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- [00:03]
John Podhoretz
Get your mother loving ears on because your big time radio DJs got news. PayPal lets you choose how you want to pay for all the stuff. With PayPal, I can pay in store, pay online, or pay overtime. What's that? You want this translated into song?
- [00:18]
Seth Mandel
I hope you're sitting down.
- [00:20]
John Podhoretz
You can pay your own way. You keep those ears on, you hear. Don't just pay, baby. PayPal.
- [00:28]
Seth Mandel
Learn more@paypal.com.
- [00:34]
Christine Rosen
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:41]
John Podhoretz
Some green champagne, some diapers, no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, December 1, 2025. Yay. We made it to December, only one month to go before a midterm election year begins. And what fun we're gonna have then. I am John Pothoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine, and we have a full house today with me as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:19]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [01:21]
John Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [01:24]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:25]
John Podhoretz
Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:28]
Eliana Johnson
Hi, John.
- [01:29]
John Podhoretz
And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [01:33]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:35]
John Podhoretz
I want to begin by quoting the conservative independent thinker Erik Erickson and his newsletter this morning, which is titled An Insane Few Days. And he begins by saying where even to begin. The boat is probably where should we we should begin, Meaning the story that on September 2, the first strike was ordered on a drug boat out of Venezuela. And according to allegations in the Washington Post, two sourced, anonymous allegations. The strike was declared on the boat by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And when it turned out that there were survivors of the initial strike on the boat in the water, the order was given again by Hegseth to kill the people in the water, take them out. Which if true, is apparently an open and shut violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime. That's the boats number one boats. Military issue number two is the kerfuffle over the senators and congressmen who made the ad a month ago saying, reminding people in the military that they should not follow illegal orders from, from their superiors, which I thought was a kind of brilliant troll of the administration because it caused people on the right to go absolutely bonkers and scream about how they were all traitors. And Trump called them seditious, led by Senator Mark Kelly, who is of course a veteran and a colonel and an astronaut. And Kelly doubled down on the idea on the morning shows yesterday. And this raises the question of whether or not that ad was done, because these guys knew that there would be the surfacing of this allegation about the September 2nd attack and that they were setting up the pre. The precedent for having the administration scream and yell about how they were criminals. And then there was going to be this boom. Here comes the big story, which is that the administration basically committed a war crime. Then the president, according to Erickson, as Erickson points out, then as he is saying, we are, you know, at war with narco terrorists, pardons the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is a narco terrorist who is in a federal prison in the United States. I don't quite even remember this story happening. So it is crazy to me that somehow a former president of Honduras is in jail in the United States, but here we are. And of course, the terror attack by an Afghan national on two National Guardsmen in D.C. and whether this suggests that the program to repatriate Afghani nationals who were working with the United States during the war against the Taliban was either fatally flawed or a threat to our national security, because it does seem directly to have led to this murder of the two National Guardsmen. And Trump. Then, as he points out, Trump going on social media saying that all Biden should go to jail and Cash Patel coming under attack from, of all people, my old colleague Miranda Devine at the New York Post thought to be very friendly to the administration, basically, Miranda Devine lowering a howitzer and aiming it directly at Cash Patel's face for his misconduct as, or supposed misconduct as FBI director. So this is the atmosphere in which we are beginning today's show. Lot of fun. So Trump said yesterday on Air Force One that he does not believe that Hegseth gave the order for the second attack on the, on the Venezuelans in the water. And that would be the be all and end all the story, that the story is false, that there is a false allegation that has been made about Pete Hegseth and that that's. That's it. And that the media are just showing their colors by being Trump Hegseth Derangement syndrome figures who will believe anything that's told to them, but doesn't quite feel like that's right. Because while he said he doesn't believe, Hegseth says he didn't do it, and he believes him. Hegseth is not acting quite outraged enough by the allegation that he committed a war crime. In fact, last night he tweeted, tweeted out a comedy, a meme which is a cover of a children's book about a turtle named Franklin. And it said Franklin takes out narco terrorists with a cartoon illustration of Franklin with a machine gun hanging out of a helicopter, which a is a kind of repugnant thing for the Secretary of Defense to be doing because, like, we're engaged in serious kinetic action in which people are being killed. And that is serious. That is serious as a heart attack. And making jokes about it. There are many things you can make jokes about and be irreverent and you could be a political cartoonist and do it. But if you are ultimately the person at the top of the organization who is giving the orders to kill people in the name of American national security, you don't tweet out a cartoon of a book, of a children's book jacket that seems to make light of the action that you are taking to defend national security. That's just revolting. I don't know how else to describe it.
- [07:55]
Abe Greenwald
So on the second strike story itself, I could believe either possibility very as easily, each one as easily as the other. I could believe that the, the Trump hating press has bought an anonymous story that is not true. Certainly happened before having to do with Trump and other administration figures. And I can easily believe that the second strike was ordered and they're just trying to cover it up. And Hegseth is trying to be cool and nonchalant to project that.
- [08:39]
Christine Rosen
I have to say, in this case, I do think we're going to find out the truth of the matter. A couple of important points here. The Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee have said they want to know what happened here and they have open investigations. And I think that's significant in that we haven't seen a lot of pushback from Senate Republicans or House Republicans on what this administration's doing. And both Republicans in this case express concern, in addition to Democrats like Mark Kelly who have been theatrically opposing what the administration has done. And the other interesting thing, John, you noted Trump's comments where he said, well, Pete Hagseth told me he wouldn't, he didn't do this. Trump was also asked, would you have supported this? And Trump said, no, no, I wouldn't have supported the second strike. And I think that's important. And Trump also said, and we're going to find out what happened or something to that effect. And so Trump, he wasn't, he wasn't livid in his denunciation or anything. But it did suggest that when the facts come out, and I think they will, you know, the President, the president, what isn't aligned with Hegseth, if this, if this is story is true.
- [10:05]
John Podhoretz
So do we think, Eliana, you as a, and Seth, you as sort of people who have done government, extensive government reporting and media reporting. Christine, also I do think that this gives some, offers us a frame in which to understand the ad, the notorious Kelly don't obey unlawful orders ad that seemed to come out of nowhere. These veterans who are in the House and the Senate announcing, just to let you know, don't obey unlawful orders. And people on the right have gone absolutely bananas about this, saying it's disgusting. Like where, where's the evidence? You know, why are you even saying this? You're suggesting that the President gives unlawful orders. That's outrageous. It's very convenient that just a couple of weeks after this bombshell story drops that a like that an unlawful order may have been given in September. And remember that the head of Centcom, I believe it's the head of Centcom, unless it's the head of military operations, etc. A major official resigned the day after the strike. So we would then have potentially the source of the story or some version of the source of the story or somebody he told the story to and a pretty elaborate setup in which the story gets to people, they make the ad, they draw the first fire about how outrageous any such accusation should possibly be. And anybody who makes it should be accused of sedition as Trump did. And then the boom gets lowered. Like this is a very Andrew Breitbart way of letting a story out.
- [12:05]
Eliana Johnson
The first story, remember, wasn't reported by the Washington Post. It was reported by the very left leaning Intercept. And then the Post filled out the original reporting that the Intercept had done. And so there's certainly, as Abe says, if you noted, there's certainly reasonable suspicion about the story. And so it does have to be looked into. And Congress is the body that should be doing this because they can, they can haul before them. Not just Pete Hagseth who has a lot to answer for and will have to do so under oath, but Admiral Bradley, who was the person there, who was the one who actually was, you know, in the field ordering the strike or you know, seeing the strike through. What did, what did Pete Hegseth say to him? What did he interpret Hegseth's order to mean? All of these are questions that have to get out there. And you know, I agree with Eliana, Mark, Mark Kelly should know better than to have participated in that ad in the first place just because he was so high ranking when he left the military. Slotkin seems to have been the one who was the mastermind of this whole ad. But, but it does suggest that they, somebody was leaking information to them about what might have gone on. The whole point though is that Congress rousing itself to look and fulfill its oversight role. That is exactly what should be happening. It probably should have been happening the first time the first boat strike was done by this administration. So better late than never.
- [13:20]
Christine Rosen
I don't think that those guys knew. Look, maybe I'm wrong and this is all some genius scheme and they're all going to look like a bunch of geniuses. But count me a skeptic because Slotkin was asked on a Sunday show, to your knowledge, has the President given any unlawful orders? And she said no. And she looked like a dumb, dumb and people were laughing at her and look, maybe now she looks like a genius. But first of all, the President didn't give the order so far that we know. And now he's saying, well, I didn't, you know, I don't agree with that. I'm not going to attribute to genius, you know, what could be attributed to, you know, just bumbling, you know, like some kind of chaos. And I do think, you know, it's interesting to talk about, but it's all sort of a distraction from what is the administration's strategy with regard to Venezuela? Why are they, what is the end goal of striking these boats for which they don't have Congress's buy in actually. And now they may actually pay the price for not having Congress's buy in because Congress not only is not supporting the strikes, but they're going to investigate what happened in the strikes and then what are they driving at? Is the goal regime change? Our friend Elliot Abrams has a long foreign affairs essay which he, in which he points out the, you know, half hearted regime change strategy. But you're not going to get regime change if your strategy is half hearted. And he argues that the administration should embrace wholeheartedly a regime change strategy and says it could be done just with special forces. But I do think they should decide what they're driving towards, make it clear to the American people. And that would actually clear up and solve a lot of these downstream problems like this, this boat thing is a downstream problem from their lack of clarity on the big picture issue.
- [15:30]
Abe Greenwald
I mean, obviously.
- [15:31]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, I mean I think that they.
- [15:32]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, go ahead.
- [15:33]
Abe Greenwald
The administration obviously wants Maduro to bug out of there before the US has to actually do anything about it. Which, you know, that's perhaps fanciful or wishful, but yeah, I mean, look, one.
- [15:50]
Christine Rosen
Of the points Elliot makes in his essay is that economic and diplomatic pressure didn't work in the first Trump administration, and it is unlikely to work in this administration. And so they're going to have to decide are they willing to use military pressure or not. And doing it by striking these boats isn't working if their goal is regime change either.
- [16:11]
John Podhoretz
SETH yeah.
- [16:12]
Seth Mandel
You know the old joke about how many psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the light bulb has to really want to change. That's Trump. Trump talking about this. The way that he talks about the regime change in Venezuela is like his wish for the regime is for it to change. And we're trying to determine whether that's a policy of regime change, hope of regime change or whatever. But, you know, we've had this discussion with regard to Iran also for a long time, which is that America would like there to be a different regime in Iran. Right. That doesn't mean we're necessarily going to send in whoever we're going to send in, but, but it does mean that we would rather see that. Right. And the Israeli government spoke similarly during the 12 Day War, which is, you know, we can bring them to the brink, but we're not, we're not sending ground troops, not sending the IDF ground troops into Iran to occupy Tehran. Right. If you want a different regime, you have to do it. We don't, you know, that was clearer about Iran and we've had clearer discussions about Iran. Even though you get into this murky question of is the policy regime change, there haven't been anything, there hasn't been anything nearly so clarifying with regard to Venezuela. We don't, we haven't had the president saying it's not on us to change the regime, but we're going to do everything in our power to help those. We haven't had the president say we're going to change the regime. We have had the president say, essentially, I think Maduro has to, has to go, right. I mean, he has to leave or whatever the words that he used, you know, that Trump used. So that sounds a lot like, you know, he better or else. But the other problem, yeah, I was.
- [18:02]
John Podhoretz
Just going to say, you know, they.
- [18:03]
Eliana Johnson
Also sent a carrier group. I mean, the Caribbean is really bristling with a lot of our military right now preparing something.
- [18:10]
John Podhoretz
Right. So our late, our late, not late, but I mean, our former colleague here, Matt Continetti, said that Trump's main foreign policy, the thing that would, would survive as Trump's foreign policy of the second term, was a kind of re. Implementation of the Monroe Doctrine. This is our hemisphere. We get to say how things work because hemispheric instability has been leading to our border crisis and various other things. And, you know, he. To make a decisive impact supporting the regime in Argentina from the very bottom of the. Of South America up to trying to make things change in Venezuela at the top of South America, and then into questions of how Mexico behaves toward us, you know, at the very, at the very sort of top of Central America. That's one way of looking at this. The other way of looking at this is Trump is now testing the limits of his control, ideological control of the entirety of the Republican Party because he ran. If there's one thing you could say about him in 2015 and 2016, it was he said regime change was stupid and that we had been spending and that Bush was stupid and the talking about regime change and democratization was stupid, and we didn't have any business doing that. And when Bill O'Reilly said, why are you so nice to Putin? He said, oh, yeah, we're such, we're such, such angels. We're so great. The way we conduct our foreign policy. If there's one thing you took away, it's that Bush wasn't going to be going around searching for monsters to destroy and that he wasn't going to threaten Trump. Excuse me, that Trump wasn't going to go around and he wasn't going to be going around regime changing. And here we have a policy toward Venezuela that I don't care. You know, it is a regime change policy. He's just not saying that it's a regime change policy. He says Maduro should go. He's calling Maduro, offering amnesty or a trip or whatever, or figuring out some way to buy him out. And he's blowing up these ships in an effort to make Maduro look bad. Obviously, not only in Venezuela itself, but to the narco terrorists that support Maduro and help his regiment stay afloat. It's regime change. He isn't saying it because he's betraying that weird kind of anti Bush conservative. Bush was like a patsy thinking that all of these, you know, people outside the United States could even be Democrats or have good regimes. What do we care about their regimes when we have troubles here at home? So he's effectively moved to a. I wouldn't even call it a neocon position here because, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a promiscuous regime changer. I don't know that we should be committing actual national resources to overthrowing Maduro, that I'm, I'm. I am, I would say, agnostic on it, and I trust Elliot for many reasons that people can look up, but I don't know. And it was his job in the first Trump administration to try to negotiate a way out of, you know, to get Maduro out of power. He did that for the administration. So he knows. He's forgotten more about this than most of us know, and knows that that doesn't work. But, you know, we don't even get leaks. Ordinarily, you're pursuing a policy like this, and it seems unclear, and it's kind of a secret policy. Somebody would take a friendly essay, would take Walter Russell Meade down in a court, sit him down in the skiff, and explain to him what was going on with Venezuela. And then Walter Elliot or something like that would write a serious essay explaining this new version of the Trump Doctrine that was being tried out in Venezuela. But no one is doing that. We don't have any rationale because there's no.
- [22:26]
Seth Mandel
There's no doctrine. There is no doctrine. And so there's nothing to explain in that sense of the word. Of the word. Right. And also. So part of the problem, though, with.
- [22:37]
John Podhoretz
This is that somebody talked Trump into the idea that it was a good idea for us to be strafing boats out of Venezuela and like, going to war without a congressional authorization or even, even like a briefing of the House Foreign affairs and Defense Committees and the Senate Foreign affairs and Defense Committees. Even a briefing, even a conversation, nobody has done that. That's part of what's unprecedented here, is like, give me a reason, I might really support you, but there's gotta be a re. They've been doing it now for three months.
- [23:15]
Seth Mandel
Well, also, I. The way I would interpret this, and, you know, I get that, you know, maybe it's wrong, but the way that I would interpret these policies are that they're more in contradiction with each other than they are in concert. I mean, I get that you can. That strafing the narco boats is something that would further destabilize Venezuela because it would further weaken Maduro and it would make him look silly and all that stuff. But if I were just looking at this, you know, from bird's eye view, I would see the attacks on the narco boats as different. I would see that as they. As in. Instead of regime change policy, because we're not actually sending military out there to Venezuela. So if I had to interpret what I'm seeing, I would, I would say we're not actually planning on removing Maduro and changing the regime anytime soon. Which is why we're beefing up, you know, our sort of, you know, border protection and our waters and all that stuff like this. This is, you know, instead of going in and changing the regime, making sure that the regime which will likely stay in place will be less harmful to us.
- [24:30]
John Podhoretz
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- [26:11]
Abe Greenwald
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- [27:50]
John Podhoretz
Again, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, it seems to me you.
- [27:59]
Eliana Johnson
Just described Trump's foreign policy in toto. This, this effort to constantly, like, look backwards at decisions he's made in foreign policy and drum up some sort of intellectual doctrine behind it is useless. Because that's not. I think Seth's right. That's not how he operates. He operates on impulsiv, which can be a great strength in negotiation. It can be a great strength in dealing with ongoing conflict. But he doesn't really have a philosophy. The other thing he doesn't have, and this is to your earlier point, John, is any healthy relationship with Congress. There's been a lot of complaints of the GOP and Congress lately about how this administration deals with them, which is in a condescending and dismissive way. And that's going to come back and bite them. And I think it'll especially come back with some of his poor Cabinet choices. I got a lot of hate mail for saying that I don't, like many members of Trump's Cabinet, that they're not qualified because Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel are example A and B of that. And I would guess because Hegseth has caused a lot of headaches in the press for this administration, that as much as Trump hates to give the media and the left any sort of scalp, Hegseth might be on his way out by the end of this year because he's been too much trouble. And I think that's why we did see the, you know, Driscoll and others being sent into more prominent public roles in recent months. But Patel, Patel is a disaster. I mean, you read, if you read Miranda Devine's reporting on this, it's, it's shocking. And he's always been a disaster. You have a lot of people in this administration who play to the social media crowd, who play to Trump's vanity and ego. And that is sustainable for a certain amount of time. But when real problems hit, like Charlie Kirk is murdered or, you know, Venezuelan, you know, regime change is starting to bubble up, then those people are not competent to fulfill their role as a cabinet official. And so we'll see how Trump manages that. That he doesn't like to fire people that much, any more than, than in his second term, any more than Biden did. So. But some of these guys have to go. We need new, new cabinet level officials.
- [29:47]
John Podhoretz
Okay, So I have one thing to say about the policy. The question here is whether the Venezuela policy is a version of policy drift from two different domestic issues. One is Trump saying we have to do something about the opioid crisis in the United States, which by the way, appears to be resolving itself to some degree as drug epidemics illegal often do. That is that the emergency room admissions from fentanyl and the deaths from fentanyl and stuff like that have been going down. You know, these epidemics sometimes have a 10 year cycle where people get, weirdly enough, get sick of being addicted to these drugs and stop being, or stop using them or something like that. But he said he was going to deal with fentanyl. Right? And then the border crisis and the deportations, that somehow you mix these two and we have these deportation flights. We're still litigating the deportation flight to El Salvador. Judge Boasberg is still, you know, like, you know, raging from his bench about how he wasn't listened to when he said the plane should be turned around and that's going to go to the Supreme Court and all of that. And that somehow this became a third order effort. That was, that was an expression of both let's do something about the opioid epidemic and let's do something about how Central and South America are, you know, like invading our borders by strafing ships, you know, in the Atlantic. And it's a very strange concatenation of circumstances because that's the only thing that I can kind of discern as a consistency with anything else that the administration has done or believes, by the way. So regime change is a very controversial policy. We should explain that. There's this idea that, you know, oh, particularly neoco, we just wander around wanting regime change everywhere. There should be regime Change everywhere. And some of this is because of Bush's, I think, extremely irresponsible, though very powerful second inaugural address, which was a terrible mistake, like a generational mistake that, that addressed the sort of messianism of that address. But we have done successful regime changes, but they generally come at the end of extremely long wars. And there were regime changes in the 1980s, meaning that communist regime, some communist regimes in Central and South America and elsewhere were overthrown with some covert US Help by elections that were sort of forced upon the countries. And then, and then the, the communists were taken out by their own electorates and, and non communist regimes were installed by, by electoral fiat. But generally speaking, when we talk about regime change, the successful regime changes were Germany and Japan, Japan, you know, and Panama. And then of course, the huge gravest mistake that we've made in the last 35 years, which was going to war in Iraq, in Kuwait, to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and then not deposing him in 1991 when we had the chance, letting him survive because it was because the coalition wasn't going to really like us going any further than pushing him out of Iraq, which again is like a generational mistake. The Taliban also into 2001. Like we do regime change when we commit full military resources to a conflict against somebody at the end of which we can say, you get out of there. We're not, we don't do regime change for you know, like a, like a guy like Maduro regime that's been around for 25 years by like, you know, saying get out of there or you know, like we're going to hit a couple of boats or something like that. They've shown real durability. The Chavez Maduro regime is an enduring more than two decade regime here that, that overtook a democrat, destroyed a democratic country and turned it into a satrapy. And you know, if you're going to be serious about it, you do. The only way to do it seriously is some form of military action, as we've been saying. And I don't think there's an American stomach to go into Venezuela. What, what is our casus bella, the fentanyl epidemic again? Like, is that a reason to commit serious American military resources? But Special Forces can do it if we don't.
- [34:41]
Abe Greenwald
Yeah, if we don't and if Maduro doesn't leave on his own and then what do we do with this with all these huge ships that we have like poised there ready to go? We just withdraw them. He sort of stared us down. He stared Trump down. That's gonna look really bad.
- [35:01]
John Podhoretz
Well, those ships can go somewhere. It's always gonna be like, oh no, we need a ship in the Indian Ocean.
- [35:07]
Abe Greenwald
No, but, but the, but the conversation is going to be, well, what was that all about then?
- [35:11]
John Podhoretz
It still is. That's my problem. We don't know what it was about. We don't know what's about now. We won't know what it was about then.
- [35:19]
Abe Greenwald
It's about trying to pressure the regime. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's.
- [35:22]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [35:23]
Abe Greenwald
The Trump administration has some reason to think and wants to continue to act on this, that it can project American power in a, in a neater, less messy, less, less, less sloppy, consequential way for the US and can, you know, like the Iran strike and can sort of just get things done without the kinds of commitments you're talking about. I mean that is, that's clearly what, what they want to happen here.
- [35:54]
John Podhoretz
So it's something like, doesn't happen. It's what my dad in, why we were in Vietnam would call this is like regime change on the cheap. Right? It's like this is where we have total dominance. If we want to destroy a narco terror boat with, you know, all the might of the U.S. navy and Air Force, we can do that at will, 22 times a day, like without any possible cost to us whatsoever. The problem is that when you do things on the cheap like that, the, the what, what follows from it, which is, well, then I guess you have to like land on the shore of, you know, of Venezuela and then march down the avenue and go to the Presidential palace and say we're putting you on this plane and taking you out of the country or we're arresting you for being a narco terrorist. I don't know. It's not going well. Can we move on to the question of the response to the National Guard shooting and the horrible, you know, tragic Deaths of this 23 year old and 20 year old targeted by this Afghan national who came to the country in the wake of the, of our shameful pullout from Afghanistan as part of the repatriation of Afghanis who worked with the CIA. The stories that are coming out now suggest that he had some kind of a, or, you know, he had some kind of a nervous breakdown in Bellingham, Washington where he, to which he was relocated. That he hasn't been, he was like in his room for a year and Deprat wasn't doing anything, wasn't seeing anybody and then he jumped In a car, drove to D.C. and, you know, ambushed these two people. And the question is, is there a logical policy consequence that's going to come to this? Like, we should never have repatriated the Afghanis who worked with us for 20 years in the first place.
- [37:53]
Eliana Johnson
Can we. Can we clarify? I think one of the soldiers is in critical condition.
- [37:57]
John Podhoretz
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
- [37:59]
Eliana Johnson
One of the soldiers is. Was killed. That's Sarah beckstrom, who is 20 years old. And. But the Staff Sergeant Wolf, I think is still. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I. I believe he's still alive, although.
- [38:13]
John Podhoretz
Okay, that's right.
- [38:14]
Christine Rosen
I believe.
- [38:14]
John Podhoretz
Okay, I. I apologize if I. If I. If I. For my error, but the policy, the way that people are jumping on it is to say we should never have repatriated. We should never brought any of these people here. And I said so in 2021. And there should have been this and there should have been that. And obviously, the danger of doing something like this kind of repatriation scheme is that people who are bad actors can slip in somehow. You know, if you're. If you're letting in 15 or 20,000 people, the possibility that, you know, 100 of them are actually Taliban agents who have somehow planted themselves or some version of that and gotten themselves through the screening process and into the country, that would be, you know, like less than 1 per. You know, it would be like a 0.1% of the people who came in, but that's all you need to cause havoc at some point. Or was this literally the psychotic break of a single person? And we are. This goes to something that Eliana's wonderful father, Scott Johnson, has been pushing now for, has been talking about now for five years or four years. Are we knocking this together? Are we blending this together with the story of the Somali repatriation after the, you know, after the genocidal wars in Africa in the 90s, Somali repatriation to Minnesota that led inexorably not only to the election of Ilhan Omar, but this insane fraud story in Minneapolis. You know, billion or maybe $2 billion of COVID fraud funneled through Somali fraternal organizations that just stole all the COVID money, maybe might be the biggest fraud on record in American history. It's possible. I mean, direct theft of government dollars that we know in this fashion. So that story hits very big. Then this comes along, and it's like, we let people in from Muslim countries. We should never let anybody in from any Muslim country. And here we are awash. And Fraud. We, we've got these people like Ilhan Omar hating America in Congress and saying that they're there to serve the Somali people and not the American people and they're stealing money. And now we have this Afghani murdering, you know, murdering one and critically wounding another National Guardsman. This whole thing has gone, you know, awry.
- [40:56]
Seth Mandel
Well, they have, you know, they do say that, but I think that what works against that argument is the fact that he was somebody who worked in a military capacity with the US In Afghanistan. And I think you just, you can't have a policy of if you've worked with us, you will throw you to the Taliban when we leave rather than trying to help you get out in some way. Right. I think it's simply impossible to conduct yourself as a, as a, as a military with, you know, legitimacy in foreign countries, working with foreign partners and gaining the trust that we need to, for, you know, for us to say that this is the type of guy, you know, who couldn't come over. And so I think it does, it weakens the anti refugee argument for, you know, to some degree once you look at the details of the case. That being said, it also could be used as an example of, you know, there's a process and that process doesn't end when the refugee is repatriated here in the US that's not the end of our work with these refugees. You know, it's, you know, it's like a social service type of thing.
- [42:13]
John Podhoretz
And this is. Okay, this is where maybe Eliana can talk some about this.
- [42:19]
Abe Greenwald
Can you say one thing about Afghanistan just quickly first?
- [42:21]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [42:22]
Abe Greenwald
If we're going to play, you know, if they're going to play, we should have, shouldn't have done this. What could have avoided this is if we didn't leave Afghanistan.
- [42:32]
Eliana Johnson
Right.
- [42:32]
John Podhoretz
Well, of course. Right. I'm sorry. I mean, I almost thought that went without saying it, but the circumstance was obviously we would have been, it would have been a despicable evil for us to bug out and then leave everybody that we had recruited over the last 20 years to work with us against the Taliban to the depredations of the Taliban that, you know, that that's just an elementary moral thing. And for us now to say, well, obviously not one hair on Sarah, the National Guards woman's head should have been, you know, should have been disturbed by anything that happened in Afghanistan. Well, we were in Afghanistan. It was a totally consensus national policy that we were in Afghanistan and we pulled out in a terrible way. And this is a knock on Consequence of the way we, we pulled out. But anti refugee or pro refugee argument aside, we have no indication. I mean, we have a couple of cases of Afghan, of Afghans brought out since in 2021 who have done bad things. But there were like, I'm saying there were like 20,000 of them. And to, and to tar them all with the same brush when they risk their lives to help the United States is, I think, really kind of gross. And part of the problem with the way the Republican Party's newfound realism about how we were too idealistic about these things can go to very dark places.
- [44:13]
Christine Rosen
Well, I don't think it's painting with too broad a brush to say that the Biden administration could have and should have foreseen that there would be problems with the pullout from Afghanistan that went beyond the military issues. So they decided to pull out. That was a bad decision. 13American service members died during the pullout. And then they had, on top of senseless immigration policies on the southern border. They knew we were going to have to absorb refugees from Afghanistan. And I don't think it's painting with too broad a brush to say we have issues in this country with the assimilation of Muslim immigrants, whether they're refugees or not. We have major issues. And that's how you can connect the Somali refugees in Minneapolis to the Afghan refugees, you know, wherever this guy was in Washington. But the issues with assimilation among these communities are major. And they're a problem for Americans, you know, may or may not have anything to do with their religion, but we have issues with assimilation in a lot of places in the country. And I can tell you in Minneapolis, like, it's a huge issue, huge, where not only are they not assimilating, they don't, they don't want to assimilate. There's no.
- [45:54]
Eliana Johnson
Well, the opposite of assimilation is radicalization. And that's the question I have about this guy who did this of country didn't seem to be a threat. He passed vetting. Both the Biden administration's vetting and then the asylum vetting that the first Trump administration did. Somehow at some point, he became radicalized. I mean, we hope he was a lone wolf with some mental illness that would actually make this weirdly less terrifying. But if he was radicalized because he was in a community that encouraged that, which I think has also been the case in with the Somali refugees in Minnesota, that's a problem. That is, that is a nationwide problem. Elian is absolutely right.
- [46:27]
John Podhoretz
Look, this is a 40 year issue. Goes back. I have to say, or 40, 50 year issue goes back to the first stirrings of what was then called Chicano consciousness in California that led to the unbelievably failed, horrible experiment of bilingual education, where the idea was people came in from Mexico, were here in the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, other places, and the idea was that it was too hard for their children to be taught in school in the English language, and an entire new branch of education needed to be created where they could be taught in their native tongues in American schools. That was the first major explosion of the idea that it was not the goal of the United States to bring in immigrants, legal or illegal, and turn them into Americans. The easiest way to do that, teach them English and teach them civics, right? America is the best country in the world. We have this system. You, unlike the countries that you came from, which Jews heard, Italians heard, Irish heard, everybody heard about how our system was better than the systems that they came from. If it weren't, they wouldn't be coming to America to have a better life. And here's how you have a better life. You have a better life because America grants you freedoms and gives you responsibilities and all of that. And beginning in the mid-1970s, after the 60s ideological capture of nonprofits and the education departments and education systems, people stop being taught this. Kids stop being taught this in school. And assimilation or acculturation, which is a way of describing it differently in a more respectful way to the original culture, simply stopped being practiced, wasn't there. And so then here we are, it's 40 years later, and we're bringing in hundreds of thousands of people as refugees. You would think they would be grateful to the United States. I mean, the amazing thing about the Somalis and the Palestinians who have come here, as represented by Rashida Tlaib the Palestinian, and Ilhan Omar the Somali, is that they should be like, my God, I kissed the ground that I came in here in the United States. Look what it has done for me. I came here as nothing, and now I'm a member of Congress and they shit all over the United States. That is not. This is 250 years we're about to hit. That is not the way people coming into the United States have traditionally treated the United States. And they've treated the United States because they come here and nobody attends to their moral education as Americans.
- [49:23]
Eliana Johnson
Well, there's.
- [49:24]
John Podhoretz
I don't know.
- [49:24]
Eliana Johnson
Well, no, I mean, I would actually say they did, but the wolf in sheep's clothing here was multiculturalism, which actually was taught as the New iteration, the modern version of assimilation. No longer would we force them to march through a melting pot and take off their, you know, customary clothing and put on American clothing and wave flags. That's oppressive. No, instead, we embrace all these different cultures and we allow them to thrive, and that will somehow transform into a better, more thoughtful kind of American patriotism. And it didn't work. I mean, conservatives were always suspicious of it, so. Because it was undermining exactly what you're pointing out, John, which is an idea that we are a country built on an idea. And to defend an idea and to teach it to each new generation is actually required. You cannot rely on some of the ways that more ancient countries have inculcated these ideas and practices in each new generation. And our education system is part of it. But there was a whole. There was a popular culture aspect to this, too. And I think all of that has brought us to this point. It's brought us to the wildly overreactionary, almost often racist tone on the far right as a. As a response to this. But it is going to require, and now is a good time, as you say, 250 years. Now's a good time to rethink how we educate ourselves and future generations about.
- [50:45]
John Podhoretz
I mean, I don't even think we need to rethink it. I mean, we know what the thought is. The problem is, no country on Earth would ever object to the idea that the thing to teach in school to the kids of your. Is that your country is the best country on Earth. That is like a. That is a given. That's what patriotism is. And that's what you do. You come in, you're five years old, you salute the flag, you say the pledge, you sing the anthem. You talk about all the, you know, you talk about the. The Founding Fathers, you talk about how we defeated slavery and. And ended it. You talk about all the good things. And in fact, that is not what American education is like. It's about the bad things. And even though we can talk about the bad things and the good things or whatever, the idea that that immigrant coming into this country should not be compelled to learn why they're here, except for the fact that they got a soft landing on the planet. They, like, got a. They got a lucky lottery ticket and they got a soft landing. But everything that they used to think, they're still allowed to think about how crappy America is or how crappy democracy is or how crappy Christianity is or how crappy Judaism is that you don't get to think that here, because that is the price of entry is to become an American. And it used to be that that was a sink or swim proposition for immigrants. You know, remember a quarter of the population of the United States were 15% of population in the United States in 1920 was foreign born. And somehow everybody got the lesson that they weren't supposed to be duplicating the Italian political experiment in the United States. That wasn't what you wanted to do. You were getting away from the Italian political experiment or the Irish political experiment or whatever, the Polish political experiment, by coming to America and becoming part of the American political experiment. And that got.
- [52:39]
Eliana Johnson
Yeah, but it was also easier then once you came here to stay removed from what was going on in the home country. And I think that's another difference now is that these new waves of immigrants, yes, many of them are Muslim, but even the ones who aren't, they retain because thanks to our technological revolution, an ability to be constantly connected to their home communities. And while that is a benefit, I think for a lot of people, it also makes it more difficult to disconnect in the way that. Look, I was going through my attic re reorganizing stuff and I found a bunch of, you know, the original certificate, we got copies of it of my great grandfather when he came from Bohemia. And you know, I remember the stories that he told my grandfather about why he came here. And it was all the stuff you're saying, but it was also very expensive and difficult to get here. And once here, they never went back, they never visited, they, they wrote a few letters. But basically people were brought over in waves when they could afford it. And I think a lot of the. We should look the role of NGOs in a lot of this process, what they encourage and discourage in terms of the new immigrants, putting them in communities where they are unlikely to assimilate is another issue. And the amount of money back to the Minneapolis story, the amount of money flowing from local government to folks who come here, that gets sent back home too. They know it. They know the whole infrastructure of social services and payment structure that is given to immigrants. So there's a lot more knowledge.
- [54:04]
John Podhoretz
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- [55:24]
Seth Mandel
I'm Oliver Darcy. And I'm John Passantino. We have spent years covering the inner workings of the news media, tech, politics, Hollywood and power. Now through our nightly newsletter, status. And we're bringing that same reporting and sharp analysis to a new podcast, Power Lines. Every Friday, we're breaking down the biggest stories shaping the industry, explaining why they matter and saying the things most people are thinking but too timid to say out loud. No spin, no fluff, just sharp analysis.
- [55:52]
John Podhoretz
That isn't afraid to call it like it is. We also pull back the curtain via.
- [55:56]
Seth Mandel
Our exclusive reporting to take you behind the scenes. My understanding having reported this is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
- [56:15]
John Podhoretz
Oh my God. That's Power Lines presented by status.
- [56:20]
Seth Mandel
Follow power lines and listen on Apple.
- [56:22]
John Podhoretz
Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast app. Okay, two, two final points. One, this Minnesota scandal is a way bigger story than people realize it's going to be. Tim Walsh is running for reelection and if this story continues to develop as it is going to develop, that, you know, very, very, very blue state is going to turn him out. Because this is a non pol, this is not a, I mean there's a lot of political and ideological stuff here that explains why what happened, happened. But this is the sort of thing that transcends party affiliations and if he, you know, he is not making a good showing of himself in relation to this story and, you know, and a relatively not disastrous Republican candidate running against him could really take him out. And this could be the beginning of dozens of, finally dozens of investigations of COVID fraud all across the country. You know what happened? We spent $6 trillion. Federal government spent $6 trillion on Covid. How much of that was stolen? How much of it was, was redirected? I mean, the amount is likely to be beyond anybody's capacity even to imagine. In the history of American fraud.
- [57:59]
Christine Rosen
With Walls in Minnesota, the story has developed. I think the only thing left to find out is whether Tim Walls will pay any price. The trial, the biggest trial happened in 2022, right of the feeding case.
- [58:19]
John Podhoretz
59 people were convicted, I believe.
- [58:22]
Christine Rosen
And there have been two subsequent and related frauds uncovered with some of the same cast of perpetrators, some of them exploiting a social services program for autistic children where they drew kids in to pretend to use these services to get the taxpayer dollars. But the federal prosecutors in the Twin Cities have been systematically uncovering and prosecuting these cases for the past four. For the past three years, nearly five dozen people have gone to jail. The cast of perpetrators is almost exclusively Somali. There are a couple of people who aren't. But of the 58 people, almost all of them are first or second generation Somali immigrants in that community. Walls spoke about this. He was pressed about it on Meet the Press yesterday and he claimed that he has sent people to jail for these frauds. Well, actually it was the feds who tried these people, including a Biden nominated and confirmed U.S. attorney Andy Lugar. And it's continuing under the Trump administration and the U.S. attorney there. But Walls, all his administration did was rubber stamp these bs, you know, food sites. And, and then he blamed Trump for, you know, cutting inspectors general. So he is not acquitting himself well. And I think we will have to see whether he pays any price. And the other point, you know, I made on our text thread was nobody was covering in the mainstream media was covering these things when he was on the Democratic ticket. Right, of course. And now we get the big New York Times story, which was excellent, by the way. And I recommend to people there was a big New York Times story about all these scandals unfolding on Tim Walls's watch with. And by the way, the Times also covers the angle of the Walls administration's squeamishness to confront these frauds because they were afraid of being accused of racism, which the, the perpetrators of the SC of the, of these frauds actually did file a lawsuit accusing the administration of racism. I mean, they, they really do have gall.
- [60:47]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [60:48]
Christine Rosen
But, but the Times story gets at that, which is impressive, I think. For the Times. For the Times.
- [60:54]
John Podhoretz
Okay, just to move off, I mentioned all These things and we haven't even touched on them. But just to move off for two minutes and then we'll close. Seth, we find you in the Holy Land. And there is a huge political issue brewing in the Holy Land, which is that Benjamin Netanyahu and his lawyers have made a formal request to the President of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel. The President of Israel is named Buji Herzog, former head of the Labor Party, son of the esteemed former president Chaim Herzog, sort of royal Israeli political family. He was, as head of the Labor Party, obviously not a political ally of. Of Benjamin Netanyahu's, but he ran against Netanyahu one year. He ran it. Yes, he did. Anyway, he. A formal request for a pardon has been issued by Netanyahu's lawyers. A letter written to Boujee Herzog by Netanyahu does not mention the pardon, but says if we could clear up all of our political business, we can move forward on the most controversial political matters in Israel, like judicial reform. No one knows quite what he means. Does that mean that he's going to drop judicial reform or does it mean that he is going to continue to seek judicial reform? That's what created the massive demonstrations when he came in in 2023, as the first in the first government to be elected in six years, like formally, with a full coalition. So this is a very complicated and hard to understand matter. Just. There were four charges of illegal actions against Netanyahu that he is in court for. Two of them, the two most serious have been dismissed, and one of them was dismissed before they even got to trial, which was theoretically the most serious about whether or not he had thrown business on the construction of Israeli submarines to a cousin. That case is. That case does not exist. The court told the prosecutor drop the case because it was so bad. Largely, the strength of the case against Netanyahu literally resides on the allegation that he took champagne and cigars from a Hollywood producer named Arnon Milchin, who came to maturity as a kind of Israeli arms dealer and probably an agent of the Mossad as a. As somebody who was helping create relationships around the world for clandestine Israeli arms sales and things like that. Anyway, supposedly Milchin gave him champagne and cigars. And this is enough to overturn the results of an election or to throw somebody into. Nobody looks at Bibi Netanyahu sanely and looks at somebody who is consumed by monetary desire for monetary gain or anything like that. This is a bribery charge that is preposterous. In My view. But anyway, it's there. And because of the oddities of the Israeli political system, this case has gone on now for five years. He has been in court now for eight months. This trial may go on for another year when that court hears its, has a hearing and like, makes a decision. If this ever gets to that point and the decision goes against Netanyahu, he can then appeal to the Supreme Court. This case could go on for another five years. And basically, finally, Bibi said, just give me a pardon and let's move on. So, Seth, what's your feeling, you know, there on the ground with your, you're there.
- [64:37]
Seth Mandel
Your shoe leather, Kermit defrog here. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I mean, it's exhaustion with the trial is really the only, is the best way to describe it. And that's the thing that works in his favor for a pardon is that, you know, I've been surprised by how, you know, how, how many, how Israelis are basically just like, ah, fine, so pardon them. I don't know, whatever. They just, they're just kind of tired of all of this. And, and that's, you know, and that's the fault in a lot of ways of the prosecution, which has been jumping from thing to thing. But the other part of this is that Netanyahu is saying, you know, the trial has gone on for X number of years. Right. If the trial is going to wrap up before, while, before we are dead, then they're going to force me to be in court three times a week, testifying three days a week.
- [65:35]
John Podhoretz
Week.
- [65:35]
Seth Mandel
That's the, that's the only, you know, that's what they're trying to do.
- [65:38]
Eliana Johnson
Now.
- [65:40]
John Podhoretz
Just so people understand, Bibi has been doing this during the war.
- [65:45]
Eliana Johnson
Right.
- [65:45]
John Podhoretz
Bibi has been in that courtroom while he has been conducting and leading the war, the 12 day war, the war against the Houthis, the war, you know, coordinating with Trump on the war against Iran. He has also been sitting in a courtroom. They wouldn't let him not sit in the courtroom. They ordered him to sit in the courtroom during the trial like he's testifying.
- [66:06]
Seth Mandel
His position is you can have, you know, your elected head of government running the government, or you can have your elected government essentially via lawfare, sort of canceled out and, you know, a sort of a form of soft coup almost. Right. Which is just, well, the attorney general says he has to be in court for most of the week, so he can't play prime minister or whatever. The argument is a strong one because, and Herzog is open to it. Because the, you know, there is a feeling that the judicial reform and the internal divisions, they've. They've hurt Israel, that they've maybe invited some of the attacks that have happened. You know, I don't know. Nobody can say, oh, October 7th wouldn't have happened if they didn't try to do some sort of judicial reform. But the point was more that, you know, its enemies see that a divided Israel during the war, Hamas capitalized on the hostages this way. Right. Hamas would, Would stir the pot in Israel by, you know, trying to. To allow, Give. To give Israel the space to fight itself at times over the hostages. And, you know, and so I think that Herzog's.
- [67:24]
John Podhoretz
Yes, Seth, here's my question. So the. This is the weirdness, and then we really do have to go. But the weirdness is he's asking for this. The war is over. It may not be over. May I really be over. I mean, there may be more stuff, but I mean, obviously the. The. To the October 7th war, as we understand it, has ended. There may be something that follows it. He managed to do this during the war. Now the war's over. Now he's like, let me. Let me alone already. Like, I don't know. It seems like if there was a time that he could actually stomach sitting in the courtroom and now would be the time.
- [68:03]
Seth Mandel
Well, the answer to that question is Trump. That's the answer that Trump said, pardon this guy. And so that's the discussion they're having, you know, and Trump is, Is, you know, I mean, I think Israelis would say, you know, I'm a great deal. Would be, pardon Bibi. He agrees to step down, and Trump agrees to be prime minister in his stead. I think Israelis, because I'm walking through the old, you know, the old city and seeing yarmulkes with a picture of Trump raising his fist, you know, after surviving the gunshot. I mean, so, yeah, I mean, Trump said. Trump said it, and so they're talking about it. That's. That's the simple answer.
- [68:39]
John Podhoretz
Okay, fair enough. We'll have more to say about this and about the other stuff. I'm just going to end, conclude by paying tribute, as I do, as I have on our website, to Tom Stoppard, who died over the weekend at the age of 88. Tom Stoppard was the greatest English playwright of our time, possibly the greatest writer in English of our. Of our time. His career spanned an astounding 60 years, almost 60 years. His first major play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, staged in 1964, and his final work, Leopoldstadt, staged in 2020, wrote 34 plays. He wrote 13 screenplays, unbelievably productive, the most literate, cerebral, word gamey, witty playwright of our age. And wrote three or four plays that deserve to be called masterpieces, among them travesties in the 1970s and the invention of love in the 1990s, and Arcadia in the 2000s. But the amazing story of Tom Stoppard is the story of his play Leopoldstadt. In 1994, he discovered a Czech refugee, as he had been born in Czechoslovakia, but then taken removed to Singapore by his parents. In the late 1930s, his father died in an attack on a Japanese attack on a ship. His mother then remarried, moved to in moved to India, remarried a guy named Stoppar who adopted him and his brother, moved them to England. He became, at the age of eight, he moved to England and was a grammar school student in England. And like Joseph Conrad and others before him, like Vladimir Nabokov, not a native English speaker, became one of the great users of English play play. Users of English, like comma, had a command of it that you only get when you come to it from the outside. But he hadn't really investigated his own past and Learned in his 50s that his parents were Jews and that his parents had his. Obviously his stepfather was not a Jew and his mother did not want to have her children live as Jews, having gone through what she had gone through and did not tell them that they were Jewish. And he discovered it in his 50s and then wrote an essay called on becoming Jewish in 1999, and then dropped it. And then the story is that in sometime around 2014, he read a novel called Trieste by a Croatian writer who has a character who says these people, these Tom Stoppards and Madeleine Albrights, they think that they can just divorce themselves from history and say that, choose their Judaism. Well, if they had, you know, if they lived the way other people live, they would be dead now, and they are skating through history and not taking it seriously. And Stoppard said this hit him with the force of revelation and shame that he had done exactly this, that this writer, Drasik, had nailed him, and that he started to do as he did with all of his plays, unbelievable amounts of research about Jewish life. And he ended up writing a play that is autobiographical only in the sense that is about what is going on in his soul, because it's not set in Czechoslovakia, it's set in Vienna and It goes from 1899 to 1955, and it is the greatest theatrical work of my lifetime, the greatest English play written. And he wrote it at 82, which is like unheard of for a writer to write his masterpiece at 82. You can go read it. It's an astonishing piece of work and not coincidentally though, it is fundamentally the most Zionist work of art ever produced. It is a play that begins with an argument over Herzl's publication of the Jewish state and demonstrates in the course of the following two hours without intermission what happened when Jews did not heed Herzl's warning. And there were 24 members of a family on stage at the beginning of the show and there are three on stage at the end of the show and everyone else is dead. Everyone else has been murdered in the camps or committed suicide because they could not survive it. And that fact, which is that the stage is crowded with people at the beginning and denuded of people at the end, is the story of European Jewry and the European Jewry that did not heed Herzl's warning, move to Palestine and try to make a nation there anyway. Tom Stoppard Great before Leopoldstadt, Greater after Leopoldstadt, and an amazing contributor to the storehouse of Western Civilization. So may his memory be for a blessing. So we'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Christine, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pod Horitz. Keep the candle burning. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.