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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:45]
No way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best.
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Seth Mandel
Expect the worst.
- [00:52]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, November 8, 2024. I am John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:07]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:10]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:11]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:15]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:16]
John Podhoretz
And Matt's successor as editor of the Washington Free Beacon and host of the co host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast, our friend Eliana Johnson joining us. Say hi, Eliana.
- [01:28]
Matthew Continetti
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [01:30]
Abe Greenwald
Sure.
- [01:30]
John Podhoretz
Well, it's a grim morning. It was a grim night last night. News out of Amsterdam of a pogrom. There is no other way to put it. Pre positioned mobs of Muslim youths in Amsterdam following a soccer match between the Tel Aviv Maccabee team and a team in Amsterdam, at the conclusion of which Tel Aviv having won, by the way, 5 0. These pre position mobs attacked Israeli fans coming out of the stadium. The footage is horrifying. You can go to X or to wherever you get your social media GoPro feeds of Muslim terrorists assaulting Jews. They're all there. 30 or 40 injuries. It took the police in Amsterdam five hours to quell the incident. People being chased into restaurants, into hotels, being beaten on the street. Three people are still missing. Israel scrambled two planes to send them to Amsterdam to help extract Israelis from this situation. If it just so happens that the. Is it. The 70. The 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the effective beginning of the Final Solution, takes place over the next couple of days. And if you want to get a sense of what Kristallnacht might have been like, because there's very little live active film footage of Kristallnacht. There are a lot of photos of broken windows and broken glass. You might get them from these GoPro videos of Jews being chased down in the streets of Europe. One particularly horrifying one of a father shielding his son saying take my money, take my money in English because he was trying to figure out how to communicate. Can't really see it, but you don't want to see it.
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Eliana Johnson
And a couple things leap out. First, it looks like this was pre planned, coordinated. This was a soccer match. The pogrom people seemed to have known what they were doing.
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John Podhoretz
They knew where the Israelis were staying. They were also positioned outside specific hotels that must have been booked.
- [04:11]
Eliana Johnson
With that type of planning, you never can rule out foreign involvement. And I wonder whether the long arm of Iran is involved. Second is the location, the Netherlands, the capital of liberal cosmopolitan Europe, Spinoza's home. And here in this place says supposed tolerance and progressivism. Of course, we have the worst and oldest hatred rearing its head, and it's just shameful for Europe.
- [04:44]
John Podhoretz
You know, as Commentary contributor and my old colleague Eugene Kontorovich reminded us last night on Twitter, the Netherlands is also the home to the Hague. And what is going on in the Hague are prosecutions of Israel and Israeli officials for supposed war crimes. Maybe the Hague should itself be prosecuted for war crimes, or the police in Amsterdam should be prosecuted for their inability to quell this event. Whether we'll know over the next couple of days. There is, of course, an active and very serious anti antisemitism cohort in the Netherlands led by Geert Wilders that is not going to be silent about what went on here and is going to demand answers. But remember, this is the country from which Ayin Hirsi Ali had to flee in fear of her life for raising questions about the effect of Muslim immigration on this wonderfully liberal, tolerant society that was, in her view, maybe destroying itself from within. That was 20 years ago that Ayaan left the country to which she had fled from Somalia to flee the, you know, to flee the oppression that she had faced as a, as a girl there. And here we are now.
- [06:23]
Eliana Johnson
Well, and that was the third aspect I wanted to highlight with the connection between immigration, terrorism, antisemitism. This is something that Europe has been struggling with for most of the 21st century. We're beginning to see parts of it emerge in the United States as well. And it is the ultimate driver, I believe, of national populism in Western Europe and the United States.
- [06:52]
John Podhoretz
We should quickly talk about what you mean when you say we're beginning to see it here in the United States. So all week, by the way, things have been happening in the United States all week in parallel to what happened in Amsterdam. On Monday morning in Brooklyn in Borough Park, a little boy riding his bike on the way to school, visibly Orthodox, was slapped off his bicycle by a Man who said something antisemitic. Harvard and Yale have had incidents over the last four or five days. Elie Wiesel's grandson was sort of like, literally, his pathway was blocked on the Yale campus by some encampment members. There was a scene inside a library at Harvard where people started shouting about, know, genocide and the intifada. At the University of California at Santa Cruz, a critical studies department invited people to join the Students for Justice in Palestine. An official major, an official concentration at the University of California State School at Santa Cruz, with a photograph with an image of someone in a keffiyeh holding a gun and saying, please join. And then, of course, this is the major one. Two weeks ago in Chicago. Oh, in Chicago, at DePaul University, an Israeli reservist and another kid, Israeli reservist who was a student at DePaul wearing a shirt that said, like, I'm an Israeli reservist. Ask me anything, and his friend were shoved to the ground and beaten in front of the student center at DePaul University. A week after, the same day that there was a scene inside a synagogue in the Loop in Chicago where an Arab Israeli coexistencist was speaking, and people came in and refused to leave and threw themselves on the floor and had to be dragged out. That's a week or two weeks after an illegal immigrant from Mauritania coming through the border at San Diego last year ends up on a street in West Rogers Park, Chicago, and shoots an Orthodox shulgoer on Shabbat morning shouting Allahu Akbar before he is subdued hours later by the Chicago police, a fact that it took the mayor of Chicago four days, four days officially, to acknowledge in a statement in which he used neither the word Jew nor the word antisemitism. So while we are looking at an actual pogrom in Amsterdam, we are looking at the. It's not over.
- [09:58]
Seth Mandel
You know, last night while this was going on, while we were watching videos of this at Amsterdam, there's a very large protest block marching on a private home of a Jewish family in Bergenfield, New Jersey, which is near Teaneck. And in that area, not far from Englewood, the family was apparently having an informal discussion, just a few people, about moving to Israel or how to. How to do that, how to buy land in Israel or something that was not, from what I understand, an official real estate event or something of the kind that was attacked in Los Angeles a few months ago. We're just private people. And the. You are in Bergenfield. You are required to have permit to do any sort of public protest. And again, this was in a residential neighborhood outside someone's house, and they gathered and the cops let them do it. And there was a counter protest. People in the neighborhood, because it's a Jewish neighborhood, came out of their homes and did a sort of counter protest standing in front of the home, and they passed around Cholent and things like that. There was a nice sort of communal reaction to it. But what you had was a group of. One of the pictures that came out of Bergenfield last night was of a woman holding a Palestinian flag in one hand and a picture of Hitler in the other hand and smirking at the camera that was taking the picture. I was in New Jersey last night.
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Matthew Continetti
I actually had a weird situation where I go to bed early and my Twitter account was hacked. So my learning about this event was waking up early this morning and just reading the newspapers. And I have to say, reading the New York Times account, which I have up on my screen right now about what happened, it's really difficult, actually, to understand what happened from reading the New York Times account of what happened, where they describe bursts of violence tied to a soccer game. This is in the lead, the first paragraph of the piece between a Dutch and Israeli team. And they say that Dutch police did not say what had touched off the b. The violence. The exact circumstances remain unclear. Some of the violence was in support of the Israeli teams. Others were in protest. There was a tense atmosphere. But in reading the news accounts, the Wall Street Journal's is a little bit better. There seems to be a real reluctance. And, John, your mention of Chicago and the way the authorities handled that there, to call this what it is, which is it appears to be a well coordinated antisemitic attack. And what's so interesting to me about the Times and the Journal being so careful to call this by its name is that in our domestic politics, we've been inundated with cries from journalists that you can't say Trump misled somebody. You have to call it a lie. But with regard to antisemitic hate crimes against Jews, there is a real reluctance to acknowledge what it. What it is.
- [13:44]
John Podhoretz
Okay? This is.
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Seth Mandel
And you can't say racially charged. You have to say racist, exact. You can say linked to antisemitic. Whatever.
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John Podhoretz
Okay? So this is the complication that we are. It's going to have to get sorted through over the next 48 hours. Early reports suggested that there was some kind of a kerfuffle between Israeli fans of the Maccabee team and Palestinian supporters of Palestine. This was all adduced from the claim or a video of somebody pulling down a Palestinian flag somewhere in Amsterdam. Then there was footage, again, GoPro footage, or you know, totally out of context, of police in Amsterdam taking some Israelis wearing Maccabee shirts somewhere. So a narrative was created almost instantly that the Maccabee fans had pulled down a Palestinian flag, had then engaged in soccer hooliganism of some sort, had been taken into custody by police in Amsterdam. And that, that's what started this event. That narrative, I believe we can now think was part of the overall psyop here. I don't know that I can't. I can't attest to that. But the fact that it is now apparently unquestionable, based on what the police in Amsterdam and others are saying, that the decision to attack Israeli fans of the Maccabee team was pre planned and organized and geographically sophisticated, so that it took place at different spots all over this neighborhood, including near the hotels at which is that where Israeli tours had booked blocks of rooms so that they could stay to watch the game.
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Seth Mandel
They knew where the police escorts would end. Police escorted fans out of the stadium to various subway stops and in some cases maybe were stationed at some subway stops and escorted them through out of the exits of those places. Depending on the neighborhood, they knew where the police stopped and the fans would pick up on their own. And then of course, the police there with their hands in their pockets and.
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John Podhoretz
Remember that these Israelis, the Israelis who were there as fans, a lot of them are themselves, as people have been talking about, are war veterans. And for all we know, have been in Gaza, but are trained, they're trained in self defense. And so this idea that somehow they may have just attacked, you know, and torn down, it beggars belief to think that a visitor to a city as a tourist is gonna go around vandalizing stuff. People watch soccer games and get drunk are often really bad, engage in really bad behav. Go ahead. Sorry.
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Abe Greenwald
Well, that's actually, I mean, related to a point. I want to bring up what. This is precisely what globalize the Intifada means. And when it goes into action, particularly in Europe, this is what it looks like without the cosplay element in it. This is, this is, this is the actual hardcore people globalizing the intifada. And the thing about international soccer culture, and I'm thankful that we don't. We're not steeped in it here, is that it is where all our civilizational clashes and pathologies play out. And they have for a Long time. It's been a very racist, antisemitic undertaking for a long, long time. And it's not surprising at all that this is the kind of mass event that would trigger this. And we've. We've been very close to things like this on the U.S. excuse me, in the U.S. not on campuses here. We're only a few clicks away from something like this having happened.
- [18:12]
John Podhoretz
Well, we're clicks away because the mayor of Chicago has not used the word antisemitism. He has not responded to the event at a synagogue in the Loop or on a college campus within the boundaries of the city of Chicago. He has decided that this is not his field. Attacks on minorities in the city that are not attacks on black people don't count to Brandon Johnson. And we don't know. My other favorite event of the week, not to blend things in, is the DA of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, making a very stern statement. This is not about antisemitism stuff, right? Making a very stern statement warning people that if they were to attempt in Philadelphia to interfere or disrupt or do anything to make the election on Tuesday any more problematic or interfere with the voting or something like that. He had handcuffs. He had jail cells. He had solitary confinement. He said fafo. You know, if you know what that means, you can look it up. This is a guy who will not prosecute anyone for anything except for the crime that he himself doesn't like. That's the classic rule of thumb. So he. So what would happen if there's a pogrom in Philadelphia? Do we have any assurance, do we have any assurance whatsoever that the DA in Philadelphia will prosecute anybody for a misdemeanor offense relating to that?
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Abe Greenwald
That's the last point I want to make, is that when something like this happens, it opens up a window of possibility for it happening again. And in other places, namely here, it becomes that much more thinkable as we.
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Seth Mandel
A lot of the charges were generally dismissed in New York, right? When. When students at Columbia. Excuse me, when students at Columbia. And was it cuny, the other school, or was it the City College?
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John Podhoretz
Yeah, no, no, City College. City College.
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Seth Mandel
City College had all those charges were dropped. And at Columbia, that was the night that students took a janitor hostage temporarily in a building they had no right to be in, and those charges were dropped. We all said, you know, this is what you're incentivizing. The other. By the way, the other thing is just to raise about Chicago is that immediately preceding what you described, John, in Chicago was the situation where the School. The Board of Education president in Chicago now former Board of Education president Mitchell Johnson, had made these insanely anti Semitic comments over the course of the year since October 7th. Some of them were, you know, justifying the attack. Some of them were talking about Jews, you know, feeling their power and this, all this other stuff. And the initial response from the city was, well, you know, we all say things that we don't mean sometimes on social media. Let's see the. I want to see the full, you know, context of this. And it just, remember, reminded me of, like the last time we had this context debate was the same sort of thing, right? People yelling about killing Jews. Like, that's the one time that we have this context where the mayor of one of the biggest cities in America will say, let's hang on, let's get the full context of what he meant when he said the Jews are feeling their power, you know, or something like that. As if it could be nuanced. That was immediately before the. He had a chance. In other words, the mayor had already failed, had just failed badly. An anti Semitism test. And then he had this in which he failed in exactly the same.
- [22:11]
John Podhoretz
I mean, that's the question is, did he fail an anti Semitism test or did he pick Johnson because Johnson was an antisemite? That Johnson is somebody who has a compendium of beliefs in which antisemitism is an entirely functional subset of his other ideas, which is why Johnson wanted him in the first place. So it took him seven days to realize that he really could not have him serve as head of the Board of Ed because this was, you know, like J.D. the governor of the state of Illinois is a. Is a repulsive guy, but he's a Jewish guy. Was going to do something about it.
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Eliana Johnson
Yeah.
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John Podhoretz
And so he needed to do something first. I mean, so like, can I just.
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Eliana Johnson
Make two more observations about Europe? First is the radicals who believe in the settler colonialist ideology are often heard in pro Hamas protests to tell the Jews of Israel, go back to Europe. Right. Well, here you have Israelis in Europe and what happens? They're violently attacked in an organized manner, reinforcing the idea that for the state of Israel, for the Jewish homeland, as the safe haven for the Jewish people, because outside of its borders, you cannot guarantee that Jews will be protected against antisemitic violence.
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John Podhoretz
That's number one. Yeah. There are two major. It's also important to mention this. Amsterdam has two major tourist sites. One of them is the Rembrandt Museum and the other is the Anne Frank House. These are the two most visited sites in Holland in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House, where she was hidden and then betrayed, sent to Auschwitz and died of typhus, and the Rembrandt Museum. Rembrandt, of course, the painter whose work, as our dear columnist Sully Sulawatrik is very fond of pointing out, is among the most sort of philosophically, emotionally Zionist pieces of art ever produced. Amsterdam has a beautiful Holocaust memorial and a Holocaust museum and the Anne Frank House. And no Jew is safe in Amsterdam now. So it's wonderful that they commemorate and memorialize the events that were so awful and make sure that we never forget them. And now we're never going to forget them because you can't go to Amsterdam to go to the Anne Frank house safely. As literally happened to my friend's daughter. Friend, I have a friend's friend, her daughter, who was in class with my daughter, was in Amsterdam going to the game on her semester abroad, came up from a different European city, showed up, actually left the stadium early because some of her friends tickets malfunctioned, couldn't get into the stadium, ended up in a bar they had to close. The waiter in the bar had to put a crowbar across the bar's door entryway in order to prevent mobs from coming into their. Into the bar. And when it was all over and everything was there, my friend's daughter texted her and said, so do you think I can go to the Anne Frank house today or not? And her mother said, of course you can't go to the Anne Frank house today. We have to get you out of there as soon as possible. Stay in your room. So the Anne Frank House is now off limits to Jews who want to protect themselves against the Muslim horde in Amsterdam that drove Ayaan Hirsi Ali into exile from this country where she had gotten her PhD and was teaching and was a. And was a legislator and all of that 20 years ago.
- [26:32]
Eliana Johnson
So that's my. That leads to my second point, which is Europe is in a really bad way. Just take a step back and look. The divergence between America's economic growth and Europe's over the past decade, especially since the pandemic, is incredible. Everyone I know who has visited Europe, especially the United Kingdom in recent past year or so, has said, you can just tell they're poorer than us, right? So you have economic decline. You have a group of countries that are still unserious about their national defense. The frontline Eastern European countries, of course, much more invested in their defense, worried about Europe. But the Farther you get from the Russian frontier, the less serious Europeans are about defending themselves from external threats. They're poor and they have not grappled with the extent of the crisis that has come from immigration. And this is very disturbing. And I also think, though, it's another reason that in a Trump administration, Europe will be deemphasized. And all of the John Kerry type multilateral meetings, let me speak French with my counterpart and then go and dine at a wonderful restaurant in Paris. That's going to be over. And you can see the fear from someone like the UK's foreign secretary, David Lammy, Total progressive shillings now trying to walk back all of the ridiculous and offensive things he said about Donald Trump over the years. He recognizes that Europe's in a bad place and it's not going to get any better anytime soon.
- [28:47]
John Podhoretz
Okay, so let's shift gears to Donald Trump and the continuing fallout from the election.
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Seth Mandel
I say, well, can I just say one more thing on this before we move topics? I just wanted to bring up that in 2015, there was this Paris supermarket hostage taking and killing of four hostages, injuring of a bunch of others. After that, that was after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. The super, the kosher supermarket attack was on behalf of the Charlie Hebdo shooters. If you remember, the people who took it hostage and killed those Jews inside the supermarket had said were doing this for the, you know, the heroes who had shot up Charlie Hebdo. After that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Paris and he visited the site and he visited a synagogue. And he said in his speech, at the end of his speech, brothers and sisters, Jews of France, I would like to say to you what I say to our Jewish brothers and sisters from all countries, you have the full right to live in safety and tranquility as citizens with equal rights wherever you wish, including here in France. But Jews of our time have been blessed with another right, a right that did not exist for previous generations of Jews, the right to join their Jewish brothers and sisters in our historic homeland, the land of Israel. The right to live in our free country, the one and only Jewish state, the state of Israel. The right to stand tall and proud at the walls of Zion, our eternal capital of Jerusalem. Any Jew who wishes to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed with open arms and warm and accepting hearts. They will not arrive in a foreign land, but rather the land of our forefathers. For this speech, Netanyahu was subject to days of bad press in Israel, in the United States, and especially in Europe. Where it was seen as obnoxious, it was seen as undiplomatic, it was seen as aggressive, it was seen as ungrateful for the fact that, well, France had, you know, they condemned the attacks, they're against killing Jews. They said it was bad. And everybody said, this is what you shouldn't do. You can't go to these places and say you have a home in Israel. But that's exactly what has to be said over and over again. Because the whole point is that the incentive structure, as we've said before, is officials don't do anything, cops stand by, DAs don't prosecute, ET cetera. The only thing that can possibly move these people is the prime Minister of the state of Israel coming to your city and saying, you've messed up, you need to fix this or they should leave.
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John Podhoretz
I'm really glad that you brought that up because this just allows us to put a cherry on top of Matt's wonderful image of John Kerry going and speaking French and dining at a wonderful French restaurant. Because guess who didn't call the attack on Hyper Cashier, the supermarket that was attacked by these. Guess who didn't call it an antisemitic act? Obama. Secretary of State John Kerry, who refused to characterize it as such for fear of being too incendiary. And I don't think that Donald Trump's election in 2016 had anything to do with any of this whatsoever. But what it did have to do with was the worldview that led John Kerry to think that it was provocative to call an antisemitic slaughter in Paris by its name, and that this, you know, vulgar real estate guy from New York who was so rude and gross and insulting and personal was nonetheless not a guy whom you could imagine wouldn't say, they went and killed Jews and somebody should go kill them back. So that's a way we could transition to talking about day three of the of Trump 2.
- [33:21]
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [33:50]
Eliana, you're the free beacon, which Matt founded and which you are now the editor of, has not only played an important role in writing about what has happened after October 7th, and of course, a key role in the holding our great university presidents of leaders of our educational institutions to account in, you know, in material that were the Pulitzer Prize, not a garbage dump, would have won you a Pulitzer Prize, though it did win you the Manhattan Institute Award this week. And I want to congratulate you on that. But, you know, we are in a world in which Donald Trump managed to spend has spent eight years being called Hitler by everybody in the mainstream media. And he has fought them and contested them, and then he decided in his own way over the last three or four months, as he had in different ways, to bypass them. Right. And bypass the way in which people communicate, which campaigns have traditionally communicated people through large scale news interviews on big media like 60 Minutes, more debates, because debates have such big audiences and all of that. And instead to go on podcasts and to talk to Joe Rogan and to talk to guys whose names I can't even remember and all of that. Bryson DeChambeau, well, Bryson DeChambeau is, of course, glorious, wonderful figure anyway, but I do. So I wanted to ask you how you view in the wake of the election, this absolute emotional meltdown on the part of not only pundits, but reporters and sort of analysts and all of that, to the fact that their ability to shape the conversation such that they could take out this guy who had been indicted 91 times, found liable for sexual assault, had his company taken away by the attorney general of the state of New York, found, you know, found for fraud, all of that, and, you know, ate with Nick Fuentes and had Kanye west to his house and all that, and nothing that they did could prevent him from winning the popular vote in 2024.
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Matthew Continetti
Well, it's really interesting because a couple of things. First, in 2016, when the press got the election wrong, there was a lot of talk about why that was and introspection in terms of how should newsrooms change to better capture the reality of the country and present it to their readers. And what we're seeing in the wake of Trump's much more decisive victory in 2024, that occurred in part because of press coverage, there's no talk of that at all. How did we get this wrong? And if you had been reading the major newspapers in the run up to the election, I don't think you would have had an accurate sense of who these candidates were, why they were running, the sorts of campaigns they were, and what was happening in the country. But there's no talk of course correction. And in fact, I was struck by the New York Times headline the day after the election was Trump's America Victory changes Nation sense of itself. And Jan Crawford of CBS News commented, isn't the headline Victory Reveals NYT doesn't understand Nation?
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Eliana Johnson
The New York Times has been hilarious.
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Matthew Continetti
It's unbelievable.
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Eliana Johnson
America hires a strong man. Today's print edition is Trump. Trump's grievances became the vessel for America's rage. The Post in the Bezos exerting himself era has been a little bit better. Trying to play the political dudes a little bit straight. But the Times, msnbc, all of the centers of resistance media, they have not wasted a moment in self reflection and of just moving to, you know, the typical, I'd say the typical response whenever Republicans have a great victory.
- [38:47]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. And my favorite was the Times had a piece yesterday about how devastated Democrats were beginning to, you know, confront the future. And they try to parse how Democrats are reacting and they say others turned inward searching for why the nation rejected them. They spoke about misinformation and the struggle to communicate the party's vision in a diminished news environment in a with right wing propaganda. And I just thought that's the kind of self reflection I want to engage in in which I blame everybody else.
- [39:22]
Eliana Johnson
I have one that's my favorite that I'd like to share a friend passed along this morning. This is in the article in the Times on what Kamala Harris might do next. Here's some different ideas and the final idea I will just read to you because I love it so much. Practice self care and go for a hike. About the only clue regarding Ms. Harris's post election plans is her apparent desire to spend more time with food not eaten on a campaign plane. Quote, I plan on putting on some pounds after this is over, kamala Harris said on October 27 in Pennsylvania at a bookstore in Pennsylvania. Okay, maybe that's the first thing the New York Times needs to do is hire an editor.
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Matthew Continetti
Editor.
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Eliana Johnson
Yeah, the quote continues, they're working me to the bone. Here's the reporter Harris could also emulate, Mrs. Clinton. Days after she lost to Mr. Trump in 2016, the former secretary of state was spotted by a fellow hiker on a trail outside her home in Chappaqua, New York. Bill Clinton took a photo that the woman subsequently shared on Facebook, where it went viral. Final paragraph, Ms. Harris still has 10 weeks left to reside in the Naval Observatory, the grounds of which are not known for good hiking. But Rock Creek park in Washington is nearby, with miles of pretty trails for the vice president or her supporters to relieve their post Election stress on foot. Now that those two sentences are so absurd, I'm almost beginning to think now that it's a troll, it's a purposeful troll of the Democrats. But this is what you're reading in the paper of record, that it's time for Kamala Harris to have some of her Doritos. Remember when they told us some things we didn't know about? She loves Doritos. Have some Doritos, have some junk food kind of letter, let it slide for a little bit and then just take a relaxing walk in Rock Creek Park.
- [41:15]
John Podhoretz
I am, I am speechless. I'm looking at you and you're speechless. I'm speechless. That go for fantastic. I thought that nothing could beat for Comic Relief this week. The two and a half minute video produced by the New York Times opinion section on what's the worst you can imagine about the second Trump presidency that featured, among other things, Michelle Goldberg with her Louise Brooks Bob, explaining that what she saw as a possible future, the worst future, mind you, not necessarily, but the worst future but concealable future, was a concentration camp set up in her neighborhood in Brooklyn. She says this with a straight face. Troops on the streets of Brooklyn hunting down illegal migrants. This is a columnist for the New York, by the way, an anti Zionist columnist for the New York Times. So may her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth in the wake of a pogrom in Amsterdam about which I am sure she will either not write or will come up with some means to blame Bibi Netanyahu's firing of Yoav Gallant on the event.
- [42:43]
Seth Mandel
Well, that particular columnist has a history of writing columns that say this just helps the right. This antisemitism just helps the right. So that is the most likely thing is unhelpful politically to our side to beat up Jews and stab Jews in Amsterdam. Please don't do that.
- [43:00]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, by the way, there's an important element, you know, we mentioned the question of the Jewish vote. There does seem to be, as the days pass, and I think we get more and more data there, there does seem to have been a somewhat epical change. As I said in my piece on Wednesday or something, the delta in the Jewish change in Jewish support seems to be somewhere between 10 and 40% in Trump's favor. If you go by certain counties, it's very hard to do this with a, with a community as small as the Jewish community and the country as large as this. But it does seem to be something like 10 to 40%, which is not normal, which is not, you know, it's beyond the realm of the normal. Except in this one election where we do these wild swings in, like, Latino support or black male support toward Trump. And I was thinking about this in relation to Harris and Biden and what we would have thought would have been the case Just a year ago today, a month after October 7, Biden had gone to Israel. Israelis were deeply grateful for the support that he demonstrated by going to Israel in the wake of the war. He had pledged American support. He had pledged. He had said that Hamas needed to be destroyed. He had said, I have Israel's back. And there was this sense that Obama had had no reservoir personal sympathy for Israel, but that Biden did. Biden had it. And he may have had differences with the government, but that this was existential and here they were and something. And that this was a very notable moment. And then somebody had a meeting at the White House and said, we got trouble in Dearborn, Michigan. Arab Americans and Palestinians are very concerned that you're showing too much support and Michigan's going to be very close. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that happened. And then for 11 months, we got this seesaw of the administration providing military aid and saying that Israel was killing too many Palestinians and providing. And saying Israel should not go into Rafah building the pier because they could not trust that Israel was going to allow enough food aid in when it was allowing in 600 tons of food aid a day or whatever the hell number it was that they were allowing in, believing every lie that was being told by the NGOs about Israel and Jose Andres lies and all these lies about what Israel was doing and blowing up hospitals and all of that. And by. And there was Trump and Trump. The only thing that Trump said two or three times was Israel needs to finish the job, to do it quickly because the pictures are terrible, doesn't look good, but Israel needs to finish the job. And what's more, when it became clear, when Iran started entering the picture, then the question was, well, who do you trust to deal with Iran if Iran is going to be firing missiles at Jews? Do you trust the administration that reopened, that gave the money and wants to go back into the nuclear deal? Or do you trust the guy who left the nuclear deal and says, you know what? Israel should blow the hell out of Iran. And by November 5, maybe 40%, this 100% swing, maybe in the Jewish vote, when all is said and done toward Trump happened and it didn't have to happen. And it's an important element of understanding just how Little another element here, Jack.
- [46:58]
Abe Greenwald
That you have alluded to in the past. Now it's actually come to fruition. You had sort of talked about it speculatively, which was that Biden could have tied himself to Israeli victory. And we've seen over the past months Israel, in a very dazzling way, win and win and win and win, which has inspired a lot of people, not just Jews, but I think has brought a lot of people around to saying, hmm, this is a pretty good thing. They're actually taking out a lot of very thousands and thousands of dangerous people, threats to us, threats that, Threats to the world. And during that whole time, you have the Biden administration saying, stop, this is no good. Don't do this.
- [47:49]
John Podhoretz
Right. And Eliana, in terms of terrorists who.
- [47:52]
Seth Mandel
Had American blood on their hands, of course.
- [47:55]
John Podhoretz
And there's FBI.
- [47:56]
Seth Mandel
FBI has some. Had some of these guys on its most wanted list.
- [48:00]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [48:01]
Seth Mandel
Connected a very long time.
- [48:04]
John Podhoretz
The Free Beacon exposed the behavior of the presidents of Harvard, Penn, MIT has been going after campus stories. The Biden administration has a Department of Education. It has an education secretary, it has a president who has a megaphone. It has vice president who has a megaphone, who could have come out and said, the behavior on these campuses is unacceptable. I don't want to see these encampments. You better take them. This is not the way we do things in America. Let these students pass. Let these kids study. Don't interfere with the. This is, you know, children are our future. They need to be educated to lead 21st century America into a dazzling new future. And they sewed their mouths up.
- [48:50]
Matthew Continetti
Right. Well, we saw the same thing from the administration and then from Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walls on the campaign trail, which is a reluctance and a refusal to call BO call this by its name. And in fact, they did the opposite. They said, these protesters, they have a point. Both Harrison Walls said that and. But this is sort of connected to what Abe said. I actually think. I was talking with people last night. You know, Iran has a short window to retaliate now in this lame duck, Biden's lame duck before Trump's inauguration. And it's. Their calculations have to be interesting. They need to act before Trump is inaugurated. He's much. He's likely to be more tough on them, but I actually think we're more likely to see Biden distance himself from Harris. You know, we saw Biden march up and give this speech yesterday, and he looked happy as a clam that he wasn't the one. Yeah, he wasn't the One who lost. He looked light as air. We put up a video at the Free Beacon and we put the shaggy song It Wasn't Me under it. And yeah. And so I think that based on the election is having Trump to lunch.
- [50:13]
John Podhoretz
He's having lunch.
- [50:15]
Matthew Continetti
So I think this is just a guess that Biden is likely to revert to being more pro Israel based on the election results and say Harris is wrong and he's going to throw her under the bus. Now, that's what I would suspect between now and January and make it, make it more difficult for Iran.
- [50:36]
Eliana Johnson
Wouldn't it be great if we got the Biden Trump golf game now?
- [50:39]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
- [50:42]
John Podhoretz
So great. And by the way, you know, I'm not sure that this calculation, this goes into an entirely other conversation. We have to, we have to bring this to a close because these podcasts have been going on too long. But just judging by the 1980 model, that is to say, unexpected victory of this person who is an unknown, even though Trump's not an unknown quantity. But like Reagan beats Carter, Carter humiliates himself in relation to the Iran hostage crisis. And by on Inauguration Day, Iran releases the 52 hostages from their captivity at the US embassy after 445 days in order because they wanted to clear the decks and not have this fact giving Reagan any casus belli because they did not know what he might or might not do. And Trump said on July 27, Trump said they better get those hot. Speaking of the American hostages, by the way, of whom there are now four, I believe, still in custody, maybe six.
- [52:06]
Matthew Continetti
They better, I think, and the bot.
- [52:08]
John Podhoretz
They better get those hostages out before I am inaugurated or there are going to be very serious consequences. And do you think Iran, which took, which takes the prospect of a Trump presidency so seriously that it sought to assassinate him during this period, didn't hear that message.
- [52:32]
Matthew Continetti
And the currency plunged the day.
- [52:35]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I'm just saying, I think.
- [52:37]
Seth Mandel
And it looks like the Trump, the Trump official leading the transition is going to be Brian Hook, right. Who was a very serious proponent of the maximum pressure strategy.
- [52:51]
John Podhoretz
Well implemented. He was the implementer.
- [52:54]
Seth Mandel
That's who's, that's the first you see guiding yourself into the Trump administration. Maybe the first meet Brian Hook.
- [53:01]
Eliana Johnson
This great segue into maybe the just the last piece of news that we should touch on briefly, which is Trump's decision yesterday to choose his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff. I think this is a very important decision right off the bat. I've been saying on the podcast for a long time about how impressed I've been with Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita leading the Trump campaign. Susie Wiles in particular, someone who has vast experience in American politics, worked for DeSantis, had a falling out with DeSantis, went to Trump and has been with Trump since 2022. And clearly she knows how to deal with Trump. Trump trusts her. She will be the first woman chief of staff in American history. But this is not a diversity pick. This is a pick based on merit. And everyone who I know who has dealt with Susie Wiles says she is data driven, a straight shooter, and she is, I think, going to be now the center of a lot of lower level decision making. Of course, the big decisions will come from Trump, they always do. But she is without a doubt the most capable person to serve as Trump's chief of staff since 2017. And I think it's a big, big decision.
- [54:27]
John Podhoretz
We know two things about or three things about this. Number one, when he came and appointed his chiefs of his had that bizarre structure, right? His Chief Bannon structure.
- [54:40]
Eliana Johnson
And Kellyanne, I think, yeah, all he.
- [54:43]
John Podhoretz
Knew Kellyanne because she lived in his building. He met Priebus and like, and she.
- [54:48]
Eliana Johnson
Was also the first female campaign manager to win. I mean, Kellyanne, I think, has a good perspective on things, but. Yeah, but putting Priebus as the chief of staff was a terrible move.
- [54:59]
John Podhoretz
He didn't know Priebus from Adam. Priebus was like, was a. Was a congressional staffer who then went on to run the RNC pretty incompetently in a lot of ways. And he picked him. And then there was Bannon and there was this total chaos and he didn't know any of them. And he didn't trust. I mean, he knew Kellyanne, as I say, socially almost. He didn't trust any of them. He had no reason to trust any of them. He then defaulted to Jared and Ivanka as basically the only people that he could make sure had his back. So he knows Wiles. He now has had two and a half years to trust her. She worked his campaign in 2016 and in 2020 in Florida.
- [55:43]
Eliana Johnson
In one Florida both times, right?
- [55:44]
John Podhoretz
In one Florida both times. And even, I think, more importantly, the one thing that we were told yesterday about what it was that she had said she wanted to do was the door to the Oval Office is closed, right? No. All we ever heard throughout the administration were that people would wander in. I mean, it's almost unimaginable if you've ever actually worked in the White House, as I did, or even visited the White House, that people could walk, wander into the Oval. It's like most like, there was no order, it was chaos. And Sebastian Gorka could walk in and say, you better do something about thus and such. That guy on the National Security Council is not to be trusted, and suddenly gets into Trump's head and that kind of thing, and she is going to gatekeep, which is what the chief of staff is supposed to do, say, no, you can't go in to see the president, and here is your schedule, and here is how you're gonna do. Now, you don't wanna follow the schedule. That's your choice. You're the president. You can do whatever you want, but other people aren't going to be masters of your time. That alone, huge means he wants to run a more disciplined operation run by somebody he trusts with whom he now has a long relationship that is solely political. Not someone from his business life, not someone that he golfs with. Not all of it. Not someone from D.C. and not someone from D.C. so. Which is, by the way, a tradition.
- [57:12]
Seth Mandel
The Trump Organization itself was a big part of staffing him. The Trump Organization, yeah, exactly.
- [57:17]
John Podhoretz
The White House. Yeah. And remember there was that whole thing where Chris Christie was designing a transition, and Jared Kushner said, chris Christie sent my dad to jail. He needs to go and, you know, be thrown in a garbage.
- [57:30]
Eliana Johnson
I also think Trump really hadn't known that there was a transition going on or that Chris Christie was in charge of it until he won in 2016. This is total different, total difference from eight years ago.
- [57:42]
John Podhoretz
I also remember he's the most experienced freshman president ever, I guess.
- [57:48]
Eliana Johnson
Cleveland, Grover Cleveland.
- [57:50]
John Podhoretz
But I mean, there. But there was no White House staff. There were like 12 people who worked in the White House when Grover Klee was president. Like, who knows more about how the White House works going into the White House than Donald Trump as president? No one ever in history.
- [58:04]
Seth Mandel
It's like the movie where Rodney Dangerfield.
- [58:06]
Matthew Continetti
Goes back to college on Susie. I also think it's worth that you. She unites disparate aspects of the right in terms of people's admiration and respect and good opinion of her. So you had had Charlie Kirk of Turning Point coming out and saying, she's so wonderful. This is a great pick. You had Kevin McCarthy on Guy Benson show coming out and saying, I don't want this job. Susie Wiles should do it. And you had Jeb Bush come out yesterday and say, susie Wiles is the greatest. She's going to be a phenomenal chief of staff. And I would note I had in the back of my mind yesterday, you know, how Ron DeSantis must be thinking and interpreting all of this. And it just occurred to me that the fact that he couldn't keep up a relationship and keep on someone like her, who did unite the disparate factions of the right, said something about why he lost and why Trump won.
- [59:02]
John Podhoretz
It was worse than that.
- [59:04]
Seth Mandel
No, no, no.
- [59:04]
Matthew Continetti
They had a horrible, explosive fallout.
- [59:07]
John Podhoretz
Actively tried to destroy Susan Wiles's career.
- [59:10]
Eliana Johnson
Well, think about this. She works better. She works better with Donald Trump than.
- [59:14]
John Podhoretz
With Ron DeSantis or with Casey DeSantis, which I think is actually more to the point that Casey. Casey Santos didn't like Susie Wiles for, I don't know, Sarah Netanyahu reasons.
- [59:27]
Eliana Johnson
We don't just on what Seth was saying and Brian Hooks. What Wiles also just suggests is this transition that has been in process, that Linda McMahon co chairs. I think it's Howard Lutnick. Howard Lutnick is the other co chair.
- [59:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [59:44]
Eliana Johnson
That is the transition. Because Wiles is definitely, I think, plugged in with that. And so you're going to hear a lot of stuff on social media about potential nominees and staff. Trust what you hear from the actual transition this time, because that's what Wiles in La Civita are operating. And that was Trump is putting her in charge. Now, of course, it's Trump. He will have his own views that he'll come in. But I think this was a move toward putting people in place that were pretty effective in certain quarters toward the end of the first term.
- [60:23]
John Podhoretz
I think it's important also to note that who was the author of the I am sorry, but you guys are not going to run Trump too in the form of the sidelining and trashing of Project 2025. That was Susie Wiles and Chris Lacivita who said, we have nothing to do with this document. We are not responsible for this document. So much so that Kevin Roberts, the oleaginous head of the Heritage foundation who mastered the 2025 project, following Inheritage's long tradition of producing a policy document to help a new Republican administration dating back to 1980, in a desperate effort to remain in the good graces of the administration, fires the guy that he hired to produce the 2025 project, offers a human sacrifice so that he could maintain his viability within the Trump system. And that means, like, this is a real FAFO situation. Like, they are not playing around. It's not going to be that Omarosa from the Apprentice is going to get a senior White House advisor's job this time. Or come on in, we'll find a place for you. Get a desk over there in the corner for Sebastian Gorka. There are no inmates running the asylum. It's not going to be an amateur hour thing. It may be Trump is still Trump, which means by the matter who the President is, not who the chief of staff is.
- [62:02]
Abe Greenwald
The fact that it's not going to be insane asylum means that Elon Musk is going to draw a lot of fire over the next four years from the press. He's so far the scary lightning rod. He's the crazy connection that the media is warning us about.
- [62:23]
Eliana Johnson
Well, look, the RFK junior.
- [62:25]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, well, the X factor is the RFK junior question.
- [62:27]
Eliana Johnson
RFK and are going to be there kind of. They're going to kind of float around Trump. Right. Because they're. And RFK may have some role.
- [62:36]
John Podhoretz
Well, that's in government. I mean, that's the question is RFK will be a signpost of whether or not there is going to be this kind of like team of rivals where you have, you know, lunatics over here in one corner and professionals in the other corner. And how is that going to work? We just don't know what that is going to be or if it's going to be anything like you think. Yeah, he loves, he loves Bobby, he loves it. But take his hands off the oil.
- [63:00]
Seth Mandel
Kennedy, we won't be in charge of the epa.
- [63:03]
John Podhoretz
I can tell you that.
- [63:04]
Seth Mandel
Whether he's a Kennedy or not, Susie Wiles will eat him alive.
- [63:09]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [63:10]
Seth Mandel
That's what I, that was my reaction to seeing the hiring of Susie Wiles yesterday, is that RFK is going to take what RFK is going to be given now.
- [63:19]
John Podhoretz
Right. Anyway, we'll see that There are going to be very interesting and telling indications over the course of the next two months. I read very distressingly in a story in the Wall Street Journal last night that there are four candidates for National Security Advisor and one of them is Elbridge Colby. Now, Elbridge Colby is called a former Defense Department official. He's sort of a. He is a weird, hawkish isolationist who thinks that we should only do, you know, we should focus everything on China. And I'm not opposed to that idea, but basically uses the threat of China as a means of saying that we should pull back every wells and focus only on China. And then a guy like him, when it comes down to it, when asked, well, does that mean that you're going to Therefore, support a war on behalf of Taiwan against China, basically says, no, actually, if it comes to that, we shouldn't be involved in that war either. He's a bad actor and he would be a bad leading figure. And I probably shouldn't say that because maybe it'll help him if I attack him. But that is the first actually genuinely piece of distressing news in the Great Whisperer's whispering is Bridge Colby being considered for national security.
- [64:41]
Eliana Johnson
He's close to Vance, and those views are very prevalent in MAGA and America First. You know how they relate to Trump in the interview? I think in a lot of cases, and we just don't know so much is yet to be written. But when you think about it, the two bold personnel moves Donald Trump has made since July, Vance and Wiles, are very important. And Vance was definitely a confidence pick, a successor pick. But he. Vance's performance improved on the campaign trail to the point where I think he's gained a lot of credibility among people who were a little bit wary or skeptical of the choice. So that's not one and two. And the debate performance against Walls, I mean, just, I think, was a turning point in the campaign. Right. Yeah. So that worked out. And now Wiles, you have someone who is extremely effective as well, as you say, she is a gatekeeper, but she also knows that, look, Trump is gonna be Trump, as they used to say about Reagan. And there's only so much you can do about that, and you just try to roll with the punches and convince him of your point of view. So I think these are very good decisions at the outset. And we're not gonna like everything, John.
- [66:06]
John Podhoretz
No, we're not. I have no. I'm under no illusions. But, like, there will be signposts of things. Will he? And there are things that we're not going to understand either. Like, let's say he picks Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, which may be now more likely because of Susie Wiles presence, because Marco.
- [66:25]
Eliana Johnson
Well, and also, remember, we haven't mentioned our friend Tom Cotton has removed himself from contention. Right. So now, you see, Cotton's not in play now. And I do think there's a desire to have someone with kind of a more hawkish Jacksonian worldview in the cabinet. So is that Marco?
- [66:43]
John Podhoretz
That's what we don't know. So that's what's interesting about this because it will be a telling sign about the future of this administration and the Republican Party, which is that, of course, Rubio was the neoconservative candidate in 16. He blew it didn't work out.
- [66:58]
Eliana Johnson
No.
- [66:59]
John Podhoretz
He moved away. He hired Mike Needham of Heritage to be his chief of staff. He talks very he's. But he was a hawk and he was always so if he becomes secretary of State. Well, we don't know a. He will obviously be a very articulate and interesting person. Good to have on the shows. Will know how to talk about foreign policy in a way that, say, Rex Tillerson only knew how to talk about the Boy Scouts in the first year of the Trump 1 administration. But Rubio is a kind of unknown quantity like he has with the MAGA on foreign policy, but also doesn't on foreign policy.
- [67:44]
Eliana Johnson
He's still very much, I think, an advocate for freedom and democracy. He's MAGA more on kind of common good economics, industrial policy stuff, strategic competition with China. The other name, you know, there are a lot of names in the mix. Of course, Pompeo is still kind of in the mix, although apparently for defense.
- [68:05]
John Podhoretz
The. The word that's been floated is that he's in the mix for defense. He did not know anything until graduate at the top of his class at West Point. Yeah.
- [68:16]
Eliana Johnson
I mean, well, so if I can just give some advice to people. If you're, if you're selecting a Republican administration and you're going to have a realist in your cabinet and a hawk in your cabinet, follow Reagan. Put the real estate, defense and the hawk at the State Department because you need to control the State Department. The State Department and the realist, that's Powell, that's Bush 43. And that doesn't work because they're captured by the state bureaucracy. But you have Schultz at the head of the State Department and you get some really effective governance. Whereas if you have Weinberger at Defense. Yes, you're going to be a little bit more cautious. But you know that Reagan's dod that kicks him butt. So that's kind of if I were telling President Trump, you know, has it has never happened and probably never will. But if I were there telling him, I'd say, you want your real estate defense and your hock at State. We'll see what happens.
- [69:17]
John Podhoretz
That is good. The other names that are being floated for State are Senator Jim Hagerty of Tennessee.
- [69:24]
Eliana Johnson
Yes.
- [69:24]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [69:25]
Eliana Johnson
Businessman, former ambassador to Japan. Trump likes him a lot.
- [69:30]
John Podhoretz
And apparently again, sort of like very MAGA in his forced posture as a senator, being somebody who came in after in the world of Trump and not before the world of Trump. But if you go and you read his website and you look at where he is on foreign policy, what he says about foreign policy, particularly about Israel. Again, I shouldn't endorse his nomination because that would make it maybe less likely. But I would be entirely comfortable with Hagerty, somebody I'm not particularly familiar with, until I spent about an hour.
- [70:17]
Eliana Johnson
I think the pro Israel community will be well represented in the next Trump administration.
- [70:23]
Seth Mandel
And I do think he has a history of having people like Robert C. O'Brien around him who are thoughtful in whatever, wherever they come out on certain issues.
- [70:32]
Eliana Johnson
O'Brien's also in the mix of some.
- [70:33]
Seth Mandel
Of these, engaging with all the factions. And you know, they wanted Robert C. O'Brien to run for Senate. They tried to push him to run for Senate this year, didn't they, in Utah, wherever. So, you know, these are people that the party respects across the board. And I think as long as those names are the ones you keep hearing in the mix, the Robert C. Ryan's and Marco Rubio's, you're getting a sense that, you know, there is a kind of consensus for people who at least know what they're talking about and have experience, et cetera.
- [71:02]
John Podhoretz
I do think, I do think that one thing to watch for in the great mentioning is there is a very serious over reliance in these lists on senators. And that's not necessarily the easiest or smartest lift in terms of Machiavellian power planning. Because yeah, if you pick Tommy Tuberville in Alabama to do something, not that I desperately hope he won't, but you can be reasonably assured that who replaces him is a Republican. But, you know, you don't entirely know if you pick Eric Schmidt in Missouri, probably that's not going to be a problem. But it's not a hundred percent lock that Eric Schmidt is replaced by a Republican. And yes, you now have 53 seats, but you don't want to muck around with your Republican majority. And I don't think you should look for more than one, at most two senators if that number going into the Cabinet, because that's just introducing a note of uncertainty.
- [72:07]
Eliana Johnson
I agree with that. But I will also say that Donald Trump won the state of Missouri by 19 points.
- [72:13]
John Podhoretz
I know, I know, but you just. I know, but, but then you could get the Carrie Lake nominee in Missouri. And yeah, you know, I'm saying, I'm just saying I. Eric, I don't care.
- [72:25]
Seth Mandel
Because they're easy to confirm. Senators are easy to confirm.
- [72:28]
John Podhoretz
So they can be, they can be. Or sometimes, sometimes they make a lot of enemies and somebody puts a break.
- [72:35]
Eliana Johnson
There will be A lot. Some business. A lot of businessmen.
- [72:37]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [72:38]
Eliana Johnson
I think also, you know, the two candidates in Michigan and Nevada for Senate races. Mike Rogers seems to have lost a close race against Alyssa Slotkin. Sam Brown still hasn't been called. He could lose a close race against Jackie Rosenberg. Both of them, I think, would be good fits for positions in the administration, Sam Brown in particular, va. I mean, so you can, you can kind of see how this is going to come together. And of course there's going to be, you know, MAGA has a list of people they want and a lot of those names are going to get in. And Maha now has a list of people it wants. And that's when for me, that's when the fun begins. Because, you know, I've opened up my pantry, John, and I see all these brightly colored cereals. Not in four years.
- [73:26]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. No.
- [73:27]
Eliana Johnson
All going to be dull.
- [73:28]
John Podhoretz
That's right.
- [73:29]
Eliana Johnson
It's all going to be.
- [73:30]
John Podhoretz
We're all going to be healthy again. I can't wait. That's right, I do. But I just want to. All I'm saying is that when they make these lists up at the Wall Street Journal and places like that, where I would trust Eliana's list 10 times more than I would trust their list. Because what do they know? They know what they're being told. They live in Washington and everybody. Therefore you just put a name on the list because somebody told you that somewhere who lives in Washington.
- [73:59]
Matthew Continetti
People also want to have their names floated for having been in contention, even if they were not in contention.
- [74:06]
Seth Mandel
Right. You can be sure that Hillary Clinton's name will be floated for Secretary of State too.
- [74:11]
John Podhoretz
There you go.
- [74:12]
Seth Mandel
Maybe someone close to.
- [74:14]
Eliana Johnson
Well, she'll be taking a walk. Secretary Hillary Kamala Harris.
- [74:17]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. I hope they take a walk together and that Bill is there.
- [74:21]
Eliana Johnson
And the accidental one time that Bill.
- [74:24]
John Podhoretz
And Hillary are together every four years, sometimes happen to be there and take a picture. You see them. They'll defeat in the fort.
- [74:31]
Eliana Johnson
I want to hear Bill's read on the election. I mean, because as I've been saying, he's been so great on the trail.
- [74:37]
John Podhoretz
Oh, please.
- [74:38]
Eliana Johnson
Bill Clinton's read of what he thinks happened.
- [74:40]
John Podhoretz
Yeah. Bill Clinton unchained. It takes him 25 years to tell the truth about what happened in campaign.
- [74:46]
Eliana Johnson
Honestly, you know, the record of the Democratic Party over the last decade or so, I think vindicates Clintonism, does not repudiate it. Right.
- [74:55]
John Podhoretz
That's right.
- [74:55]
Seth Mandel
Well, Bill Clinton is not shy because, you know, he writes a thousand page memoirs and sits down with the Historian and has those conversations, those recorded conversations to be published after. And that is 800 pages, which is White House conversation. So you end up getting, you know, a couple thousand pages of Bill Clinton just from his time in the White House, from his mouth first.
- [75:20]
Eliana Johnson
A lot to say.
- [75:21]
Seth Mandel
He'll say. He'll say What?
- [75:22]
John Podhoretz
And he's 78. He said, and he's 78. And, you know, fafo with him, too, which I think is what.
- [75:29]
Abe Greenwald
Well, I'm, I'm most looking forward to Barack Obama's explaining to the American people.
- [75:36]
Eliana Johnson
Oh, he already has. Did you see his Twitter post?
- [75:39]
John Podhoretz
Yes. You know, but.
- [75:40]
Eliana Johnson
Oh, that's the only straight. He's going to give another speech, I'm sure, you know, because.
- [75:43]
Abe Greenwald
Oh, yeah, we'll need litter.
- [75:45]
Eliana Johnson
We'll need leadership in the Democratic Party now. You know, go vote.
- [75:49]
John Podhoretz
I think Biden's explanation was the best, which was like, it's all going to be fine.
- [75:54]
Eliana Johnson
Okay?
- [75:55]
John Podhoretz
It's all going to be fine. I know everything I said for the last three years, four years, it's all going to be fine.
- [76:02]
Eliana Johnson
Great.
- [76:03]
John Podhoretz
Be happy. Thank God she didn't win. I mean, he's so relieved. Oh, my God. You know, it sort of has this. It's. It is. There's. I don't know. It's not. It's more like. It's more like low comedy than it is, you know, hubris, take the fall. But there was never a moment like that moment yesterday morning.
- [76:27]
Eliana Johnson
The contrast between his speech and her speech, I know, was like the Grand Canyon of political rhetoric. It was amazing.
- [76:33]
Seth Mandel
Well, it was. And it was so deserved because we were criticizing them for all these months since the summer about the fact that they're pushing Biden out because he's not all there anymore. But the reason they kept giving was, well, he's going to lose the election. And then they made him. Then he gave that address where he says, well, winning, I think I can do the job. But winning is more important than anything. And the unity of the party is more. Everybody had to say, the whole thing is about winning. Biden's fine. He can service. Harris told us he's behind closed doors. He's fine. Okay. A bit sleepy at time, but he's. He's fine. He's as good as any other president. He's leaving because he doesn't want to lose the election. And they use that as the COVID to hide the fact that they'd been covering up for three and a half years at the time, the president's having checked out, you know, mentally and having to sort of map stage, manage the presidency. It's all about who's going to win. He's stepping down to win. So if I were Biden, I would absolutely be laughing my head off right now because even if I didn't want Trump to win, I would be saying this whole thing was constructed around one justification.
- [77:45]
John Podhoretz
Also, what is we did Also, what does Trump's victory mean? Means Biden can run again in 2028.
- [77:52]
Seth Mandel
Hope he does. Hope he does.
- [77:57]
John Podhoretz
Eliana Johnson, anything you want people to take a look at on the on the free beacon website@freebeacon.com recommend Matt's column.
- [78:06]
Matthew Continetti
Today on Biden's Biden's legacy.
- [78:10]
Eliana Johnson
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
- [78:12]
John Podhoretz
All right, so that is our recommends for the day.
- [78:14]
Matthew Continetti
Oh, my real recommends, actually would be the documentary about Martha Stewart on Netflix, which is fascinating.
- [78:23]
John Podhoretz
Oh, it is so good. It is so good. Yeah, she is so interesting there because I'd watched one on cnn which was just like a kind of like Good Housekeeping profile. It was like so fluffy and insubstantial. And here they show her yelling at people and yelling at people in her kitchen and talking about how her boyfriend tells her in bed that he's gonna marry somebody else while they're lying in bed together after she comes out of jail and that he can never speak to her again because his new mother in law doesn't like her. I mean, that is some rich, rich stuff. Yeah. That's R.J. cutler's documentary about.
- [79:03]
Matthew Continetti
Fabulous.
- [79:04]
John Podhoretz
An excellent choice. All right, have a good weekend, everybody. We'll be back on Monday for Abe, Seth, Matt, and thank you again, Eliana. I'm John Puthartz. Keep the candle burning.