electoral timing and perceived American war-weariness.
  • Role of the Saudis as mediators, but clear sign that Arab partners have grown wary of U.S. commitment.
  • Seth Mandel: “Trump looked like he kind of called their bluff over the weekend… there was dead silence from Saudi.” (11:17)

• Failure of "Performative Diplomacy" and Communication:

  • Critique of Trump’s governance style: bombastic one day, declaring “victory” the next, without clarity or consistent follow-through.
  • Increasing insecurity among traditional U.S. allies and partners.

Notable Quote

• Christine Rosen: “We have reached the limits of Trump's brand of performative diplomacy where he says, I'm going to blast him to the Stone Age. And then he says, now we have a deal. It's the best deal ever.” (12:49)
• Jon Podhoretz: “If that deal, the deal that the administration wants were a deal that Iran would agree to... that is basically a definition of victory. And the Iranians are not agreeing to negotiate our victory at the negotiating table.” (05:31)

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2. Muddled Internal Dynamics, Leaks, and the Media Echo Chamber

• Internal U.S. Division & Information Chaos:

  • Multiple negotiation teams, unclear lines of authority, and MAGA influencers being teed up on social media to praise a nonexistent deal—an echo chamber reminiscent of what the panel calls the “Ben Rhodes school” during the Obama years.
  • The administration is increasingly negotiating with itself rather than Iran.
  • Jon Podhoretz: “If you're really gonna end a war, you're not gonna tell Jack Posobiek first… you're gonna bring in Tom Cotton first.” (21:16)
  • Seth Mandel: “That's Trump's version … of the echo chamber. It's no longer gonna be about print media, legacy media, it's going to be about social media figures, streamers and the rest of it.” (25:00)

• Disconnect at the Top

  • Trump and his team appear to be talking about different “deals”, with the president’s expectations outstripping diplomatic realities.
  • Absence of dissenting voices within his administration: danger that nobody pushes back.
  • Christine Rosen: "This is the danger. When you have an administration that doesn't contain people who are able and willing to push back against the leader..." (22:16)

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3. Strategic Dilemmas: Victory, Blockade, and American Power

• What Would Actually Constitute “Victory”?

  • Desired goals: open Strait, prevent Iranian nukes, eliminate missile program.
  • Iran is rejecting even the opening stage; the entire negotiation looks futile.
  • Jon Podhoretz: “Trump is the one who set the terms for the ending of this war. And if they can't even give him even remotely decent cover to claim that he's gotten there, he's not going to agree to it.” (38:52)

• Panel’s Ultimate Proposal:

  • “Stumbling backward” into what may be the only workable policy: maintain the blockade, keep the Strait open, choke Iranian commerce, and hope the regime collapses under pressure (if America can stomach the costs).
  • Jon Podhoretz: “That might be the right strategy to win the war finally…” (39:33)
  • But risk: U.S. munition shortages (as cited in Eli Lake’s reporting), potential loss of deterrence versus China, and reputational harm to American power.

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4. Political Fallout and Domestic Dynamics

Texas Primaries and Senate GOP Turmoil

• Trump’s Political Interventions:
  • Endorsement of indicted Ken Paxton over mainstream John Cornyn in the Texas Senate runoff; risk of weakening GOP prospects in Texas.
  • Alienation of key Senate Republicans, making it harder for Trump to get what he wants in a tight Congress (Ballroom funding, IRS slush fund).

Democratic "Medaling" in Primaries

• Republican Involvement in Texas Democratic Race:
  • GOP’s boosting of the anti-Semitic Maureen Galindo in the TX-35 primary, following a standard tactic pioneered earlier by Democrats (e.g., Claire McCaskill’s 2014 race).
  • Eliana Johnson: “The goal of politics is actually to win. Don't think it's crazy that Republicans are boosting this woman.” (49:29)
  • Noted hypocrisy in press coverage—the story focuses more on Republican "meddling" than on the nature of the Democratic candidate.

Foreign Money, NGO Funding, and Dark Money Influence

• Surge of Foreign-Backed Cash Into American Left:
  • The left has embraced the same "dark money" tactics once decried, with foreign billionaires funding NGOs and campaign infrastructure (Neville Roy Singham, Soros family).
  • Jon Podhoretz: “...they don't care. ...if people could remember summing up the level of uniform rage and disgust at the money polluting our politics... here we are somehow mysteriously with this socialist mayor in my city…” (53:14)

Paid Influencers and the Death of Transparency

• New Wave of “Invisible Advertising”:
  • Tom Steyer and others are paying social media influencers to promote campaigns without transparent disclosure.
  • Panelists highlight how this evades regulatory scrutiny and erodes public trust.
  • Christine Rosen: “In Steyer's case, they were not disclosing that they were paid influencers.” (60:10)

Notable Quotes:

• Jon Podhoretz: “If you're doing it and not getting paid, you are a schmuck because someone will pay you.” (61:05)
• Christine Rosen: “This is where I become very pessimistic … that we’re long past the idea that there can be a shared reality when it comes to information.” (66:13)

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5. The Collapse of Shared Reality and Media Ecosystem

• Erosion of Trust and Fragmentation of Information

  • Younger Americans increasingly cannot distinguish between content and advertising; regulatory gaps for online political ads.
  • Fears that nothing online will be believed, fostering either total cynicism or manipulation by AI-driven bots.

• Weaponization of Censorship

  • Efforts by both the Trump and Biden administrations to control information flow (removing January 6th records, suppressing stories via tech companies).
  • Dangers of retroactively rewriting history to suit political goals — “the cure worse than the disease.”

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Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “It was so stressful because it was all noise, no signal, everything between Friday and last night. We had absolutely no clue what was going on.” (Abe Greenwald, 08:34)
• “The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that this deal would not address missiles and support for proxies.” (Eliana Johnson, 04:56)
• “Trump is the one who set the terms for the ending of this war. And if they can't even give him even remotely decent cover to claim that he's gotten there, he's not going to agree to it.” (Jon Podhoretz, 38:52)
• “If you're really gonna end a war, you're not gonna tell Jack Posobiek first… you're gonna bring in Tom Cotton first.” (Jon Podhoretz, 21:16)
• “But I think that's more like. I think both sides will do this. By the way, as we saw the Biden administration's behavior with regard to the tech companies, the kinds of, you know, First Amendment violations of ordinary citizens were ridiculous. But I think that is the future...” (Christine Rosen, 67:23)
• “[Paid] advertising always morphs and it always plays games and it always tries to play games.” (Jon Podhoretz, 60:00)
• “This is where I become very pessimistic … that we're long past the idea that there can be a shared reality when it comes to information.” (Christine Rosen, 66:13)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Opening and topic setup: 00:50–03:57
• Deal terms and obstacles: 03:59–08:33
• Cycle of failed negotiations & comparison to JCPOA: 08:34–12:49
• Arab states' role and US loss of control: 10:33–12:49
• Limits of Trump's diplomacy & Senate pushback: 12:49–15:33
• Dissection of administration’s internal communication failures: 15:33–24:19
• Social media echo chamber and manipulation: 24:13–26:19
• Iran’s long-running threats, goals of US policy: 29:00–30:17
• Discussion of international law on the Strait of Hormuz: 34:12–35:15
• What to do if a deal is impossible (blockade debate): 39:33–42:27
• Senate discord and Trump’s political calculations: 43:46–49:55
• Dem/GOP meddling in primaries & dark money in politics: 49:55–54:57
• Paid influencers, campaign finance, social media manipulation: 57:53–61:11
• Fragmented reality and the decline of trust in media: 61:29–66:37
• Final reflections on government manipulation of information: 66:37–68:10
• Movie recommendation & episode close: 68:10–end

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The United States is locked in a repetitive, public failure to forge a meaningful deal with Iran, hindered by internal division, lack of clarity, and the changing nature of diplomacy and influence.
• America's political, media, and information ecosystems are fragmenting rapidly, with dark money, foreign influence, and paid influencers muddying the water and eroding public trust.
• The future holds increasing uncertainty, both in foreign affairs and domestic politics, as traditional structures of credibility and mutual understanding break down.

Final Sidenote:
Jon Podhoretz ends with a movie recommendation, “Tuner,” calling it the best film of the year so far, and promises his review in the Washington Free Beacon.

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Transcript

[A]

Oh, for the best, expect the worst Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no 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 Tuesday, May 26, 2026. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[B]

Hi, John.

[A]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[C]

Hi, John.

[A]

Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[D]

Hi, John.

[A]

And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[E]

Hi, John.

[A]

Well, I could use a vacation after this weekend. The stress of following the news this weekend, unlike pretty much any such stress I've ever experienced, except, like, in the week leading up to a presidential election whose outcome is not yet determined. The peace deal that basically was announced on Saturday morning, which to me looked like Munich, 2, JCPOA 3, Rocky IV, everything bad. I guess people like Rocky IV, but I don't, then automatically began to crumble. And it all seemed as though the reason that we believed that a deal was imminent was leaking entirely from interested parties, not only inside the administration, seeming to come from the more I would call the MAGA side of the administration, as well as supposedly diplomatic sources in the Middle east who seemed to be trying to incept a ceasefire out of their own heads when the Iranians weren't even responding to our proposal, whatever our proposal was. And then if they were responding, we're responding on Twitter, that they weren't agreeing to anything. And so gradually, over the 48 hours from which this started, it became clear that there was no deal, there could be no deal. And indeed, then we went kinetic with an actual sea battle. I know it's not really a battle. The Iranians were trying to lay mines and we fired on them and blew up their ships. But it's a little bit of a sea battle. You know, like if it were the 19th century and the Barbary pirates versus, you know, the U.S. navy, that would have been a sea battle. And Israel, Israel, which was supposedly involved in the larger ceasefire or larger peace talks in ceasing its activities against Hezbollah and Lebanon, basically went, no, they're throwing drones at us. They're new drone strategy where they're using swarms and we have to destroy them now. And Rubio and Trump both said, okay, and Israel is now basically at war in Lebanon against Hezbollah. So that was some weekend of peace that we lived through. And I, for one, am very grateful that it is Tuesday morning and we are not here talking about the wreckage of an America that has decided that had unilaterally decided to get itself out of a mess that it got itself into, basically, or acknowledging that that was what had happened.

[C]

Well, they also, I. Yeah, go ahead.

[E]

It does seem, John, like the Trump administration is eager to make a deal. I think that part of the reporting is right, but it seems to me like the Iranians are determined not to let it happen. The Trump administration has laid down, you know, some red lines on this, but the Iranians are demanding a few things, one of which is sanctions relief up front. Whereas the administration is saying sanctions relief will be given on the basis of performance. The Iranians continue to assert control over the strait or some kind of ownership over the strait, while the administration says a deal will, would restore, must restore the Strait of Hormuz to the status quo ante. And the Iranians continue to insist on a right to enrichment, even if they turn over in some capacity their nuclear materials. And number four, the only thing both sides seem to agree on is that this deal would not address missiles and support for proxies. But the Iranians seem to have now prevented the administration from being able to agree to a deal they have snatched.

[A]

Can I say one thing to set the table before everybody else speaks? If that deal, the deal that the administration wants were a deal that Iran would agree to, leaving the missiles aside, sure, that would be a deal they should accept. That's essentially a negotiated victory. We get the dust, the strait is opened. They basically acknowledge that we beat them even if they don't do so by coming to the table, we take the blockade off, the blockade is gone, and we get the nuclear materials. That is basically a definition of victory. And the Iranians are not agreed agreeing to negotiate our victory at the negotiating table. So it's not even that the deal, the more you found out about it, that the deal was so terrible, although the impulse, what I think we thought was because they were negotiating so hard and seemed so eager that they would crumble at the last minute and start making concessions like, oh, they can keep 40% of their non enriched uranium and they can keep this and we won't talk about that. And the other thing that if they were in the last mile that they would be so eager that they would, you know, that they would take some, take a victory and turn it into a loss.

[E]

I think it's also important to note the deal was supposed to play out in two phases. The first phase was supposed to be the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of the blockade and, and then a 60 day period in which the US and Iran would negotiate over the nuclear part with missiles and support for proxies entirely put off. And they couldn't even get to, you know, the opening of the strait and the removal of the blockade in order to get to part two of this deal. And meanwhile Iran, the Americans catch Iran laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. If it's not clear that Iran is not interested in negotiating a deal and will never negotiate away their nuclear materials, I don't know how much more the administration needs to hear. And I am just very skeptical that any good deal can be negotiated without the real and credible threat of serious force. And I think that's a problem in these negotiations. Like Iran has to really believe that we are willing to go back to war. And I just don't think they believe that because of the timing of these negotiations with respect to the midterm elections.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not sure I believe it. I mean, you know, as you said, Eliana, the administration seems eager for a deal. And I just wonder how many more times we're going to go through this cycle because I've literally lost count. Is this the third or fourth?

[C]

Sort of.

[B]

We're very close, we're working very hard, got to iron out a few things. Moment. It's happened a few times. And when you talk about the stress that this induced, it was so stressful because it was all noise, no signal, everything between Friday and last night. We had absolutely no clue what was going on. There were conflicting reports, there are administration insiders leaking very positive things. Then there were people riding on substacks that we have that we were willing to give up everything. And my fear is that we're gonna do this so many times and eventually it will be the kind of situation where the US starts making those types of concessions, John, that you're talking about, which is what the Obama administration did. I mean, the Obama administration basically went to the Iranians and they said. And the Iranians said no, no, no, no, no. And the US would come back and John Kerry would come back and they'd meet in Vienna and every time the Iranians would say no, no, no, no, no. And eventually the US Said okay, we

[A]

could work with that.

[B]

And that is my fear. Cuz when Trump simply says there's a deal when there's no deal,

[A]

it's eerily

[B]

close to doing that.

[E]

And it's the greatest deal ever. It's the greatest piece of paper that you've ever seen. The MoU is the most beautiful, you know, thing ever. That's tough. And if they know he's not willing to go back to war, this is going to be tough going.

[C]

I think also what's interesting is that he's, it seems to be conducted through, not through Pakistan, but through Saudi Arabia. So, you know, the mediator is really the Arab states deciding when they've had enough. And Trump looked like he kind of called their bluff over the weekend, which was like, all right, if you really, if you really want peace in the Middle east and you want everything to, you know, just be, be fine and dandy, and then I guess we'll all sign the Abraham Accords and we'll all, you know, be officially part of the same alliance and we'll sing Kumbaya together. And they were like, oh, I don't know about that. So there's an element to this.

[A]

More than that they were silent. The story when he said this on this group phone call join the Abraham Accords, there was dead silence from Saudi. I mean, I can't, seven people on the phone call went silent.

[C]

So, so I think that he's, you know, he's, I think that he's nervous about the fact that this is the fact that he's not really in control as much as he thought he would be. And it happened really a few weeks ago when the Saudis and Kuwait said, hold on, you got to put a pause on this because we thought you were going to hit back at Iran much harder if they hit us. And you're looks like you're not willing to do that, therefore, you know, everything needs to stop. And so that was like the beginning of this. Somebody else could literally just pull the curtain. It was, you know, it was like, it was like Showtime at the Apollo and, you know, a janitor clown came out in Saudi dress or something and pushed him off the stage. And since then, the, that has not gone away. The feeling that he is not fully in control of what was until that moment. His war has predominated. And I, and I think we saw a little bit of him trying to claw that back over the weekend.

[A]

I don't think, I don't think a little.

[D]

But, Christine, I just, I think a couple things. One, we really don't know what's going on right now. And the fact that we're days into not knowing what's going on right now is a failure of communication on the part of this administration. I think we have reached the limits of Trump's brand of performative diplomacy where he says, I'm going to blast him to the Stone Age. And then he says, now we have a deal. It's the best deal ever. There's a, I understand the disruptive impact being useful in some strategic negotiations and we've seen that. But he's created a new world now, but it's not clear he knows how to govern it. And I think that's where it's very disconcerting to those of us who are like, okay, we're with you on toppling Iran. Iran's bad. Iran having nuclear weapons, very bad thing. We've all known this for a long time, but we forget that, that although he says that he still sees that as a negotiating tool, although that is the one consistency over the weekend is the nuclear dust. The nuclear dust. So I'm, I'm pleased to see that. But I'm not sure that his administration's negotiating team, perhaps with the exception of, of Rubio's insight, understands that they do need to learn from what happened during the jcpoa. Not so that they don't make the same mistakes, but to understand they absolutely cannot trust Iran in any sort of negotiation about its nuclear program. No American leader has ever been able to trust them. And that was the fatal flaw in Obama's reasoning. We shouldn't be trusting Pakistan at all. I've been pretty consistent in saying that was a mistake. And now we have to consider other regional actors, Qatar in particular, who's gonna start giving more money to the Iranian regime because they still wanna maintain their position as the middleman in that, in that whole setup. So I would like to look, the President's about to go get his physical today. I imagine he's gonna wanna get before the cameras and tell us in what great shape he is. He loves to do that. I would like to hear him address where we are right now because the uncertainty is no longer something that I think the American people should be living with. I was interested to see over the weekend more pushback publicly from Republicans in the Senate. Tom Cotton, Senator Tom Cotton has introduced a bill to make sure that we, that the Iranians cannot profit from control of the strait. That there would be. That that's absolutely unacceptable, whether they call it a so called environmental tax or not, that is still controlling international shipping lane. So I like seeing that movement as well. I hope that puts some pressure on Trump to think about what a good deal would look like. I don't think we should fall into the trap of constantly comparing it to the JCPOA though, because he has changed the world as it stands now from what it was then we have degraded a lot of their capacity. We've taken out a lot of their leadership. But I'd like to hear from him, what is victory? Because, John, I think you outlined at the top of the show a kind of sense of, okay, where are we? What does victory look like? I want to hear that from the president.

[A]

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[D]

That's the key. This person might not be able to enforce any agreement that might get signed.

[A]

Right. But I wonder whether, given the fact that apparently on Saturday afternoon, people on the American negotiating team were speaking on background to all kinds of people and people. I would not actually. Maybe it's just the communications team at the White House, but basically they lined up. Seth noticed this. They lined up the kind of MAGA faithful, the most MAGA faithful, to start tweeting about what a great deal it was, Alex Bruzewitz and Jack Posobiak and this one and that one. And suddenly we're in a brand new day and a brand new dawn. And when former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, I don't like the way this deal looks, White House Communications Director Steven Chung, who needs a GLP 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 injected into his body and a gastric bypass and a brain transplant, says Mike Pompeo, Trump's own Secretary of State, doesn't know what the F. And he didn't say F. He's talking about and he should shut up. That is not the way that you herald the coming of a great deal. Somebody on the MAGA side decided that they wanted to get out the idea that the deal was coming and that everybody should line up behind it before anything happened. And any hint that that was not gonna be the case was gonna be met with social media aggression bordering on psychopathy. And that was also a sign to me that something weird was going on. Because if you're really gonna end a war, you're not gonna tell Jack Posobiek first. Do you know what I mean? You're gonna bring in this administration might

[D]

do precisely that, John. That's actually.

[A]

You're gonna bring in Tom Cotton first. You're gonna bring in the person who can spread the word out to the other 99 members of the Senate that he koshers the deal, as we might say. And they couldn't do that, and they wouldn't do that, and they weren't in a position to do that. And I'm not sure that Trump was being told the full truth about what was being negotiated for him.

[C]

Right. Because it was as if Trump was referring to one deal and they were referring to a different deal. Right. That's how it felt like Trump. In Trump's head, he's talking about the fact that the deal I offered is they have to give up everything. So that's a great deal. They're gonna own this. And someone's telling him, oh, we're close. We're close to a deal. And in his head, the deal he has is we get everything, unconditional surrender or whatever. And they're picturing two different deals.

[D]

This is the danger. When you have an administration that doesn't contain people who are able and willing to push back against the leader, that's actually something you need. You need someone who's willing to say, you know, this isn't working out this way. We have to plan for this eventuality or this contingency. He has not, in his second term, generally had people in his cabinet or in his orbit who are willing to do that consistently when he is very much focused on a particular path. We saw this with the tariff stuff as well. So that is a. That is a weakness, I think, in an administration that actually does need someone who he can listen to and trust who will give him an alternative set of options.

[A]

Okay, but there is an alternative set of options. That's the thing about this war. And that's the thing that I think he basically has realized by Sunday night. If he hadn't realized it before, he had three. He has three goals for the war. One added after the war started, which is getting the Straits of Hormuz open and never trying to close them again. But the other is no nuclear weapons and we get the dust and an elimination in some fashion of their missile program. And that's a go, no go thing. So when it comes back to him that, well, in 60, we're going to negotiate over the terms in 60 days, and maybe they'll get to keep some and not another. He does have in his head, because he keeps saying it, that the last thing that he wants anyone ever to say is that this resembles the jcpoa. You don't want to compare it to the jcpoa, but he does. And he said three times Yesterday, this is not the jcpoa. That was the worst deal ever. Any thing that involves using percentage numbers of uranium enrichment, 3%, 60% centrifuges, any talk like that is JCPOA talk.

[C]

He doesn't want you to have to analyze the deal to know who got the better of the deal.

[A]

Right, Right. In other words, the American people. Obama had to spend months trying to talk the American people into the idea that this was a really good deal. And he had this long spiel about how you see it's 10 years and then there's two extra years and the sanctions will stay on if they start spitting the centrifuges, but we're go. And even then, by the time the deal was actually before the American people, three fifths of the United States was opposed to the jcpoa. That's something that people forget. So, you know, the Senate vote against The JCPOA was 62, by the way.

[B]

People forget it because then the Ben Rhodes echo chamber was put to work. And I think you know which Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor, famously bragged about how he could feed JCPOA talking points to a new generation of journalists who knew nothing. And I think, John, when you talk about the social media figures that got the memo to start talking up this non deal over the weekend, that's Trump's version of the or, that's this administration's version of the echo chamber. It's no longer gonna be about print media, legacy media, it's going to be about social media figures, streamers and the rest of it. And that's what got me concerned, because it's not the jcpoa. I get that, and I take Christine's caution there seriously. But this reminded me of, oh, they are laundering garbage, just like Ben Rhodes did.

[A]

But they were laundering garbage that hadn't yet been fully served up as the garbage. That was the thing. The more you read the details that say Barack Ravid was putting out or others were putting out about what was in the deal, you were like, I mean, I kept saying I was texting with 15 different people and everybody was like, he can't agree. He can't agree to this. Like just two months ago, he said the exact opposite. Like he's snatching defeat from the jaws that nobody there is nobody except Alex Bruzewitz and Jack Posobiek and Stephen Chung's little army of morons that is gonna say that this deal is good. Nobody, like all Republican senators are gonna say, ye. And like every Democrat's like, you see the whole thing was a total blunder, and we went to war for no reason and put ourselves at risk, and we used up all our munitions and da, da, da, da. Like, it didn't make any sense, the terms that were coming back from him. It might make sense if this were the George H.W. bush administration, which negotiated essentially a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein that left him in power and caused us to have to go to war with him again ten years later. You know, like that would make sense from those.

[D]

Okay. But that. That is what no one is saying on the Trump administration side, because they know the American people do not want to hear it. Because if the. If that's, I think, why the whole nuclear dust negotiation involves now this caveat that, like, we can send people to the dust itself, we don't have to extract it, and they can assure us that it's not being enriched. You know, all of these new details. But that is avoiding the unsaid thing, which is in. If Iran says no to all of that, particularly about the nuclear materials, in order for Trump to do what he says he wants to do with regard to Iran's nuclear capabilities, that will require a heavy presence of troops, a real war, lots more naval activity, not these little strategic things we've been doing. And that is something I think he knows the country would not necessarily support right now. And so that's the unsaid, unspoken thing. And Iran is relying on no one saying that, but it kind of coming out in some sort of negotiation, I assume. I don't see any benefit from the Iranian standpoint to agreeing to just give over all of that material. They're going to make that part very difficult. And that's. That's why the second stage, as Eliana correctly pointed out, that second stage of negotiation is gonna be them just constantly resetting the egg timer in the kitchen and waiting for us while we cook leading up to the election.

[A]

But that assumes there's gonna be a second stage. Well, yes, because the first stage has already been rejected by Iran. I mean, it's been rejected. I mean, I don't know how many times different people had to say yesterday that they weren't agreeing to any of this for it to be clear that it was being rejected. And then, of course, we get this wonderful statement at the beginning of the Hajj from the Ayatollah, who may not even exist, Mojtaba Khamenei, who may be like Woody Allen sleeper. He may just be a nose that they're trying to clone back into life. But this statement comes out it's like, oh, I welcome all the Hajj. And by the way, Israel will not exist in 15 years. And death to America.

[D]

Okay, Bringing out the classics.

[A]

That's really

[C]

someone shaking a Magic 8 Ball Iran version.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, the phrase, ask again later, Israel will not exist in 15 years is literally what started this whole we have to do something about Iran before they get a nuclear weapon thing.

[C]

More than 15 years ago, it was

[A]

20 years ago, 21 years ago, it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, upon his election as president of Iran, who said, our task is the elimination of Israel. It will not be around very much longer. And also announcing that they were accelerating their interest in, you know, nuclear materials. And that literally triggered a worldwide understanding that the Iranian purpose had become millenarian and that it was looking to destroy the Jewish state. And something needed to be done about that, which is why every single major political figure in the United States has said Iran can never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. And I think it's also, every figure in the world basically says it's just sort of like a cliche. Now Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. So if Mojtaba, again, if that's him saying, oh, they're not. Israel's not going to exist in 15 years. And the, and the. They're. They're. The little Satan in America is the great Satan. That's really, really where Trump is going to make a peace deal with him. There is no peace deal with him. That's them saying, no peace deal. We'll go down with the ship. If you can probably sink our ship, we're going down with it. We're not scrambling to get off the ship. I'm scrolling. I need to buy something. I'm looking for something to buy online. And then I see that product that I've been looking for. I click on the link, I add it to the cart, maybe shop around a little more before finally hitting checkout. But then I realize I don't have my credit card anywhere near me. So I am so happy when I see that purple pay button that has all of your information saved, making checkout as simple as a simple tap of your screen. I'm talking about the Shopify button. Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all E commerce in the United States. From household names like Commentary magazine to brands. Just getting started. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify will help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their Shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com go to shopify.com commentary that's shopify.com commentary. I'm happy to come talk to you again about quints. It's spring and for me that means it's time to take out my quint's linen, clothing, pants, shirts, buy some new ones. The linen breathes. It is the most comfortable for the spring and summer months. It's handsome, it is attractive and we're talking about stuff that costs 50 to 80% less than you'd find from similar brands because quince works directly with ethical factories, cuts out the middleman. You're getting premium materials without the markup. So refresh your every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-Y-N C E.com commentary for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary.

[C]

I would love to see some, you know, some international law experts and defenders of international law react to Iran's pledge to control the strait forever. Because this is also what's happening. Iran is not just saying no deal. They're saying in addition to no deal, we're also going to take X, Y and Z. And you know, this is a, this is a situation where it will be very easy for the EU countries to step in and say, well, you can't have the strait because you can't, you can't toll an international waterway. Even, even if, you know, there are certain, even if there are certain technical property rights that you have and whatever, you can't toll an international waterway. You can't toll the strait. And no one's actually saying that because they're not willing to do what it would take to force Iran to not toll the streets. Somebody has to go in and make them do it.

[A]

I want to quote the Institute for the Study of Wars Daily does a daily report on where the war is. And here's the funny part about these Straits of Hormuz thing, here's what they say. Iran has continued to claim that it and Oman control the Strait of Hormuz as territorial waters. By the way, just for our listeners here, our people watching on YouTube, if you haven't, you really do have to go take a look at a map and see what the Strait of Hormuz looks like, because that informs how it is that the Iranians can even think of doing this and why they're saying that they and Oman can control the strait anyway. Iranian officials says ISW are attempting to reframe transit tolls as protection fees to give Iran's protection racket the veneer of legality. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under international law. Iran is claiming that the strait is territorial waters and under the administration of coastal states. But it is notable in this context that Iran does not define the United Arab Emirates as a coastal state, even though the UAE borders the strait. So it has said these are territorial waters for us and Oman, but not the uae, which also has a border, because the UAE is, of course, aligned with the US And Israel in the war against Iran. So this is just nonsense on stilts. You know, it's like a parody of itself that they're trying to claim some kind of international law standard that allows them to control the strait with the exception of one of the three countries that borders the strait. So, again, like, I don't know who we're negotiating with here. Once again, all of this looks like we're negotiating with ourselves. And in this case, Witkoff and Kushner or somebody, Trump's like, you go get a deal. And to be fair to them, Trump says to them, you go get a deal. So they're sitting across from somebody who says they're speaking for Iran. Maybe it's gutter, maybe it's whatever. And they keep moving the football or the goalposts or whatever analogy you want to use, because they are like the Americans during the JCPOE negotiations. Their overriding purpose is to get to a deal. So if Iran says no, they gotta move a little bit, and then they gotta move a little bit. That's them. The question is what the United States does. So they are having this conversation. The conversation makes them optimistic because they're giving in on various fronts. And the Iranians or the Gutterys or whoever are smiling and saying, here, have some more mint tea, and I have a delicious pastry for you, and it's all really wonderful. Mood lightens, but none of it has anything to do with what will actually be agreed to by the person who went to war and said, I have three. We're going to destroy their offensive capabilities. We're going to get the dust, and they are never going to have a nuclear program ever again. And that's what he said. The one thing he didn't say was that we want regime change, right? And that's where they still are. But Trump is the one who set the terms for the ending of this war. And if they can't even give him even remotely decent cover to claim that he's gotten there, he's not going to agree to it. I mean, his, his animal cunning will not allow that to happen.

[D]

But then what will he do? He will. If he doesn't agree to it, what happens next? And I think that's the question on America's mind, certainly on my mind, because this, this iteration over and over of bluster and threats and then, oh, we have a deal. Oh, it's the best deal ever. I think that you're correct, that that cannot go on for much longer.

[A]

Okay, I have an answer for that. So what if we're stumbling into the correct policy backwards, which is to say we've done the military damage that we can do. Everything else that we do after this creates the conditions under which a potential post Islamic republic Iran will not be able to be a functional country. But we are going to keep the strait open and we are going to blockade. The Iranians are not. The Iranians are blockaded. And if we can stomach doing that for six months with all the attendant pain that that will cause, the regime might well collapse. That might be the right strategy to win the war finally. And of course, then our friend Eli Lake had a very depressing piece in the Free Press yesterday or the day before yesterday about the real reason Trump needs a deal with Iran, which is that according to him, according to sources, the munitions crisis is very real that we have gone through. We haven't been replenishing our stocks and all this, and we've gone through an immense amount of weaponry and material. And if we have to do much more of this, we are going to, we're not going to have enough stuff in reserve for the real potential crisis that might happen if, say, China decides to move on Taiwan. And so Trump needs a deal so he can stop firing weapons. Now, if that's true, and I don't know that it's true, but it sounds certainly, I mean, enough people are worried that it's true, and we do know that we haven't been replenishing our munitions enough, then the Hormuz blockade of Iran that will make Iran choke and have literally no foreign commerce or trade or anything, becomes a viable long term strategy to make them break. What about that as a theory?

[D]

I think that solves Trump's near term problem, but the long term strategic implications of a United States that's just come out of the end of this conflict where China and other world powers see how we've backed off from that strategic goal of controlling nuclear weapons does shift balances of power. I think that's not good long term for the interests of the United States or for the interests of Western countries in general. And to have done that and ended up in that position while having alienated many of our allies, I think is that's of concern to me. I think in the next 20 to 30 years, even if in the immediate few months to year or through the end of Trump's term, that there's some sort of balance restored.

[A]

I mean, this is the reputational problem. And it's why I'm not sure I believe that he wouldn't go back to war. Because I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. No one knows. We have no idea. And his inconstancy is very, very jarring and difficult. And it is that one of those moments where you go, I don't know how we can go through two and a half more years of this. Like, I just don't understand, you know, Today, by the way, of course, we have the primary in Texas, right? The Senate runoff, primary runoff between Senator Cornyn, mainstream Republican votes with Trump 100% of the time, and Ken Paxton, a man convicted of crimes who bribed people and had to pay settlements to people that he wrongly indicted in order to cover up his fact that he made them hire his mistress and stuff like that. And Trump endorses Paxton, and Paxton is likely to win and thus give the Democrats the first real chance they've had to have a senator from Texas since Lloyd Benson. And, you know, so that's what also what he did last week.

[D]

Although I would like to resurrect Lord Benson from the dead and have him arm wrestle Talarico, because I really would not put my money on Talarico in that. I mean, Teloco is still very weak candidate for a Texas Senate candidacy.

[A]

He is, but Paxton is a, you know, I mean, Paxton has won races. That's clear. He is the, he is the attorney general of the state. And.

[E]

But yeah, I do think, yeah, Paxton's a weaker candidate. I do think Paxton can win in Texas. The. And I, and I think my understanding is Trump endorsed Paxton because he saw polling indicating Paxton was going to defeat Cornyn, and he was inclined to get in front of it and take the credit for what was going to happen anyway. But I think this creates a couple of other problems for the president between now and the midterms, some of which Matt talked about when he was on the podcast, which is that. But the President has alienated the Senate. The Senate is a really tight knit group and he needs some things from the Senate. He's trying to get funding for his ballroom and they are not inclined to get it from him. Attorney General Todd Blanch had a very adversarial meeting, my understanding is, with senators over this IRS slush fund for government weaponization that the President wants. And that was last week. And there, there are whispers and questions raised about what Justice Alito might do. There's the potential of a Supreme Court retirement between now and November. I think people are thinking it won't happen, but nobody knows. And so if you look at the Senate, President Trump has essentially pushed out Thom Tillis in North Carolina, he's pushed out in Louisiana. I'm blanking on the guy. Yeah, Bill Cassidy. And he's endorsed Paxton over Cornyn. He's insulted Susan Collins in Maine. And those things, you know, are things that I think make it much harder for him to get what he wants in a midterm year just months out from November elections. Let's see how far we're almost in June. So five months out from a midterm election. And I think he's made it a bit more difficult to get what he wants from a Republican Senate with very slim margins, 53 Republican senators. So we have that primary in Texas today. And the other interesting primary we have, John, is a Democratic primary, Democratic runoff, I should say, in the 35th Texas congressional district between the rabid anti Semite Maureen Galindo and the other Democrat, Johnny Garcia. The Free Beacon actually brought Galindo maybe three weeks ago to national attention, noting her, she's a self described sex therapist whose social media is littered with anti semitic posts. And when she was prodded by other media outlets following our reporting, she said that she wants to turn ICE detention centers into a prison for American Zionists where they would then be castrated. And there's been a lot of attention on a mysterious GOP linked super PAC that is boosting her candidacy. This is a swing district that is now R&4 due to the redistricting in Texas. So it leans Republican. And Republicans believe she would be the weaker candidate, obviously. And there has been an enormous amount of media attention to the fact that Republicans are boosting her. I saw Dave Weigel of Semaphore saying the real story in this race is that Republicans are boosting this candidate, not that this woman actually won a runoff election. In a Democratic primary. And I thought it was worth noting that, you know, the goal of politics is actually to win. Don't think it's crazy that Republicans are boosting this woman. They think it's more likely that she will lose the general. That's not crazy. And that. And to remind our listeners, I have not seen this noted in a single story about this, that it was Democrats who pioneered the techniques of meddling in the opposing party's primary. And it is now a standard tactic used by both parties. That happened in 2014. Claire McCaskill, then the senator from Missouri, her allies meddled in the Republican primary to boost the weaker candidate, Todd Aiken, of legitimate rape fame. They did so successfully. McCaskill prevailed. She was not defeated until the Free Beacon reports about her bus tour or

[C]

her

[E]

an RV tour of the state, that she was actually taking a private jet from stop to stop. But this is now a standard technique that was pioneered by Democrats. And that is not the story of this race. The story is that, you know, Democratic voters still have to go and vote. They still have to go and cast ballots for this candidate. So it will be quite interesting to see who prevails in that race tonight.

[D]

Can I add to that? Because I remember we discussed this on the. On the podcast many times, that in every election that Trump was on the ballot, we heard from the Democratic Party that he was a threat to democracy. He's, you know, he's gonna bring. He's gonna topple down everything like he's an existential threat to the nation. And in every one of those races, the Democrats were funding the most extreme MAGA candidates in many local and state elections, because for exactly the reason you say, Eliana, politics is a dirty game and all you wanna do is win. And so they did that. But it was the contrast at the time and between the moral grandstanding of the rhetoric coming out of their mouths and the absolute cash being sent directly to the most extreme. I mean, some really extreme people who thankfully didn't win their races. And I remember us discussing that at the time. And so I was struck as well, just as you said, that, that this has become suddenly a scandal that, that we should all attend to, when, in fact, it's just, yeah, this is what

[E]

we should be paying attention to, as always, what the Republicans are doing, not who the Democrats are voting for. And it turns out antisemitism, if folks haven't noticed, might be good politics in a Democratic primary.

[A]

By the way, it's not just that. Remember, we had 10 years, 20 years, maybe of the run up to the McCain Feingold campaign finance law. Talk about how the weakening of the parties, the strengthening of the PACs, all this Republicans using illicit illegitimate money to control politics. And we needed these campaign finance reforms, much of which were overturned by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds later in the Citizens United decision. Right now the left in the United States and the political left, it's not necessarily direct giving to candidates, but there are foreign billionaires, two of them in particular, who are basically funding the American Left and funding NGOs and funding get out the vote, everything, up to giving money to candidates or to political parties that have built this infrastructure, that has strengthened this left wing surge in Democratic circles. It's not simply populist, though I believe it is. But it is a surge of unprecedented strength and it's incredibly well funded. And that seems to be okay with people. I mean, the Koch brothers became the demons of American politics for a decade. And this guy in China, whose name I now can't quite sum it up, Neville Roy Singham. Singham, right.

[E]

And then this, whose wife is Code Pink, Medea Benjamin. And because of Singham, Code Pink has turned into a CCP front group.

[D]

Right?

[A]

Which is also weird. And then of course, there you have the Soros family and you have this guy, Fergie Chambers, who was the grandson of some billionaire. Anyway, I don't see any concern about the interference of big dark money in American politics. Once again. As long as those politics can agree or conform with liberal biases, it's all, it's all fine. And I'm all in favor of calling out Republican and conservative hypocrisy, but the level, if people could remember summing up the level of uniform rage and disgust at the money polluting our politics that had to be driven from our politics because it was so filthy and it was rich people maneuvering, you know, playing with us like we were puppets. And here we are somehow mysteriously with this socialist mayor in my city and, you know, somebody and Graham Platner, you know, storming the beaches and running, you know, Janet Mills out of, you know, out of her candidacy and all of that. And the thousands of tents that mysteriously appeared on every college campus in five seconds when the encampment thing started. All of these interferences in American politics and discussion, a lot of it exogenous, a lot of it from abroad, and they don't care.

[D]

You know, I think there's a sense of denial that runs quite deeply in most partisan Democratic voters minds. I've confronted it in friends of mine where if you mention dark money being now much more largely a project of the left, they're shocked. When you mention that the Democratic Party is not any longer the party of the working class American, but the party of the wealthy and the elite and the higher educated, they're shocked even though they know it to be true. And I think there is this undeniable sense that if an encampment pops up, it's organic. It's the people rising up, this weird sort of mythology that the Democratic left has built around itself that no longer comports with the infrastructure of money, some of it, as you say, foreign money, flowing into these NGOs, flowing into these causes that are not only extremely to the left of the average Democratic voter, but quite to the left of the average American voter. And I think that's where when stories break about tech books that have been funded by an NGO which say all kinds of crazy anti Semitic nonsense and anti American stuff, people are genuinely surprised because there is not a consistent storyline that helps Democratic voters understand that this is their party now. And I think it's why we'll see this. Both this midterm and certainly the next presidential election are going to be very important when we see what the Democratic voter agrees or disagrees with. When you have an anti Semitic candidate, as Eliana was pointing out earlier, when a primary can produce someone who says there should be Zionist internment camps in this country, and nobody even so much as shrugs about that on the left or says, oh, she didn't really mean it, if you can have Graham Platner with his Nazi tattoo and everybody makes excuses for him, that is the party. In the same way that we have been critical. I think you're right, John. Of our own party, the Republican Party, I can't even call myself a Republican anymore. The Republican Party's extremes on its own fringes, this is not something they've come to terms with. Because they haven't had a national election where they've had to choose. They are about to have one in November and they'll have another one in the next presidential election.

[B]

On this point about the Democratic hypocrisy here, it's important to remember that the foreign Money and the NGOs, they also go into shaping the narrative of a corrupt gop. It's this loop. So obviously they're not going to now shape, push the narrative into criticizing foreign funding of the Democratic Party. I mean, so we're just living in these false narratives.

[D]

And there's a lot more. Every election you have more politically homeless Americans who are sort of like, where do we go from here?

[C]

There's also this, you know, on the subject of Steyer, it's worth, you know, Christine brought up the idea of spontaneous grassroots move, the assumption of spontaneity and grassroots and all that stuff as stier. You know, today Semaphore has an interesting piece about Tom Steyer's campaign. Paying influencers online and, you know, social. Popular social media accounts to say nice things about him. And there was a problem with them initially.

[E]

Platner's doing the same thing, by the way. Yeah, it's. And the New York Times had a big piece about, you know, this is a new technique in campaigns because it goes back to our conversation on this podcast about, you know, advertising using social media. That's a new way to advertise. Well, it's a new way for politicians to advertise to.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You can say, like, not only is Stier, not only are they hypocritical, because they just don't like billionaires, except when the billionaire is one of theirs. But he is at the forefront of this new. And what Democrats behind closed doors, as this Semaphore article says, when you ask. When you ask progressives, when you ask Democrats behind closed doors, they are very nervous about the tactic that some of their own people are using because they see it as a way to hide where the money is coming from and to whom the money is going. In other words, this really blows up the whole idea of having that transparency in elections. Steyer is, by all accounts, at the forefront of this whole paid influencer, paid social media accounts, so that it's not just that he has the money, but he is that those billions, you know, not that he's spending billions on social media accounts, but those billions are going to pioneer new ways in hiding the money that he personally is putting into his own election. This is the sort of thing that would be considered a major scandal, I would think, if it were a Republican.

[A]

I mean, am I alone in thinking I have no problem with this? Like, advertising always morphs and it always plays games and it always tries to play games.

[C]

Yes, but in Steyer's case, they were not disclosing that they were paid influencers.

[E]

You know, they're not required to.

[A]

They did because we only know that they're paid influencers because of California state regulation that required him to release that information. It's more like we don't know Platter. But I think now we can just assume now that half the political accounts of the United States, if not More are basically paid advertising for campaigns. Indeed. If you're doing it and not getting paid, you are a schmuck because someone will pay you. If you have 10,000 followers. You gotta somehow get in touch with ActBlue or something. Cause they'll start funneling money to you if you do what they want.

[C]

You hear that, Mitch Daniels?

[A]

I'm sorry, Elliot.

[C]

They're doing this for free.

[A]

Yeah. No, I mean seriously, like, like advertising more. You know, it's like when, when direct mail started, it was like, oh my God, what is this? This is your. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. They're. They're putting, they're sending letters to people and raising money that way. I don't know why that was, you know, or whatever, you know, but the

[D]

combination of this form of advertising with the power of the algorithmically driven newsfeed and the fact that all Americans now get all of their news from social media and you have a lot of younger voters in particular who don't understand that they're actually being marketed to not because they're ignorant, but because the disclosures are buried or only surface if someone investigates. That's where I think it should say paid ad on any TikTok video. Any bit of social media that is bought and purchased should list that. And we do have federal regulations regarding that that are not very strictly enforced with regard to influencers acknowledging that they're being paid sponsors. But that would actually be a very good use of federal regulation is to enforce that. Say this is a paid advertisement. They have to do that for television, they have to do that for radio. Why not enforce.

[A]

Television and radio are regulated by the FCC and this is not regulated by the.

[D]

Well, that's.

[A]

And that's a loophole that they've been

[D]

trying to close, but we haven't yet said succeeded in doing that.

[A]

I think this is a short term problem by which I mean the BS detectors of people, we're still in this, like first moment of this, like we'll

[D]

vote how AI Jesus tells us to vote right now.

[A]

Right. But I know it feels like it's been a decade and then, you know, where we've been being spun like tops for a decade. I know that. But eventually people do grok the difference between what's real and what's not real. And they get very, very cynical about it. It may take a little while for that to start kicking in or they basically will believe in nothing. I mean, that's the other possibility is that nothing that is fed to anybody on TikTok in five years will be. Believe it. It'll be sort of like when your original email program. Like I was on an email server called Sprynet. Like, that was my first one. And at some point Sprynet got. Was destroyed because of the spam. They didn't have a good enough spam filter. They didn't have a good enough protection or something like that. And then every day you got 150 spam. You had to get the hell off Sprynet because you couldn't use it anymore because it was choked like that. And it could well be that people will just look at TikTok and say. Or these servers and say, this is all garbage. It's like watching a television channel that is only commercials or something like that. And I can't take it.

[C]

Yeah. Condi Rice tells a great story in her memoirs about visiting Russia and trying to advocate for the opposition to have media rights. And one of the things they didn't have is that, you know, in Putin's Russia, they didn't have access to tv. It was all propaganda. And she went to the. I think it was. Medvedev was technically president at the time, but she went to the administration and she said, we. One of our demands is we want you guys to let them. To let opposition ideas and figures have some time on tv. You have a monopoly. And Medvedev's people said to her, nobody watches tv. Nobody gets their news from tv. It doesn't matter what we say. And she said, okay, whatever. Then she went to. She met with the opposition, the guys who at the time were really feeding this Internet rush, this rush of the Internet, the online opposition in Russia, and said to them, look, I'm working. I've put in a formal request with Medvedev to have you guys have some media equity here on Russian tv. And the activists said to her, nobody watches tv. It doesn't matter. That was like the joke for Condi. She was like, both sides said it doesn't. Nobody cares about tv. This was the propaganda channel. So that's the idea, is the idea that anything coming to you through this particular medium is just assumed to be prepackaged for you. And there are other ways that people are going to get what they believe is the truth.

[B]

But the problem is that there really aren't other ways. I mean, now. This is where people live now, so they can come to whatever.

[A]

Now, the operative word, though.

[B]

Yeah, but where are they going to live after?

[A]

I don't know. Did you know TikTok was ever going to exist? I'M just saying it's all the same thing.

[B]

It's all. My point is, if they're going to live virtually, essentially, then the problem remains.

[D]

Yeah, this is where I become very pessimistic, where you were a little more optimistic, John, and that's that we're long past the idea that there can be a shared reality when it comes to information. And so it is if you're under 30. The nihilistic direction has been going on for a while now. And I think that's what worries me again, like we'll still parse everything we read and figure out if it's true or not. That's not even on the radar screen for the next generation.

[A]

I mean, the horrible part about this is that you could imagine in all innocence right after 2016, this idea that arose that the social media companies should do something about trying to make sure that lies were not being spread over their. Over their services that were distortive and convinced people that, that things were not true. And then, of course, that was just politically weaponized into a. Into a censorship machine that kept the Hunter Biden story from being, and, you know, Covid stories that were viewed as inappropriate or unorthodox and all of that. And that's, of course, that's the cure that's worse than the disease, because it's not a cure. You're just therefore spinning the news in one direction.

[D]

And the future is what the Trump administration just did, which is to remove all information about prosecutions of January six participants. That's the future is that the administrations itself will just disappear information, and there's no way to resurface that. Even the Internet Archive cannot always resurface those documents. So I think that's more like. I think both sides will do this. By the way, as we saw the Biden administration's behavior with regard to the tech companies, the kinds of, you know, First Amendment violations of ordinary citizens were ridiculous. But I think that is the future where who then is able to maintain access to information that a government agency or official decides should no longer be publicly available for any other reason than that they don't like what it says, even if it's something.

[A]

There's been a lot of that. Look, you know, there are still papers from the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations that are deemed classified. That's insane. You know, that is. I mean, it is literally insane since everybody in those papers is dead. And the countries that we were fighting, most of them, a lot of them don't, no longer exist. So controlling information is something that Governments try to do at all times. They do it with whatever means and modalities. They can have this removal of the January 6 information, which is so outrageous as to be sort of unthinkable. There are still other sources for it. There's the congressional January 6th commission, which released tens of thousands of pages of documents. And the court documents still exist in the court system. That's under the judiciary. That's not the executive branch. So it's amazing, but it is not memory hold like the Kremlin. Could memory hold something because it was the only holder of any document in the country, that everything was totally centralized. That said, this is a whole other topic about this idea that it's again, like this weird thing where the Trump people admirably, or sort of like conservatives got very worried about this revision of the past, removing the statues, changing the names of things, rewriting the history books to make sure that they cast America in a bad light. And so you think, oh, that's really, you know, that's very important. And they're trying to establish the historical record properly. And it's like, no, you know what they're doing. They went, they started there and now that what they want to do is write history according to their lights and revise everything so that it conforms with their propaganda, just like the same thing happened with the truth commissions at Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else. And this is why, you know, governments can't be have to be overseen and that there's this terrible crisis with the if the Senate were functioning properly, what the Justice Department just did with those J6 files would be instantly the subject of hearings, or they wouldn't do it because they would be too afraid that the Senate would come down on them. So that's another part of our dysfunctional system at work. I want to make a quick recommendation. I saw a movie this weekend, best movie of the year so far, in my opinion. Tuner. It is a small. It's a heist movie, it's a safecracker movie, but it's about a piano tuner whose skills as a piano tuner turn out to help him as a safecracker. And he gets involved with Israeli gangsters. And he's a musician who falls in love with a brilliant young pianist. And he works with Dustin Hoffman at the age of 88, who is his senior piano tuner, for whom he needs to get a lot of money really fast because he's in the hospital and all these things. Converge stars an actor named Leo Woodall, who was in. Who was in White Lotus Season 2. If you were a fan of that. It's an extraordinarily good movie by a 33 year old director who has already won an Oscar for his documentary. Interestingly enough, given what Seth was talking about, about Alexei Navalny, the opposition figure in Russia, and won a documentary Oscar and this is his first film tuner. Go see it. Trust me. You can read my review, I think later today in the Washington Free Beacon, Eliana's own Washington Free Beacon. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Eliana, Seth, Abe and Christine, I'm John Podhoritz. Keep the candle burning.